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L.A. Times Art Critic Wins Pulitzer Prize; Long Beach Opera Production Cited
A scene from "The Central Park Five," composed by Anthony Davis for Long Beach Opera. (Keith Ian Polakoff)
Christopher Knight, the longtime art critic for The Los Angeles Times, won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism on Monday for his writing about the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, while the Long Beach Opera was cited for premiering music prize winner Anthony Davis’ “The Central Park Five.”
Knight, who had been a Pulitzer finalist three times before, was honored for his often unsparing criticism of LACMA, particularly about its troubled expansion.
The Pulitzer jurors said that Davis’ “The Central Park Five,” which premiered at Long Beach Opera in June of 2019, was “a courageous operatic work, marked by powerful vocal writing and sensitive orchestration, that skillfully transforms a notorious example of contemporary injustice into something empathetic and hopeful.” (Richard Wesley wrote the libretto.)
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