Microsoft's Art Connection When Michael Klein became the curator of Microsoft's corporate art collection five years ago, the first thing he did was give the committee that had been picking art for the company the boot. "He's not above rubbing it in. 'I took their toy away'." With a substantial budget and an eye for contemporary art, Klein has emerged as a player in the coporate art collecting world.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer 05/24/04
Posted: 05/25/2004 9:05 am
Forging Gauguin (And Getting Away With It) How did New York art dealer Ely Sakhai get away with forging and selling a Gauguin? "What was perhaps most interesting was how well this hustle exploited—and exposed—the frailties of the art marketplace. It is a world in which surprisingly few people are willing to stick their neck out and call a fake a fake, so that even as Sakhai’s scheme racked up victims, virtually no one was willing to call him on it. The forger knew this secret of the art world: It is tolerant of frauds, so long as the victims are in far-off places like Tokyo and too humiliated to raise a fuss. As if delivering a judo move, he used the particular quirks of art dealers against them." New York Magazine 05/24/04
Posted: 05/24/2004 6:34 pm
High Times Over For Irish Art Sales? What's happened to the market for Irish art? "This year, the 10th that Irish sales have been held in London, a niche market that once seemed confident and youthful looked tired and middle-aged. Beset by supply problems and Ireland's economic slowdown, these specialist auctions have lost their bounce." The Telegraph (UK) 05/24/04
Posted: 05/24/2004 6:26 pm
(Washington) Mall Rat Paul Goldberger says the new World War II Memorial on the Capitol Mall follows the tradition of uninspired Washington architecture. "The new National World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington seems to want to be majestic, but it’s really an opulent, overbuilt civic plaza. The most important thing about it isn’t the design, which is a vaguely classical set of colonnades by the architect Friedrich St. Florian, but the real estate it occupies." The New Yorker 05/24/04
Posted: 05/24/2004 6:19 pm
Cleaning Of David Finished "The eight-month cleaning of Michelangelo's statue of David is complete, the museum which houses the Italian Renaissance masterpiece said, almost four months ahead of its 500th anniversary celebrations." Yahoo! (AP) 05/24/04
Posted: 05/24/2004 3:51 pm
- David's New Look "The overall effect is of a glowing colossus restored to something close to its Renaissance splendour. Visitors to Florence should not expect a dramatic transformation, such as that wrought on Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in Rome in the 1990s; but, because of the greater uniformity of colour, it is easier than before to appreciate the statue's exquisite detail - the vein that stands out ever so slightly on David's upper right arm, for example." The Guardian (UK) 05/25/04
Posted: 05/24/2004 3:42 pm
- A History Of Cleaning David "The marks on "David" recount much of the statue's life story, starting with an 18-foot-high marble bloc from Carrara that had been exposed to the elements for 40 years before Michelangelo began transforming it. It is very poor quality marble. Even Michelangelo had to spend four months polishing the marble before it was presented in public in 1504." The New York Times 05/25/04
Posted: 05/24/2004 3:36 pm
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Music Sales Up Sharply Sales of music in the US are up 9 percent this year, and some recording execs are predicting a recovery in the global music business: "If this is the result of a combined formula of anti-piracy lawsuits knocking people off file-sharing sites and the massive adoption of legal services and a spike in CD sales then it could be good news for everyone." BBC 05/25/04
Posted: 05/25/2004 6:02 am
"Rings" Soundtrack Scores In Phoenix The Phoenix Symphony makes all sorts of new fans and sells a record number of tickts as it presents a "Lord of the Rings" symphony, taken from Howard Shore's movie soundtrack. Arizona Republic 05/23/04
Posted: 05/25/2004 5:55 am
KC Symphony Search Narrows The Hunt The Kansas City Symphony has narrowed its search for a music director to three candidates, and it's clear that standing in front of musicians isn't the only thing the orchestra is looking for... Kansas City Star 05/25/04
Posted: 05/25/2004 5:28 am
A Bad Night For Levine And The Met James Levine and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra finish up their Carnegie season on a down note. Why? "It's futile to speculate on whether any of this reflects the effects of recent public discussion of long-standing concerns about unexplained tremors in Mr. Levine's left arm and leg and whether tension was created in the orchestra by its members' willingness to voice their doubts in The New York Times in an article on May 1. The only effect one can state with certainty is the huge outpouring of love and support from the audience every time Mr. Levine conducts. The only reason to raise the issue is that one wants to find a reason for the poor quality beyond simple fatigue at the end of a long season." The New York Times 05/25/04
Posted: 05/24/2004 10:26 pm
The Enduring Stride And Swing "Few pop idols survive changing fashions unscathed, but Glen Miller and Fats Waller seem to have done just that. One might have expected the renown of Glenn Miller, a hard-nosed martinet who devised the big-band sound most associated with reveries of the nineteen-forties, to fade with memories of the war in which he lost his life. Instead, critics who once denigrated him as a humorless purveyor of diluted swing, banal novelties, and saccharine vocals are reassessing a sound that clings relentlessly to the collective memory. The ongoing preëminence of Thomas (Fats) Waller is perhaps less of a surprise, given the dazzle of his pianism, the thumping pleasures of his small band, and the frequent hilarity of his satire." The New Yorker 05/24/04
Posted: 05/24/2004 3:55 pm
Afghanistan Sings Again Music is starting to flow again in Afghanistan. "A revolutionary musical revival is under way here after six years during which all music, even humming on the streets, was forbidden. The lively scene on Kabul's version of New Orleans' Bourbon Street is one indicator. Another is the birth of Radio Arman, a new station unlike anything Afghanistan has ever seen. 'When you deprive someone of water for five days and then you finally give them some, you will see what the taste will be. That's what music is to us Afghans'." Miami Herald 05/25/04
Posted: 05/25/2004 6:47 am
Doctorow Cheered, Booed For Anti-Bush Commencement Speech Writer E.L. Doctorow gave a commencement speech at Hofstra University over the weekend, and was extremely critical of George Bush. "Apparently, some folks at the university ceremony liked what Doctorow had to say and cheered. But others said his comments were inappropriately political. The vocal outrage grew so vociferous that at one point Hofstra President Stuart Rabinowitz stepped in and asked the crowd to quiet down so Doctorow could continue." Washington Post 05/25/04
Posted: 05/25/2004 7:02 am
Hadid In The Real World Zaha Hadid "is the world's foremost woman architect. Yet, until a recent explosion in work, she had built little. This is an award more for influence than for physical impact on the world. Hadid's extraordinary designs have been instantly recognisable and seemingly omnipresent for more than two decades, well before she had realised any significant structures." Financial Times 05/25/04
Posted: 05/24/2004 8:00 pm
Albee: I'm In Fashion, I'm Out... From a New York point of view, Edward Albee is solidly back. Yet, from his own perspective, he never went away. "You're in fashion, you're out of fashion. That comes and goes. I'll be out of fashion again.' He notes, however, that in the years the theater establishment regarded him as passe, he 'was performed everywhere except in New York. I was still writing all the time. My output has always been pretty steady, a play every year and half'." Philadelphia Inquirer 05/25/04
Posted: 05/25/2004 6:22 am
RSC Might Change Stratford Plans The Royal Shakespeare Company is rethinking the redevelopment of its Stratford-On-Avon home after architects working on the project quit. The RSC has been planning to replace its current home with a "theatre village", but the plan has been controversial. BBC 05/25/04
Posted: 05/25/2004 6:06 am
Troy Movie Spurs Interest In Classics Evidently, Brad Pitt makes Homer's The Illiad sexy. University professors are expecting an upturn in enrollment for courses in the classics. And book sales of The Illiad are rocketing up. "In fact, the Iliad has already cracked the Amazon.com top 100 book list at No. 86." TorontoStar 05/25/04
Posted: 05/25/2004 7:11 am
Getting Inside Your Reading A new interactive reading device expands the experience of reading. "You can get God's eye view if you want, or you can go in and be part of the scene. You can flip a switch and transition into an immersive VR experience. You can fly inside and see what it feels like to be a blood corpuscle going through the heart." BBC 05/25/04
Posted: 05/24/2004 8:28 pm
The Death Of Literary Criticism What's happened to literary criticism, asks James Wood. It's been replaced by academic-speak. "For the first time in history, many poets and novelists are graduates of English studies, many of them put through the theory machine for good measure. Writers and academics teach together, attend conferences together, and sometimes almost speak the same language (Rushdie's essays and academic post-colonialist discourse; DeLillo's fiction and academic postmodern critique). But during the same period, literary criticism as a discourse available for, and even attractive to, the common reader has all but disappeared." London Review of Books 05/21/04
Posted: 05/24/2004 8:05 pm
Penn Ballet Gets A Wheeldon Swan Lake Pennsylvania Ballet has spent much of the past decade rebuilding its fortunes after getting into money problems. How successful the company has been is evidenced by the fact that the company has landed Christopher Wheeldon, one of the hottest young choreographers around, to produce a new "Swan Lake" for the company. Philadelphia Inquirer 05/23/04
Posted: 05/25/2004 6:15 am
Welcome To The "Golden Trailers" "Trailers in 17 categories ranging from "Best Action" to "Best Romance" to "Trashiest" to "Most Original" will compete for prizes in an irreverent ceremony that recognizes a familiar, yet obscure, corner of Hollywood: movie previews." OpinionJournal.com 05/25/04
Posted: 05/24/2004 11:08 pm
Radio Talkers Debate FCC Crackdown More than 300 talk radio hosts gathered in New York over the weekend "for the annual New Media Seminar, sponsored by Talkers magazine, to debate how much the FCC's new vigilance threatens their First Amendment rights. Michael Harrison, the conference organizer, argued that there is no clear line between the sexual innuendo of a Howard Stern and the political speech of a Rush Limbaugh. The legally reckless FCC crackdown poses a deadly threat to the entire radio broadcasting industry." OpinionJournal.com 03/24/04
Posted: 05/24/2004 11:04 pm
Still No Deal To Distribute Moore Film "Tense relations between Disney and Miramax are complicating a deal to find a distributor for Michael Moore's anti-Bush documentary movie "Fahrenheit 9/11," which is still without American representation two days after winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes International Film Festival." The New York Times 05/25/04
Posted: 05/24/2004 10:22 pm
Penn Ballet Gets A Wheeldon Swan Lake Pennsylvania Ballet has spent much of the past decade rebuilding its fortunes after getting into money problems. How successful the company has been is evidenced by the fact that the company has landed Christopher Wheeldon, one of the hottest young choreographers around, to produce a new "Swan Lake" for the company. Philadelphia Inquirer 05/23/04
Posted: 05/25/2004 6:31 am
