America By The Numbers The 28.5-pound, $825, five-volume Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition is out, containing more numbers and comparisons than you can shake a stick at, all purporting to paint a useful picture of America Then & Now. But Joel Garreau says that "what it is, really, is a marvelous walk through a bizarre notion -- that America, our culture and values, indeed our reality -- can be described in numbers." Washington Post 04/26/06
Posted: 04/26/2006 7:16 am
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Preserving Pollock Presents Plenty of Problems Art conservation has become such an intricate and well-understood science that it sometimes seems as if there is no damage a skilled professional cannot undo, no work that cannot be perfectly preserved. But the paintings of Jackson Pollock present a unique challenge for restorers, with the famous spatters subject to cracking and other deterioration. A new restoration job on one of Pollock's more famous works points up how conservators' techniques have changed over the decades. The Christian Science Monitor (Boston) 04/26/06
Posted: 04/26/2006 6:57 am
A Tale Of Two Getty Gardens "Gardens at the two Getty Museum campuses could not be more different. California artist Robert Irwin's central garden at the Brentwood Center is a constantly changing, off-balance geometric splash of color and texture. It's a stark contrast to the beige classicism of the towering, marble buildings above it. Conversely, the elegant Mediterranean-style landscaping of the newly reopened Getty Villa in nearby Malibu is an understated partner to the estate it surrounds. Nonetheless, the two gardens share a dramatic spirit: One is a work of living sculpture, the other a piece of horticultural theater." The Christian Science Monitor (Boston) 04/26/06
Posted: 04/26/2006 6:56 am
Did Britain Miss Out On The Last 150 Years? There's an outstanding new Van Gogh exhibition at a suburban London museum, but to some in the UK art world, such chances to view the work of a French master only serve as a reminder of how previous generations of Brits managed to almost completely ignore important developments taking place on the European continent. "Were we really the only nation to turn its collective back on each new movement in art as it arose, from Impressionism and Post-Impressionism to Fauvism and Cubism? ... with a few exceptions, English collectors lacked the courage to purchase modern paintings, and that is why there are relatively few of these pictures in our national galleries as compared to Russia or the US." The Telegraph (UK) 04/25/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 8:31 pm
Hawthorne: Gehry's Plans For LA Need Work Frank Gehry's plans for a $1.8 billion downtown development in Los Angeles are impressive, yes, but Christopher Hawthorne says that the first draft's "attitude toward the city is laid bare in these models, and, stripped of architectural flourish, they reveal a project a good deal less public-minded than many of us had hoped... Particularly on its lower levels, the design is clogged with retail space — 250,000 square feet of it in total above a labyrinth of underground parking. As a result, the project is shaping up as something of a commercial cul-de-sac: a place that's designed, like a casino or a mall, to make getting in easier than getting out or walking through." Los Angeles Times 04/24/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 7:39 pm
- If You Build It, They Still May Not Come The challenge of creating a dynamic and thriving downtown center in Los Angeles is not limited to the pursuit of high-profile architecture and pedestrian-friendly plazas. "The developers must lure back the kind of high-end retailers who began abandoning downtown Los Angeles 50 years ago... Throughout downtown, developers are finding it is a lot easier to lure well-heeled condo buyers to the urban core than businesses. In what some see as an ominous sign, some of the historic bank buildings converted into lofts have filled their upper floors with new residents but have failed to find retail tenants for the street-level spaces." Los Angeles Times 04/25/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 7:38 pm
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Roanoke Orchestra CEO Quits; Musicians Cheer The chief executive of the Roanoke Symphony in Virginia has resigned after running $480,000 in deficits and clashing with the orchestra's musicians over cuts in the concert schedule. Paul Chambers had also faced criticism for contracting the orchestra's marketing work out to his wife. The musicians are openly celebrating Chambers' resignation, saying that "There wasn't any aspect of Paul's tenure that [we] felt really good about." Chambers had come to the Roanoke Symphony after running the Savannah Symphony in Georgia, which went bankrupt on his watch. Roanoke Times (VA) 04/26/06
Posted: 04/26/2006 5:33 am
San Antonio Lyric To Get Name Change And A New Home The eight-year-old Lyric Opera of San Antonio (which has already been through one name change since it launched as San Antonio Pocket Opera) will become San Antonio Opera next season, in conjunction with a move to a smaller theater more conducive to opera. The move will likely mean more than the name change to local audiences, who were in near revolt this season after the company began presenting its performances in the massive Municipal Auditorium, which reportedly does not sport the finest acoustics. Mike Greenberg reports that, while the company has made significant progress since its 1998 debut, it is still being run on a skeleton staff, and will have to continue searching for a more permanent venue. San Antonio Express-News 04/26/06
Posted: 04/26/2006 5:26 am
Phil Orch Fills Diaz Vacancy From Within It isn't often that principal positions come open in a major orchestra, so when the Philadelphia Orchestra's principal violist, Roberto Diaz, announced that he was leaving to accept a position as head of the prestigious Curtis Institute, there was no shortage of interest in succeeding him. Auditions for the plum spot were held this week, and when the dust cleared, the Philadelphians promoted longtime associate principal Choong-Jin Chang to the top chair. Philadelphia Inquirer 04/26/06
Posted: 04/26/2006 5:17 am
Of African Dictators & Experimental Electronica Did the world really need an opera about Libyan dictator Muammar Gadafy? Perhaps not, but English National Opera is preparing to stage one anyway. "The opera is a huge gamble for [ENO] - not just because of its incendiary subject matter, but also because of the experimental nature of the music. It's not often the venerable opera house plays host to an alternative electronica collective like Asian Dub Foundation, who specialise in breakbeat, dub, bangla and ragga. More challengingly, the opera will feature Egyptian and Libyan musicians alongside the ENO orchestra" The Guardian (UK) 04/26/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 8:15 pm
NY Phil Wants A Summer Venue "The New York Philharmonic is stepping up efforts to create an outdoor concert venue for summer concerts... Public relations consultant Howard Rubenstein is working on behalf of the orchestra to enlist New York mayor Michael Bloomberg's support for a new venue within the city limits... The Philharmonic currently plays summer concerts in Central Park and other parks around the metropolitan area, but the city has no permanent outdoor music venue along the lines of suburban Chicago's Ravinia Festival, Cleveland's Blossom Festival, or Los Angeles's Hollywood Bowl." PlaybillArts 04/25/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 7:34 pm
Scottish Opera's Year Of Reckoning Scottish Opera is performing again after its forced 1-year hiatus (imposed when the Scottish government refused to fund the company until an accumulated debt was paid off,) but the company has clearly been decimated. "The spiral of decline into which Scottish Opera has fallen in recent years has reached the make-or-break stage. Funding may have been guaranteed till mid-2008, but the next 12 months will decide whether the company continues as a main-stage entity or shrivels into a touring outfit. Scotland’s political class would tolerate the latter, and even encourage it." Financial Times (UK) 04/25/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 7:23 pm
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Historians Slam Smithsonian Commercialism "The Society of American Historians, a group that promotes excellence in historical writing, has suspended Smithsonian Books from its ranks in protest over the Smithsonian Institution's 'increasingly commercial approach to its mission.' The suspension itself will have little impact, but it is the latest symptom of friction between the Smithsonian's top managers and many of the nation's scholars." Washington Post 04/26/06
Posted: 04/26/2006 7:18 am
National Advancement In The What Now? How Many Thousands? For a quarter of a century, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts has toiled quietly away in Miami, encouraging and supporting young performers, writers, and artists to the tune of more than $500,000 per year in grants alone. Now, the NFAA is making a stab at true national recognition, mounting a star-studded gala in New York and a continuing push for attention, all designed to secure the organization's long-term future and make it a household name among arts types. The New York Times 04/26/06
Posted: 04/26/2006 6:20 am
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Knussen Wins $100K Prize Oliver Knussen has been awarded Northwestern University's biennial $100,000 Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Musical Composition. "Knussen was praised by the anonymous, three-member selection committee for his 'uniquely focused, vibrantly varied music and his total embrace—as a profoundly influential composer, conductor, and educator—of today's musical culture.' One of Knussen's works will be performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during the 2007-08 season; he will also visit Chicago for a residency at Northwestern's School of Music." PlaybillArts 04/25/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 7:29 pm
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Ten Years On, Rent Still Paying Nicely For a decade now, Rent has been a Broadway producer's dream - a cult hit beloved by critics that outgrows its initial status to become a bona fide phenomenon, with a movie adaptation and everything. (Plenty of people despise the show, too, and as anyone in PR will tell you, that kind of animosity only makes your fan base more devoted.) Now, the original cast has reassembled for a semistaged tenth anniversary performance that raised $2 million for AIDS care and New York theatre groups, and while all the hoopla may have been more than creator Jonathan Larson could have imagined (he died from AIDS shortly before the show opened,) it seems a fitting tribute to one of Broadway's truly original thinkers. The New York Times 04/26/06
Posted: 04/26/2006 6:33 am
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So, Another Advance Is Out Of The Question, Then? The Harvard student-turned-author who confessed yesterday to "accidentally" plagiarizing parts of her first novel, has now been blasted by her own publisher. "In a statement issued today, [Kaavya Viswanathan's] publisher said that, 'based on the scope and character of the similarities, it is inconceivable that this was a display of youthful innocence or an unconscious or unintentional act." The publisher, Steve Ross, also acknowledges that there are more than 40 apparently lifted passages in Viswanathan's novel, and calls the situation "nothing less than an act of literary identity theft." Boston Globe 04/26/06
Posted: 04/26/2006 6:43 am
- Will This Become Another "Poor Me" Story? Alex Beam isn't cutting Kaavya Viswanathan any slack for her alleged plagiarism, and points out that she didn't exactly "write" her own novel in the traditional sense, anyway. "[She] bought her way into Harvard -- her parents paid $10,000 to $20,000 to IvyWise, a college counseling service, according to The New York Times -- then lucked her way into a $500,000 two-book contract with Little, Brown & Co. She shares the valuable copyright on her first novel with 'book packager' Alloy Entertainment, which helped flesh out the novel's concept." Beam wonders whether Viswanathan will be able to slough off the blame for the copying on some anonymous Alloy staffer. Boston Globe 04/26/06
Posted: 04/26/2006 6:40 am
Orange Prize Shortlist Released American author Nicole Krauss, first-time Australian novelist Carrie Tiffany, and UK writers Zadie Smith, Sarah Waters, and Ali Smith have been named as the finalists for Britain's Orange Prize for Fiction. The winner of the Ł30,000 prize will be announced in early June. The Independent (UK) 04/26/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 8:21 pm
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How Do You Play A Terrorist? Imagine you're an actor of Middle Eastern descent trying to make a career in Hollywood. For years, you had endless trouble getting parts. Now, the industry can't get enough of you, but most of the parts available will have you playing a terrorist, and if you do your job as an actor and try to humanize the character, you'll stir up the animosity of countless viewers. What do you do? Los Angeles Times 04/26/06
Posted: 04/26/2006 7:05 am
First Look At 9/11 Film Proves Emotional For Many The controversial and much-anticipated United 93 made its debut in New York last night, and the reaction, as might be expected, was emotional in the extreme. "The screen went dark after the stomach-turning sequence showing the plane's nosedive. The theatre was silent except for the gut-wrenching sobs and wails from the loge, where the relatives [of the flight's passengers] were seated together." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/26/06
Posted: 04/26/2006 7:03 am
Movie Satire Loses Specificity, Gains Appeal Satire is hot right now, but the biting political send-ups that have made Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert millionaires seem to lose some of their specificity when Hollywood translates the idea to film. Caryn James says there's a good reason for that: "Political satires on screen may be most successful when they don't aim at specific politicians at all... At their shrewdest, movies like American Dreamz and Thank You for Smoking follow the lead of Wag the Dog. They don't attack individual politicians or entertainers (not even Simon); they are really satirizing how all those scoundrels in Washington and Hollywood talk down to us." The New York Times 04/26/06
Posted: 04/26/2006 6:38 am
TV Turnoff Week: Now More Than Ever? TV is such a huge part of most lives these days that the notion of "TV Turnoff Week" (yes, it's this week) might seem a bit antiquated. Some critics clearly feel that there's enough good available on the set today to make the anti-tube forces seem out of step. But at least one UK writer wonders when exactly we all began building our lives around the infernal thing, anyway. "I'm sure there are good things to see on TV. I'm simply not convinced that it's something you need to watch every single day... We have become a slovenly nation of living, breathing, wan-faced sponge fingers, entranced by some blinking, bawling machine." The Guardian (UK) 04/26/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 8:08 pm
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