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Top Arts News
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Of Special Note
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Just for Fun
TOP
ARTS NEWS
PLUS:German
government proposes to initiate a fee on computer hardware makers
that would be used to pay those whose intellectual property is distributed
digitally ~
92 Botticelli drawings are reunited in Rome after more than
five centuries of being dispersed throughout Europe ~ Giotto's
remains are found beneath Florence's Duomo ~ Thieves
who stole
a Monet from the Polish National Museum replaced it with a cheap
fake
~ Harvard
University's
plans to build two ambitious new museums draw opposition from neighbors
worried about crowds and congestion ~
A
proposal to consider closing streets off to cars in New York's
Times Square ~ Royal
Shakespeare Company hires a black actor for the first time in
125 years for the role of an English monarch
~ A
plan to sell cheap classical CD's in petrol stations in England
and Germany at rock-bottom prices ~ The
number of pirated CD's seized in the first part of this year
rose by 350 per cent over figures from this time last year. In all,
more than 539,000 CDs were confiscated." ~ Brooklyn
Museum unveiled a $55 million plan to transform the institution's
front entrance into a major civic plaza ~ Australia's
theatre companies are unenthusiastic over an extra $70 million
in government ~ Egypt's
lavish annual production of “Aida,” performed each autumn under
Cairo’s pyramids, was abruptly cancelled by officials
~ New
attempts to combat piracy by adding grating noises, lapses in
volume, and spoken-word interruptions to pre-release CDs ~
Two
long-lost poems by Rubén Darío -who is considered by some to
be "the greatest Latin American poet of all time - are causing
a big stir in Spanish literary circles
~ Movie
attendance in Europe and Australia for those under the age of
25 has fallen off. Movie theatre's blame the drop on the growing
popularity of computers and cell phones ~
Toronto
Film Fest concludes ~ Canada
Council selects a crop of young musicians to whom it will lend
valuable musical instruments, including a couple of Strads
~ Humble
ancient stone turns out to be the first art. "New scientific
data suggests that early humans were producing representations of
life 220,000 years ago, 170,000 years earlier than previously thought
~
Stolen
WWII art returned to the heirs of Gustav Kirstein, a principal
in an art printing firm in Leipzig.
TOP
ARTS FEATURES
- FEELING
SOMETHING: Something new is happening in dance. "The
cool, formal abstractness of body movement of the past 30 years,
American in origin, is being overtaken by a new, psychoanalytical,
emotional approach from Europe, where feelings matter more than
aesthetics." The
Telegraph (London) 09/21/00
- A
PARADIGM SHIFT YOU CAN DANCE TO: Now that digital downloadable
options like Napster have transformed the ways we can acquire
and listen to new music, will consumers ever be content again
with the old recording industry model of expensive, pre-packaged
albums? “Never again will we think of music, or eventually any
cultural creation, as produced by a label, network or imprint,
packaged, purchased and sitting on a shelf in our homes.”
Inside.com
09/19/00
- SIX
DISTRIBUTORS IN SEARCH OF AN AUDIENCE: How to market an independent
art film on a tiny distribution company’s budget and reach an
audience that isn’t growing at the pace of the releases? “[Distributors]
will tell you that there are too many films vying for the attention
of an audience that is no larger than it was in the '70s. The
pie is the same size, but it's being cut into smaller slices.”
Village
Voice 09/26/00
- MENTORING
& THE ART OF CHOREOGRAPHY: Where are the mentors for today's
choreographers? Who helps midwife a dance and develop it into
something finished, something unique? Boston
Herald 09/24/00
- AN
ANONYMOUS ART: Accompanists are the music world’s unsung artists.
“Twice the work, half the pay, and people invariably forget your
name. What self-respecting pianist would choose such a career?”
London
Times 09/19/00
- CHENEY
AND THE CULTURE WARS: If George W Bush goes to the White House,
Lynne Cheney may well lead a revival of those eighties culture
wars. The former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities
has been an arch foe of the agency she formerly headed, and she's
being touted for a cabinet position if Bush wins.
The
Nation 10/02/00
- ARE
LIBRARIES VIABLE? In a few years, if students can get all
their research online and access most books electronically, does
that mean the traditional library will be obsolete?
Wired
09/18/00
- CULTURAL
AUSTRALIA: "Australian culture is for the most part deeply
democratic, and joyously so as well. It is no longer "provincial",
a distant and nervous response to norms generated in imperial
centres. It is the result of a bloodless and slow-developing social
revolution conducted over 40 years as a small society grew larger
and immeasurably more complex, shook off its sense of derivative
Englishness and its fear of American domination, and learned to
trust its own talents."
The Guardian 09/18/00
- THE
SOUND OF POETRY: "Poetry readings are now a major part
of our literary landscape. Most American poets reach wider audiences
at readings than through publishing. In the days before poetry
readings became so ubiquitious, however, some of our best poets
recorded their work."
Public Arts 09/18/00
- PUZZLING
WELCOME: The London Philharmonic held a day-long celebration
to welcome Kurt Masur, the orchestra's new principal conductor.
But the performance roster was a multi-cultural stew that had
virtually nothing to do with Masur's esthetic. "What on earth
is the poor man being welcomed to? An orchestra or an agenda?
A concert series suited to his musical character, or a musical
re-creation of the Millennium Dome?" Sunday
Times (London) 09/24/00
- ARTS
CENTER OR BERMUDA TRIANGLE? Even in London's current artboom,
plans for redoing Southbank's galleries and concert halls have
hit yet another snag. "One famous architect after another
has boldly set out to civilise its streaked concrete walkways
and make sense of its flawed galleries and concert halls, only
to see their schemes vanish without leaving so much as an oil
slick on the Thames." The Observer
09/24/00
- WHY
VIRTUAL MUSEUMS DISAPPOINT: Even as London's Tate and New
York's Museum of Modern Art get set to launch ambitious virtual
museums, a big question still remains: "Why is the Virtual Museum
so boring? And it is. The cyber gallery is nearly always dense,
confusing, difficult to navigate, devoid of passion and, worse,
of intellect. Not only are these sites a betrayal of the 'muse'
function at the core of the name museum, they often demand hours
of downloading special software to handle special effects that
are nothing special." New York
Times 09/24/00 (one-time registration
required for entry)
PLUS:
Why
is it that great stage musicals rarely translate well to film? ~
Publications
are selling original photos from their archives but critics protest
that pieces of history are disappearing in such sales ~ Textbook
publishers have been slow to hit the internet, but that's all
changing ~ Hollywood
actors are overruning London stages, but is the star search
wrecking the West End? ~ Mahler's
redo of Beethoven's symphonies "restored" lines that
are lost, thoughts that get buried, details that are implicit but
suppressed."
~ Succession
battles at Germany's Bayreuth Festival are killing it
~ First
reviews of the Royal Academy's followup to "Sensation"
paint "a rather sad little show, even a pathetic one. This
was obviously not the intention."
SPECIAL
INTEREST
- NEW
HARVARD STUDY ON ARTS EDUCATION: "After a comprehensive
review of 50 years of arts education research and nearly 200 existing
studies, researchers concluded that spatial-temporal reasoning
improves for children when they learn to make music and improves
temporarily for adults when they listen to certain kinds of music.
However, researchers uncovered no generalizable, causal links
between studying the arts and improvement in SAT scores, grades
or reading scores, challenging a popular argument that the arts
can and should be used to buttress other types of learning."
Washington Post 09/21/00
- COMPUTERS
MAY HURT, NOT HELP: A growing number of educators, child development
experts, and doctors are beginning to speak out against early
computer use, especially when coupled with regular television
watching. Too much 'screen time' at a young age, they say, may
actually undermine the development of the critical skills that
kids need to become successful, diminishing creativity and imagination,
motivation, attention spans, and the desire to persevere.
US News 09/25/00
- JOB
DESCRIPTION: The artist's job is to "experience
(mostly emotions), to mould it into a the grammar, syntax and
vocabulary of a universal language in order to communicate the
echo of their idiosyncratic language. They are forever mediating
between us and their experience. Rightly so, the quality of an
artist is measured by his ability to loyally represent his unique
language to us. The smaller the distance between the original
experience (the emotion of the artist) and its external representation
- the more prominent the artist." The
Idler 09/20/00
JUST
FOR FUN
-
PRAYING
TO THE SOUND OF PORN: A broadcaster mixes up the soundtracks
of a Catholic broadcast and a porn channel. "For two hours,
millions of Roman Catholics watched video of cardinals singing
hymns and praying, set to the orgasmic moaning and caterwauling
of porn stars like Shyla Foxxx, Kaitlyn Ashley and Caressa Savage.
Conversely, male viewers of the Fantasy Channel, sitting on
sofas with their pants to their ankles, were treated to porn
that featured holy incantations."
Salon 09/20/00
-
AUSTRALIAN
OPERA COMPETITION GOES WRONG: Opera Foundation
Australia staged its competition recently, but participants
are crying foul. "Earlier this week, finalists received
a letter from the Opera Foundation informing them that the $40,000
prize had been awarded to another singer who had not taken part
in the competition." Sydney
Morning Herald 09/21/00
- FIRST
IT WAS THE FRENCH... Now Italian authorities are getting
upset about the corruption of their language by English. "Critics
complain that not enough effort was being made to coin new Italian
words instead of borrowing foreign ones."
BBC 09/20/00
- MR.
GRUMPY PARTY POOPER: I hate clapping along at concerts. "I
don't think the clapping has yet been brought forward as an issue,
and in this time of Olympic-level whingeing and control, I think
it's time we looked at legislation to contain it. Of course, being
in a crowd of rhythmless hand-bashers does have its spiritual
upside. I now truly understand what the Buddhists mean when they
talk about the beauty of the sound of one hand clapping."
Sydney
Morning Herald 09/18/00
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