Guild Hall Revival

Have you noticed the goings-on at Guild Hall lately? Just a glance through last week's lineup gives a pretty clear indication of the cultural center's increasing liveliness.

As part of a notable literary series the poets John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch read from their work. For artists and gardeners, Jack Lenor Larsen, guiding spirit of LongHouse, spoke on "The Garden as Art," and for film fans there were two more movies in a series of French cinema classics.

The Hot Topic of the week was the Clinton Administration, with an all-star panel featuring a former White House counsel, the dean of the Yale School of Management, a columnist for The Washington Post, the former president of the Import-Export Bank, and the publisher of The Daily News.

The galleries were in the final week of a risky and challenging show of installation art. Then there was comedy from George Carlin, a magic show for children, a Joni Mitchell impersonator, and an evening of tap dancing and 1930s tunes.

While this year's Delsener concerts were not as applauded by the younger set as last year's, there is no doubt that Guild Hall is reaching out to diverse segments of the population, just as its director, Henry Korn, promised when he came on board three and a half years ago.

In many people's minds, the word "museum" connotes a ponderous institution, often carved of granite and moving forward with about as much animation. Guild Hall is proving to be a lighter, brighter entity.