IDEAS
http://www.artsjournal.com/ideas
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Echoes Of Other Language "Is there such a phenomenon in poetry as a 'shadow language,' that is, a concealed or tacit foreign language which exerts a strong and sometimes fruitful pressure on the native tongue of a poet? In one sense, of course, the answer is an obvious yes. Much of traditional English poetry would have been the poorer without the pressure of, say, Latin or French." The New Criterion 04/03

Science And Our Growing Illiteracy Arguably, science has never been more important in our lives. "Science offers a way of finding out about, and changing, the world around you. As such, it is increasingly central to all our lives. It touches everything that we hold dear, from communication, to nutrition, to reproduction - and now promises to take us into a strange world of cyberspace, biotechnology and nanoscience. The pride and scorn for science, that saw most people through the 20th-century, is now giving way to fear. Why the change? Jargon and methodology, more than ever, are raising the wall between the cognoscenti and Everyone Else." The Guardian (UK) 04/10/03

Battle For The Soul Of American Science Traditional science is under attack in the US. "A new climate has emerged under the Bush administration: one driven partly by close relationships with big business, but just as much by a fiercely moral approach to the business of science." Instead of attacking theories like evolution in favor of creationism, critics propose alternative "scientific" ideas like "intelligent design." "The approach is not exclusively religious, nor exclusively rightwing, but is spreading worry as never before through the nation's laboratories and lecture halls. These aren't the old wars of science versus religion. The new assaults on the conventional wisdom frame themselves, without exception, as scientific theories, no less deserving of a hearing than any other." The Guardian (UK) 04/10/03

Has Conceptualism Hit A Dead End? Battles over the legitimacy of conceptual art occupied a good part of the 20th Century. In the 21st Century those concluding that art has taken a wrong turn with conceptualism are a growing chorus. "The world of fine art now appears exclusively concerned with semiotics, ?the crisis in representation? and other academic matters. Visiting a gallery in the hope of being made to stare in wonder is, according to the prevailing critical theory, 'sentimental' and 'naïve'. Beauty, it would seem, is merely something to be analysed in a cloud of righteous deconstruction. However, the rapidity with which conceptual art evaporates from our consciousness undermines such grandiose pretensions. Once the tribal rituals of endorsement or derision have passed, the oeuvres of our more prominent artists actually evoke very little sense of meaning or avant-garde unease." Eye: the International Review of Graphic Design 04/03

Stupidity As Science Did you know that: crosswalks increase pedestrian accidents, many tanning lotions contain carcinogens, computers vastly increase the consumption of paper, and that better hygiene creates susceptibility to bacteria? A new book catalogs stupidity and the detriments of ideas that were supposed to help. The Independent 04/06/03

Only 200 US Colleges Reject More Students Than They Accept "In the ongoing debate about affirmative action, with the Supreme Court expecting to decide a case involving admissions procedures at the University of Michigan, the term meritocracy is a canard. American education is not meritocratic, and it never has been. Merit, defined as quantifiable aptitude and achievement, is just one of the variables that decide educational outcomes. Success in college admissions, as in almost every sphere of life, is a function of some combination of ability, connections, persistence, wealth, and special markers?that is, attributes valued for the difference they make to the mix. There are more than two thousand four-year colleges in the United States. Only about two hundred reject more students than they accept. The vast majority of American colleges accept eighty per cent or more of those who apply." The New Yorker 04/07/03

"War Porno" And The Voyeurization Of America The constant barrage of exciting video, exploding tank columns, belligerant journalists who make themselves the story, and endless nationalistic jingoism from the American media have congealed into a phenomenon best described as "war porno," says Joanne Ostrow. "Here we are in the middle of Act 2, just past the rescue of Jessica Lynch as a riveting subplot, awaiting the promised climactic act break in which we monitor the siege of Baghdad around the clock. We are at our posts, remotes in hand. You can tell you're a glutton for war porno when you arrange your day around Pentagon briefings to track Donald Rumsfeld's crankiness." Denver Post 04/04/03

ARTS ISSUES
http://www.artsjournal.com/artsissues
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Gioia And The Bureaucracy When he quit business, new NEA chairman Dana Gioia says he vowed not to be involved with bureaucracy again. "Appointed to his four-year term by President Bush, Gioia sees the bureaucratic dimension of his job as 'a necessary obstacle. There's no other way of administering these grants... except through a bureaucracy.' The key, he says, is to remain 'conscious of what your mission is. The constituency of the arts endowment is not merely artists. It's all Americans'." Philadelphia Inquirer 04/13/03

• Rosenthal To Gioia: Fund Artists Over Institutions LA Times reader Rachel Rosenthal doesn't like NEA chairman Dana Gioia's emphasis on only funding arts institutions at the expense of artists. "Yes, art should be taught in school; yes, it's good to reach out; yes, art should be part of the fabric of social life. But by denying direct support to artists, what you are doing is forcing individual creative artists to mold their output to fit the tastes and policies of existing presenting organizations (theaters, galleries, concert halls) instead of following their own muse. This is a distorting and painful situation for most creators, and it favors interpretive artists: actors, musicians, curators." Los Angeles Times 04/14/03

Our Cultural Leaders - Where's The Considered Debate? Clive Davis is disappointed by the behavior of Britain's cultural leaders over the issue of the war. "At a time when cultural figures should have been leading a considered debate, Britain’s cultural elite (and a fair part of America’s too) responded with a mixture of hysteria, self-righteousness and wilful ignorance. If you think I am exaggerating, consider just some of the evidence. Exhibit 1 is the poetry (for want of a better word) of Harold Pinter, a once-respected figure who has turned into the literary equivalent of a sad old man with a 'The End Is Nigh' sandwich board." The Times (UK) 04/14/03

Denver - More Interest In Arts Than Sports A new study reports that in Denver "more people in the Denver area patronize the performing arts than professional sporting events, according to an unprecedented new study of attitudes and attendance patterns. It also shows that among the primary performing-arts disciplines, theater far outdraws dance, opera and the symphony." Denver Post 04/13/03

US States Sharpen Their Arts Budget Cuts Across America, states are considering drastically reducing or eliminating arts funding. "State arts funding plunged from $410 million two years ago to around $350 million in 2002-03, and this year looks to be worse. But the proposed cuts have a long way to go before they become law, and by the time they are approved in early summer, reductions may be significantly less severe. In fact, some believe the dramatic announcements are calculated to shock the arts community into accepting more modest cutbacks." But it's not all a bluff... The Art Newspaper 04/11/03

Your Ad Here It seems like every public space and event has a corporate sponsor these days. "The marketing idea behind this trend is consumer impressions. The more often we see a company's name, the theory goes, the more likely we'll trust that company and, in turn, buy its products or services when the opportunity arises. Thus, we get corporate names on the sports facilities and concert venues we attend, ubiquitous product placement in the movies, TV and cable shows we watch, even in the air we breathe (thanks, Fuji blimp)." But instead of complaining, maybe we should see this as an opportunity. "The biggest untapped avenue for sponsorship may just be us. Individuals. You and me..." Los Angeles Times 04/11/03

Alaska Pols Looking To Kill Public Art Program Alaska state legislators are attempting to abolish the state's public art program. Anchorage Daily News 04/04/03

Workers Want Art, Music In Workplace A new survey of workers in the UK suggests that "60 percent of employees feel that music or art in the workplace would prove both motivational and inspirational. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of respondents – who either worked full-time or part-time – said that they would like to see art in their workplace, however, only 48 percent said that their employer invested in workplace art." HR Gateway 04/10/03

Funding Cuts Threaten Florida Culture The chair of the Miami-Dade Cultural Affairs Council writes to protest proposed cuts in Florida's state arts budget. "The Senate is proposing zero dollars for the state's Division of Cultural Affairs' grants programs and the elimination of the Cultural Institutions Trust Fund, one of three so targeted out of the state's 450. For years, the Trust Fund has provided a stable, dedicated source of funds for the state's arts grants programs. The House's position is $6.1 million in cultural support, a 78 percent reduction from the current year. Gov. Bush's fiscal-year 2004 budget of $12 million for culture is a 57 percent reduction from the FY 2003 state budget. These cuts are disproportionate to other reductions proposed to address the state's budget crisis." Miami Herald 04/04/03

Apparently, Only Politicians Find Arts Expendable States across the country are slashing their arts budgets to the bone in order to patch holes in their overall revenue streams. In Massachusetts, cuts to the arts are nothing new, but a recent survey suggests that the residents of the Bay State do not view these cuts as a positive development. 94% of those surveyed "consider the arts to be as important a part of basic education as math and English, and that 92 percent favor state funding for arts programs in public schools. Eighty-seven percent said that nonprofit cultural organizations were important to the quality of life in their communities, and 84 percent said they favored state funding to support public programs of cultural organizations." Boston Globe 04/10/03

Visas To get Artists Into US Getting More Difficult To Acquire It's getting more and more difficult and expensive (and arbitrary) trying to get artists into America to perform. "In general we are talking $1,000 for the performer's petition, plus $1,000 for the technical staff petition, plus a $130 per-application fee each. That's $2,260. Plus, the AGMA and IATSE unions now charge $250 per letter of support. That's $2,760. You either have a huge budget that can accommodate that kind of extra money, or you're doing less international work, or you're more motivated to collaborate with partners." Village Voice 04/08/03

This Year's Arts Pulitzer Winners The New York Times on this year's winners of The Pulitzer Prizes for Letters, Drama and Music:
• Fiction: ' Middlesex ' by Jeffrey Eugenides
• General Nonfiction: ' "A Problem From Hell" ' by Samantha Power
• Biography: ' Master of the Senate ' by Robert A. Caro
• History: ' An Army at Dawn ' by Rick Atkinson
• Poetry: ' Moy Sand and Gravel ' by Paul Muldoon
• Drama: ' Anna in the Tropics ' by Nilo
• Music: ' On the Transmigration of Souls ' by John Adams The New York Times 04/08/03

What Will Happen If Oregon Zeroes Out Arts Funding The Oregon state legislature is considering zeroing out the state arts commission. Arts commission director Christine D'Arcy says her agency would try to reinvent. "You could see the commission continue as a service agency rather than a grant maker. We?re clearly looking at partnerships, revenue resources. I would say there is a lot of creative thinking under way." Salem Statesman Journal (Oregon) 04/07/03

DANCE
http://www.artsjournal.com/dance
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The Shrinking Dance Company Ohio Ballet is fading away. "Once a company of more than 20 dancers, the ensemble has been reduced to 12. Once a beloved cultural jewel with a subscription base of about 3,500 patrons, it now has a total of 848 subscribers in Cleveland and Akron." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 04/13/03

The Appeal Of Smaller Bites "Some small and medium-size American troupes may be on to something artistically important. Without feeling it necessary to confine themselves to a standard repertory or to tailor all productions to opera-house proportions, they can present a rich mixture of one-act works, each a crowd pleaser in its own way." The New York Times 04/13/03

Dance As A Crutch (Or Is It The Other Way Around?) Bill Shannon is a street and stage performer, sculptor and video artist, but he is widely recognized for his distinctive dance style. Known in the club-dance world as Crutchmaster, he uses his curved-bottomed crutches to extend his limbs in the way ballerinas use point shoes. The crutches enable him 'to streamline methods of weight distribution' and to make 'level changes from floor work to standing.' To describe what he calls the 'Shannon technique,' he uses terms taken from the worlds of skateboarding and the breakdancing of b-boys." The New York Times 04/13/03

Pied Piper Of Tap Brenda Bufalino has spent her career trying to re-popularize tap dancing. "Now in her mid-60s, Bufalino is credited as a major force in the renaissance of tap worldwide. She has formed tap orchestras and tap festivals, and helped inspire a new generation of performers - such as the young black tap superstar Savion Glover. She still tours and performs worldwide, acting as a unique bridge between tap's 'golden era' and its contemporary development." The Age (Melbourne) 04/11/03

Nureyev And The Royal - What Might Have Been What would have happened if Rudolf Nureyev had become head of London's Royal Ballet? Nureyev wanted the job, and Royal managing director John Tooley talked with him. "The Royal Ballet needed a new director in the mid-Seventies and approached Nureyev. Tooley remembers several discussions with him, in which Nureyev finally said that he would like the job but would also need to continue dancing. He never made any secret of his need to be on stage, but he also needed a fall-back if he proved unsuited to directing. Tooley answered that if Nureyev continued dancing to the extent he wanted, this simply wouldn't meet the company's needs. End of negotiations." The Independent (UK) 04/09/03

Will Dance For Money Auditioning for a job at one of America's major ballet companies is a grueling experience combining the harshest aspects of a Hollywood screen test, an Olympic floor routine, and the judges' table at American Idol. Dancers at these auditions must perform extremely difficult maneuvers en masse, and are dismissed casually and without explanation if they don't meet one of the dozens of physical, artistic, and athletic criteria of the people judging them. Thousands of dancers graduate from top schools every year - only a few will land full-time jobs. When you come right down to it, dance is one of the most competitive job markets in the arts world. Philadelphia Inquirer 04/09/03

Paul Taylor/Mark Morris Explained Joan Acocella looks at two modern masters. Paul Taylor is seventy-two, "and he has made more than a hundred dances, but one dance keeps reappearing. It goes like this: The dancers are a kind of community (we’re not sure what kind), and they perform maneuvers that they are very earnest about, and which look like rituals. This is somewhat comic—they think they’ve found an explanation of life. It is somewhat tragic, too, for the same reason. Mark Morris, on the other hand, is more abstract. "It has always been something of a mystery how Morris, who is a very sophisticated artist, and largely an abstractionist, became such a favorite with the public. One reason is that he’s often funny. Another is that he’s clear." The New Yorker 04/07/03

Wanna Dance? Better Stay Young. India has an enviable tradition of government support for the arts, a system which requires a large bureaucracy and intricate rules to administer. A recent Delhi High Court ruling, however, threatens to establish a maximum age for performing dancers, a move which, according to Lewis Segal, would be devastating to the counry's dance community. The court "ruled that dancers over 45 cannot be said to give performances, merely lecture-demonstrations. The ruling came in response to a petition filed in the court by Komala Varadan, a 62-year-old classical dancer insisting that she be listed as a performing artist in the files of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations." Los Angeles Times 04/08/03

MEDIA
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Why Movies Are So Bad This Time Of Year There seems to be great consternation in the movie industry right now over the lackluster performance of recent movies." Why, asks Barry Koltnow? Because movies this time of year stink. "The reason they stink is that all the best movies come out in the last two months of the year because members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are brain-dead and cannot remember a movie longer than two months. Therefore, if you want your movie to be considered for an Oscar, you must release it just before the voting deadline. On the other hand, if you have a fun movie that has the potential to make a lot of money, then you must release it in the summer when school is out and kids have the time to see a movie 12 times a day." Orange County Register 04/13/03

Attacking Celebs For Their Political Views There has been an explosion of "web sites by Americans attacking and frequently urging boycotts against celebrities who are using their fame - and sometimes their own Web sites - to promote political causes. The anticeleb sites present a single-minded view of patriotism in which anyone challenging the U.S. administration or its foreign policy is anti-American or worse. Their names are as colourful and direct as the messages on them..." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/12/03

Promoting By Word-Of-Email What's the biggest obstacle to getting an audience for your indie movie? Okay, getting it into theatres, of course. But how to promote it to potential fans? There's "a growing grass-roots movement to promote independent movies and niche projects, particularly those about ethnic groups largely overlooked by mainstream productions" through e-mail. "Community activists for years have used the Internet to promote niche projects, and that strategy is helping boost a trend toward underground marketing tactics to promote films. That is particularly attractive to independent filmmakers with limited budgets." Los Angeles Times 04/11/03

Movies On TV? Time To Move On "Britain has been Europe's most movie-intensive television market for more than 40 years. Until relatively recently, this has made perfect sense. Before it was possible for viewers to compile their own private film library, the belated television screening of a successful theatrical release was a genuine broadcasting event." But with so much non-TV access to movies, it's time for programming to move on. Financial Times 04/09/03

The All-Important 18-to-24s The 18-to-49 American TV demographic is "the single most important factor in determining what we see, hear and read. Appealing to young adults and trend-setting teenagers in an effort to sate ad buyers has promoted numerous media trends, among them the proliferation of so-called reality television, since the genre disproportionately attracts them; the 1990s surplus of yuppie-something sitcoms; news channels streaming text up, down and sideways; and even shorter newspaper articles, usually accompanied by pictures the size of a cantaloupe. Now, beyond tailoring sitcoms and dramas to a younger crowd, news coverage increasingly reflects this infatuation, from model-like anchors to gee-whiz graphics that translate the war into video-game language for those conversant in Nintendo and PlayStation."
Los Angeles Times 04/09/03

Canadian TV Faces Program Cuts In Canada, the government subsidizes the production of many of the nation's most popular television programs. Producers must apply to the government for the funding, and any program which is not granted funding is much less likely ever to make it to the small screen. Now, a new round of budget cuts may mean that several popular existing TV shows may wind up unfunded in the next year, seriously jeopardizing future production. Thought to be on the hypothetical chopping block are such programs as the biting satire This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and rural send-up The Red Green Show, which has also found a large audience in the U.S. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/09/03

FCC Debates Media Dereg Top figures at the Federal Communications Commission are sparring over the right way to approach further deregulation of the American media industry. Both sides agree that further loosening of the rules regarding media ownership is desirable, but there is disagreement over the extent of the deregulation, and the formulas which would be used to calculate ownership limits in a given market. Still, the debate is largely over small sub-issues, and nowhere in the upper echelons of the FCC is anyone giving any credence to the notion (generally accepted by press and public) that media deregulation has been disastrous from the point of view of the consumer. Wired 04/09/03

European Movie Box Office Down This Winter Movie box office in the UK was down 21 percent in February from a year ago. "In France, audiences were down 9% for the first quarter, while Germany showed a 7.4% drop in admissions on last year." Analysts say that last winter there were big blockbusters selling tickets, but breakout hits are missing so far this year. BBC 04/08/03

Disney Rethinking Digital Content Strategy? Disney CEO Michael Eisner signals a shift in Disney's emphasis on policing copyright infractions. "Last year the company was a leading proponent of a bill, which didn't become law, that would have forced electronics makers to prevent consumers from making unauthorized copies of films and songs. In the future, Eisner said, movie studios will need to be more flexible about the way they distribute movies. He suggested that in place of the current sequence of studio releases - from theaters to video to pay per view to television - studios would need to offer faster distribution, directly to consumers. 'If we don't provide consumers with our product in a timely manner, pirates will'." Los Angeles Times 04/08/03

Kids Shows - All About The Merchandise "With the death of Fred Rogers in late February, the children's television industry said good-bye to one of the last creators who didn't sell merchandise to finance his show. Today, more than 20 programs draw on his pedagogical legacy to educate the preschoolers he gently welcomed to 'Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood,' but with one big difference: Unless kids buy the goods, their favorite shows and characters disappear." The Christian Science Monitor 04/08/03

MUSIC
http://www.artsjournal.com/music
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The Dictator And The Opera North Korean dictator Kim Jong II has written a book on opera. "You might assume the book is a socialist critique of La Traviata and Carmen. Unfortunately, it's nothing so delicious, and isn't even whacked-out enough to be fun. It's just desperately prosaic and, for us, a creepy cautionary tale about what happens when someone whose favorite opera is titled 'Sea of Blood' (and whose favorite movie is Rocky III, according to another of his aesthetic tracts, 'On the Art of the Cinema') attempts to legislate the artistic process." Philadelphia Inquirer 04/13/03

New Look For Radio Pay-For-Play? Last week radio giant Clear Channel Communications announced it would discontinue what many consider the pay-fot-play system of choosing which music radio stations play. "But it's likely that the Clear Channel decision won't overturn the pay-for-play system so much as reconfigure it. Instead of funneling money through independent promoters to radio stations, record companies will now have to deal directly with Clear Channel programmers in seeking access to the airwaves. And, as in all things radio, money will talk. The radio giant said as much in a statement announcing the move, in which it promised a 'new, restructured relationship with the recording industry . . . on specific group-wide contesting, promotions and marketing opportunities.' Those words sent a shudder through many industry observers." Chicago Tribune 04/13/03

A New Music Label That Will Live On In Death This month CRI, the recording company that has championed new music through more than 900 releases, is shutting down. Time for laments. But New World Records will take over CRI's catalog and "digitize the master tapes of the complete CRI archive and keep each album available as a custom-made CD, burned to order and mailed to the buyer with the original liner notes. Not only that, New World is exploring the possibility of making CRI recordings available through digital downloads, as that technology becomes more viable. So what seems a simple act of one nonprofit's salvaging another's catalog could represent a bold step into the online future of recording." The New York Times 04/13/03

Apple Computer In Talks To Buy World's Largest Recording Company Is Apple CEO Steve Jobs about to become the most powerful man in the recording business? "Apple Computer Inc. is in talks with Vivendi Universal to buy Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, for as much as $6 billion, sources said. Such a seemingly unlikely combination would instantly make technology guru Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder and chief executive, the most powerful player in the record industry."
Los Angeles Times 04/11/03

Australian Recording Industry Institutes Ratings System The Australian recording industry has decided to initiate a ratings system that will restrict sales of some recordings to adults. "The industry's ruling body, ARIA, last week announced that its new system will prohibit the sale of CDs and tapes containing potentially offensive lyrics or themes to under-18s. Calls for stricter classification have followed complaints about US death-metal outfit Cannibal Corpse. Over the top to the point of absurdity, their lyrics are all but indecipherable, the vocals sounding like the Cookie Monster in a sink." The Age (Melbourne) 04/11/03

Computer Program Can Identify Composers? "A standard PC file-compression program can tell the difference between classical music, jazz and rock, all without playing a single note. This new-found ability could help scholars identify the composers of music that until now has remained anonymous." New Scientist 04/10/03

What Music Slump? Indie Labels Flourish As Majors Struggle While execs at major recording labels "wail about the industry's imminent collapse, indie labels and artists are singing a much happier tune. Profits are up - in some cases by 50 to 100 percent. That's in contrast to overall album sales, which dropped about 11 percent in 2002. You won't hear many of these labels' artists on pop radio - and ironically, that's one of the secrets to their success. By avoiding the major expenses associated with getting a tune on the air - which can cost upwards of $400,000 or $500,000 per song - independent labels are able to turn a profit far more quickly, and share more of those profits with their artists." Christian Science Monitor 04/11/03

Is Orchestra Touring Disappearing? Recently, musicians from a Dutch orchestra arrived in London to play a concert only to discover it had been cancelled for lack of ticket sales. This kind of thing is happening more frequently, writes Norman Lebrecht. "An awareness is dawning across the musical world that the age of orchestral touring is over, leaving gaping holes in the concert calendar and another economic nightmare. The Philharmonia Orchestra has just totted up a two-thirds drop in touring revenues over the past year. The Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields which has, for four decades, spent more time abroad than within sight of Nelson's Column, has ( players tell me) great white gaps in its diary." London Evening Standard 04/09/03

Is America Cutting Itself Out Of World Music? World music artists are cancelling U.S. tours left and right, in part because of the difficulty of obtaining visas in the post-9/11 world, but also out of fear of how they will be received in a newly isolationist and paranoid America. The fact that many world music artists have been active in anti-war movements at home is adding to the pressure to cancel, and musicians are increasingly aware of "rumblings from arts presenters... who [feel] that a newfound xenophobia might be on the rise." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/09/03

Music, The International Peacemaker In Rome, hundreds of student protesters calling for an end to the war in Iraq tried to disrupt a university performance by the famed La Scala Opera Orchestra, under the direction of Riccardo Muti. Rather than cancel the concert or forcibly remove the protesters, Muti addressed them directly, saying "The musicians you see seated here have been touring the world since 1996 in the name of peace." The protesters apparently conceded the point, sitting quietly for the first part of the performance before leaving the premises. Andante (AP) 04/09/03

Global CD Slump Gathers Steam Consumers worldwide are buying less music, according to industry representatives, with CDs particularly hard hit. "Sales dropped by 7% around the world last year after a 5% dip in 2001, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI)." Naturally, the industry says that the number one reason for the slump is the proliferation of illegal downloading sites and the inability of the industry to stay ahead of the pirates. In particular, the U.S. "suffered a 10% drop in album sales in 2002, mainly because fans were getting the music from the internet instead, the IFPI said." Of course, it's worth noting that the severe economic slump in the U.S. may also be contributing to the problem.
BBC 04/09/03

John Adams: Mixed Feelings About Pulitzer Win Composer John Adams is happy to have won this year's Pulitzer Prize for music. But "every year I continue to be disappointed that the Pulitzer has stayed stylistically within such a narrow bandwidth of mainly academic music. It doesn't carry much prestige amongst the composers that I know. I hope that over the years, the people who administer the prize will accept that American music is a far more universal art form than the past history would suggest." San Francisco Chronicle 04/08/03

All Avril, All The Time At Junos The Juno Awards, Canada's answer to the Grammys, turned into a near-sweep Sunday night as teen rock sensation Avril Lavigne took home several awards, including Artist of the Year. Lavigne was up against stiff competition, including mainstays Celine Dion and Shania Twain, and many observers saw her dominance as a significant shift in the direction of the Canadian music industry. Calgary Herald (CanWest) 04/07/03

• Classical Winners Are No Surprise Pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin, composer Bramwell Tovey, and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra were among the mostly predictable winners of the classical Junos. Diana Krall won for best vocal jazz album, and Richard Underhill took home the award for best contemporary jazz release. CBC 04/07/03

San Diego Chooses Ling In an era of fiscal crisis at most American orchestras, the San Diego Symphony has had the unusual luxury of sitting back and waiting to find the perfect person to lead them in a time of newfound wealth. The orchestra received an unexpected and unprecedented $120 million gift last year, and now they may have scored something of a coup in the baton-waving department, reaching an agreement with Jahja Ling to be the orchestra's next music director. Ling is the director of the Cleveland Orchestra's summer festival, and a former music director of the Florida Orchestra. San Diego had previously offered the position to up-and-comer David Robertson, who declined the job. San Diego Union Tribune 04/05/03

The Underwater Symphony The German Symphony Orchestra is performing in a health club, playing a piece of music for which the audience will have to be submerged in a pool. "The cellists will be on the poolside, playing electric instruments and the sound will be put through a mixing desk and modified. There will be no sound to hear unless you are under the water." The Guardian (UK) 04/06/03

Beethoven Ninth For Sale Sotheby's is selling a manuscript of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. "In three bound volumes of 465 pages, the offering includes virtually the complete score of that symphony in manuscript. (Two fragments of the same manuscript reside in the Beethovenhaus in Bonn and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.) The hands are mainly those of two copyists, but Beethoven scribbled corrections and changes throughout. The manuscript may have been used at the work's premiere, in 1824, and it was the basis for the first printed edition, in 1826." The New York Times 04/07/03

PEOPLE
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Charlotte Church's Rebellion Charlotte Church's holiday in Hawaii has been ruined by a terrible telephone row with her mother. Heading abroad with her 'disreputable' boyfriend, Steven, Charlotte was photographed at the airport in a pink T-shirt which read: 'My Barbie is a Crack Whore'. This didn't play too well with Mum back home." The Observer (UK) 04/13/03

Daniel Libeskind, Salesman Daniel Libeskind is a brilliant architect. But he has one other skill that is almost as developed. He's a salesman. "Sales is the right word, because we live in the marketplace, not only in terms of selling and buying but in the marketplace of ideas. It's a democratic city, democratic country, and that's how civic projects get developed. They're certainly not going to be done in an ivory tower somewhere - take it or leave it. Either you interact and communicate what you're doing or you're really cynical and should not be involved in civic art." Denver Post 04/13/03

Johnny On The Spot - The Perfect Life Of John Eliot Gardiner Conductor John Eliot Gardiner "heads the list of most recorded, and most awarded, musicians in history. He has wealth, a knighthood, a captivating wife, charisma. At home in several languages and an accomplished historian, he is also infuriatingly brainy. Put another way, he is ambitious, self-centred, workaholic, privileged, caustic. Human nature is not always generous to those who win." London Evening Standard 04/10/03

Deborah Card Named To Head Chicago Symphony Seattle Symphony executive director Deborah Card has been named president of the Chicago Symphony, replacing Henry Fogel. Card had a good 11-year run in Seattle. When she arrived from Los Angeles in 1992, at age 36, the "symphony had a $2.5 million accumulated deficit and was struggling to make its payroll every two weeks. Six years later, the symphony was debt-free, its endowment fund significantly increased and Benaroya Concert hall built." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 04/09/03

PUBLISHING
http://www.artsjournal.com/publishing
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Cliche Central There's a central list of words that have become cliched and ought not to be used in good writing. "This year's list consists almost entirely of pat phrases associated with '9/11' and the 'war on terror', all of which are so far beyond mockery and have been so ruthlessly dissected in the (British) press that the list seems sadly unimaginative (it's become clichéd to remark on the clichéness of the clichés). But isn't there an unforgivable fundamentalism in proscribing certain words as 'bad' English and promoting others as 'right', even when done in jest - one that is, at best, pompously pedantic and, at worst, pernicious, given that many 'wrong' words originate with ethnic or cultural groups for whom they are perfectly 'correct'?" The Observer (UK) 04/13/03

Wordy-gig - The New "Shorter" OED Some 3,500 new words have found their ways into the new Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. "Browsing in their latest verbal treasurehouse is not only a welcome escape. At around seven pounds a volume, it's also good for those pecs." And it's got great new words - like "newzak" for those burned out on the 24-hour news cycles... The Economist 04/11/03

For 22 Years She's Been Most-Borrowed Dame Catherine Cookson, who wrote more than 70 books and died in 1998, has been the 'most borrowed author' for 22 years in British libraries. In 1988 a survey found her books accounted for a third of all British library borrowings." But her grip on the fiction hearts of Britons is waning - this past year, her books were checked out fewer than 3 million times for the first time. The Guardian (UK) 04/12/03

Small Publishers' Stock Trades Up Business analysts say that small publishers are sometimes a better business than the big publishing houses. "If these companies are publishing for the professional or children's book market, they don't need one big hit a year. They might publish hundreds of books that sell 10,000 copies each, and that's fine. They can make a profit because the books tend to be pricier than other kinds of books and because, particularly with universities and other professional markets, institutions have to buy large numbers of these books, whether they want to or not." CNN 04/11/03

Frankfurt Fair To Stay In Frankfurt After long debates and threats to leave town, "the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world's largest publishing trade fair, will stay in Frankfurt. Threats to relocate to Munich have lost currency and that's the end to all that. This decision was made public Tuesday following an extraordinary meeting of the publishing association's management board." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 04/11/03

The Promising Young Writer Who Says He Won't Write Again Who is Dan Rhodes? "At 30, he is one of the youngest authors to be chosen for Granta's reputedly generation-defining Best Young British Novelists list. His first novel, 'Timoleon Vieta Come Home,' has attracted a flurry of plaudits." But there's a catch on the way up the literary ladder. Rhodes declared that he will never write again. The Guardian (UK) 04/09/03

Iraqi Looters Steal Everything But The Books Looters emptied the house of Iraqi vice-premier Tariq Aziz, "stealing everything from paintings to curtains, kitchen units, and even stripped the electrical wires from the villa's main switchboard. But what they left behind in his library was politically notable: the complete works of Saddam Hussein in Arabic, the mafia novels of Mario Puzo, author of the Godfather, and a book on geopolitics by Richard Nixon, former US president." Glasgow Herald 04/11/03

Suing To Sell Books On The Streets Of New Orleans On the streets of New Orleans you can sell candles, razor blades, toiletries, pencils and shoelaces. You can sell photographs, weigh people, stage art shows and hold cooking demonstrations. What you can't do is sell books. Now a move to sue to get the ordinance changed to allow bookselling. Publishers Weekly 04/09/03

The FBI Is Watching You American government law officials are visiting libraries to remove "sensitive" material, access records of what library patrons are reading, and, in at least one case, try to remove a librarian's computer hard drive because an email with the word "anthrax" had been recieved on it. Village Voice 04/08/03

The UK's Favorite Book? Let's Try To Vote Legit The BBC is conducting a public search for the UK's most-loved book. But the broadcaster wants to avoid attempted manipulation of the voting, as happened last year with the public vote that named Winston Churchill the country's Favorite Briton. "The Churchill bandwagon beat off a well-orchestrated campaign for Isambard Kingdom Brunel, headed by students at Brunel University, who voted en-masse on the internet for the man who gave their institution its name. Bookmakers were so convinced the students' campaign would work that they stopped taking bets, and the episode led to allegations that the BBC had fixed the poll by deliberately placing the Churchill documentary last in the series so he would be freshest in the viewers' memory." London Evening Standard 04/09/03

US Libraries Vs US Patriot Act American libraries are taking steps to guard patrons' privacy from the US government. The US Patriot Act allows law enforcement to pry into the library habits of citizens. "The American Libraries Association calls the provisions a present danger to the constitutional rights and privacy rights of library users. The association fears library patrons or bookstore customers could become targets of suspicion simply based on what books they are reading. More importantly, they say they fear a chilling effect that could make people fearful of reading particular books or Web sites to avoid becoming targets of suspicion." Newark Star-Ledger 04/08/03

Libraries - Shredding The Patriot Act Librarians across the US have protested provisions in the Patriot Act that require libraries to turn over records about their patrons. Librarians in Santa Cruz have turned to the shredder for their protest. Daily they shred records that might identify patrons in some way. "The basic strategy now is to keep as little historical information as possible." The New York Times 04/07/03

Does An Author's Looks Matter For Book Sales? As a writer with three novels published by New York houses, I knew that each new book got harder to place. I was aware of the publishers' lust for 'new blood,' for authors with no track record, but who were therefore full of potential, vs. those who were mid-list. That's the category for authors whose average sales are in the 5,000- to 7,000-copy range, the book industry equivalent of a woman who is dismissed as 'plain.' The thinking, of course, was that vivacious and photogenic authors were more attractive to the media and more effective on book tours. For a while this worked, until every bookstore in the country had a bestselling author every other night of the week and readers looked upon the opportunity to greet their favorite author with about the same enthusiasm as for their favorite pizza topping." Hartford Courant 04/06/03

Down With The Language Bullies "Language bullying - or prescriptivism, as it's more politely called - is conservative in the worst sense. It advances a stuffy and old-fashioned view of language, the rules of which it considers set by supposed experts, such as the authors of grammar books, rather than common usage. It is deeply anti-populist and snobby, not to mention just plain wrong and cranky. Most 'rules' cited by bullies are highly suspect." National Post (Canada) 03/26/03

THEATRE
http://www.artsjournal.com/theatre
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This Year's Humana Fest - The Fear Flows Through Louisville's six-week Humana Festival - America's biggest festival for new plays, is winding up. "In stylistically diverse ways, playwrights featured in the 27th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays tapped into our national post-9/11 angst and let the fear flow through their funny, sobering, provocative works." Miami Herald 04/13/03

• Humana - Mirroring Our Fears Themes of this year's Humana Festival? "Terrorism. School violence. The dangers of human cloning. They spoke in a diversity of voices, yet the writers shared a common theme: We are afraid of our world." Rocky Mountain News 04/13/03

Shakespeare And Hip Hop - They're Like This, I Tell You... Shakespeare and hip hop - a natural fit, don't you think? "It was only a matter of time before an American stage production put us in touch with Shakespeare’s inner hip hop. The all-male, cross-dressing The Bomb-itty of Errors, a critically acclaimed sell-out on the Edinburgh Fringe last year, is now bound for the West End after a six-city tour. The marriage of hip hop and early Shakespearean comedy is by no means a shotgun one: they share a musicality of language, rhyming couplets, tongue-twisting obsession with wordplay and a taste for bawdiness." The Times (UK) 04/14/03

Royal Shakespeare - Time For A Makeover Directing the down-and-out Royal Shakespeare Company is called the toughest job in theatre. And Michael Boyd now has the job. Big changes are ahead he says. "At present, the RSC is 'too big for anyone to run' and 'too big for people to identify us'. He presides over an antiquated corporate structure, with 30 governors, 12 of whom are on the board. It is imperative, according to at least one governor I spoke to, that the RSC reorganise itself structurally and that creative and commercial genius coincide. Arts Council support depends on the ability to generate income by other means. Boyd has taken this on board, telling me that he and Christopher Foy, the company's managing director, will 'work seamlessly together to try and close the cultural divide between art and management'." The Observer (UK) 04/13/03

Sondheim & Friends Trying To Keep NY Critics Away From Show? Stephen Sondheim, John Weidman and Harold Prince are New York theatre legends. And they have a new show. It's opening in Chicago. And they don't want New York critics to come see it. "The three Broadway bigwigs are trying to keep the national theater press away from their new musical, 'Bounce,' which will have its world premiere June 30 at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. They have instructed the theater not to invite - or make press seats available to - any critic or reporter outside the Chicago area. Nice try, boys, but no dice." New York Post 04/11/03

Shakespeare In A Sex Clinic? "While it hasn't yet shaken the stage-driven foundation of traditional theatre and dance, site-specific theatre is certainly rousing a state of artistic excitement on Canada's West Coast. The charge is being led by innovative young companies that all agree site-specific theatre should involve more than just plunking a script into an offbeat locale." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/11/03

NEA Chairman Dana Gioia's view of Theatre in America: "It cannot be a coincidence that the three greatest eras in theatre - which I would define as Athenian drama, Elizabethan drama, and 19th Century Italian opera - existed in those rare moments when all classes attended the theatre together. The dramatists had to find a way to create works that spoke across classes of people rather than flattered one particular group. So I believe we must aim high in quality and as broadly as possible in terms of audience. Anything less would be unworthy of a great public agency." Backstage 04/09/03

London Theatre Gets Political Who says the theatre hasn't been political? To Michael Billington's surprise, over the past few weeks London theatre has been "startlingly repoliticised and has confronted, directly or obliquely, the conflict in Iraq. The Guardian (UK) 04/10/03

Milo Cruz's Excellent Week Playwright Nilo Cruz has had a good week. "Over the weekend, at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Ky., Mr. Cruz, a 42-year-old Cuban-born New Yorker, was awarded $15,000 by the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust for his play 'Anna in the Tropics,' which had been anointed by the American Theater Critics Association as the best play of last year not to have been produced in New York City. Then on Monday Cruz won this year's Drama Pulitzer - in a "rather large surprise in the theater world." The New York Times 04/09/03

This Year's Pulitzer - The Little Play That... Nilo Cruz's little-known play "'Anna in the Tropics" wins the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, triumphing over high-profile Broadway competition - Edward Albee's "The Goat or Who is Sylvia?" and Richard Greenberg's "Take Me Out." "Anna" was born when Cruz got the idea of writing a play about a cigar-factory tradition brought years ago from Cuba to Florida. The Nando Times (AP) 04/07/03

Study: Stage Fog Harms Actors A new study says that fog used in theatres and in movies is harmful to actors' health. "Compared to the control group, the entertainment industry employees had lower average lung function test results and they reported more chronic respiratory symptoms: nasal symptoms, cough, phlegm, wheezing, chest tightness, shortness of breath on exertion, and current asthma symptoms, even after taking other factors into account such as age, smoking, and other lung diseases and allergic conditions. The entertainment industry employees also had increased rates of work-related phlegm, wheezing, chest tightness, and nasal symptoms." Backstage 04/06/03

VISUAL ARTS
http://www.artsjournal.com/visualarts
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London - Going Up... This week there will be a vote on allowing the building of Europe's tallest skyscraper in London. "Nothing can avoid the fact that this massive building will transform the scale of London. St Paul's Cathedral still holds its own against tall buildings in the City, but London Bridge Tower is three times its height. At the moment, Tower 42, the former NatWest Tower, sets an unofficial 600ft height limit in central London. If London Bridge Tower gets the go-ahead, all developers will be aiming at 1,000ft, the limit imposed by the Civil Aviation Authority. London will become a high-rise city, with the dome of St Paul's slowly reduced to a pimple. Organised opposition to such a transformation has largely evaporated." The Telegraph (UK) 04/14/03

Destroying Iraq's Museum - One Tank Could Have Saved It The looting of the Iraq Museum is a loss for the world. "The losses will be felt worldwide, but its greatest impact will be on the Iraqi people themselves when it comes to rebuilding their sense of national identity. International cultural organisations had urged before the war that the cultural heritage of Iraq, which has more than 10,000 archaeological sites, be spared. US forces are making a belated attempt to protect the National Museum, calling on Iraqi policemen to turn up for duty. There is no pay, but 80 have given their services. 'The Americans were supposed to protect the museum. If they had just one tank and two soldiers nothing like this would have happened. I hold the American troops responsible. They know that this is a museum. They protect oil ministries but not the cultural heritage'." The Telegraph (UK) 04/13/03

• Erasing The Story Of Civilization The looting of Iraq's museums is "a cultural catastrophe. Yesterday the museum's exhibition halls and security vaults were a barren mess - display cases smashed, offices ransacked and floors littered with hand-written index cards recording the timeless detail of more than 170,000 rare items that were pilfered. Worse, in their search for gold and gems, the looters got into the museum's underground vaults, where they smashed the contents of the thousands of tin trunks. It was here that staff had painstakingly packed priceless ceramics that tell the story of life from one civilisation to the next through 9000 fabled years in Mesopotamia." The Age (Melbourne) 04/14/03
• Iraq Museum Destroyed Iraq's National Museum in Baghdad has been destroyed. "Once American troops entered Baghdad in sufficient force to topple Saddam Hussein's government this week, it took only 48 hours for the museum to be destroyed, with at least 170,000 artifacts carried away by looters. The full extent of the disaster that befell the museum came to light only today, as the frenzied looting that swept much of the capital over the previous three days began to ebb." The New York Times 04/13/03
• Calls To Protect Iraqi Art "Concerned archaeologists urged United States military leaders to take more forceful steps to protect Iraqi's cultural treasures and to restore control of them to the local Department of Antiquities. For weeks before the war, archaeologists and other scholars had alerted military planners to the risks of combat, particularly postwar pillage of the country's antiquities. These include 10,000 sites of ruins with such resonating names as Babylon, Nineveh, Nimrud and Ur." The New York Times 04/13/03
• Looters Clean Out Iraqi Museum The Mosul Museum in Iraq has been looted. "The looters knew what they were looking for, and in less than 10 minutes had walked off with several million dollars worth of Parthian sculpture. "Iraq has a great history," said the museum's curator. "It's just been wrecked. I'm extremely angry. We used to have American and British tourists who visited this museum. I want to know whether the Americans accept this." The Guardian (UK) 04/12/03
• Some Fear Archaeological Looting In Iraq Many in the art world are concerned that Iraq's cultural treasures will be looted after the war ends. "After the last gulf war a lot of treasures disappeared onto the black market and archaeologists in Britain and the US are concerned this will be repeated on a much larger scale in the power vacuum after the fall of Saddam Hussein, as happened in Afghanistan. For poor Iraqis the temptation to sell stolen antiquities will be greatly increased if it is known there is a ready market in the west. Alarm bells had been set ringing by reports of a meeting between a coalition of antiquities collectors and arts lawyers, calling itself the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP), with US defence and state department officials before the start of the war. The group offered help in preserving Iraq's invaluable archaeological collections, but archaeologists fear there is a hidden agenda to ease the way for exports post-Saddam." The Guardian (UK) 04/11/03

When Ideas Overwhelm Art Trickle-down festivalism, which is largely supported by institutions and foundations, is influencing artists and curators alike. It has generated a parallel art world inhabited foremost by curators who talk mostly to one another and look mostly at one another's shows, always focusing on the same coterie of artists. The prevailing artistic strategy is to emphasize topical subject matter — the urban infrastructure, globalization, cultural identity — while relying on all-but-exhausted international styles, like Post-Minimal installation or Conceptual Art. The prevailing curatorial strategy is a big, catch-all idea about the present condition of life on earth approached with multidisciplinary intent. A result is the repeated substitution of good intentions for good art, unmanageable agendas for focus and shows that, between the art, the labels and the catalogs, are largely talk. For the most part, the viewer is left with next to nothing, other than a depressing hollowness." The New York Times 04/13/03

Mona Lisa At 500 The Mona Lisa turns 500 this year. "Over the centuries, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa has been denounced as a femme fatale, celebrated as the paragon of womanhood, inspired three suicides, and survived a theft. Yet that serene smile staring at us behind bulletproof glass in Paris's Louvre museum remains mysterious." And yet, some of her mysteries have been solved... The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/12/03

The Greatest Generation The American artists who came of age in the 60s and 70s are the country's greatest generation of artists. "They are men mostly, with big egos and big ideas. They were the first Americans to influence Europeans. The work these artists made changed, or at least questioned, the nature of art: what it looked like, its size, its materials, its attitude toward the places where it was shown, its relation to architecture, light and space and to the land. The artists even questioned whether art needed to be a tangible object. Minimalism, Post-Minimalism, Earth art, video art, Conceptualism - suddenly art could be nothing more than an idea, a thought on a piece of paper that played in your head. It could be ephemeral or atmospheric, like the experience of a room illuminated by colored fluorescent tubes." The New York Times 04/06/03

Commercial Interests Picking Apart Libeskind's WTC Plans Stakeholders in the process to build on the site of the World Trade Center are already starting to pick apart the Daniel Libeskind design that had been chosen for the site. The owner of a retail mall that had been in the base of the World Trade Center doesn't like the design: 'We don’t think [the Libeskind plan] works. So why don’t we sit down and fix it? Why not have a meeting? It’s not that difficult. We think we can help and make it better.' Westfield’s unhappiness is significant because the company and the Port Authority will have to renegotiate Westfield’s lease at the site." New York Oberver 04/09/03

Greece's Acropolis Museum - Now All It Needs Is The Art "Greece is rushing to build the $100 million New Acropolis Museum to house the Marbles for the 2004 Summer Olympics, locating it next to the rocky citadel in the heart of ancient Athens. The three-level museum will be topped with a glass-walled Parthenon Gallery to display the carvings in brilliant sunlight, just 800 feet from, and slightly below, the temple they once adorned. Innovative and earthquake-proof, the museum aims to rebut longtime British objections to the Elgin Marbles' return - that Greece lacked first-rate display space to assure the safety of the 480-foot-long section of the Parthenon frieze. British officials are also worried that a repatriation of the Marbles, even on loan, could set a precedent for other claims on antiquities removed from original sites." CNN.com 04/10/03

Fighting Numbers With Numbers The Detroit Institute of the Arts, facing an uncertain financial future in the wake of a proposed 72% cut to Michigan arts funding, has released a study designed to hammer home the point that the arts give back more to the community than they take out in tax dollars. The study claims that the recent DIA exhibit "Degas and the Dance" brought $15 million into the local economy, but some economists are already saying that the study uses a flawed formula. Such arguments are commonplace among arts organizations facing governmental cuts, but few seem to think the economic-stimulus argument will cut much ice at the state legislature. Detroit Free Press 04/08/03

Beck's Futures - Pessimistic Chic For The Culturati? The UK's richest art prize for contemporary art has taken a turn for the serious. "Beck's Futures is experiencing the post-September 11 blues, and this year's selection reflects a darker, more critical mood now gripping many contemporary artists. Indeed, Beck's itself seems to be wracked with gloomy self-doubt, its poster campaign heckling you with the question, 'If corporate sponsorship is killing art, want to come to a funeral'?" The Telegraph (UK) 04/09/03

Saddam Palaces - What $2 Billion In Decorating Buys American soldiers entering Saddam Hussein's palaces see evidence of the reported $2 billion spent on decorating. But money doesn't equal taste. "With Saddam Hussein, it's not about taste, but size. The interiors are monumental, gilded and dreadful," and the palace interior "looks sad and corporate. It's too bad he turned his back on his own culture, which has amazing architecture and design, and his own people, who, politics aside, are wonderful artisans." Los Angeles Times 04/08/03

Stolen Pompeii Frescoes Recovered Two frescoes stolen from Pompeii last week have been recovered by Italian police. "The 1st Century frescoes were found at a construction site close to the historic city, after roadblocks were set up across the whole of Naples province. The authorities said they had already been packed, and that the aim may have been to smuggle them abroad. Both panels were damaged during the theft." BBC 04/08/03

Utzon Wins Pritzker Jorn Utzon has won this year's Pritzker Architecture Prize, the profession's most prestigious international award. Utzon was the architect of the Sydney Opera House, "perhaps the world's most famous 20th-century building." Washington Post 04/07/03

A Clue To Who Mona Was Mona Lisa is a star. But who was she? "Over the past five centuries, that smile has been exploited and replicated in so many forms that the Mona Lisa has been transformed from a mere masterpiece into an international celebrity. And, like a Hollywood star, she now has to have her own bodyguards and lives behind triplex bullet-proof glass in a humidified, air-conditioned environment. Aside from the riddle of the smile, it's the mystery of Mona Lisa's identity that has inspired amateur art detectives all over the world. After centuries of uncertainty, a vitally important document has recently come to light in the Milan State Archive." It suggests Mona Lisa's identity. The Telegraph (UK) 04/07/03