...For Felt # 8, Arturo Herrera has created a template that can be hung in any number of ways, dramatically changing its form. As Scholl says,''It's a skinny piece of felt that can create dramatic volume.'' Olafur Eliasson's Fivefold Dodecahedron Lamp also changes form depending on where it is installed. The sculpture consists of the environment of light and shadows as the movers move close...

Though he’s just one voice among many, Francisco Noya is one of the Tanglewood Chorus singers on that old Boston Symphony recording of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy. Now Noya, resident conductor of the Rhode Island Philharmonic, will lead the orchestra in the Beethoven Saturday night at Veterans Memorial Auditorium...

..."[They] are among the most important artists of the 20th century anywhere in the world," said MoMA’s director, Glenn Lowry.

Language is at the center of both artists’ work, as the MoMA retrospective easily conveys.

"They worked during the same years; they thought about similar problems," said Pérez-Oramas, the first curator of Latin-American art at MoMA. "They used language as if there is no distinction between the visible and the legible."...

In a career that dates to the mid-1980s, Yanni has never deigned to add the human voice to his lush, orchestral instrumentals.

So how did he come to record Voices, an album that incorporates the singing of classically trained tenor Nathan Pacheco, pop singer Leslie Mills, Venezuelan-born Ender Thomas and a Florida-bred singer-songwriter Chloe into a combination of old favorites and new songs? (Yanni performs Tuesday, April 14, at Amway Arena)...

The women of this year's Virginia Arts Festival are hot, in a promotional sense.

The 13th annual fest begins on Tuesday with pianist Gabriela Montero, who was seen by millions performing with Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman for President Barack Obama's inauguration.

When Rob Cross, director of the arts festival, watched the inauguration, he was flabbergasted. He had been pursuing Montero for more than a year and had just booked her last summer. "I was like, 'Oh, this is unbelievable.'"...

...Orlando Amaro, the chef at Pamplona, has also created some fusion-style dishes.

"In the United States, my fusion is a French product," said the Venezuelan-born Amaro. "It's a local product - local fish, like catfish, redfish."

Amaro worked in Venezuela, Colombia and Puerto Rico, as well as at a three-star restaurant in the Basque region of Spain, before becoming the executive chef at a Miami restaurant, then finally settling in Lafayette.

"His grandmother was Italian," Payne said. "He does some fusion here and there to try to keep things as interesting as possible."...

VENEZOLANOS EN HOLLYWOOD PRESENTS

"SIEMPRE SIMÓN"

Suffering will be second nature for Salvador by the end of Luisa Maria Celis' debut, historical novel, Arrows.

The missionary will be bashed about in a deadly storm, rescued from falling overboard, taken seriously ill, twice skewered by arrows, attacked by a horde of hungry red ants, stabbed in the chest, punched, battered and finally tortured by the folks at the Spanish Inquisition. In between injuries and mishaps, he engages in self-flagellation.

And that list of woes doesn't include his broken heart. It's Spain's Golden Age in the mid 16th-century and the evangelist has left his monastery in Spain to join an expedition sent to re-conquer territory in the Caracas valley. Two previously vanquished expeditions failed to take revenge on the Carib leader, Guacaipuro, who left the original Spanish settlement in ashes ten years earlier....

Ron van Dongen’s photographs of flowers are so beautiful they could make your knees buckle. Born in Venezuela and raised in Holland, Ron imbues his images with the vibrant sensuality of one culture and the quiet restraint of the other. Now residing in Portland, Oregon, he grows his photographic subjects in his own garden, then captures their beauty using a large format view camera. Already a very accomplished black and white photographer, Ron’s career really took off when he started shooting in color and playing with the same limited tonal values...

...Saturday night, the Venezuelan-born Valero will fight in the U.S. for the first time since 2003 after having been suspended by the New York State Athletic Commission for a faulty brain scan. Valero has always insisted that was a medical mistake and has gone on to make his case in a profound way. After a 17-month layoff he began to fight again in Japan, Europe and South America and has won 12 straight times, all by knockout. Along the way he picked up the WBA junior lightweight title, a championship he recently relinquished to move up to 135 pounds in pursuit of what he hopes will be a bigger prize – a big money fight with Juan Manuel Marquez or a less valuable stepping-stone match with one of the four other 135-pounders appearing on Saturday night’s “Lightweight Lightning’’ pay-per-view show in Austin, Tx...