Why Our Brains Differ From Apes "A group of researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles and Emory in Atlanta has compiled the first extensive analysis of human and primate genomic data. The result is a big-picture look at why human brains are so evolved. The answer lies not in which or how many genes we have, but in how and when those genes turn on and off." Wired 11/03/04
Posted: 11/03/2004 6:59 pm
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Taking Some Early Shots At SF's New Museum The M.H. de Young Memorial Museum currently under construction in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park is inspiring some hostile talk before the museum even opens its doors. The Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron-designed building has been described as "hideous," "totally out of place," and "antiseptic and soulless" by denizens of the city, but John King points out the obvious: the building isn't done yet, and given the intricate nature of the design, as well as the plan for it to be partially covered in greenery, the amateur critics are passing judgment far too early. San Francisco Chronicle 11/04/04
Posted: 11/04/2004 6:26 am
A Serious Look At Designer Art This year's Carnegie International art exhibition in Pittsburgh is focusing on "designer art," displaying work by 38 artists from across the world. It's an interesting attempt to show how pop culture trends can intersect with the world of serious art, but "the problem with designer art is that it can be difficult to distinguish from everyday commercial art... The brainier designer-directors tend to produce work that is more interesting to philosophize about than to experience." The New York Times 11/04/04
Posted: 11/04/2004 6:04 am
Painting George Washington A new exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Arts provides a survey of the portraits of America's first president and war hero, General George Washington. 15 of the most famous and interesting likenesses are the work of the American master Gilbert Stuart, and behind the series lies a fascinating tale of the evolution of an artistic relationship between painter and subject. Washington was not an easy personality to capture on canvas, but over the years, Stuart managed to break down the president's defenses, and earn the trust of the most powerful man in a new country. Chicago Tribune 11/04/04
Posted: 11/04/2004 5:46 am
Christie's Auction Nets $128 mil A 1904 Monet oil painting of the British Parliament has sold at auction for $20 million. "It was the first time the painting - titled Londres, le Parlement, Effet de Soleil dans le Brouillard - had been offered on the open market. The sale, which also included works by Miro and Van Gogh, fetched a total of $128.2m." BBC 11/04/04
Posted: 11/04/2004 5:07 am
Biotech In The Service Of Art Preservation "Biochemists at the United Nations University in Caracas, Venezuela, are using DNA sampling to identify materials from which artifacts are made and the pests that are feeding on them. They then use biotechnology techniques to create weapons that target the pests specifically, without damaging the artwork." Wired 11/03/04
Posted: 11/03/2004 6:57 pm
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The Last-Ever Studio Opera Recording? Studio recording of opera is almost exactly a century old. A new recording of Tristan now underway is "almost certain to prove the last commercial audio recording of an opera to be made in a studio. With the market shrinking and media formats changing, the figures just can't be made to add up. In a broader cultural perspective, how much does this matter?" The Telegraph (UK) 11/04/04
Posted: 11/03/2004 7:11 pm
Indies Challenge Sony/Bertelsman Merger Independent European recording companies are challenging the EU's decision to allow a merger of Sony and Bertelsman. "Impala, the body representing 2,500 indie labels, is appealing to prevent what is calls a 'market imbalance'. Permission for them to merge meant that 80% of the world's music is owned by just four records companies." BBC 11/03/04
Posted: 11/03/2004 5:11 pm
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Cleveland Arts Center Keeps Raking In The Cash Cleveland's $42 million "Idea Center", which will house dance studios, a small theater, and broadcast facilities for local public radio and TV stations when it is completed, got another major gift this week when the Reinberger Foundation pledged a cool million to the project. "This is the third major gift for the project this year. The George Gund Foundation contributed $1.6 million in July. Key Bank donated $1 million in March. The two nonprofit partners have raised about $10 million. They hope to raise an additional $17 million, with the rest of the money coming from historic tax credits and the state." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 11/04/04
Posted: 11/04/2004 6:17 am
Culture Lottery - Ten Years Of Good Work "In England, £1.86bn of lottery money has been pumped into the arts over the past decade, £1.3bn of which has been capital investment to create 100 new venues and refurbish 500 others. The arts councils in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have disbursed another £400m, and the UK film industry has received over £100m. The arts - museums in particular - have also been able to tap into huge amounts of cash from the millennium fund and heritage fund, taking the investment into the stratosphere. No wonder Arts Council England (ACE) wants to blow its own trumpet." The Guardian (UK) 11/04/04
Posted: 11/03/2004 8:24 pm
Congress' Arts Report Card Americans for the Arts has released report cards on members of Congress for their support of legislative arts issues. "The highest-ranked states tended to have smaller delegations. Among states with delegations of 10 or more House members, Massachusetts and New York finished in front. Thirty-three House members received the highest possible grade (A+). However, the average grade for the House was a B. Arts support is increasingly bipartisan, the report card shows, a relief to arts advocates who saw conservative Republicans attempt to scrap the NEA in the mid-'90s." Backstage 11/03/04
Posted: 11/03/2004 5:32 pm
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The Derrida Divide When French Deconstructionist Jacques Derrida died las month, the eulogizing was predictable. " If the response came from outside the academy, it tended to be bemused or critical. If a response came from the purlieus of the professoriate, however, it was likely to be sorrowful, eulogistic, even starry-eyed. There was nothing surprising about this." New Criterion 11/04
Posted: 11/03/2004 5:41 pm
Man Arrested In Van Gogh Murder The man suspected of killing Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh is a suspected radical Islamist with alleged terrorist links, the Dutch authorities say. The man, aged 26, has dual Dutch and Moroccan citizenship. BBC 11/03/04
Posted: 11/03/2004 5:14 pm
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Testing America's Iran Ban An Iranian human rights activist is suing the U.S. government for the right to work with an American literary agent in the publication of her memoirs. "[U.S.] Treasury Department regulations... impose penalties on anybody who transacts business with Iran," but Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi says that she doesn't want to have to submit her manuscript to Iran's repressive mullahs for approval. U.S. law does permit "American publishers to reproduce, translate and edit 'informational materials' from countries subject to U.S. sanctions. But even advising an author how to structure a book 'would be a problem.'" Washington Post 11/04/04
Posted: 11/04/2004 6:39 am
Protests Over Graham Greene Bio The last installment of Norman Sherry's massive biography of Graham Greene was supposed to be a victory lap for the biographer. But "members of Greene's family are furious that Mr. Sherry - who had exclusive access to many of the author's papers - chose to highlight Greene's fondness for prostitutes and his sordid sexual pursuits. The new volume has received widespread praise in the United States, but critics in England have condemned its unconventional style and are livid. Mr. Sherry has interjected himself into the narrative, dropped in bits of his own poetry, even included a picture of himself riding on a donkey in Mexico as he retraced Greene's research for the novel The Power and the Glory." The New York Times 11/04/04
Posted: 11/03/2004 8:33 pm
Cheapening The Nobel Prize How is the Nobel Prize for Literature being chosen these days? "More and more, the Nobel Prize has gone to a person who has the correct sex, geographical address, ethnic origin, and political profile—“correct” being determined by the commissars at the Swedish Academy. Laureates like Toni Morrison, Dario Fo, and José Saramago cheapen the Nobel Prize. But this year’s laureate, the Austrian novelist and playwright Elfriede Jelinek (born 1946), marks a new low." New Criterion 11/04
Posted: 11/03/2004 5:45 pm
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Monkey See, Monkey Sue "Taking a cue from recording companies, Hollywood movie studios are preparing to file copyright infringement lawsuits against computer users they say are illegally distributing movies online... The lawsuits will target movie fans who share digitized versions of films over peer-to-peer networks, with the first wave of litigation planned for as early as Thursday." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (AP) 11/04/04
Posted: 11/04/2004 6:15 am
Is Iceland The New Canada? Taking a page from Canada's book, the nation of Iceland is attempting to lure American filmmakers to its shores. But unlike Canada, the reasoning behind the come-on is more than just financial: Icelanders go to more movies than residents of any other nation, and locally made films often get lost in the Hollywood shuffle. "The hope is that these filmmakers will bring revenue into a country that has struggled to diversify beyond fishing, and that the American and European crews will bring their expertise. The theory is that these skills will be passed along to local filmmakers, [and] the production values of Icelandic films will be raised." The New York Times 11/04/04
Posted: 11/04/2004 6:08 am
New: First Dial-In Concert The new generation of cell phones promise big things. And so this week the first-ever dial-in cell phone concert took place. "At 9pm, some 300 Rooster fans were expected to flock to the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London to see their heroes perform a 45-minute set. At the same time, up to 1,000 customers on the 3 mobile network were watching the very same concert on their telephones. Live music broadcasts are billed as one of the major enticements of third generation - or 3G - mobile technology." The Guardian (UK) 11/03/04
Posted: 11/03/2004 6:30 pm
The Miramax Saga "Twenty-five years after Miramax Films was founded and 11 years after it was purchased outright by the Walt Disney Co., the company is in the news as never before. After two rounds of layoffs that have eliminated 26% of Miramax's work force -- and amid speculation that Bob and Harvey Weinstein, brothers who founded the company, might contemplate striking out on their own -- its achievements stand in even bolder relief." Backstage 11/03/04
Posted: 11/03/2004 5:28 pm
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Ballet Master Thompson Dies Basil Thompson, the acclaimed former ballet master of Chicago's Joffrey Ballet and soloist with the American Ballet Theater, has died of sudden cardiac arrest at age 67. Thompson was on the dance faculty of the University of Iowa, and had recently consulted on the Joffrey's revival of "Petrouchka". Chicago Sun-Times 11/04/04
Posted: 11/04/2004 5:41 am
Gauging The Health Of ABT American Ballet Theatre had a lot of people taking its temperature when it recently announced the departure of its general manager, and pay cuts and furloughs for 50 employees. But the company says despite the current belt-tightening, it's actually been expanding - adding "eight more dancers (bringing the total to 90), three weeks of performances at City Center instead of two, more touring, and increased ticket sales." Backstage 11/03/04
Posted: 11/03/2004 5:24 pm
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