A Newcomer Makes a Splash in Museum Attendance Standings

The Art Newspaper’s annual roundup of international museum attendance numbers for 2012 found a lineup of heavyweights whose positions haven’t changed much - the Louvre is still the world’s most popular, with 9.7 million visitors, topping the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in second place with 6.1 million. But the survey found a surprising bump in an out-of-the-way place: the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, opened in late 2011 in Bentonville, Ark., by the Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton, brought in 565,488 visitors in its first full year, more than double the number the museum expected.

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, which is going through a rocky period - with board defections and explorations of possible mergers - experienced a dip in attendance. But its 2012 number - 218,558 visitors - mostly reflects a return, after its blockbuster “Art in the Streets” show in 2011 (which drew more than 200,000 visitors), to the kind of attendance it has seen for most of the past decade.

The newspaper reports that the most popular single exhibition in the world last year was the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum’s show of Old Masters lent by the Mauritshuis - including Vermeer’s rock-star “Girl With a Pearl Earring” - which drew more than 10,000 visitors a day.

A Newcomer Makes a Splash in Museum Attendance Standings

The Art Newspaper’s annual roundup of international museum attendance numbers for 2012 found a lineup of heavyweights whose positions haven’t changed much - the Louvre is still the world’s most popular, with 9.7 million visitors, topping the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in second place with 6.1 million. But the survey found a surprising bump in an out-of-the-way place: the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, opened in late 2011 in Bentonville, Ark., by the Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton, brought in 565,488 visitors in its first full year, more than double the number the museum expected.

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, which is going through a rocky period - with board defections and explorations of possible mergers - experienced a dip in attendance. But its 2012 number - 218,558 visitors - mostly reflects a return, after its blockbuster “Art in the Streets” show in 2011 (which drew more than 200,000 visitors), to the kind of attendance it has seen for most of the past decade.

The newspaper reports that the most popular single exhibition in the world last year was the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum’s show of Old Masters lent by the Mauritshuis - including Vermeer’s rock-star “Girl With a Pearl Earring” - which drew more than 10,000 visitors a day.

Weak Job Market Leaves City’s Unemployment Rate Flat

A strike by school bus drivers and layoffs on Wall Street contributed to a weak job market in New York City last month and kept the city’s unemployment rate well above the nation’s, the State Labor Department reported on Thursday.

The city’s unemployment rate was 9.1 percent in February, unchanged from January. The national rate fell in February to a four-year low, 7.7 percent.

The city’s private sector usually swells by thousands of jobs in February, but last month added a total of just 700, said James P. Brown, principal economist for the State Labor Department. After adjustments for the usual seasonal gain, that increase will look like a substantial decline.

The statewide figures, which are already seasonally adjusted, showed a loss of 7,700 private-sector jobs last month. The February report was so weak that state officials chose to focus again on what happened in January, when the state’s private-sector tally reached a revised high of almost 7.42 million jobs.

The state’s unemployment rate remained at 8.4 percent in February. More than 800,000 state residents were unemployed, but fewer than half of them collected unemployment insurance payments.

Benefits for the long-term unemployed have been shrinking. Some state residents stand to collect a maximum of 63 weeks of payments, down from a high of 99 at the depths of the last recession.

New York City had led the state back from the recession, adding jobs at a significantly faster pace than that of the rest of the nation. But that trend has flipped: In the past 12 months, the number of private-sector jobs in the city has risen by 1.5 percent, compared with a national growth rate of 1.9 percent.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other city officials have emphasized the job-growth numbers while dismissing the high unemployment rate as a flawed measure of the city’s health. They also have taken credit for making the city less dependent on Wall Street.

But the jobs that Wall Street is shedding pay much more, on average, than the jobs that are being added in health care, education and tourism-dependent businesses like hotels and restaurants.

Education and health services added about 5,900 jobs in February, while Wall Street lost about 1,300 jobs. A monthlong strike by school bus drivers contributed to a loss of about 6,600 jobs in the transportation and warehousing industries. One of the biggest increases last month came in the local government sector, which added 7,600 jobs, according to the Labor Department.

A Career Bringing Natural History to Life

Robert Caplin for The New York Times Stephen Quinn, the senior diorama artist at the American Museum of Natural History, is retiring after nearly 40 years at the museum.

“I’m in my work clothes,” Stephen Christopher Quinn said as he smoothed a dark blue apron splotched with paint. “I’ve got to finish two murals by Friday.”

Standing in front of the buffalo diorama that he had restored, he meant to sound apologetic, but he sounded busy. He is the da Vinci of dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History, its Botticelli of birds, its Renoir of rhinoceroses. As the museum’s senior diorama artist, he has masterminded the scenes that make the crowds ooh and ahhh: the big blue whale, the huge coral reef, the gorillas beating their chests, the archaeopteryx, the acanthostega.

Those last two are in one of the fourth-floor dinosaur halls. You cannot mention the museum’s dioramas without mentioning its dinosaurs â€" in this case the archaeopteryx, a bird that bridged the evolutionary gap between dinosaurs that had feathers and latter-day birds. Or the acanthostega, an extinct creature that must have looked like a small alligator. It was one of the first to have distinct, recognizable limbs and hands with eight digits, if you counted them. Mr. Quinn, who is nothing if not precise, did.

Now, at 62, Mr. Quinn has decided to retire after nearly 40 years of creating the museum’s behind-glass environments (and many that were out in the open). His last day at work is Friday. He will become an “exhibition associate,” having a first-of-its-kind title conferred by the museum’s scientific staff, but retirement will give him time to do limited-edition paintings and to work on an urban nature center adjacent to his home in New Jersey.

So the pressure was on to finish background paintings for an exhibition on poison â€" a tropical rain forest like one in Colombia.

“What people don’t realize is these aren’t just generalized scenes,” he said on Monday. “It’s not just an artist getting together with a curator at the museum. The museum has a set protocol of actually going to a place and replicating that place.”

It is a boots-on-the-ground approach that sent him off to see polar bears on the frozen Chukchi Sea off Alaska and killer whales in what he calls the “rosy sunset waters” off the Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia.

Mr. Quinn, who arrived at the museum as an intern artist in 1974, went on to write the book on the museum’s dioramas â€" literally. “Windows on Nature” is a full-color volume that says dioramas are relics. They are not as old as their subjects, perhaps, but they are an art form that predates television and movies. “They were powerful forms of virtual reality” before 3-D glasses and DVRs, Mr. Quinn said.

It turns out that the term “diorama” was coined by Louis Daguerre, who used his name as the basis for another coinage, the daguerreotype, an early commercial photographic process. Daguerre created the first dioramas, in 1822, as theater sets in Europe.

In the book, Mr. Quinn wrote that the most frequently asked question of a diorama artist is, “Is it real” The second-most frequently asked is, “How do you get in to water the plants”

The answers are, “Not necessarily” (some plant specimens are in there, but not every leaf that you see is real, and the animals have been stuffed) and “You don’t” (the dioramas are sealed).

To open a diorama and redo it is a once-in-a-lifetime project. He relished those, starting with his very first assignment, working on the foreground of the wood stork diorama in the Hall of North American Birds.

He was good at birds, thanks to what he called a “Tom Sawyerlike childhood in the New Jersey Meadowlands” in the 1950s and 1960s, before the world knew it just for a sports complex. It helped that his older brother, John R. Quinn, had raised mallards, wood ducks, wigeon and bobwhite quail in the backyard. Together they learned to paint them. John went on to paint a mural of Alexander the Great on their bedroom wall.

“On his horse, marching to the Mediterranean,” Mr. Quinn said. (John grew up to become a museum exhibit artist for the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and later a naturalist with the Hackensack Meadowlands Commission. He died last year.)

Stephen Quinn’s travels have taken him far from home in Ridgefield Park, N.J., where he still lives in the same house â€" and where the Alexander the Great mural is still on the same wall. In 2010, he went to the Democratic Republic of Congo, retracing the steps of Carl Akeley, a pioneering taxidermist who did many of the museum’s dioramas in the early 20th century.

Mr. Quinn camped on Mount Mikeno, where Akeley had camped on his first gorilla expedition in 1921.

“You’re up 11,000 feet,” he said. “The volcanoes are still active, so at night there’s this brilliant vermilion color. But the first night we were there, we had snow flurries as we were pitching our tent and starting our fire, which was remarkable for equatorial Africa. You just assume you’re in the steaming rain forest, but it got cold.”

But the prize for an artist â€" a glimpse of his subject â€" eluded him: “The gorillas are wary of people.”

A Career Bringing Natural History to Life

Robert Caplin for The New York Times Stephen Quinn, the senior diorama artist at the American Museum of Natural History, is retiring after nearly 40 years at the museum.

“I’m in my work clothes,” Stephen Christopher Quinn said as he smoothed a dark blue apron splotched with paint. “I’ve got to finish two murals by Friday.”

Standing in front of the buffalo diorama that he had restored, he meant to sound apologetic, but he sounded busy. He is the da Vinci of dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History, its Botticelli of birds, its Renoir of rhinoceroses. As the museum’s senior diorama artist, he has masterminded the scenes that make the crowds ooh and ahhh: the big blue whale, the huge coral reef, the gorillas beating their chests, the archaeopteryx, the acanthostega.

Those last two are in one of the fourth-floor dinosaur halls. You cannot mention the museum’s dioramas without mentioning its dinosaurs â€" in this case the archaeopteryx, a bird that bridged the evolutionary gap between dinosaurs that had feathers and latter-day birds. Or the acanthostega, an extinct creature that must have looked like a small alligator. It was one of the first to have distinct, recognizable limbs and hands with eight digits, if you counted them. Mr. Quinn, who is nothing if not precise, did.

Now, at 62, Mr. Quinn has decided to retire after nearly 40 years of creating the museum’s behind-glass environments (and many that were out in the open). His last day at work is Friday. He will become an “exhibition associate,” having a first-of-its-kind title conferred by the museum’s scientific staff, but retirement will give him time to do limited-edition paintings and to work on an urban nature center adjacent to his home in New Jersey.

So the pressure was on to finish background paintings for an exhibition on poison â€" a tropical rain forest like one in Colombia.

“What people don’t realize is these aren’t just generalized scenes,” he said on Monday. “It’s not just an artist getting together with a curator at the museum. The museum has a set protocol of actually going to a place and replicating that place.”

It is a boots-on-the-ground approach that sent him off to see polar bears on the frozen Chukchi Sea off Alaska and killer whales in what he calls the “rosy sunset waters” off the Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia.

Mr. Quinn, who arrived at the museum as an intern artist in 1974, went on to write the book on the museum’s dioramas â€" literally. “Windows on Nature” is a full-color volume that says dioramas are relics. They are not as old as their subjects, perhaps, but they are an art form that predates television and movies. “They were powerful forms of virtual reality” before 3-D glasses and DVRs, Mr. Quinn said.

It turns out that the term “diorama” was coined by Louis Daguerre, who used his name as the basis for another coinage, the daguerreotype, an early commercial photographic process. Daguerre created the first dioramas, in 1822, as theater sets in Europe.

In the book, Mr. Quinn wrote that the most frequently asked question of a diorama artist is, “Is it real” The second-most frequently asked is, “How do you get in to water the plants”

The answers are, “Not necessarily” (some plant specimens are in there, but not every leaf that you see is real, and the animals have been stuffed) and “You don’t” (the dioramas are sealed).

To open a diorama and redo it is a once-in-a-lifetime project. He relished those, starting with his very first assignment, working on the foreground of the wood stork diorama in the Hall of North American Birds.

He was good at birds, thanks to what he called a “Tom Sawyerlike childhood in the New Jersey Meadowlands” in the 1950s and 1960s, before the world knew it just for a sports complex. It helped that his older brother, John R. Quinn, had raised mallards, wood ducks, wigeon and bobwhite quail in the backyard. Together they learned to paint them. John went on to paint a mural of Alexander the Great on their bedroom wall.

“On his horse, marching to the Mediterranean,” Mr. Quinn said. (John grew up to become a museum exhibit artist for the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and later a naturalist with the Hackensack Meadowlands Commission. He died last year.)

Stephen Quinn’s travels have taken him far from home in Ridgefield Park, N.J., where he still lives in the same house â€" and where the Alexander the Great mural is still on the same wall. In 2010, he went to the Democratic Republic of Congo, retracing the steps of Carl Akeley, a pioneering taxidermist who did many of the museum’s dioramas in the early 20th century.

Mr. Quinn camped on Mount Mikeno, where Akeley had camped on his first gorilla expedition in 1921.

“You’re up 11,000 feet,” he said. “The volcanoes are still active, so at night there’s this brilliant vermilion color. But the first night we were there, we had snow flurries as we were pitching our tent and starting our fire, which was remarkable for equatorial Africa. You just assume you’re in the steaming rain forest, but it got cold.”

But the prize for an artist â€" a glimpse of his subject â€" eluded him: “The gorillas are wary of people.”

Michener Center Director To Mold Its Namesake Into Fiction

James Magnuson, who has been the director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin since 1994, will bring some of his experience with boldface names to his next novel. The book, “Famous Writers I Have Known,” was recently acquired by the publishing house W. W. Norton & Company.

The best-selling author James Michener, whose philanthropy funded the center, is among Mr. Magnuson’s prominent inspirations, he said by email.

“The central figure in the book is modeled on Michener, who I knew for the last 10 years of his life,” Mr. Magnuson said. “In the novel, his name is Rex Schoeninger, the world’s oldest, richest writer, who is dying and all the buzzards are circling, looking for a shot at his last $20 million. That’s awfully close to the truth of what happened.” He called Michener a “complicated, admirable and sometimes heartbreaking figure.”

In the novel, writing classes at a prestigious Texas program are taught by a con man on the run who falsely adopts the identity of America’s most reclusive writer and sees Schoeninger as a potential mark.

“During those last years, I was so struck by the steady stream of people coming to [Michener] for money,” Mr. Magnuson said. “Some of them were con men, certainly, but much slicker and more cultured than my poor anti-hero off the streets of New York. Some of them were literary figures of note. I went along on some of those lunches and it was a true education. Some of those people were dazzling. Those experiences, fictionalized, are an important part of the novel.”

The book will be sprinkled with “bits about famous writers and their reputations,” according to Mr. Magnuson, but he considers real-life aspiring writers off-limits. “I love my students and have been careful not to base any of the characters in the book on them, though the descriptions of what goes on in workshops are only slightly exaggerated.”

Mr. Magnuson said the novel was autobiographical, but “not in ways that are immediately apparent. This novel was a way for me to pour everything I’ve learned about writers and writing into one book, to let it rip.”

Assemblyman Explains Opposition to Hospital Measure

A push by the Cuomo administration to allow private investment in two New York State hospitals met an impasse during state budget negotiations last week, with strong opposition from Richard N. Gottfried, the chairman of the State Assembly’s health committee.

In a letter to the editor submitted on Thursday to The New York Times, Assemblyman Gottfried, a Democrat from Manhattan, provided his reasons:

“New York’s laws barring large business corporations from owning hospitals are important. It’s bad enough that distant stockholders control most of our health coverage. They shouldn’t also control health care delivery.

“The proposal in this year’s budget legislation to allow for-profit corporate ownership of two hospitals (one to be in Brooklyn) had no plan for how it might be implemented. Corporate ownership can mean cutting ‘unprofitable’ services and shipping ‘profitable’ services to powerful hospitals in other communities. This is especially true for underserved communities like much of Brooklyn.

“Brooklyn’s hospitals need help. The Health Department should sit down with the Legislature and the affected communities to work out solutions, including ways to bring in capital that do not involve corporate control.”

In an e-mail, Mr. Gottfried added, “I do hope the executive branch will pull people together on this topic so we can do something this session.”

A Restored ‘King of Comedy’ Will Close Tribeca Film Festival

Twentieth Century Fox Jerry Lewis and Robert De Niro in a scene from the Martin Scorsese film “The King of Comedy.”

If your only exposure to “The King of Comedy,” Martin Scorsese’s cinematic exploration of celebrity, media and obsession, has been watching the movie on a small TV screen in your mother’s basement while reciting its dialogue to no one in particular, the Tribeca Film Festival will soon offer you a new way to experience this acclaimed satire.

A restored version of “The King of Comedy,” the 1983 comedy-thriller directed by Mr. Scorsese that starred Jerry Lewis as the abrasive talk-show host Jerry Langford and Robert De Niro as his dangerously fixated fan Rupert Pupkin, will be presented as the closing night film of the Tribeca Film Festival, it was announced on Thursday by the festival’s organizers (who just so happen to include Mr. De Niro.)

Written by Paul D. Zimmerman and featuring supporting performances from Diahnne Abbott and Sandra Bernhard (as well as appearances by members of the Clash and the director’s mother, father and daughter Cathy), “The King of Comedy” was more of a critical than a commercial hit at the time of its release, but has gradually earned a place in Mr. Scorsese’s pantheon. This digital restoration, which will be presented on April 27, is being produced from the film’s original camera negatives and will also have a restored soundtrack.

In a statement, Mr. De Niro said of “The King of Comedy”: “I was a big fan of the script and was very excited to do it with Marty and happy that we finally made it. The fact that it’s been restored (hard to believe that so many years have passed) is even all the better, and I can’t wait to see it on our closing night.”

Mr. Scorsese said in a statement, “I’ve always been partial to comedians - the irreverence, the absurdity, the hostility, all the feelings under the surface - and to the old world of late night variety shows hosted by Steve Allen and Jack Paar and, of course, Johnny Carson, to the familiarity and the camaraderie between the guests. You had the feeling that they were there with you, in your living room.”

A Restored ‘King of Comedy’ Will Close Tribeca Film Festival

Twentieth Century Fox Jerry Lewis and Robert De Niro in a scene from the Martin Scorsese film “The King of Comedy.”

If your only exposure to “The King of Comedy,” Martin Scorsese’s cinematic exploration of celebrity, media and obsession, has been watching the movie on a small TV screen in your mother’s basement while reciting its dialogue to no one in particular, the Tribeca Film Festival will soon offer you a new way to experience this acclaimed satire.

A restored version of “The King of Comedy,” the 1983 comedy-thriller directed by Mr. Scorsese that starred Jerry Lewis as the abrasive talk-show host Jerry Langford and Robert De Niro as his dangerously fixated fan Rupert Pupkin, will be presented as the closing night film of the Tribeca Film Festival, it was announced on Thursday by the festival’s organizers (who just so happen to include Mr. De Niro.)

Written by Paul D. Zimmerman and featuring supporting performances from Diahnne Abbott and Sandra Bernhard (as well as appearances by members of the Clash and the director’s mother, father and daughter Cathy), “The King of Comedy” was more of a critical than a commercial hit at the time of its release, but has gradually earned a place in Mr. Scorsese’s pantheon. This digital restoration, which will be presented on April 27, is being produced from the film’s original camera negatives and will also have a restored soundtrack.

In a statement, Mr. De Niro said of “The King of Comedy”: “I was a big fan of the script and was very excited to do it with Marty and happy that we finally made it. The fact that it’s been restored (hard to believe that so many years have passed) is even all the better, and I can’t wait to see it on our closing night.”

Mr. Scorsese said in a statement, “I’ve always been partial to comedians - the irreverence, the absurdity, the hostility, all the feelings under the surface - and to the old world of late night variety shows hosted by Steve Allen and Jack Paar and, of course, Johnny Carson, to the familiarity and the camaraderie between the guests. You had the feeling that they were there with you, in your living room.”

For Young Readers, a Chance to Work Off Library Debt

Marcus Yam for The New York Times Luis Palaguachi, 15, is among young library patrons who have taken advantage of a program in Queens that allows users to eliminate fines for overdue books by reading in library branches.

On a recent Thursday night, Mark Munoz sat in the library branch in Corona, Queens, holding his head in his hands as he read a book called “A Magic Tree House: Leprechaun in Late Winter,’’ an adventure novel set in Ireland.

The room was filled with readers, as would be expected. But in Mark’s case, his motivation was not simply the joy of reading - it was a matter of dollars and cents. By reading, Mark was reducing the fines he had accrued for failing to return several books that he had borrowed on time.

“Today is my ninth birthday, but I have to finish reading before I can go out and have a party at home,” Mark said.

Mark is just one of many young scofflaws who are taking advantage of a program by the Queens Borough Public Library intended to help younger library users eliminate their overdue fines. While the penalties for failing to return an item on time for library users younger than 21 might not seem high - 10 cents per day for a book, $1 per day for a CD or DVD - they can add up and be onerous for children from families of limited means. And once library users have accumulated a total of $15 in fines, their borrowing privileges can be suspended.

Library officials say that though they want to encourage users to take responsibility for what they borrow, they also do not want to put up any barriers between children and books.

“Children tend to lose track of their things; books sometimes fall into bathtubs,” said Joanne King, a spokeswoman for the Queens Library system. “It is important that children realize and maintain their library privilege. They also do not have much cash at hand either.”

The system’s “Read Down Your Fees’’ program, which has existed for several years, has proved popular, drawing a steady crowd of users, especially after school, to many of the 62 branches that make up the Queens Library system. For every half-hour that children read, $1 is knocked off their fines.

Some library workers have found other creative ways to get children to work off their fines. In some cases, children can read to younger patrons. At one library branch, a staff member offered classes to teenagers about preparing for the SAT or on how to wear a tie.

Queens is not the only place where libraries have come up with ways to forgive overdue fines. The New York Public Library system, which includes Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, had a summer-long program in 2011 giving younger users a chance to read books in the library to wipe out their fines. Across the country, some libraries ask youngsters to donate canned foods to have their fines forgiven.

But at a time when many libraries are facing budgetary constraints, can they really afford to erase fines, even if they represent a small portion of their revenue Thomas Galante, the chief executive of the Queens Public Library, said he had no qualms about the fine-forgiveness program.

“We don’t see the program as costing us money, although it does consume more staff time since they have to work with children,’’ he said. “But it is worth the effort. I don’t know why other libraries may not want to have similar programs; it seems like a no-brainer to us.”

Some librarians are also flexible when it comes to enforcing the payment of fines. Jiang Jing Xie, the community library manager at the Fresh Meadows branch, said, “Sometimes we adjust the amount but would not redeem the entire fine since the aim is to make them responsible people.” She continued, “We allow them to borrow books if it is an utmost necessity for their school work, even if their fine amount is more than $15,” which would normally result in having borrowing privileges blocked.

One of the regulars at the Fresh Meadows branch was Ali Khalid, 13, who last summer had amassed over $70 in fines. Working off such a hefty penalty was exhausting, he recalled.

“I read for six hours each day for two weeks,’’ he said. “I also participated in the summer art program, and those hours were counted as my reading-down hours. But since my fines were so high, and I did not want to ask my parents for money, I gathered my own pocket money to pay $15 and read down the rest of the fines.”

After he had finally gotten rid of his debt to the library, Ali said, “I did not want to read a book for a long time afterward.”

Theater Talkback: Quick-Change Artistry

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Harriet Harris, left, and Laura Osnes in “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella.”

“How did they do that”

That was the first thing my friend said to me during the intermission of the London production of “The Book of Mormon,” which was then in its last week of previews. My friend is a writer of considerable erudition, and there was much she was eager to discuss about this American-born musical, which appealed in equal measures to the moralist and the hedonist in her.

But what she wanted to know right away was this: How was it possible that a phalanx of soberly dressed Mormon missionaries were transformed - during a blackout that couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds â€" into sequined-vest-wearing chorus boys out of a Busby Berkeley fantasy

Simple sleight of hand. It gets ‘em every time.

Such basic moments of metamorphosis still wow us at the theater in a way movies never can, no matter how much digital trickery is deployed. After all, actors on screen have been changing shape before our eyes - whether from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, or from Lon Chaney Jr. into the Werewolf â€" for almost as long as there have been moving pictures.

The Red Sea is parted, the Titanic goes down again in a wall of water and human beings turn into their blue-skinned avatars, in three dimensions to boot. Yet as scenic and spectacular as these moments may be, we always appreciate on some level that they are the product of long hours of technological manipulation, achieved on sound stages and in editing rooms.

In theater, on the other hand, something as rudimentary as an instant change of costume makes grown-ups gasp. Go to the current Broadway production of “Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella,” and listen for the ascending chorus of “ooohs” that arises on the two occasions the title heroine (played by Laura Osnes) spins out of her sad rags and into glittering ball gowns without ever leaving our sight. (William Ivey Long did the costumes.)

Or, if you’re in London and can score a ticket, check out the wondering murmurs that course through the John Gielgud Theater every time Helen Mirren gains or sheds decades in Peter Morgan’s “Audience,” in which she portrays Queen Elizabeth II at different points in her reign. True, most often Ms. Mirren accomplishes these wonders off stage (though in less time than it takes most of us to put on a coat and scarf).

But there’s also that moment when the Queen, surrounded by a throng of courtiers, steps out from the protective huddle in a different gown, with a different hairstyle and is both of a different age and from a different age than she was seconds before. Ah, if only we could juggle styles - and time â€" so effortlessly when we get dressed in the morning.

Johan Persson A scene from the London production of “The Book of Mormon.”

These are all, to some extent, magician’s tricks. And I suppose you could argue that in their use of show-biz expertise they’re not all that different from the gizmo-driven gimmickry of movie makers. It’s that these reinventions of living people take place in real time and space that makes us feel like little kids at their first county fair. Such metamorphoses also embody the larger process and very essence of theater.

The leapfrogging through time in “The Audience” â€" especially as embodied by its leading lady - is a virtuoso version of what happens every time a performer convinces us that she’s someone else, existing in a breathing moment that only those of us who are gathered in this place at this time have access to.

The quick-change artistry of the young missionaries in “The Book of Mormon” is a happy, gaudy metaphor for the way musicals give extravagant color and rhythm to gray, chaotic reality. That’s what this show is about, finally â€" the alchemical power of the religion that is theater, and specifically, the American musical. (For the record, some of the more eminent London critics thought the show was at best middle-brow and at worst gratuitously offensive. But for me, it felt as joyous as it had in New York.)

In another London show, Alan Bennett’s “People” at the National Theater, there’s a sequence in which a shabby, long-neglected English country castle is recast into sparkling, immaculate luxury as we watch. This is not necessarily a cause for celebration in a play that is highly ambivalent, if now downright censorious, about the way Britain polishes and re-styles its own past for profit.

But the feeling that emanated from the audience in that makeover scene was of the pure giddiness that comes when the theater shows off its sorcerer’s technique. Anyway, we all knew that the big house would be a dump again in time for the next performance of “People.” And that it would turn back into a palace for another audience’s delectation and then turn back into a dump again to begin another evening at the theater, where some performers, some designers, some stage hands and a willing group of watchers would collude in marvelous illusion-making.

What are some of your memories of stage magic, of moments - whether elaborate or simple - when impossible metamorphoses take place in plain view

Blue Note Jazz Festival Gets Bigger in Its 3rd Year

The Blue Note Jazz Festival will be bigger in its third season, and a glance at its schedule suggests it will be better. Held in June at nine locations around New York, it will feature a range of jazz and pop artists, including the saxophonist Wayne Shorter, the flamenco star Buika and the blues singer Buddy Guy.

The inaugural Blue Note Jazz Festival, in 2011, arrived at a time of transition for the summer jazz festival landscape in New York. From the start it seemed to be rushing to fill a void left by the JVC Jazz Festival (which had changed sponsors, becoming the CareFusion Jazz Festival, in its final year). The first two Blue Note festivals were strongly club-centered â€" its organizers own the Blue Note jazz club, the Highline Ballroom and the B.B. King Blues Club and Grill â€" and the occasional larger concert was generally cast in the JVC mold.

That’s gradually changing. This year’s festival has a few reflexive bookings: the Manhattan Transfer will appear for a third consecutive year, as will the pianist McCoy Tyner. And a lot of the action is still at the Blue Note, which will present the guitarist John McLaughlin with his band the 4th Dimension (June 18-20); and the B.B. King Blues Club, which offers Latin-jazz groups led by the pianist Eddie Palmieri (June 6) and the percussionist Poncho Sanchez (June 10).

But some other concerts indicate a greater programmatic ambition. Among them is a Wayne Shorter 80th birthday celebration at Town Hall on Aug. 28. Birthday concerts were once a JVC cliché, but this one, which continues a busy year of activity for Mr. Shorter, will feature his longtime quartet along with two astute ensembles paying their respects: Sound Prints, led by the trumpeter Dave Douglas and the saxophonist Joe Lovano; and the Esperanza Spalding Trio, led by its namesake bassist and vocalist.

Another prominent saxophonist, Joshua Redman, will perform at Town Hall on June 4, offering a preview of “Walking Shadows,” his forthcoming album on Nonesuch. As on the album, he’ll perform with a string orchestra as well as a blue-chip rhythm section: Brad Mehldau on piano, Larry Grenadier on bass and Brian Blade on drums.

Also appearing at Town Hall are the keyboardist Bob James with the alto saxophonist David Sanborn, crossover-jazz veterans with a lot of history together (June 6); and the eminent Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés, leading his quintet (June 21) and possibly paying tribute to his father, Bebo Valdés, who died last week. For a full festival schedule, visit bluenotejazzfestival.com.

A New Doctorow Novel

E. L. Doctorow, the author of “The Book of Daniel” and “Ragtime” among many other novels, has a work coming in early 2014, his publisher, Random House, said Wednesday. Mr. Doctorow, best known for works of historical fiction like “World’s Fair,” which won the National Book Award for fiction, appears to be taking a new tack in the novel, “Andrew’s Brain.” In a news release Kate Medina, his editor, said: “It’s an of-the-moment novel whose main character, speaking from an unknown place and to an unknown interlocutor, unfurls his life, his loves and the circumstances that have led him to commit a mysterious act.” Besides the National Book Award, Mr. Doctorow has won two PEN/Faulkner Awards, three National Book Critics Circle Awards and the National Humanities Medal.

City Has Financial Ties to Carwashes Under Investigation, Report Says

Yana Paskova for The New York Times Workers protested outside the Sixth Avenue Car Wash in February.

The owners of a string of carwashes with a history of labor law violations and who are under investigation by the state attorney general’s office are paid by the city to clean city-owned cars, according to a new report.

Using publicly available documents, the report shows that the city has paid more than $400,000 to businesses operated by the carwash owners, John Lage and Fernando Magalhaes, since 2007. That amount includes money to wash Police Department vehicles.

In 2005, the federal Department of Labor sued a company owned by Mr. Lage, Lage Management Corporation, accusing the company of violating labor law by failing to pay minimum wage and overtime. The corporation eventually agreed to pay $4.7 million in back wages and damages to more than 1,300 employees.

In March 2012, the state attorney general’s office announced that it had started a separate investigation into labor law violations at 23 carwashes in the New York City area owned or operated by Mr. Lage and Mr. Magalhaes. The investigation is continuing.

Carwash workers across the country have long complained about unlawful abuse, including nonpayment, underpayment, insufficient safety training and unsafe conditions. In March 2012, city carwash workers began a campaign to unionize the approximately 200 carwashes in the five boroughs. Since then, employees at five carwashes have voted to unionize.

Three groups have led the unionization campaign and produced the report: Make the Road New York; New York Communities for Change; and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The report has not been publicly released.

Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker and a Democratic candidate for mayor, said that the city should “immediately take action and reconsider doing business with them.”

Dennis Lalli, a lawyer for Mr. Lage, defended his client’s practices, noting that Mr. Lage recently raised workers’ wages, and “now pays well in excess of the state minimum wage for tipped employees,” which is $5.50 an hour.

“The city does business with Mr. Lage’s carwashes because he does a good job,” said Mr. Lalli, who also represents Mr. Magalhaes. “Those who say that the city should stop doing business with Mr. Lage do not have evidence of labor law violations. They aren’t out to advance the workers’ interests. Rather, they are a front for a labor union that seeks to advance its own interest in collecting dues from the employees’ hard-earned pay.”

Other agencies that have paid for services from businesses owned by Mr. Lage and Mr. Magalhaes include the Department of Housing, Preservation and Development; the Department of Sanitation; the Department of Homeless Services; and the Department of Transportation. The information is available on checkbooknyc.com, a city Web site that lists some, but not all, transactions that the city makes with outside vendors.

Hector Gomez, 24, began working at the Sixth Avenue Car Wash in Greenwich Village, which was owned by Mr. Lage and Mr. Magalhaes, five years ago. He was paid $5.50 an hour, never received safety training and was never offered protections like gloves or masks, he said. “We washed 50 or 40 police cars each day,” he said. “The white ones, the black ones, every kind. Of course it didn’t feel good, the cars come in, many cars, and we’re not even earning minimum wage.” After workers at his carwash voted to form a union, his salary was raised to $6.03 an hour.

When the Sixth Avenue Car Wash shut down earlier this year, he was transferred to another carwash in Queens. “All I want is for them to pay us the minimum wage,” he said, “for them to give us regular days to rest.”

Journey, an Indie Video Game, Wins Top Prizes

SAN FRANCISCO â€" Journey, a downloadable video game made by the independent studio thatgamecompany for the PlayStation 3, took home 6 of the 11 Game Developers Choice Awards, including game of the year, handed out here on Wednesday night at the Game Developers Conference.

Journey is the first independent title to win the game of the year award. Past winners include blockbusters like Red Dead Redemption, Gears of War, Grand Theft Auto III and The Sims. Just 2 of the 11 prizes went to games developed by mainstream studios. The award for best technology went to Far Cry 3, an open-world, first-person shooter published by Ubisoft. And the audience award went to Dishonored, from Arkane Studios.

During the Independent Games Festival Awards, also handed out Wednesday, the little-known game Cart Life, made by Richard Hofmeier, took home three awards, including the grand prize. FTL: Faster than Light won two independent awards: the audience award and excellence in design. FTL won yet another prize, for best debut, during the Game Developers Choice Awards.

“The system we’re fighting kind of likes us now,” said Andy Schatz, an independent designer who hosted the Independent Games Festival Awards. He later added: “Like it or not, we’re not the Clash anymore. We’re Green Day.”

The other winners of the indie awards were Kentucky Route Zero, for excellence in visual art; the game 140, for excellence in audio; Little Inferno, for technical excellence; and Zineth, which won the student showcase. The remaining winners of the Game Developers Choice Awards were The Walking Dead, for best narrative, and The Room, for best handheld or mobile game.

The Lunatic is On the Air: A Stoppard Radio Play for Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’

BBC Tom Stoppard, center, and the cast members of “Dark Side,” including Rufus Sewell, left, and Bill Nighy, right.

The 40th anniversary of the release of “The Dark Side of the Moon,” that best-selling Pink Floyd album, technically occurred earlier this month. But in the case of a seminal prog-rock record that deals with the nature of time (and the slowing-down thereof), we’ll forgive Tom Stoppard if his unique effort to celebrate this milestone doesn’t actually arrive until the summer.

Mr. Stoppard, the celebrated playwright of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” and “The Coast of Utopia” and a screenwriter of “Shakespeare in Love,” among many other works, has written a new play for British radio that will mark the 40 years since “The Dark Side of the Moon” was released in March 1973, The Guardian reported. But this latest dramatic work is no simple narrative of how Roger Waters, David Gilmour and company spent several months at Abbey Road recording songs like “Money,” “Time” and “Breathe.” This one’s … a little weird.

Describing Mr. Stoppard’s radio play, called “Dark Side,” at its Web site, the BBC called it “a fantastical and psychedelic story based on themes from the seminal album” that incorporates “music from the album and a gripping story that takes listeners on a journey through their imaginations.” (So keep your black-light posters handy, apparently.)

Mr. Stoppard, a self-identified Pink Floyd fan, said in a statement that he had spent the past four decades contemplating this project but had “no idea for a long time what I would do.”

“Finally,” he continued, “I found some time and sat down and listened to the album for the thousandth time and picked up from the beginning and kept going.”

The BBC said that the cast of “Dark Side” will feature actors like Bill Nighy, Rufus Sewell and Iwan Rheon but did not describe their roles. Mr. Gilmour of Pink Floyd said he had read Mr. Stoppard’s play and “found it fascinating.”

Mr. Stoppard’s “Dark Side” will be broadcast on BBC radio in August. There was no immediate announcement of an American air date or whether the play syncs up with “The Wizard of Oz.”

Blunt Doctor Cures Headaches

Dear Diary:

A few years ago, I was getting these headaches, which was unusual for me, so I went to see my doctor, a very professional stoic man.

Me: “Doc, I’m getting these headaches. I think I may have a brain tumor.”

Doc: “Everybody with headaches thinks they have a brain tumor. No one really does. (Pause) Well except for this woman last week. She really did. (Sees utter horror in my face). But that’s unusual. And she’s old.”

Soon after, my headaches went away.

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