Artists - A Cautionary Tale Some artists provoke. It's their job. But "Van Gogh's murder, the cartoon riots and the violent response to the pope's comments may finally have jolted artists out of their solipsistic cocoon. These days, it would be lethally naive to forget that art can unleash murderous passions." Newsday 10/16/06
Posted: 10/16/2006 4:25 pm
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The "Project Runway" Fan Support Group Will Meet Wednesday Night ... "Wednesday night is buddy-up time in the art world. Artists who have cable make room on their couches for those who don't. Unless held early in the evening, art openings aren't happening on Wednesday nights. Nobody would come. The reason is 'Project Runway,' now in its third season on Bravo and the hands-down, coast-to-coast favorite of artists, curators, critics, dealers and collections. Ever since blogger Tyler Green (Modern Art Notes at on www.ArtsJournal.com) admitted his addiction to the show in September, everybody's been coming out of the closet with his or her 'Runway' obsession."
Seattle Post-Intelligencer 10/17/06 Posted: 10/17/2006 8:33 am
Berlin's Bode Museum Reopens "Berlin's famed Museum Island complex moves a big step closer to recovering its former glory this week when the Bode Museum, home to the city's sculpture collection, reopens after six years of restoration. The domed building, which juts out into the Spree River in the heart of former East Berlin, is the second of the five Neoclassical museums to get a full makeover as part of a government-funded $1.5-billion overhaul."
Los Angeles Times (AP) 10/17/06 Posted: 10/17/2006 6:18 am
Painting Abu Ghraib "Naked figures writhe in an eerie darkness. Vicious beasts bare their teeth and snarl. The faces of lost souls cry out in unimaginable agony, forced into strange and contorted positions reminiscent of crucifixion. Such a vision evokes a scene of the apocalypse typical of 15th-century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. But no, these paintings by Colombian artist Fernando Botero are depictions of real events. Despite their hellish subject matter, they are all meticulously based on photographs and press accounts of the torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003." Having made their way from Europe, they're now on view in New York.
New York Sun 10/17/06 Posted: 10/17/2006 5:42 am
Duomo's Ghiberti Doors To Vist US "Their 10 panels depict scenes from the Old Testament, intricately illustrated in high and low relief. When the three-ton, 20-foot-tall doors were completed, in 1452, Michelangelo pronounced them grand enough to adorn the entrance to paradise, and so they became known as 'The Gates of Paradise.' They have for centuries been considered one of the masterpieces of Western art."
The New York Times 10/16/06 Posted: 10/16/2006 5:52 pm
Archaeologists Alarmed - Roman Treasure Goes On Display "One of the most beautiful and infamous treasure hoards of the 20th century, 14 pieces of Roman-era silver of staggering quality, will resurface today on display in London, to the consternation of leading archaeologists who regard it as archaeological loot."
The Guardian (UK) 10/16/06 Posted: 10/16/2006 5:41 pm
Libeskind's Denver Museum - Great, But How About The Art? "Inspired by a glimpse of the Rocky Mountains gained as he first flew into Denver, Libeskind's new building for the Denver Art Museum sits like an alien craft amid the civic grandeur of the mile-high city's downtown. Docked at an angle on a vacant plot of land, its hull shimmers in the sun, the titanium surface reflecting the colours around it, silver and ochre fading into a brackish brown. The stern of the ship is a jumble of metal boxes, stacked any which way. Its prow looms over the adjoining road, jutting out toward the museum's existing building, a grey crenellated mausoleum of a place."
The Guardian (UK) 10/16/06 Posted: 10/16/2006 5:38 pm
Richard Rogers Wins Stirling Prize For Spanish Airport "As he received the £20,000 prize to a standing ovation, Lord Rogers described his £1.2 billion building at Madrid’s Barajas airport, with its mile-long wavy roof designed to look like billowing clouds tethered to the ground, as “the greatest experience I’ve had in architecture since the Pompidou Centre (his 1970s building in Paris)."
Sunday Times 10/15/06 Posted: 10/16/2006 5:24 pm
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Music Editor Out After Okaying Reviews By Ad Staffer "The Stranger, one of Seattle's two alternative weekly newspapers, accepted the resignation of two employees late last week after it was discovered that an advertising coordinator had been secretly writing for the paper under a pseudonym -- something editors and managers called a conflict of interest." Those two employees were the advertising staffer, who wrote music reviews and blog entries for the paper, and the music editor who oversaw the arrangement. Seattle Post-Intelligencer 10/17/06
Posted: 10/17/2006 8:10 am
Met Opera Pinches Chicago Lyric's Chorus Master Donald Palumbo is "widely considered to be one of the best opera chorus masters in the world, with many impresarios, including the Met's Peter Gelb and Lyric's William Mason, saying that he is tops in the difficult field." Chicago Sun-Times 10/16/06
Posted: 10/16/2006 5:29 pm
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Cadaver Exhibit Draws Legal Challenge "The operators of a (Seattle) museum that offers UFO exhibits, Bigfoot displays and ghost tours have filed a federal complaint against an Atlanta-based company that has opened an exhibit in downtown Seattle displaying 21 human cadavers and some 250 body parts. In a complaint filed Friday in U.S. District Court, Charlette LeFevre and Philip Lipson, directors of the Seattle Museum of the Mysteries, accused Premier Exhibitions of violating the U.S. Anatomical Gift Act -- which prohibits the sale of human tissue -- by displaying dead Chinese citizens who did not give consent for their bodies to be publicly shown." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 10/17/06
Posted: 10/17/2006 8:04 am
Miami's New Performing Arts Center Debuts Miami's new Carnival Performing Arts Center is badly needed. But "it's a shame a price tag variously quoted between $446 million and $518 million hasn't bought better architecture. But no architectural practice has been more uneven than the 80-year-old Argentine-American's, now called Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects." Dallas Morning News 10/15/06
Posted: 10/16/2006 4:35 pm
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Dancer-choreographer Todd Bolender, 92 "Todd Bolender, an internationally known dancer and choreographer who left a distinctive imprint on the New York City Ballet and its forerunner companies before leading the Kansas City Ballet and troupes abroad, died on Thursday in Kansas City, Kan. He was 92 and lived in Kansas City, Mo." The New York Times 10/16/06
Posted: 10/17/2006 4:52 am
The American Theatre's New Genius In Residence The playwright of the moment in the American theatre is 32-year-old Sarah Ruhl, whose award-winning, much-buzzed-about play, "The Clean House," is at last hitting New York; whose lower-profile drama, "Eurydice," earned a near-benediction from The New York Times a few weeks ago; and -- oh, the other thing -- who made her way onto the genius list when she became a MacArthur Fellow last month. "The superstitious part of me goes, 'Uh-oh, when is the other shoe going to drop?' " she said. "There is so much happening at once. But the nonsuperstitious part of me is trying to enjoy it and see it as the result of 10 years of labor." The New York Times 10/14/06
Posted: 10/17/2006 3:55 am
Scorcese To Quit Hollywood Director Martin Scorcese says he's going to quit Hollywood and make low-budget films. "When there are very big budgets there is less risk that can be taken,' he said at the Rome Film Festival. The director said his next project would be a 'small-scale' adaptation of Japanese novel The Silence." BBC 10/16/06
Posted: 10/16/2006 5:04 pm
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New House, Different Rules At Victory Gardens Chicago's Victory Gardens Theater "gets pigeonholed as a 'mom-and-pop' operation. But now this family has a big, newly renovated house up at the historic Biograph Theater that just emptied the piggy bank by $11.7 million (and counting). And it's facing a whole different set of economic realities. So, will the family values stay the same? Only to a point, say the parents." One of the coming changes may be a raising of the bar for the theatre's stable of affiliated playwrights -- an ensemble whose existence sets Victory Gardens apart from most American theatres. Chicago Tribune 10/15/06
Posted: 10/17/2006 7:13 am
"Rachel Corrie" As Drama, Not Debate Topic "Few plays have traveled to New York with as much excess baggage as 'My Name Is Rachel Corrie,' " which had no such problems in London. "Those didn’t erupt until the New York Theater Workshop, a nonprofit institution known for championing politically daring work, announced in late February that it would indefinitely delay the play’s American premiere. ... Rachel Corrie became a name best not mentioned at Manhattan dinner parties if you wanted your guests to hold on to their good manners." Now that the play has opened, Ben Brantley writes, "many theatergoers wonder what all the shouting was about." The New York Times 10/16/06
Posted: 10/17/2006 5:10 am
Harlem's Gatehouse, Remade As A Theatre "There was a time not so long ago when people would hike to the Gatehouse pumping station at 135th Street and Convent Avenue in Harlem just to stand at a railing inside and watch the water rush by below. The water is still there, coursing its way underground to points south in Manhattan, but the building above now offers a different kind of spectacle. The architect Rolf Ohlhausen set out to evoke the public-works legacy of this rugged 1890 building in transforming it into a brand-new 192-seat performance space for Harlem Stage/Aaron Davis Hall. ... (The) $21 million theater (is) the first new performance space to open in Harlem in a generation." The New York Times 10/17/06
Posted: 10/17/2006 4:19 am
Previously: Amid Harlem's Gentrification, A New Stage Aaron Davis Hall, Inc., has been part of Harlem for 25 years. Now renamed Harlem Stage, it opens its new theatre next month in "a community that is rapidly changing, with townhouses selling for millions of dollars and new buildings being erected by internationally renowned architects like Rafael Viñoly." For executive director Patricia Cruz, that reality comes with a particular responsibility: "Things are changing," she said, "but how do we make it so that it's positive for the community — that they are not among the displaced? We hope to be a stabilizing force." New York Sun 09/19/06
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Where Does Literature Flow Into The Mainstream? " 'The real culture of America,' " Lawrence Ferlinghetti said after announcing the finalists for the 2006 National Book Awards, " 'is not corporate monoculture and television. It's the writers, teachers, universities, libraries and librarians. That's the mainstream culture of America.' It's hard to say what's more unexpected: to hear Ferlinghetti invoke the mainstream or to see him take part in an event like this. ... Still, the issue he raises — that of the mainstream and literature's place within it, of why this stuff matters — is one readers and writers have no choice but to take on." Los Angeles Times 10/17/06
Posted: 10/17/2006 6:04 am
Boys Behind Bars, Reading "Redwall" With his book-tour stop at the Orange County Jail in Florida, crime writer Dennis Lehane became the latest of a dozen authors to visit a class where literature is used to teach teenage boys that, as their program coordinator put it, "they don’t have to be dirtbags." "Ernest J. Gaines was the first author to come, in 2001, after the group read 'A Lesson Before Dying' (Random House), about a black youth sentenced to death. He has visited twice. Brian Jacques, author of the 'Redwall' series, about mice who fight off evil rats, foxes and other predators, has also visited twice, on a book tour for his publisher, Penguin, from England." The New York Times 10/16/06
Posted: 10/17/2006 4:39 am
Solving Agatha Christie's Personal Mystery In 1926 Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days. No one's ever been able to explain what happened. "Several plausible theories have competed for favour over the years, but biographer Andrew Norman believes he is the first to find one that satisfies every element of the case." The Guardian (UK) 10/16/06
Posted: 10/16/2006 5:36 pm
This Year's Governor General's Award Finalists An "obscure short list of mainly first- and second-time authors" has been named as finalists for this year's Canadian Governor General's Literary Award for English-language fiction. CBC 10/16/06
Posted: 10/16/2006 5:18 pm
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Full Speed Ahead For Microsoft's Live Book Search "Microsoft's strategic shift into Google territory took another step forward today with the announcement that the software giant has signed a digitisation agreement with a digital scanning specialist, Kirtas Technologies. The deal ... will enable Microsoft to forge ahead with its Live Book Search portal.... Its Live Book Search portal, to be launched early next year, will make available two strands of material: out-of-copyright scholarly material from educational establishments, and in-copyright books that are sent to Microsoft by publishers or authors and which are scanned by the company free of charge." The Guardian (UK) 10/17/06
Posted: 10/17/2006 6:51 am
TV: Where U.S. Cultural Diplomacy Stands A Chance "In the parliaments and pubs of Europe, the United States may wallow in least-favored-nation status. But on European television, American shows have been enjoying a popularity not seen since the 1980’s heyday of 'Dallas,' 'Dynasty' and 'The Dukes of Hazzard.' ... Nick Thorogood, controller of Five US," a new television channel devoted to American programming, "said British viewers set aside any anti-American sentiments when they settle down on the sofa. 'We are seeing bright, intelligent and beautifully made drama coming out of America,' he said. 'In the U.K., many people abhor the politics of the U.S. but eagerly embrace the culture.' " The New York Times 10/16/06
Posted: 10/17/2006 4:59 am
Is YouTube The Best TV Network? "Welcome to the new media universe, where for millions of video junkies, the best TV network in America isn't Comedy Central, MTV, ESPN or even HBO, but YouTube, the amazing website whose video clips are viewed more than 100 million times each day." Los Angeles Times 10/16/06
Posted: 10/16/2006 5:47 pm
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Sexy Dancing, 2006 Edition (Or: Elvis's Legacy Lives) "Freaking has gained widespread acceptance in recent years, propelled by the mainstreaming of rap music and the sultry images in hip-hop videos. Critics say its unquestionably carnal positions — girl bent at the waist, boy thrusting behind her — go far beyond previous generations' bumping and grinding. 'Every generation finds its successors' dances to be improprieties,' said Judith Lynne Hanna, a University of Maryland senior scholar and author of a book on dance and sexuality." Even so, "educators from New Hampshire to Washington state are growing increasingly agitated." Los Angeles Times 10/17/06
Posted: 10/17/2006 5:48 am
Previously: "Footloose" Revisited: Can Dance Lessons Save The Day? "Just hours after a welcome-to-school dance at Aliso Niguel High School in Aliso Viejo, Principal Charles Salter banned all future dances for this academic year. The frustrated Salter had been sending out warnings for several years. In a recent phone call, he boiled down his complaints to three factors: inappropriate clothing (or too little clothing), especially among the girls; students who had been drinking alcohol; and 'freaking' – dancing that was way too raunchy and sexually suggestive." Laura Bleiberg has a suggestion for rescinding the ban – and it involves (gulp) learning. Orange County Register 09/24/06
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