Monday’s Art Notes

“Passover” by Arthur Szyk, 1948; colored tempera, ink. Courtesy of the Center for Jewish History.

On the first day of Passover, the New York Times’ Edward Rothstein gives a critical reading of the Haggadah: “To make any sense of it, one must first see just how strange it really is.”

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The board of the Philadelphia Orchestra voted Saturday to file for bankruptcy. The move makes Philadelphia’s the first major U.S. orchestra to file for bankruptcy, via the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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Seattle’s Intiman Theatre, a Tony Award winner, is canceling the rest of its season and laying off all its employees, citing financial problems, via the Seattle Times.

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The New York mansion that scholars believe inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is being razed for a subdivision. Demolition of the 25-room mansion known as Land’s End began Saturday, via the Daily Mail.

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An Egyptian court on Sunday sentenced antiquities minister Zahi Hawass to a year in jail and ordered him removed from his job. The sentence arose out of a dispute over the assigning of a contract to run a bookstore at the Egyptian museum, via Bloomberg. Hawass said on his blog that he intends to appeal the ruling.