War & Policy As A Marketing Message For years critics have been observing the growing sophistication and power of the entertainment/marketing complex and marveling at its effectiveness in selling its messages to the public. But "the media giants that wield such clout don't always put it to such frivolous use. We are not just plugged into their matrix to be sold movies and other entertainment products. These companies can also plug the nation into news narratives as ubiquitous and lightweight as 'The Matrix Reloaded,' but with more damaging side effects." The New York Times 05/25/03
Posted: 05/25/2003 7:58 am
Am I Hot Or Not? (Scientifically Speaking, Of Course) It's surprisingly easy to find agreement on what is an attractive face and what is not. But "finding answers to why we regard one face as being more beautiful than another is actually not as easy as it seems." A major research project on 'facial attractiveness' by two German universities has been attempting to find out "why some faces are more beautiful than others, how scienctists help unravel the mystery of beauty, and the dangerous relationship between a beautiful body and social power." Beautycheck 05/03
Posted: 05/24/2003 5:58 pm
New Eyewitness Update On Baghdad Museum Looting "British Museum director Neil MacGregor returned this week from Baghdad, which he visited as part of a Unesco delegation. In an exclusive interview with The Art Newspaper, he reported that three separate storerooms at the National Museum had been looted, in addition to the galleries. Although the number of objects which were taken was very much smaller than had originally been feared, they include some which are 'extraordinarily important'.” The Art Newspaper 05/23/03
Posted: 05/24/2003 5:50 pm
The $58 Million Saltcellar The Cellini saltcellar recently stolen from Austria's Kunsthistorisches Museum is said to be worth $58 million. How come so much? "The figure they cited is stunning, and no wonder: It comes out of an empyrean that few objects ever visit. Art, like any other commodity, receives its worth partly from the quality of the artifact and partly from its scarcity. But the Cellini is unique—and not just in the sense in which all artworks are unique: Nothing even remotely like it exists. Lose a Warhol, and you can always get another one. Rembrandts are hard to find, but not impossible. But there's only one Cellini table piece." Slate 05/23/03
Posted: 05/24/2003 5:41 pm
New $100 Million Canadian Museum Opposed By Museum Community The Canadian government intends to announce a new $100 million museum of Canadian history and politics. But critics including opposition MPs and the museum community say that "the money would be better spent helping cash-strapped institutions across the country. 'Museums in Canada are desperately underfunded. Some even are verging on bankruptcy."
The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/24/03
Posted: 05/24/2003 4:19 pm
The Poet Stadium The model for Herzog and de Meuron's recently announced stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games is a crossover from structure to poetry, writes Giles Worsley. "When built, it will rise 67 metres in the heart of the city and hold 100,000 spectators. The model captures the sense of ambiguity that increasingly surrounds the architects' buildings, particularly where façade and structure meet. The Basel-based firm that designed Tate Modern has used the idea of a nest of twigs to give external form to the building, a lattice of massive concrete beams, through which spectators penetrate to the heart of the building – the stands." The Telegraph (UK) 05/24/03
Posted: 05/24/2003 3:51 pm
Ode To St. Petersburg (At 300) St. Petersburg is, "without doubt, one of the world's most exquisite cities. Yes, it is flanked by meretricious modern design, encircled by brutal Soviet-era, high-rise apartment blocks and smells of grinding poverty. Its water is often unsafe to drink, its crowded trolley-buses are rusting away and its pavements are forced to tackle the shifts of fetid marshland below them. But, when you walk along Nevsky Prospect or catch sight of any of the city's brightly coloured, set-piece buildings, when you spy the golden spires of fairy-tale fortresses and heavenly churches or the seemingly infinite march of classical arcades, their vaults lit by the sun sparkling from the Dutch and Venetian-style canals, you feel that this is paradise, not urban purgatory." The Guardian (UK) 05/24/03
Posted: 05/24/2003 3:22 pm
Open Minds Through Opera Manuela Hoelterhoff writes that the value of broadcasting opera every week throughout America is hard to calculate. "All I know is that I am not unique, and countless children must have listened to those opera broadcasts and gone on to become mathematicians, Supreme Court justices, stock brokers, teachers and captains of industry (if not, I guess, at ChevronTexaco)." The New York Times 05/25/03
Posted: 05/25/2003 7:34 am
Turkey Wins Eurovision Contest Turkey's Sertab Erener has won this year's Eurovision song contest with the song 'Every Way That I Can.'Belgium's Urban Trad came in second and Russia's Tatu in third. Erener is one of Turkey's most popular singers, with album sales of over four million. BBC 03/24/03
Posted: 05/24/2003 5:46 pm
Got The Hall, Got The Players. Why Not Start An Orchestra... Denver could use a good chamber orchestra, writes Marc Shulgold. Most of the pieces are in place to create one. All it takes is a little money. "Who doesn't like Bach, Handel and Vivaldi? Who wouldn't enjoy a Mozart or Haydn symphony played as originally conceived? What's not to like in those sumptuous string-orchestra pieces by Tchaikovsky, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Grieg and Dvorak? Particularly when they're played with professional polish?" Rocky Mountain News 05/24/03
Posted: 05/24/2003 5:09 pm
Spano's NY Phil Debut - A Preview Of The Future? Robert Spano finally makes his New York Philharmonic debut. The Philharmonic has been "catching up with the younger generation of American conductors lately, perhaps with too great a sense of dutiful deliberation, and Mr. Spano's debut lets it check off another name on its list. But there is also a sense that the orchestra is scouting out talent for its eventual search for its next music director — a process that would have to involve establishing relationships with the potential candidates. Mr. Spano's name, along with David Robertson's and Alan Gilbert's, has been mentioned as a possibility, although mostly in the context of critics' wish lists, not by the orchestra itself." The New York Times 05/24/03
Posted: 05/24/2003 4:41 pm
Visa Rules To Keep Cubans From Attending Grammys US visa rules in effect since 9/11 mean that Cuban artists nominated for Grammys will not be able to attend or perform in the Grammy ceremony. "The new rules mean that, with only six weeks between the announcement of the Latin Grammy nominations on July 22 and the Sept. 3 show, it will be virtually impossible for any Cuban artist to get a visa in time." Miami Herald 05/24/03
Posted: 05/24/2003 4:06 pm
Can Opera Survive On The Radio? Now that ChevronTexaco has bailed out of a 63-year sponsorship of Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts, and "with classical-music institutions facing financial difficulties and dwindling audiences across the continent, is opera on the radio an idea whose time has passed? Does the Met still have the influence to attract the interest of large corporations? Does opera still have the cachet and prestige it once did? These questions will be answered in the coming year." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/24/03
Posted: 05/24/2003 3:05 pm
Future Doctors Studying Art The number of medical students taking "literature, art interpretation and other humanities courses has surged over the past decade. They are trying to awaken their feelings and intuition as a way to connect with patients who often feel as though they've been reduced to a collection of symptoms. Educators say the distilled emotions and insight in the arts offer students a crash course in the old-fashioned skill of the bedside manner. Art, they say, is a textbook on the human condition." Los Angeles Times 05/24/03
Posted: 05/24/2003 4:24 pm
Spanish Honor "Spanish drama is fascinated by rules, by the code of conduct by which life is lived in matters of love and honour. Generally speaking we may seem to have lost interest in honour as a topic, but that does not mean that we cannot be stirred by a play in which honour is the motivating force. After all, we understand what humiliation (the opposite of honour) is, and we pursue honour in various of its aspects all the time, by other names. Respect is the current street-slang under whose rubric issues of honour are discussed and fought out." The Guardian (UK) 05/24/03
Posted: 05/24/2003 3:39 pm
No Guts, No Glory David Hare wonders about the lack of ambition of British theatres and audiences compared to playwrights. "It is clear that much of the free theatre we once loved has become sclerotic, choked up by damp-palmed development officers and fetid sponsorship deals, and patrolled from the watchtowers by a bureaucratic Arts Police that has sought to rob the activity of its very point - its spontaneity - it is remarkable how many of us feel that even if it has been a lifetime of failure, it has not been a lifetime of waste." The Guardian (UK) 05/24/03
Posted: 05/24/2003 3:26 pm
Return To Deep Throat What is it about washed-up 80s music stars? "Two members of the eighties good-time girl group the Go-Go's this week announced they were working on a musical about porn queen Linda Lovelace (Deep Throat)." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/24/03
Posted: 05/24/2003 3:17 pm
Chum In The Water - Harsh Critic About To Become The Criticized James Wood is described as "the most brutal, the most loathed, the most respected literary critic of his time." He has been "merciless in debunking many esteemed writers of the age — Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie. Now the New Republic book critic is about to publish his own first novel, and James Wood the novelist is fair game. "A critic writing a novel is like William Bennett in a casino. All eyes are upon him." The New York Times 05/24/03
Posted: 05/24/2003 4:36 pm
The Queen Writes A Poem... (And We Think...) Queen Elizabeth wrote a poem:
"To leafy Balmoral,
We are now on our way.
But our hearts will remain
At the Castle of Mey.
With your gardens and ranges,
And all your good cheer,
We will be back again soon
So roll on next year"
And the Guardian canvased poets for reaction... The Guardian (UK) 05/24/03
Posted: 05/24/2003 3:42 pm
Summing Up Cannes As Cannes winds down for another year, Desson Howe writes that one thing is clear about this year's lineup: "Someone was saving the really great movies for another year." Washington Post 05/25/03
Posted: 05/25/2003 9:02 am
Washington Ballet - Successful, But What Does That Mean? Septime Webre has been running Washington Ballet for four years. "Sales of yearly subscriptions have tripled. The budget is up more than 50 percent. Last year the pool of individual donations hit the $2 million mark, a first for the institution. The annual number of performances has increased, and the company has moved from the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater to the larger Eisenhower for many engagements." But "the populist drive that marks his programming and helps account for the increased ticket sales has at least one closely connected observer worried about its effects on the sterling tradition of the company's training arm, the Washington School of Ballet." Washington Post 05/25/03
Posted: 05/25/2003 8:55 am
