The Translation Algorithm The intricacies of different languages have always been a bit much for computers to handle, and computerized translation programs have never been as reliable as users would like. Translation "is a tricky problem, not only for a piece of software but also for the human mind. A single word in one language, for example, may map into three or more in another... But a New York firm with an ingenious algorithm and a really big dictionary is finally cracking the code." Wired 12/01/06
Posted: 12/01/2006 6:01 am
Click here for more Ideas stories...
Sorry, New York, But You're Just Not That Important A large percentage of the American art world seems to accept, without argument, the idea that New York is the art center of the world, and has no peer. But the dean of the Yale School of Art and curator of next year's Venice Biennale is on a mission to get artists and art lovers to look beyond New York, which he says is overvalued to a ridiculous degree. Robert Storr says that the most interesting modern art is coming from Asia and Africa, that the best-run museum in the country is in Minneapolis, and that the art world's obsession with money allows the New York-centric viewpoint to thrive.
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 12/01/06 Posted: 12/01/2006 6:31 am
Knowing It When You See It Proving that a painting is what someone thinks it is can be a daunting task, especially when there is evidence that it may have been painted by an old master whose name would make the canvas worth millions. This week, a once-disputed Rembrandt will go under the hammer in New York, and whoever buys it will inherit quite a history along with the art. The painting, which was discovered in 1972, wasn't certified as a Rembrandt until nearly a quarter-century later, and its story underlines the important advances that have been made in art analysis over the past few decades.
The New York Times 12/01/06 Posted: 12/01/2006 5:46 am
Scream Thief Believed Dead "A 27-year-old man who died this month is believed to be one of three masked gunmen who snatched the Edvard Munch paintings The Scream and Madonna from an Oslo museum in August 2004. The same man is reported to have led police to believe the daring daylight heist was linked to an earlier robbery in which a police officer was shot... The man is reported to have confessed his role in the Munch heist on tape while in conversation with an undercover officer."
CBC 11/30/06 Posted: 12/01/2006 5:38 am
A Rockwell Record, With A Hopper To Match "A beloved Norman Rockwell painting that was discovered behind a false wall in a Vermont home last spring sold yesterday at Sotheby’s for $15.4 million, a record price for the artist at auction... It was not the only record of the day. 'Hotel Window,' a 1955 painting by Edward Hopper owned by the actor Steve Martin, which depicts a woman sitting in an empty hotel lobby, brought $26.8 million."
The New York Times 12/01/06 Posted: 11/30/2006 9:10 pm
Celebrating Your Surroundings, No Matter How Bleak It's not easy promoting high culture in a city like Detroit, where urban blight is a far more common sight than public art. So for the architecture of the new Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, organizers decided that they needed to embrace the city they hoped would be embracing it. "Housed in an abandoned car dealership on a barren strip of Woodward Avenue, it fits loosely into a decades-long effort to restore energy to an area that was abandoned during the white flight of the 1970s. But the design springs from a profound rethinking of what constitutes urban revitalization."
The New York Times 12/01/06 Posted: 11/30/2006 8:59 pm
Judging By His History, We're Sure It's Quite Tasteful "Banksy, the anarchic graffiti artist, has poked fun at Michael Jackson, the pop star who faced child abuse charges, by featuring him in a drawing inspired by Hansel and Gretel... Jackson is seen trying to coax a little girl and a boy with a sweet in one of four works displayed in Santa’s Ghetto, an amusement arcade that opens in Central London today."
The Times (UK) 12/01/06 Posted: 11/30/2006 8:57 pm
Click here for more Visual Arts stories...
Does Portable Have To Mean Compressed? The iPod revolution has changed the music industry, but five years after the personal jukebox was debuted, no one has yet figured out how to bring high-quality sound to the portable players. "Listeners demand portability and a la carte song purchases. But at least some also want 'fidelity,' to experience a sound that's true to the full aural expression the artist poured out at the moment of a work's creation. Technology, artist advocacy, and buyer behavior will determine the degree to which listeners can have both, experts say." The Christian Science Monitor 12/01/06
Posted: 12/01/2006 6:10 am
Berlin Gets A Taste of American-Style Advocacy The new managing director of the Berlin Philharmonic says that she wants to give the atmosphere surrounding the orchestra a new energy, and to broaden the Phil's target audience. Pamela Rosenberg, who came to Berlin from the San Francisco Opera, says that it isn't about selling tickets (the Phil sells out most of its concerts, anyway) but about using what many consider to be the greatest orchestra in the world to promote classical music to the wide swath of the public to which it has no meaning. International Herald Tribune (AP) 12/01/06
Posted: 12/01/2006 5:20 am
Glimmerglass Finds It Already Had Its Man Glimmerglass Opera, the summer opera festival based in upstate New York, has removed the "interim" tag and officially named Don Marrazo as its new artistic director. Marrazo, who previously served as Glimmerglass's PR chief, took over on a temporary basis last fall following the departure of Nicholas Russell. Opera News 11/30/06
Posted: 11/30/2006 8:33 pm
Or Maybe He Just Wanted To Watch Everyone Go Nuts Over It Exactly what was Lorin Maazel thinking when he, apparently out of the blue, publicly nominated Daniel Barenboim to be his successor at the helm of the New York Philharmonic? It's unlikely that Maazel will have any influence over the search process, and Barenboim was apparently shocked to be mentioned. "He might simply have highlighted the difficulty of finding conductors of the highest stature to lead such U.S. orchestras as those in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit, all of which are looking for new music directors." Chicago Sun-Times 11/30/06
Posted: 11/30/2006 8:28 pm
Chicago Back On The Air And In The Studio "After more than five years, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will return to the national radio airwaves early next year as part of a comprehensive new media agreement that includes the launch of a new in-house recording label for compact discs and digital downloads, it was announced Thursday... The series will comprise 39 weekly programs, with interviews and special features augmenting the taped performances." Chicago Tribune 12/01/06
Posted: 11/30/2006 8:22 pm
Major Fundraising Effort Underway In Pittsburgh The Pittsburgh Symphony has announced an $80 million capital campaign, with the bulk of the money to go to its endowment. "The operating reserve would save the Symphony the interest payments it currently makes for a revolving line of credit that is spent and repaid each year." Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 11/30/06
Posted: 11/30/2006 8:18 pm
Good News From Milwaukee Things are looking up at the Milwaukee Symphony, which has struggled in recent years with budget deficits and declining ticket sales. New subscribers for the 2005-06 season rose a whopping 39%, and renewals jumped from 75% to 84%. "Fewer concerts and a big surge in single ticket sales led to several sellouts." The MSO still ran a $671,000 deficit for the season, but that's better than had been projected, and keeps the orchestra in line with its three-year plan to eliminate red ink. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 11/29/06
Posted: 11/30/2006 8:10 pm
Click here for more Music stories...
Ottawa To See Influx Of Cultural Cash "Canadian Heritage Minister Beverley Oda is announcing Monday that her department will provide what sources say is $100-million to repair and upgrade six national cultural institutions in the Ottawa region. Oda will make the announcement at the Canadian Museum of Nature, one of the institutions benefiting from the infrastructure aid package. Other buildings receiving assistance include the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Que., National Battlefields Commission, Science and Technology Museum and the National Arts Centre." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/01/06
Posted: 12/01/2006 6:15 am
Click here for more Arts Issues stories...
Final Act An international scam attempting to prey on AIDS victims with hopes for a cure was foiled this week when the film actor the scammers had hoped would endorse their product instead smelled a rat and turned them in to the BBC. "The project planned to inject 40 AIDS victims with the serum and depriving them of anti-retroviral drugs." Sydney Morning Herald 12/01/06
Posted: 11/30/2006 9:15 pm
Click here for more People stories...
Just So Long As They Don't Start Using Fear Factor Contestants No one has ever accused Broadway of being shy about piggybacking on the latest pop culture trends. This season saw several former American Idol stars playing prominent roles in leading Broadway shows, and now, "it looks as if the Great White Way will soon be inundated with hoofers from 'Dancing With the Stars.'" New York Post 12/01/06
Posted: 12/01/2006 6:24 am
Click here for more Theatre stories...
Sundance Looks Beyond Its Usual Sphere Mark Olson says that this year's Sundance lineup reflects a welcome maturity, a sign that the little festival that could has finally grown into its success. "Even as it has enjoyed increased cache and huge success, for years it has been known for self-consciously quirky films that lean heavily on dysfunctional families and relationships. For the 2007 edition, festival programmers say, filmmakers are looking beyond the familiar and the personal to the world at large." Los Angeles Times 12/01/06
Posted: 12/01/2006 6:19 am
Hollywood Stomps California Privacy Measure A bill that would have made it illegal for companies and individuals to use false pretenses to obtain information about consumers was killed this week in the California state legislature. Who could have been against such a measure? The movie industry, apparently: insiders are saying that determined lobbying by the MPAA is entirely responsible for the bill's defeat. Wired 12/01/06
Posted: 12/01/2006 5:58 am
Indies Gearing Up For An Eclectic Sundance The Sundance Film Festival is less than two months away, and the lineup is looking more than slightly eclectic. "Five dramas made by American directors were shot with characters speaking mainly in Spanish, Hindi, Korean, Portuguese or Muskogee, an American Indian language... Sexual oddities and sexual abuse, the ravages of war, the challenges of immigration, human disabilities and the writer’s life: all will be recurring themes." The New York Times 12/01/06
Posted: 11/30/2006 9:04 pm
Can Australia Keep Up The Good Work? Some Australian critics are pinching themselves to see if the high quality of the current crop of homegrown films can possibly be real. But even as film buffs celebrate a golden year of Down Under moviemaking, many look at the past as evidence that the good times won't last. "The one thing the Australian industry has never been very good at - and which drives film critics even nuttier than they usually are - is consistency." The Age (Melbourne) 12/01/06
Posted: 11/30/2006 8:43 pm
Click here for more Media stories...
Ailey Company Flying High It's been more than 15 years since Alvin Ailey died, and yet the company that bears his name is more vibrant than ever, says John Rockwell. "As this 2006 season opens, the company is showing signs of moving up to a new level. Its performances are enjoyed by teeming audiences nationally and internationally, with a steady, not to say backbreaking, touring schedule. Its dancers are better than ever, with the marvelous athleticism, vivid personalities and sleek sensuality the company has long fostered, now infused with the presence of starry newcomers." The New York Times 12/01/06
Posted: 12/01/2006 5:41 am
Click here for more Dance stories...
