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Monday, June 30




Ideas

STORIES FROM THE WEEKEND EDITION (20 stories) Bernard Holland says that the symphony orchestra crisis is real, and it isn't going to get any better. R.M. Vaughan is sick of Canada being so high on itself all the time, and the American Library Association has managed to get itself caught in the middle of a debate over Cuba. All that, plus Frank Lloyd Wright's vision for Baghdad, and L.A.'s vision for a vibrant dance scene, in this weekend's ArtsJournal roundup.
Posted: 06/29/2003 10:50 pm

A New Enlightenment: Cultural Lifeline or Western-centric Hoohah? Ever since 9/11, various social and political commentators have declared flatly that the only hope for global peace is for the Islamic world to undergo an "Enlightenment" of the type the West experienced a couple of centuries back. Such an Enlightenment would overturn religious misconceptions, dispel ethnic hatred, and bring the Islamic world into harmony with its neighbors and with itself. Sounds good, hmm? One problem: many highly intelligent people don't see what was so great about the Western Enlightenment, and make a compelling argument that it caused at least as many problems as it solved. Boston Globe 06/22/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 7:35 pm

Visual Arts

Why Overpay For The Old Stuff? Art forgery is usually a dangerous business, but Christophe Petyt has turned it into a wildly profitable business. "At 32, he is the world's leading dealer in fake masterpieces, a man whose activities provoke both admiration and exasperation in the higher levels of the art world. Name the painting and for as little as £1,000 he will deliver you a copy so perfect that even the original artist would struggle to tell the difference." The Telegraph (UK) 06/30/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 9:10 pm

Who Says Farmers Don't Know Art? Back in the 1970s, an Australian farm-implement and hardware company needed something to put on the walls of its headquarters, and began to make a project of acquiring museum-quality art. The company now owns better than 600 works, and last year, it mounted an exhibition to allow the public a glimpse of what the company's execs see every day. "National interest was so great when the exhibition was originally limited to the Art Gallery of Western Australia last year that it was decided to tour it nationally. The paintings will be on the road for the next 2 years, visiting all states." The Age (Melbourne) 06/30/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 8:44 pm

Restored Tiepolo To Be Shown In Melbourne "It sounds like a marriage made in heaven - one of the world's greatest paintings housed in one of the world's great art galleries. By the end of the year, the marriage will be consummated. The celebrations will be held in Melbourne at the opening of the $160 million renovation of the National Gallery of Victoria's St Kilda Road headquarters. The painting, Tiepolo's Banquet of Cleopatra, will have pride of place. The freshly restored work will hang at the end of one of the new, high-ceilinged galleries that have been installed in the former open courtyards." The Age (Melbourne) 06/30/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 8:41 pm

The World's Biggest Jigsaw Puzzle Meets The World's Best Math Geeks "A mathematical formula is allowing Italian researchers to recompose one of the most complicated jigsaw puzzles in history: the fragmented 15th century frescoes which once decorated the Ovetari Chapel of the Church of the Eremitani at Padua." The fragments were photographed, digitized, and are now being painstakingly reconstructed on computers, with the aid of "'circular harmonics' — mathematical formulas that are able to identify and 'retain the memory' of the piece's orientation." Discovery News 06/27/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 8:07 pm

Forget the Museum! How About That Storage Shed? This week, Atlanta's High Museum of Art will close for two months of extensive renovation and expansion, the latest in a string of American museums to break ground on expensive new wings. But even more impressive than the renovation plans is the $5 million facility where the museum will house its 11,000-piece collection during construction. "Even with its artwork under one roof, the High will have enough room left over to accelerate a pack rat's heart: 21,472 square feet of amply lit, high-ceilinged, generously shelved capacity... The storage facility is equipped with high-tech fixtures, too, such as the shiny white vapor-tight cabinets ($4,000 apiece) that currently house the ceramics collection." Atlanta Journal-Constitution 06/29/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 7:29 pm

Music

Will NY City Opera Really Relocate? For some months it's been assumed in many quarters that New York City Opera would be leaving Lincoln Center to anchor a new cultural complex in the World Trade Center project. But directors of the project are putting out a general call for cultural groups who might be interested in locating downtown, leading to speculation that City Opera's relocation is not a done deal. "Today's expected invitation from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation seems intended to send the message that decisions about a cultural element at ground zero will not be based on personal, political or professional connections. 'We want to cast a broad net to see what's out there'." The New York Times 06/30/03
Posted: 06/30/2003 7:54 am

Another Orchestra That Isn't Collapsing The Richmond (VA) Symphony reports that it is officially on the list of smaller American orchestras that are not on the verge of folding up their tents and vanishing into the night. "According to a nearly complete year-end tally, the symphony ran a $26,478 loss after spending $3.8 million in the 2002-03 season. The loss could shrink by as much as $20,000 after late-arriving revenues are counted in, said David Fisk, the symphony's executive director." Richmond Times-Dispatch 06/27/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 8:35 pm

Berlin Can't Afford Three Opera Houses There's no lack of public support for Berlin's opera scene, which continues to thrive despite a sluggish economy. But the city is out of money, and appears to be on the verge of shuttering at least one of the city's three most prominent opera houses. "The three opera houses — the Staatsoper and Komische Oper in the former east and the Deutsche Oper in the west — are relics of the division of Berlin. And now they are victims of post-unification budget cutbacks. And like the plot of a Puccini opera, this drama is very likely to end unhappily." Andante (Deutsche Presse-Agenteur) 06/27/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 8:32 pm

Baghdad Symphony Rises From The Ashes Of A City The Baghdad Symphony Orchestra has played a concert. Consider the gravity of such a statement. In a city where many residents are without electricity, or water, or basic medical care, and where American and British troops continue to conduct daily raids searching for supporters of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, 50 musicians sat on a stage in formal attire, and brought music back to the Iraqi capital for the first time since the invasion began. The first work on the program was the patriotic song, "My Nation," virtually banned under Hussein's rule. Jerusalem Post 06/29/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 8:16 pm

Donizetti's Lost Opera Nearly two decades ago, journalist Will Crutchfield uncovered a stack of moldy old manuscript papers filled with musical jumbles, abandoned compositions, and what appeared to be pieces of an unpublished opera by Donizetti. "It didn't take long to discover the pages were in fact a lost opera. But it took nearly two decades, and return trips to Europe, to piece together a version capable of being produced. On July 17, that big step in this ongoing detective story will be taken at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, N.Y., when Crutchfield himself will conduct Elisabeth, the never-produced Donizetti opera he rediscovered. The Christian Science Monitor 06/27/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 7:46 pm

Arts Issues

The Ups And Downs of Philanthropy "Two New York-based not-for-profit research organizations, the Foundation Center and Grantmakers in the Arts, have issued a report showing that while the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks had a deleterious effect on arts and culture philanthropy during 2001 and 2002, the drop in giving wasn't as steep as first feared. Meanwhile, a new survey... suggests that charitable giving by corporations slackened in 2001, but then, in a surprise, rose dramatically in 2002." Still, these numbers don't mean that arts giving isn't at disturbingly low levels, and the scramble in dozens of U.S. states to fix deficits by slashing arts funding is making matters even worse. Backstage 06/27/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 7:14 pm

Zeroing Out The Arts In California The budget crisis in California is dire, so dire that the Democrats in control of the State Senate are seriously considering a proposal to completely eliminate the State Arts Board, which issues $18 million in grant money to California artists each year. The wholesale destruction of the board, which draws $20 million from the public coffers annually, wouldn't go far towards eliminating the Golden State's eye-popping $38 billion deficit, but Senate leaders say there may be no way around it. Los Angeles Times 06/29/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 7:08 pm

People

Chabrier The Hedonist "Emmanuel Chabrier wanted to write operas so lewd, people would start to 'make babies in the stalls'." Where other composers wrote music full of the joy of God, or the joy of great knowledge, Chabrier wrote about the pure, unadulterated fun of being human. "His party piece was to sing the front page of that day's newspaper, dramatising the events depicted - a street accident, the fall of the Bourse - with appropriate extra-musical effects." But beyond all the bluster and hedonist revelry was a serious artist whose works attracted the admiration of composers as distinguished as Debussy and Ravel. The Guardian (UK) 06/28/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 9:02 pm

The Film World Loses One Of Its Finest The actress Katherine Hepburn has died. Her career spanned more than half a century, and encompassed a breathtaking diversity of work. She won her first Oscar in 1933 for Morning Glory, and her last, for On Golden Pond, 48 years later. Her work with Spencer Tracy is the stuff of cinema legend, and she was completely at home in roles from Cleopatra to Violet Vennable. Hepburn was 96. Washington Post 06/29/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 8:24 pm

Impressionism You Can Really Get Into J. Seward Johnson Jr. can make a bronze sculpture so lifelike and convincing that you'll want to talk to it. But his latest assignment is far more daunting than any park-bench mannequin. Johnson is recreating the works of the great Impressionist painters, in bronze, in real-life scale, and in three dimensions. "Visitors [to Johnson's exhibit in Washington] will be able to walk into Vincent van Gogh's 'The Bedroom' in Arles, France. They will be invited to touch the objects, to the expected horror of conservative museum folks. They will even be able to lie down on the bed, though they won't be able to get under the covers." CNN (AP) 06/29/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 8:11 pm

Joseph Chaiken, 67 Joseph Chaiken, the much-esteemed actor and director who was involved in dozens of regional theatre productions in Atlanta and Los Angeles, along with his work in New York's off-Broadway scene, has died. "The esteemed actor and director, who founded New York's avant-garde Open Theater in 1963 and won five Obie Awards, died Sunday at his Greenwich Village home of congenital heart failure. He was 67 and had suffered from aphasia since experiencing a massive stroke in 1984." Atlanta Journal-Constitution 06/25/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 7:19 pm

Theatre

The Evolution of a Festival Ontario's Shaw Theatre Festival has a new artistic director, and Jackie Maxwell is wasting no time in putting her mark on the organization made famous by her predecessor, Christopher Newton. That type of situation is bound to make fans and critics (not to mention actors) a bit nervous, but Christopher Rawson says that the Shaw appears to be as artistically vibrant as its ever been. "Of the three shows I saw, two are well worth traveling to see and the third is worth seeing once you've made the trip." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 06/29/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 8:02 pm

Shakespeare In Alabama. And Oregon. And, Well, Everywhere. "After the Civil War... consumers moved away from communal celebrations and began to enjoy culture in small groups or alone, a development heralding the eventual triumph in our day of the home entertainment center. Yet 150 years later, Shakespeare is undergoing a rebirth in this country, thanks to dozens of well-entrenched festivals devoted to his work, as well as a new initiative by the National Endowment of the Arts. Paradoxically, the biggest name in literature once again finds himself most at home in smaller cities and towns." The Christian Science Monitor 06/27/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 7:58 pm

Publishing

Record Book Sales - At Discount Prices This is turning into a record sales summer for the book business. "The impressive sales totals partly reflect the growing power of big discounters like Wal-Mart and price clubs like Costco. In a sea change for the publishing business, those outlets accounted for as much as half of the early sales of the three books and can claim as large a share as traditional bookstores and online outlets, according to the publishers and an analysis of sales of figures. The power of the price clubs and discounters to move huge numbers of certain books is giddily unnerving for book publishers. The good news is that millions of consumers bought books last month. The bad news is that a lot of them skipped a trip to the bookstore, where they may have bought even more books. For a growing number of consumers, however, the nontraditional outlets simply mean cheaper books." The New York Times 06/30/03
Posted: 06/30/2003 8:02 am

Harry Goes Back For Another Printing The launch of the new Harry Potter last week broke all publishing records. "To help keep stores supplied, Scholastic announced last Tuesday that it was going back for a third printing of 800,000 copies, which will bring the in-print figure up to 9.3 million copies." Publishers Weekly 06/30/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 9:57 pm

Media

Shakespeare In Translation: Harder Than It Sounds Translating plays from one language to another is always a difficult task. Translating Shakespeare, whose constant use of puns and linguistic tricks was uniquely English, is nigh onto impossible, particularly when the language needed is as far afield from the original as Japanese. There have been many Japanese translations of the Bard's works, of course, but many have made the mistake of trying too hard to stick faithfully to the original dialogue. The resulting mish-mash of words and sounds can be grating on a Japanese audience's ears, says Miki Takashima, but a new Tokyo production of Hamlet seems to have risen above the usual awkwardness. Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo) 06/29/03
Posted: 06/29/2003 8:50 pm

Dance

A Season-Long Celebration Of Balanchine To celebrate George Balanchine's 100th birthday, New York City Ballet is planning a season-long retrospective of his work, presenting 81 of his ballets. "Among those who will participate are Valery Gergiev, the conductor and director of the Kirov Theater in St. Petersburg, Balanchine's birthplace in Russia, and the Georgian State Dance company, the professional folk dance company from Tbilisi. Balanchine, who died in 1983, was of Georgian descent." The New York Times 06/30/03
Posted: 06/30/2003 7:59 am


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