I know how this looks: it looks as if I am fixated on prizes in the arts. Really, I’m not — it just happens that I’ve either run across or been told about some noteworthy ones lately. And I am, if not fixated, certainly interested in strategies and tactics that encourage people to appreciate the arts.

So here’s a prize I like: The Saatchi Gallery-Sunday Telegraph Art Prize for Schools — which just announced its shortlist of finalists.

The London newspaper launched the prize last May, with these words:

Whether traditional drawing and painting, whether it is work that falls into the messy or the precise schools, whether it is sculptural or digital, art is an expression of creative skills, and they are skills that The Sunday Telegraph would like to encourage among our schoolchildren.

The paper decided to team up with the Saatchi Gallery, which it said already had an education program, to start a partnership designed to “promote art and encourage artists of the future.” Students up to 18 years old, worldwide, could enter, with the deadline being Aug. 28.

Since then, a panel — artists Antony Gormley and Peter Blake, Andrew Graham-Dixon, The Sunday Telegraph’s art critic, Ekow Eshun, the artistic director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and Camilla Batmanghelidjh, CEO of Kids Company — has assessed the entries.

Winning produces two prizes, one to the artist and one to his or her school.   

[Read more…] about This Art Award, The Saatchi-Sunday Telegraph Prize, Breeds Art-Lovers

Rocco Landesman didn’t take Peoria, but he did seem to refrain from dismissing the city and its arts community again.

The new National Endowment for the Arts chairman yesterday started the whistle-stop tour of U.S. arts communities that he promised a few weeks ago. The first stop was a must because he’d insulted Peorians back in August.

On his visit, Landesman avoided another direct hit, saying he would not compare the production of “Rent” that he saw at the Eastlight Theatre Friday Night to a production of the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. According to the Peoria Journal Star, here’s what happened:

The chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts did observe earlier in the day that amateur arts are worthwhile much in the same way that minor leagues and amateur sports have value in relation to the big leagues and professional sports. One can feed into the other and is worthy of support, he said.

Including NEA support?

“I don’t know. I’m not saying the NEA would never support a community theater,” Landesman said. “I don’t think that’s something I could definitively say.”

Having learned what not to say, Landeman also said his view of the city had changed:

“The first impression from someone who knows nothing about it is that it’s a very meat and potatoes, rust belt, manufacturing city…The thing, of course, that is revelatory is realizing that there is a vibrant arts scene, that there is what has, I think, the beginnings, ultimately, of the real makings of an arts district in the Warehouse District. There’s big plans for it. The riverfront museum is a big deal. You have great riverfront, too.”

Here’s the whole story, plus a local reaction article, also in the Journal Star. WMBD/WYZZ also covered the visit.

Photo: ©

2009 GateHouseMedia, Inc., Courtesy Peoria Journal Star.

 

Art thievery usually boggles the mind — you can’t resell a truly valuable piece — and yet it flourishes. Do you know where it thrives, and where it’s rising?

The Art Loss Register, which tracks reported thefts, sent out a notice at the end of October about the theft of three paintings by Pierre Gavreau in Toronto (coincidentally, I just mentioned Gavreau the other day in my post about the Automatistes):

The window of the gallery was smashed and the paintings removed during an early morning burglary. The paintings [at left] were part of a 30-year retrospective of the artist’s work, commemorating his first solo show in Toronto in 1979. All three paintings are abstract works dating from the early 1980s, and had a combined value of over $40,000 USD.

Then, ALR said:

Canada currently ranks #13 in reported art thefts, with over 2,000 lost artworks recorded on the Art Loss Register’s database.  Reports of art thefts are on the rise in Canada.  Between 2000 and 2005, only 82 stolen objects were reported.  Since 2006, over 300 have been registered on the ALR’s database.

Well, I knew ALR kept track of thefts by country, but I’d not seen the statistics. So I asked, and here’s the current top 15:

1) United Kingdom — 53,709

2) United States — 21,079

3) France — 15,562

4) Italy — 15,041

5) Germany — 11,137

6) Belgium — 5,178

7) Switzerland — 4,540

8) Netherlands — 3,340

9) Iraq — 3,292

10) Brazil — 3,198

11) Austria — 2,946

12) Poland — 2,184

13) Canada — 2,077

14) Turkey — 1,956

15) Hungary — 1,700

 

Don’t read too much into the list: it’s likely that art theft is rampant in rich Asian countries, say, but it’s just not reported to ALR, which is based in London and New York.

 

The trends are important, though — they show changes in the theft rate, or the reporting of thefts, or both. 

 

Let’s look at three numbers. 

[Read more…] about If You Live In Britain, Better Hide That Picasso

David T. Little, the New York City-based composer and percussionist, has won DilettanteMusic.com’s digital composer-in-residence contest — by a huge margin, gaining more than half the votes.

This contest, as I mentioned the other day, was judged first by experts and then by the voting public, who could listen to Little’s music, and that of the other two contenders, Aaron Gervais from Edmonton, Canada, and Chiayu from Taiwan, on the DilettanteMusic.com website.

Little’s entry was called 1986, was written for a string quartet, and, as he described it:

is based on the tune “My Grandfather’s Clock.” ‘I have my own connections to this song, which I must have played hundreds, if not thousands of times as a boy playing in a fife and drum corps in New Jersey.’ 1986 calls on this experience, making use of the snare drum part that he played. The “tune” returns throughout the piece in different incarnations – from silly to serious – giving the listener a sense of a hazy, but fond, memory.

Little, who holds a degree in percussion performance, a Masters in Composition and a Master of Fine Arts degree, is studying for a Ph.D. at Princeton.

 

His victory was announced at a concert Thursday night at Wilton’s Music Hall (above) in London, where the London Sinfonietta performed a program curated by the three finalists featuring their contest entries alongside works that influenced them. Little chose the second movement of Charles Ives’ Trio, for violin, violoncello & piano, S. 86 (K. 2B17), “TSIAJ (“This scherzo is a joke”)” as the work that influenced him.

 

According to the press release, Little

 

now faces a year full of interactivity not only with the fans that voted for him, but with all Dilettante members including fellow musicians and composers. Unprecedented opportunities to connect with Little include “Composer’s Corner”, promoted and directly linked from the site homepage, a podcast series, online master classes, and forum discussions. His residency will conclude with a live performance of his newly-commissioned work, at a date and venue to be announced.

Could be an interesting year.

 

So here’s how the evening of classical music at the White House went. President Obama warmed up the crowd with remarks about not knowing when to applaud, eliciting laughs, according to the transcript provided by the White House.

Now, if any of you in the audience are newcomers to classical music, and aren’t sure when to applaud, don’t be nervous.  (Laughter.)  Apparently, President Kennedy had the same problem.  (Laughter.)  He and Jackie held several classical music events here, and more than once he started applauding when he wasn’t supposed to.  (Laughter.)  So the social secretary worked out a system where she’d signal him — (laughter) — through a crack in the door to the cross-hall.  

Now, fortunately, I have Michelle to tell me when to applaud.  (Laughter.)  The rest of you are on your own.  (Laughter.)

I couldn’t watch it, because of another engagement, but The Washington Post‘s Anne Midgette did, and seemed to share concerns similar to mine: “The day’s message was, “Look, classical music can be fun,” even though this message is also a tacit admission of the widespread assumption that it isn’t.”

Earlier in the day, Michelle Obama had “sold” classical to kids by saying it was exciting because it could be changed. Midgette posted on my post, which asked whether the First Lady was thus sending the right message, partly agreeing without saying what I was questioning…but happy that classical music is being played in the White House.

The New York Times, meanwhile, suggested the importance of classical music by sending music critic Anthony Tommasini down to Washington to review it — in contrast to practice with the country, jazz and Latin events, when D.C. bureau people wrote about it or no one did. Rather a waste, I think: Tommasini offered no commentary, simply playing it straight.