Ideas

The Inevitable Tragedy of Urban Memory Lapse It happens in every city, particularly in North America: things disappear. They become other things, or sometimes they become nothing. But they disappear, either because no one wanted them, or they were dated, or dilapidated, or just plain ugly. Eventually, you walk past something that was once something else, and you can't even remember what it used to be. And that moment, says Geoff Pevere, is one of the saddest aspects of modern urban existence. Toronto Star 04/18/03
Posted: 04/18/2003 6:50 am

Email Patterns Show Who Counts In A Group Turns out you can tell who's important in a group of people by tracking the email traffic within the group. "Researchers have developed a way to use e-mail exchanges to build a map of the structure of an organization. The map shows the teams in which people actually work, as opposed to those they are assigned to. The technique can also reveal who is at the heart of each sub-group. These people often correspond with company-designated leaders such as project managers. But unofficial de facto leaders can also emerge. The approach might even help to pinpoint the heads of criminal or terrorist networks." Nature 03/20/03
Posted: 04/17/2003 8:19 pm

Visual Arts

Bush Advisers Resign Over Iraq Looting "Three White House cultural advisers have resigned in protest at the failure of US forces to prevent the looting of Iraq's national museum." The advisers were all members of the President's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property. The three advisers had sharp words for the Bush administration's failure to have in place any sort of contingency plan for dealing with such foreseeable problems, and committee chair Martin Sullivan, who is one of those resigning, added that the looting was doubly preventable, since the United States was the nation in control of the timetable of the war. "In a pre-emptive war that's the kind of thing you should have planned for," he said. BBC 04/18/03
Posted: 04/18/2003 5:54 am

• The Fog Of Washington Arrogance "Let's be serious. Is anybody really surprised that Baghdad's great civic art museum didn't rate a measly tank? That the treasures of ancient Mesopotamia sat unguarded and exposed, ripe for the picking by local scavengers either amateur or professional? The horrendous event was not, after all, a dire outcome of 'the fog of war.' It was instead a routine example of the fog of the Bush administration, when it comes to matters cultural." Los Angeles Times 04/18/03
  Posted: 04/18/2003 5:53 am

Museum Looters Were Pros The looting of Baghdad's National Museum of Antiquities was no mere grab-and-go act by a desperate citizenry. According to UNESCO, the vast majority of the museum thefts were perpetrated by professional art thieves who knew exactly what to take, and where to find it. "Museum officials in Baghdad told UNESCO that one group of thieves had keys to an underground vault where the most valuable artifacts were stored. The thefts were probably the work of international gangs who hired Iraqis for the job, and who have been active in recent years doing illegal excavations at Iraqi archaeological digs." Washington Post 04/18/03
Posted: 04/18/2003 5:26 am

• The Real Cost of the Baghdad Looting Although Americans may find it convenient to think of the Middle East as a land of barbaric, uncultured souls prone to unstoppable violence, the recent horrific and systematic destruction of Iraq's cultural firmament points up how wrong these misconceptions truly are. When Baghdad's central library burned to the ground last week, centuries of irreplacable cultural scholarship were lost to the world. Iraq has always taken great pride in its culture and its history, and has catalogued both with a meticulousness which 'cultured' Americans have never matched. "Since 1967, the country has had stringent laws preventing the export of antiquities. One of the saddest ironies of the destruction is that Iraq's defense of its cultural heritage was considered a model for the region." Washington Post 04/18/03
  Posted: 04/18/2003 5:25 am

Cultural History Theft - An Organized Racket "Stealing a country’s physical history, its archaeological remains, has become the world’s third biggest organised racket, after drugs and guns. There are those who argue that it shouldn’t need to be illegal at all. There are those who say, look, the free market should operate here. Why shouldn’t a private collector be allowed to buy an antiquity and keep it in his bathroom, maybe next to the bidet, or as a tasteful holder for the Toilet Duck, if he wishes to do so, and if both he and the seller are happy with the price? You will not be surprised to hear that many of those who argue this way are American. You may not be surprised, either, that shortly before the invasion of Iraq, and with the spoils of war on their mind, some of these people formed themselves into a lobbying organisation called the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP)." The Spectator 04/17/03
Posted: 04/17/2003 8:11 pm

America's Contempt For History (Other Than Its Own) Allowing the destruction of Iraq's art shows the contempt the United States has for other cultures. "The notion that Iraq even has history - let alone that 7,000 years ago this land was the cradle of civilization - is not likely to occur to the neocolonialists running a brawny young nation barely more than 200 years old. The United States' earnest innocence is the charm that our entertainment industry markets so successfully around the world, but it is also the perennial seed of disaster as we blithely rearrange corners of the planet we only pretend to understand." The Nation 04/16/03
Posted: 04/17/2003 8:04 pm

British Museum Reaches Out To Iraq British Museum director Neil MacGregor expresses his dismay over the looting of Iraq's National Museum. "The human aspect is as vital as the artistic and cultural. These museum people in Baghdad, MacGregor points out, are friends, close associates, with whom his staff have been in regular contact over long-term shared projects. Only weeks ago, while the coalition plotted air attacks, British Museum scholars were still exchanging prized information on the decipherment of precious cuneiform tablets. Many of these writings on clay, having survived 5,000 years, now lie smashed." London Evening Standard 04/17/03
Posted: 04/17/2003 7:51 pm

Winnipeg To Build Human Rights Museum Winnipeg Canada is planning to build a $270 million international museum of human rights. About $130 million has been raised so far for the first $200-million phase, to be built on vacant land at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in downtown Winnipeg. Canoe.com 04/17/03
Posted: 04/17/2003 7:18 pm

Choosing Destruction For Iraqi Art Why did the Bush administration choose not to protect Iraq's cultural treasures? "Only two of the thousands of pieces of art that were stolen after the first Gulf War were recovered. Even if a sculpture of a bronze Akkadian king isn't important to the Bush administration, you'd think its own self-interest would be: In the eyes of the world, the war's success will be measured as much by what happens now and over the coming months as by the shock and awe campaign." Slate 04/17/03
Posted: 04/17/2003 7:04 pm

Music

A Thoroughly Modern Quartet The setup is a familiar one: talented young string quartet is heard by wealthy donor who, taken with their skill and enthusiasm, sets the foursome up with priceless old Italian instruments which they could never otherwise afford. But in the case of the Miró Quartet, one of a small number of headline-grabbing young quartets vying to be the next Juilliard or Guarneri, their benefactor was a North Carolina musician who wanted to see if a collection of specially crafted modern instruments could elevate the group in the same way that four Strads could. The result was a specially commissioned set of two violins, viola, and cello, tailored to meet the Miró's needs. And the results? Well, it depends on which player you ask. Hartford Courant 04/17/03
Posted: 04/18/2003 6:25 am

San Antonio To Cut Season Short The cash-strapped San Antonio Symphony will end its season more than a month early, and attempt to retool its finances in order to have the funds to mount a full 2003-04 season. The orchestra has been in dire straits for months, with its musicians frequently playing without pay. Orchestra officials say they are optimistic about plans for next season, but acknowledge that the new season may be a shorter one, and might not happen at all if new sources of local funding can't be found. WOAI NewsRadio 1210 (San Antonio) 04/18/03
Posted: 04/18/2003 5:41 am

• The Problem Is The Donors In many ways, the San Antonio Symphony has long been considered a model of what a small, regional orchestra should be. So what could be preventing the orchestra's leaders from reviving their gasping organization? Mike Greenberg says the problem is simple: San Antonio's big-money types are flatly refusing the symphony's advances, and ignoring its pleas for relief. "The doors have slammed so consistently that some observers inside and outside the symphony have suspected a coordinated effort by donors to force the symphony to reconstitute itself as a smaller or part-time ensemble." San Antonio Express-News 04/18/03
  Posted: 04/18/2003 5:40 am

Getting Down To Downloading How are the new music industry downloading services doing? "Various analyses of the half-dozen or so services put the total of their combined subscribers at between 300,000 and 500,000. Emusic, the one legitimate music service that discloses its subscriber numbers, claimed 70,000 subscribers as of year-end 2002. Meanwhile, Kazaa, the leader of the file-trading services not sanctioned by the music industry, has been downloaded more than 200 million times." Technology Review 04/17/03
Posted: 04/17/2003 6:57 pm

Music Education, Interactive Style The Philharmonic of New Jersey's "Discovery Concert Series of interactive music-appreciation events is attempting to extricate classical performances from the miasma of modern life, where it plays second fiddle to everything from linguine to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Since it began last year, the concert series has proven to be a huge success, selling out months in advance. Concerts take place in Newark at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and are aired on local and, increasingly, national PBS stations. The concerts are interactive in the style of a college class in music theory and have covered pieces by Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, and Claude Debussy." Christian Science Monitor 04/18/03
Posted: 04/17/2003 6:06 pm

People

J Paul Getty II, 70 Billionaire John Paul Getty II has died. "He donated millions to various galleries and institutes but rarely sought publicity for the money he gave away. Among the beneficiaries was the National Gallery in London, which received £50m in 1985 to support its bid to buy national treasures." BBC 04/17/03
Posted: 04/17/2003 6:44 pm

• The Passions Of JP Getty "At heart, JP Getty II was a scholar manque. His greatest passion was his collection of rare books, which included a number of priceless medieval manuscripts; and only recently he paid Oriel College, Oxford, £3.5 million for a First Folio of Shakespeare's plays. He absorbed himself not only in the texts and their provenance, but also in the practical art of fine book-binding. He was a cinema buff and an authority on the work of Howard Hawks and Charlie Chaplin; his video library was vast. He also had a wide knowledge of music. At the other end of the scale, Getty was an inveterate watcher of television soap operas, with a particular affection for the Australian series Neighbours." The Telegraph (UK) 04/18/03
  Posted: 04/17/2003 5:48 pm

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

Media

Stone's Castro Biopic Shelved "Three days Oliver Stone spent with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro for an HBO documentary may have been for nothing. HBO has shelved the project because Castro recently imprisoned 75 dissidents, some with terms of 28 years, and had three others executed after they hijacked a ferry in a failed attempt to reach the United States, refreshing an image of the Cuban president not seen in the film. Comandante was scheduled to air May 5, but has been pulled; no future airdate has been set." Toronto Star 04/18/03
Posted: 04/18/2003 6:54 am

To Merge Or Not To Merge A group of some 50 film actors gathered in Los Angeles yesterday to protest the proposed merger of the Screen Actors' Guild with the union representing television and radio performers (AFTRA). Merger proponents say that a unified union would be stronger, and in a better position to prevent "runaway" productions in Canada. But the protesters claim that the merger is being railroaded through by a small group of union execs, and worry about having to compete for the union's attention with soap opera actors and radio personalities. BBC 04/17/03
Posted: 04/18/2003 6:03 am

Reality Film (AKA Documentaries) Making Comeback Filmmaker Michael Moore's huge success with "Bowling for Columbine" has "energized nonfiction filmmakers and piqued moviegoers' curiosity about fare drawn from real life, and encouraged distributors to put more documentaries into theaters. But this doesn't mean his style of documentary - sar- donic, polemical, and propelled as much by his own ego as the cause he's fighting for - will now dominate the field." Christian Science Monitor 04/18/03
Posted: 04/17/2003 6:00 pm