Paris Rethinks Disney And Les Gauche Americans "The Grand Palais is paying homage to Walt Disney — seriously, academically and without a trace of disdain for American pop culture. Disney "was one of the great geniuses of the 20th century and the greatest storyteller of the 20th century," gushed curator Bruno Girveau, who tirelessly promoted his project to skeptics who couldn't understand why he wanted to put Mickey Mouse on walls usually graced by Matisse or Monet... Lately, the French seem intent on debunking the stereotype that they turn up their noses at Americana." Los Angeles Times 09/20/06
Posted: 09/20/2006 7:46 am
Why Bill Gates Refused Leonardo Loan To V&A He had agreed in principle to the loan, but when his tough terms proved unacceptable, the V&A’s request was dropped. The Art Newspaper 09/09/06
Posted: 09/19/2006 8:03 pm
Green: Kimmelman Wrong On Klimt Sale AJBlogger Tyler Green takes issue with NY Times critic Michael Kimmelman's story about selling off Klimt paintings recovered many years after being stolen by Nazis. "He views the Bloch-Bauer heirs selling of four Klimts as emblematic of greed, as sad examples of what happens in a booming art market. He thinks it's too bad the paintings could go into private collections... if you want to be angry at someone for not ensuring that the Klimts ended up in private collections, what about the wealthy trustees at major museums?" Modern Art Notes (AJBlogs) 09/19/06
Posted: 09/19/2006 7:39 pm
- Righting Wrongs On Restituted Art - An Issue Of Principle Lee Rosenbaum defends Michael Kimmelman's view that heirs who get restitution of Nazi-looted art ought to consider making it possible for museums to acquire them. "A public-spirited disposition of such art would underscore the point that righting the wrongs of the Holocaust is, above all, an issue of principle, not personal gain." CultureGrrl (AJBlogs) 09/20/06
Posted: 09/19/2006 7:00 pm
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Canadian Opera - Victim Of "Ring" Curse? "Could it be that the Canadian Opera Company's opera house-opening production of the 16-hour epic has its own curse — a medical one? A rising casualty count makes it easy to think so." Toronto Star 09/20/06
Posted: 09/20/2006 9:34 am
Met Starts A Satellite Radio Station The Metropolitan Opera has made a deal with Sirius satellite radio to program a new channel of opera. Yahoo! (Reuters) 09/20/06
Posted: 09/20/2006 8:01 am
We Want Out (Of The Concert Hall) "From a certain angle, the Canadian Music Centre's efforts to turn Canadian composers loose on public spaces looks like a revolt organized by the same group that has spent decades lobbying to get contemporary music into concert halls, not out of them." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 09/20/06
Posted: 09/20/2006 7:39 am
Anyone Want To Buy Napster? "Napster has put itself up for sale and hired bankers to explore interest in the once notorious and now struggling music download service. Analysts have highlighted the service's dwindling subscriber base and failure to turn a profit." The Guardian (UK) 09/20/06
Posted: 09/19/2006 8:27 pm
Canadian Opera "Ring": Not Much "Cringe" Factor At the end of 15 hours of "Ring" performances at the Canadian Opera Company last week, Robert Everett-Green surprised himself - hed' do a repeat this week. "It helped that the COC's production turned out to be good — better, in some ways, than the ones in those more famous opera houses I mentioned. There was a lot to admire and very little to cringe at, and the cringe factor is a large issue when you're dealing with a work that offers so many insanely difficult problems in performance and staging." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 09/19/06
Posted: 09/19/2006 8:24 pm
Sydney Opera House To Screen Performances Outside The Sydney Opera House is going to start simulcasting some performances out to a giant screen in the plaza. "[Architect Joern] Utzon has created one of the great public spaces in the world and I'd really like to use it a lot more. I'm talking about great performances and great national events as well. It could be sporting events. The place has to be seen as a great community place." Sydney Morning Herald 09/19/06
Posted: 09/19/2006 8:18 pm
Seattle Symphony Deficit Explained The Seattle Symphony's deficit of more than $2 million this past season is not the worst shape the orchestra has been in, writes RM Campbell. The orchestra has had a horrible summer, dealing with dissension with musicians over a decision to extend music director Gerard Schwarz's contract. And the orchestra lost Paul Meecham, its executive director. Seattle Post-Intelligencer 09/19/06
Posted: 09/19/2006 7:22 pm
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India's Cultural Elite Protest Anti-Gay Law "More than 100 leading figures of literature, film and academia in India rallied this weekend against a 'colonial-era' law making homosexuality a criminal offence." The Guardian (UK) 09/18/06
Posted: 09/19/2006 8:30 pm
The Image Of (Mis)Interpretation With all the digital manipulation of photos now possible, it's a wonder anyone trusts what they see. But viewers also can distort the meaning of a photo. Take the misinterpretation of a photo taken on 9/11 and how what seems to be happening in the imag isn't the real story... OpinionJournal.com 09/19/06
Posted: 09/19/2006 7:09 pm
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Kary Schulman, SF's Grant Goddess "For the past quarter century, no other person has meant more to the vitality of the arts in San Francisco, to the amplitude and richness of culture itself here, than this longtime and fondly cherished director of the city's Grants for the Arts program. In a feat of sustained and museum-quality finesse, Schulman has turned City Hall bureaucracy into her own kind of art form." San Francisco Chronicle 09/20/06
Posted: 09/20/2006 9:31 am
A Lit Trickster Who's Flourishing Most literary fakes find their careers severely damaged when they're exposed. "But Laura Alberts, another trickster, could emerge from her literary scam with her reputation enhanced. Since her fabricated author, JT Leroy, was exposed last year in New York magazine, she's done script writing for the HBO series "Deadwood" while lying low from most interviewers." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 09/19/06
Posted: 09/20/2006 9:15 am
Kennicott Is WashPo's New Architecture Critic He replaces Benjamin Forgey. Kennicott was the paper's classical music critic and became critic-at-large when Tim Page returned to the paper. He's one of the paper's most thoughtful writers. Modern Art Notes (AJBlogs) 09/19/06
Posted: 09/19/2006 7:36 pm
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Philadelphia Theatre Company Aims For Flash In New Theatre Design "Ever since Bertolt Brecht denounced stage gimmickry in the 1920s, many new theaters have been designed to downplay the make-believe. Stages became open platforms, leaving actors without the refuge of the wings or a curtain. Theater hardware was exposed, so that patrons saw exactly how all the tricks were done. By contrast, the PTC stage includes 20-foot wings. By cocooning its main theater in voluptuous colors and fabrics, the PTC is signaling that it wants patrons to sink into their plush seats and suspend disbelief for the length of the performance." Philadelphia Inquirer 09/20/06
Posted: 09/20/2006 9:06 am
Miami: A Hole Where The Coconut Used To Be Miami theatre is getting more varied. But "because of the limbo state of the Coconut Grove Playhouse, the 2006-2007 season begins with a significant hole at its center. Not to mention angry subscribers, frustrated former employees and artists who had planned to -- but now won't -- be working here this season." Miami Herald 09/17/06
Posted: 09/20/2006 8:58 am
San Jose Theatres Get Together Behind The Scenes Two big San Jose (California) theatres agree to merge their back end operations. "The fact that they're just now forming partnerships shows how reluctant the groups have been to give up on their old business models. Merging set and costume shops and other operations is a no-brainer suggested by 1stACT, the downtown arts and business coalition, and other arts leaders going back several years." San Jose Mercury-News 09/07/06
Posted: 09/19/2006 6:10 pm
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Family Decries Memoir As Fraud "The family of a bestselling author whose vivid memoir claims to document a 'hell' of sexual abuse inside a Catholic institution for fallen women denounced the book as a work of fiction yesterday." The Guardian (UK) 09/20/06
Posted: 09/20/2006 9:38 am
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PBS Struggles With FCC Censorship Focus "These days, the FCC's sterner enforcement policy makes it risky for a PBS station even to rerun a classic documentary such as the forthcoming Eyes on the Prize without purging it of potentially offensive language." Philadelphia Inquirer 09/20/06
Posted: 09/20/2006 9:08 am
How Daytime TV Is Changing "Game shows, once stacked end to end across the daytime grid, are no longer the staple (they're making more money in primetime). Talk shows, with aggressively likable hosts, are all the rage." Denver Post 09/20/06
Posted: 09/20/2006 8:55 am
Disney Scores Big With iTunes Movie Downloads "Less than a week after announcing its newest initiative with Apple Computer, the Walt Disney Co. has sold more than 125,000 feature film downloads via iTunes." Disney predicts the download business will earn the company $50 million this year. Yahoo! (Reuters) 09/20/06
Posted: 09/20/2006 7:59 am
Lucas To Give USC $175 Million For Film School "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, through a foundation, plans to make a blockbuster donation to USC of $175 million — the university's biggest single gift ever — to build a new home for its prestigious film school. Los Angeles Times 09/20/06
Posted: 09/20/2006 7:48 am
Rare World War I Items Go Missing After Film "Soon after the ambitious TV movie The Great War finished shooting in Quebec last summer, the Montreal producers, Galafilm Inc., made a disheartening discovery -- more than 1,000 items of largely irreplaceable First World War insignia, uniforms and equipment had walked off the set, they suspect, with some of the 150 descendents who had been hired to re-enact their great-grandfather's bloody battles in the trenches." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 09/20/06
Posted: 09/20/2006 7:42 am
CBC Chairman Quits After Stupid Comments The chairman of the board of the Canadin Broadcasting Corporation has Fournier resigned after making comments mocking the sexual habits of Lebanese. Fournier "has increasingly lost the confidence of Canada's new government," Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda said in announcing the resignation in the House of Commons on Tuesday. CBC 09/19/06
Posted: 09/19/2006 7:53 pm
Beirut Film Fest To Go On Everyone assumed that the Beirut Film Festival would be canceled because the of war with Israel. But "artistic director and film-maker Eliane Raheb informed guests that it would go ahead as a sign of 'cultural resistance'. Under the circumstances, this year's programme had to be cut down from over 100 films to just 40." BBC 09/19/06
Posted: 09/19/2006 7:51 pm
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