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Thursday, April 17




Visual Arts

How Iraq's National Museum Was Looted "Museum guard, Abdulk Rahman, tried to stop the first pillagers breaking through security gates at the rear of the compound, but he was forced to give up. Once inside, guards and curators were powerless to resist. A few hours later, US troops answered a desperate call from a curator, Raid Abdul Ridha Mohammed. Tanks were brought to the entrance, which dispersed the looters, but the Americans stayed for only half an hour. Immediately after their departure, the looters returned. The main ransacking seems to have occurred the next day, when hundreds of looters quickly gained access to the 28 public galleries." The Art Newspaper 04/17/03
Posted: 04/17/2003 8:12 am

  • What Was Stolen Or Destroyed The Art Newspaper has put illustrations of artwork lost in Iraq's National Museum online. The drawings come from the museum's catalog. "We should stress that at this stage there is no detailed information on what objects have been looted, what have been damaged and what are safe. Nevertheless, the images in the Treasures of the Iraq Museum represent many of the most important objects from the collection, which numbers some 170,000 pieces." The Art Newspaper 04/17/03
    Posted: 04/17/2003 8:09 am

  • An International Tragedy "The tragedy has provoked international uproar. Western museums have launched an urgent rescue mission to trace and return the missing treasures. Downing Street has demanded a list of the antiquities that can be circulated to British troops in Iraq. Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, has promised a military guard on remaining museums and important archaeological sites. And Unesco is to hold an emergency meeting tomorrow to prepare an action plan. For many, it is too late. Shards of antique pottery, smashed stone sculptures and scattered bits of parchment abandoned in the museum galleries make clear that little care will be taken with the stolen antiquities." The Art Newspaper 04/17/03
    Posted: 04/17/2003 8:06 am

  • Iraqi Culpability In Art Destruction? Jim Hoagland writes that while Americans should have done something to protect Iraqi art, "the rush to condemn Americans for looting and destruction committed by Iraqis obscures fundamental questions about social responsibility and accountability in Iraq and throughout the Arab world. The debate about responsibility for the museum's losses goes to the heart of the need for urgent moral and psychological change in the greater Middle East. An important question is going unasked in the rush to condemn: If looting was so predictable, what did the Iraqis - and particularly the staff of the museum - do to protect the museum's valuable antiquities?" Washington Post 04/17/03
    Posted: 04/17/2003 7:57 am

  • Iraq Art Destruction Makes New Enemies For America That Americans allowed the destruction of Iraqi culture while they stood by and watched has ignited rage among those Iraqis who might have been expected to support the Americans. "Somewhere, in the cacophony of bombs and the orgy of looting that followed, Baghdad's cultural elite became angry about the war, seeing in its destruction a vulgarity that only pushed the country deeper into degradation. Even today, even in Baghdad, there are people unused to chaos, and chaos now it is." The New York Times 04/17/03
    Posted: 04/17/2003 7:50 am

  • American Cutural Property Commission Official Resigns In Protest Citing "the wanton and preventable destruction" of Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities, the chairman of the President's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property has submitted his resignation to President Bush. Washington Post 04/17/03
    Posted: 04/17/2003 7:45 am

  • Iraq Art - A Forseeable Tragedy That Iraq's museums would be pillaged was a forseeable thing, writes Kenneth Baker. "We have to wonder how the Pentagon and the State Department could fail to see the cultural calamity coming, such a predictable consequence of urban war chaos. Weeks before the invasion, the Archaeological Institute of America published an 'Open Declaration on Cultural Heritage at Risk in Iraq,' signed by hundreds of scholars from around the world." San Francisco Chronicle 04/17/03
    Posted: 04/17/2003 7:35 am

  • Did Americans Allow Iraq Museum Looting Because Of A Lack Of Appreciation For Art? Is the fact that American troops protected oil fields but not museums significant? Caroline Abels writes that "we might never know why the looting continued unchecked despite strong early warnings from the world art community that Iraq's treasures required protection. But the cynic in me wonders whether the American military would have done more to protect the museums had we been a country that better recognized the value of art." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 04/17/03
    Posted: 04/17/2003 7:24 am

Is Rio Guggenheim A City's Dream Or A Disaster In The Making? Rio de Janeiro officials are hoping that a splashy new Guggenheim museum there will help the city. "Local officials are hailing the proposed museum project as part of a grand new vision of Rio, the South American capital of sun and samba that in the future also could be considered an art lover's tourist destination. But even as the project inches closer to final approval, the new Guggenheim branch's critics are growing in numbers, threatening to derail the city's plans. They say the museum should be subordinated to more pressing social needs such as roads, schools and health care..." Chicago Tribune 04/17/03
Posted: 04/17/2003 6:52 am

Debunking The Guernica-At-The-UN Story A big story before the war on Iraq began this spring had the United Nations covering up a copy of Picasso's "Guernica" that hangs outside the Security Council. Were US officials skittish about being shown on TV talking about war in front of a powerful anti-war work? No, writes Claudia Winkler. Here's what really happened: As the Iraq drama was playing out at the United Nations, the press corps covering the Security Council swelled. The usual press stakeout, where ambassadors routinely take reporters' questions outside the Security Council, simply couldn't hold the numbers - expected to reach 800 for Powell's address on February 5. So the Secretariat moved the stakeout down the hallway. As over 200 cameramen were setting up, they complained that the background at the new location didn't work for them." They asked for a plain background... Weekly Standard 04/16/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 7:06 pm

Edinburgh Museums Get Money To Tell People What They've Got Edinburgh museums have been given £117,000 by the government to "train community education workers in how to access the full range of cultural resources available to them through museums, libraries and archives." The Scotsman 04/16/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 6:36 pm

Enron Art On The Block A judge has authorized the sale of the Enron art collection. The company had a budget of $20 million for art, and reportedly spent $4 million. But "the collection is expected to bring $1.3 million to $1.8 million" at auction. "Enron creditors have filed 23,000 claims worth $400 billion." Nando Times (AP) 04/16/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 5:45 pm

Don't Buy Iraqi Antiquities World museum leaders suggest a moratorium on Iraqi antiquity sales as well as offering rewards for the return of art looted from Iraq's museums. "I feel very strongly that we have to mobilize a reaction and make people aware that it's not going to be easy to get the looted stuff out on the market." The New York Times 04/16/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 5:36 pm

Music

Is Music Better With An Explanation? Why do we need theory to explain music? "Actually, theory can be beautiful and illuminating (as opposed to complicated, obfuscating, quagmired, self-important, self-absorbed). And nothing could be more human: the desire to create systems out of chaos or near-chaos is a natural and (usually) noble expression of humanity's ability to reason. And there are theories about everything: Goethe had one about color, Einstein had one about gravity, Eisenstein had one about film montage... Freud about dreams. Darwin even had a pet theory (literally). But music theory is surely the strangest. That's the burden of trying to make sense of the most ethereal, ephemeral, abstract–one could argue the most free–art form." NewMusicBox 04/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 6:56 pm

Rachmaninov - A Shrink-Wrapped Talent? Did psychotherapy turn Rachmaninov from "a composer of ambitious discordances into a tinkler of popular tunes?" So maintains a new book. "It was a kind of unconscious Faustian pact, in which he was seduced into giving up his revolutionary rage in exchange for peace of mind and endless pleasanteries."
London Evening Standard 04/16/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 6:06 pm

People

Musicologist's Death - The Schumann Theory? Did Boston University musicology professor John Daverio try to end his life in the same way as one of his great heroes, Robert Schumann? Daverio's body surfaced in the Charles Monday night after he had been missing since March 16. Daverio wrote the 1997 biography 'Robert Schumann: Herald of a New Poetic Age', which of course mentions the brilliant, disturbed composer's attempt to commit suicide at age 44 by throwing himself into the Rhine..." Boston Globe 04/17/03
Posted: 04/17/2003 6:23 am

  • Previously: Musicologist's Body Pulled From River A body pulled from Boston's Charles River this week has been positively identified as that of musicologist John Daverio, who disappeared last month. Daverio was a professor at Boston University, and was considered one of the world's leading authorities on the music of Robert Schumann. Medical authorities say that Daverio drowned, but the circumstances surrounding his death are still a mystery, with his colleagues and friends dismissing the possibility of suicide. Andante (AP) 04/16/03

Theatre

Seattle's ACT Theatre Makes Money Deadline, Survives Seattle's ACT Theatre, which said earlier this year that it needed to raise $1.5 million in emergency cash by April 15 or it would close, has found the money. "It was a squeaker, but we did it," said Susan Trapnell, a former ACT manager who volunteered her time for three months to help raise $1.5 million to keep the wolf from ACT's door." Seattle Times 04/17/03
Posted: 04/17/2003 7:41 am

Brazilian Passion Play Divides A Community Fifty years ago a passion play was first staged in a remote Brazilian village. "Now titled 'The Passion of Christ in New Jerusalem,' it has become the best-known religious entertainment in Brazil, the largest Roman Catholic country. The play, being performed nightly through Saturday, has grown into a lavish million-dollar spectacle that annually draws as many as 70,000 people to what is described as the biggest open-air theater in the world. It is so successful that it has even inspired a rival, dissident pageant." But last year the founder died, and attempts to modernize and show-biz it up are ignited big controversy. The New York Times 04/17/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 7:15 pm

Ancient Athens Theatre Had Terrible Views Scientists have sonstructed computer models of Athens' Odeon Theatre, built 2,500 years ago in the time of Pericles. "They have reconstructed the world's first indoor theatre in three-dimensional virtual reality, only to find that 40% of the audience would have had an obstructed view. They say it would have been worse 'than being stuck behind a 6ft 10in bodybuilder at a modern cinema multiplex'. Athens in the 5th century BC was the home of Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides and other playwrights of the golden age. The Odeon was next door to the open-air theatre of Dionysus, near the Acropolis." The Guardian (UK) 04/17/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 6:44 pm

ACT - Race Against The Money-Raising Clock Seattle's ACT theatre said earlier this year it needed to raise $1.5 million by April 15 or it would go out of business. No word as of Wednesday if the goal had been met, but as of Monday (03/14) "a total of $987,000 had been raised to date, approximately two-thirds the overall goal. The great bulk of that sum has come from a small group of targeted individuals, including 'board members, past supporters, general public subscribers, and people who know us,' and donations have ranged from $5,000 to $100,000." Backstage 04/14/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 6:09 pm

Monica Lewinsky On Broadway? If Jerry Springer can be an opera, why can't Monica Lewinsky be a Broadway musical? Now she will be: "Monica! The Musical" will get its first reading at the Manhattan Theatre Club on May 7. "Its creators, hope that the reading will lead to a stage berth here in New York, where it would join unlikely post-post-ironic musicals such as Debbie Does Dallas, Urinetown and the new Zanna, Don’t!" Some sample lyrics? "I feel I’ve lost my head," sings young Bill. "Don’t look too hard for you will find it / Beneath my dress of red," responds the siren." New York Observer 04/16/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 4:58 pm

Publishing

Updike And The Gardner John Updike has written a poem about the 1990 theft of paintings from Boston's Gardner Museum. Updike felt a personal connection to the theft, he said: "It happened on my birthday night, so that I felt slightly at fault in this matter." (He has not been charged.) "It's remained in me. My wife and I do go to the museums now and then. I have always especially loved Vermeer. And so all this especially made it meaningful to me." Boston Globe 04/17/03
Posted: 04/17/2003 6:19 am

Post-Partisan Depression The demise of the Partisan Review doesn't mean the magazine will be forgotten. "From its inaugural issue as an independent journal, in 1937, which included Delmore Schwartz's short story 'In Dreams Begin Responsibilities,' a poem by Wallace Stevens and contributions by Lionel Trilling, Sidney Hook and Edmund Wilson, to its heyday in the 1940's and 50's, the journal published an astonishing range of landmark work. For many Americans, Partisan Review was their introduction to Abstract Expressionism, existentialism, New Criticism and the voices of talented young writers like Robert Lowell, Norman Mailer, Elizabeth Hardwick and Susan Sontag." The New York Times 04/17/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 7:18 pm

Fake Harry Potters Flood The Market The fifth Harry Potter book is due out in June. But already the internet is flooded with fakes purporting to be the real thing. "There are quite a few fakes out there. It's a growing problem because the internet is becoming more and more prevalent. We monitor it very closely. Sometimes they have JK's name on it which is potentially very damaging. I find that quite annoying, we've got to take action. Sometimes they're pornographic which is even more annoying because a lot of the fans are kids." The (Melbourne) 04/16/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 5:53 pm

America's Irish Affair Americans have long been fascinated with Irish poetry and literature. "The latest sign of our interest is the awarding of this year's Pulitzer Prize to Paul Muldoon, an excellent Irish poet now living in New Jersey. Why do we love the Irish so much? In large part it's because these poets have portrayed an Ireland that seems glamorously different from our own modern, urban, technological society." Slate 04/16/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 5:31 pm

Why It's Difficult To Get Publishing Sales Figures "Nobody talks about publishing numbers because they are so unbelievably low. How many authors really make a living wage from their advances? How many books actually earn out, or pay their authors anything beyond the initial advance? And how many copies sold turn any particular book into a best-seller? Those are the questions all people interested in publishing think they want to know—and their answers are the ones publishing executives go out of their way not to reveal. A book can be on the best-seller lists for a couple of weeks and have sold 30,000 copies. Within publishing, that’s a reasonably good showing, but compared to, say, the music or movie or magazine business, where sales are measured in millions, it seems like nothing." New York Observer 04/16/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 4:56 pm

Media

Is Canada Getting Out Of The Canadian Culture Business? Did the Canadian government realize it was slicing up some of Canada's most successful TV shows and bumping them off the air when it cut $25 million from a fund to help produce them? Or has the government just decided that spending money subsidizing Canadian culture is no longer a good idea? Whatever - the impact of this decision will be huge. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/17/03
Posted: 04/17/2003 7:01 am

What Happened To The Serious Arts On PBS? "While film and video makers still have a presence on PBS, albeit usually in the late night slot, contemporary performing arts appear to have been replaced by baby boomer-oriented MOR rock, a recent renewal of interest in early doo-wop, R&B and soul, light classical fare (including all the multitudinous variations on the Three Tenors), a very curious and unexpected surge in pop music directed at a rather older viewing demographic like some kind of updated version of the Lawrence Welk (e.g. Roger Whittaker), and all manner of new age-y, glitzy, and otherwise flimsy, mainstreamed versions of world music and dance. Enough of Yanni, Fleetwood Mac, Riverdance, Sarah Brightman, and Andrew Lloyd Webber! Give me some new music and contemporary performing arts of substance and meaning!" NewMusicBox 04/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 6:54 pm

Is An "R" Rating Death To A Movie? None of the top 20 films at the box office last year in America were rated "R". "According to Daily Variety, two-thirds of all films released in 2001 earned an R, and they grabbed only 28 percent of the dollars spent at U.S. box offices. Last year, 58 percent of new movies were R-rated, and those accounted for 24 percent of ticket sales. Now, try to predict the future of bold, adult-themed cinema deserving R ratings. That is anyone's guess. But in an industry where imitation breeds success, things aren't looking good for moviegoers who enjoy edgier, sexier or more violent film entertainment." Rocky Mountain News 04/16/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 6:33 pm

Performers Strike Against Clear Channel? Hollywood unions are considering a strike against four New York Clear Channel radio stations. "A major issue is protecting DJs from the recent Clear Channel practice of 'voice tracking' - piping in lower-paid, out-of-state announcers to replace higher-paid local DJs. Clear Channel is an 800-pound gorilla and the solidarity of all performers is needed in our fight against them." New York Post 04/16/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 6:28 pm

Choosing Against The Internet Being connected to the internet isn't just a matter of being able to afford it, says a new study. "A total of 80 million American adults - 42 percent of the adult population - say they don't use the Internet, the study found. But 20 percent of them have Internet access in the next room and choose not to go online. Or, some of them get family members to go online for them. 'Many of the people whom we talked to define themselves as people who don’t use technology. They view themselves as high-touch versus high-tech." Wired 04/16/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 5:22 pm

Dance

Royal Winnipeg Ballet Cancels Asian Tour "The Canadian ballet company had planned to take Mark Godden's critically acclaimed production of "Dracula" to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou on an 18-day tour, beginning May 25, but heeding a travel advisory issued by Health Canada, a department of the Canadian government, the company has canceled the trip" because of concerns about SARS. Los Angeles Times 04/16/03
Posted: 04/16/2003 6:25 pm


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