Visual Arts

The Biggest Little Art Museum Garners Raves "With its single black staircase and a breathtaking rooftop sculpture garden, Reno - Nevada's 'biggest little city' - has a renovated art museum that takes the town a step beyond the gaming industry. The new Nevada Art Museum is a four-story, 60,000-square- foot black steel building that is reminiscent of a ship at sea. It is four times the size of its predecessor and includes a 180-seat theater, several galleries and a restaurant. But the feature that has drawn the most attention is the rooftop sculpture garden and its views of the snowcapped Sierra." Kansas City Star (AP) 07/10/03
Posted: 07/10/2003 6:08 am

'New' Rembrandt Goes For Nearly £7 Million "A Rembrandt self-portrait which lay undiscovered for centuries after it had been painted over has sold for £6.94m at auction in London. It was bought by US billionaire casino tycoon Steve Wynn during a transatlantic telephone bid at Sotheby's. The portrait, painted by the Dutch master in 1634 when he was 28, lay hidden under layers of paint for more than 300 years." BBC 07/10/03
Posted: 07/10/2003 5:17 am

Painting Is Back (C'mon, It Never Went Away) The art of painting seems to be refreshed, renewed, popular again... Or maybe it never really went away. Matthew Rose and Sabine Folie discuss the painting impulse. "The popularity of painting has neither to do with a market-oriented impulse nor with a retro-attitude of the artists. Painting was, and still is, a vehicle to think about the means of art. It is entirely conceived conceptually, and is in no way just a hedonistic, affirmative retro-academic salon activity. Painting may have been for a short time somehow denied by an overexposure of video-computer-art or photography, but in the end, its methods of representation and transformation were enriched by all those media and not diminished." art-themagazine.com 07/03
Posted: 07/09/2003 11:24 pm

Eye-In-The-Sky Archaeology Scientists say that they have shown with tests that satellite imaging can show buried archaelogical sites from space. "Images from US space shuttle missions in the 1980s appeared to show ancient river drainage patterns beneath the Sahara desert. Satellites have revealed ancient river beds beneath the Sahara. Subsequent imaging turned up ring structures beneath the ice of Antarctica. But until now no-one has been entirely sure that these images definitely showed real objects." BBC 07/09/03
Posted: 07/09/2003 11:16 pm

It's Official - It Seems No One Liked This Year's Venice Biennale Director Francesco Bonami had idealistic plans. He handed over the reins to 11 other curators, two of whom are artists. "He didn't create a team of co-curators working together but gave all of them complete autonomy to do their own thing. He bestowed an idealistic title on this exhibition of exhibitions: 'Dreams and Conflicts: The Dictatorship of the Viewer.' And somehow, despite the best intentions in the world, he fell, metaphorically, flat on his face with the biggest, sloppiest, most amorphous biennial ever. As we ought to know by now, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Am I the only one who hits a snag at the notion of the, uh, dictatorship of the viewer? Isn't that what happens at art fairs? Isn't that what Hitler proposed when he outlawed art criticism? Quite apart from that little conflict between the dream of individual freedom and the idea of dictatorship, the Abdication of the Director would have been far more precise." Village Voice 07/023/03
Posted: 07/09/2003 7:34 pm

Stalling Out On DC's African-American Museum Seventy-seven years ago Congress authorized the creation of a new African American Museum in Washington DC. More recently the project has seemed to gain momentum in Congress. But that momentum may be illusory. "The main concern is an age-old one—location, location, location. The commission would like to put a new building on the Washington Mall, near the Capitol. But the Senate bill ignores the commission's existing recommendation, instead charging the Smithsonian's Board of Regents with picking a spot. Perhaps more ominously, it grants the board 18 months to make a decision, a lifetime given the ever-changing balance of power in Congress. Meanwhile, the uncertainty puts a crimp in any fundraising plans." Village Voice 07/09/03
Posted: 07/09/2003 7:12 pm

Music

Need To Get Around A Pesky Law? God Can Help. Willy Pritts owns nearly 150 acres of open land in Pennsylvania, and thought he'd like to start holding concerts there. But his property isn't zoned for such events, so local officials told him he'd have to scrap his plans. But Pritts is a resourceful fellow. He turned right around and incorporated as the Church of Universal Love and Music, which is - surprise! - "committed to spiritual growth through music." County officials are not amused, nor are some of Pritts's neighbors, who claim that the church's "services" can be heard for miles around. Washington Post (AP) 07/10/03
Posted: 07/10/2003 6:41 am

New Life For Album Cover Art? Since the near-demise of the vinyl LP, consumers and critics alike have lamented the concomitant death of the art of the album cover. But the connection between the contents of an album and its packaging may be making a comeback. "Computer graphics are making album covers -- some of them, anyway -- all the more intriguing, even in the age of the criminally scaled- down cover art of CDs. An album cover has no business not being a work of art." Still, with single-song downloads seeming to be the wave of the future, how can album art possibly adapt? San Francisco Chronicle 07/10/03
Posted: 07/10/2003 6:31 am

Look, Another Windmill To Tilt At! The record industry is apparently not yet tired of its seemingly unending quest to rid the world of already-defunct file-trading services. The latest already-dead victim: Puretunes, an online service that offered users unlimited song downloads for a flat fee. Puretunes, which was based in Madrid, lasted about three weeks, then shut down without explanation, but the industry wants blood, anyway, suing the owners of the service in a Washington court. Los Angeles Times 07/10/03
Posted: 07/10/2003 6:11 am

40% of CDs Are Illegal The global market for illicit copies of CDs has exploded, according to a new report from the record industry, and "the illegal music market is now worth $4.6 billion globally." New technologies have made it possible - and simple - to copy not only the contents of a traditional CD, but the cover art and liner notes as well, and the industry estimates that, for the first time, the number of illegal CDs in existence has topped a billion. According to the report, two of every five CDs sold are illegal copies, often without the knowledge of the buyer, and there is no end in sight. BBC 07/10/03
Posted: 07/10/2003 5:20 am

The Bad Reviews Are In (Aren't They?) When Greg Sandow wrote about the declining fortunes of classical music in last month's NewMusicBox, he sparked a furious debate on the website. This month he's back to address some of his readers' comments. "When I talked about the decline and possible death of classical music, I was talking above all about classical music institutions. Classical radio stations are disappearing, classical record companies are in major trouble, media coverage of classical music is getting scarce (compared even to where it was 10 or 20 years ago). Will orchestras be next, along with opera companies, string quartets, and music schools?" NewMusicBox 07/03
Posted: 07/09/2003 10:49 pm

• Previously:

  Sandow: A Critic's Manifesto Is classical music dying? Maybe. But maybe music critics are partly to blame. "We shouldn't be boosters. We shouldn't pretend that everything's wonderful and glorious, because, first of all, it isn't, and, even more important, nothing in the world is. I'll grant that some people idolize classical music, or at least the idea of it, and honestly believe that all classical concerts are wonderful and that there's no ego or careerism in the classical music world. (Let's have a moment of silence for that last idea, which I first heard from the bass player in a long-ago metal band, Kingdom Come.) But most of us are more realistic than that, even about things we don't know much about. So it's crucial, at least in my view, that classical critics pull no punches when they talk about bad concerts." NewMusicBox 06/03

Are Laptops The New Accordians? Laptop jamming - it's musicians getting together in public, plugging their laptops into a sound system and creating "a kind of electronic music using new sounds and ambient textures. People can just pick up and do it just using the software. Laptop music may have an aggressive beat that sounds warped and filtered, or the atmospheric outer-space effect of ambient music; like electronica, it borrows samples from many different styles of music. When a group starts playing, the sound can be jarringly cacophonous because it takes a while for the performers to get in sync with one another." The New York Times 07/10/03
Posted: 07/09/2003 10:30 pm

Your Music Collection - What It Tells About You Want to know what a person is really like inside? A new study says looking at a person's music collection will give you the best idea. "Almost anything about a man or a woman - from their looks, intelligence and fitness, to politics, wealth and even conversational ability - can be gleaned from the tunes they enjoy most. In the study, psychologists from the University of Texas questioned 3500 people about their individual musical preferences and then matched them with their personality traits." The Age (Melbourne) 07/10/03
Posted: 07/09/2003 8:53 pm

Arts Issues

Fund-raising Slump Hits Smithsonian It won't come as a surprise to any arts organization which has tried to mount a major fund-raising campaign in the last year, but the Smithsonian is facing a rather severe drop in donations. "In the six months ending in March, the Smithsonian raised $51 million. In the same period a year earlier it brought in $117 million -- including $10 million gifts from Lockheed Martin, General Motors and the James S. McDonnell Charitable Trust. But even without $30 million in major single gifts, the fundraising is down $36 million." Officials at the nation's largest museum complex are staying upbeat, however, saying that they believe the drop to be a temporary problem. Washington Post 07/10/03
Posted: 07/10/2003 6:38 am

Save Canadian Art! Revoke NAFTA Now! A new survey of Canadian culture reveals that the dollar value of Canada's 'cultural exports' last year was a record CAN$2.3 billion, with U.S. consumers accounting for 96% of that purchase total. But Canada's cultural import business grew even more, despite the insistence of Canadian citizens that they want to buy home-grown. (The U.S. is the culture-gobbling villain in this equation, too.) The Canadian publishing industry was hardest hit by the lack of import-export balance, and the only corner of the arts not badly affected was the film industry. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/10/03
Posted: 07/10/2003 6:01 am

Avignon Cancelled As Strike Continues France's Avignon Festival has been called off, with no end in sight to the strike by the nation's arts workers. "The opening days' events were cancelled, but organisers had hoped to salvage the later stages. Those hopes were dashed early on Thursday, when actors voted to continue their strike, dealing a fatal blow to the event." Avignon was to have run for three weeks. BBC 07/10/03
Posted: 07/10/2003 5:39 am

• French Strikers Shut Down Avignon Fest/Nicholson Movie Shoot Striking French arts workers shut down shooting on a Jack Nicholson movie in Paris (after meeting with strikers, Nicholson expressed his solidarity) and closed the Avignon Festival for a second day. "At the Avignon festival in southern France, organizers said the remainder of the three-week event - which draws 700,000 people a year for round-the-clock theater performances - will be decided each day the strike continues. They say they stand to lose $3.7 million in ticket sales alone if the event is called off." New Jersey Online (AP) 07/09/03
  Posted: 07/09/2003 11:08 pm

Did British Culture Really Win The Lottery? Britain's lottery has funded dozens of major arts projects, and its supporters celebrate its remaking of the country's cultural scene in the past decade. But the lottery's success is rather more mixed than that, writes Norman Lebrecht. "Those lottery schemes which have indeed 'made Britain a better place' are the ones which would have happened anyway, but where a modest application of lottery lubricant facilitated a triumphant resurgence." London Evening Standard 07/09/03
Posted: 07/09/2003 10:04 pm

Nailing Down Mother Teresa's Copyright Nuns of Mother's Teresa's order are trying to file a copyright on use of her name and insignia. "In her lifetime, Mother Teresa expressed on a number of occasions her wish that her name not be used by any other individual or organisation without her permission, or after her death, the permission of her successor, the Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity." Yahoo! (AFP) 07/09/03
Posted: 07/09/2003 8:34 pm

Berlin's Cultural Bite Berlin is famed for its lavish cultural riches. But "after decades of floating along on generous public handouts, Berlin's famed cultural world has been feeling the chill wind of the fiscal austerity that has now descended on Germany, with the German capital saddled with debts totalling more than EUR 40 billion and a massive hole emerging in the city's annual arts budget. 'Den Guertel enger schnallen' (belt tightening) has suddenly become the new chorus rising from the German capital's army of arts bureaucrats, forcing them to seek funds in very unknown territory the private sector." Expatica 07/03
Posted: 07/09/2003 7:21 pm

Theatre

Manhattan By Angel Light When Ben Brantley first heard about Deborah Warner's "Angel Project," a "theatre" piece that sends participants on a tour of Manhattan, it it sounded, he writes, "more like my idea of hell than heaven." But "as the aesthetic philosophers of the early 20th century liked to point out, if you put a frame around anything it becomes art. Everyday objects begin to vibrate mysteriously. The mundane acquires instant drama; you start to see poetic patterns in flat surfaces. The immodest goal of Ms. Warner — the British director responsible for last spring's brilliant and brutal "Medea" on Broadway — is to condition you to see all of New York in such terms." So was it hell? The New York Times 07/10/03
Posted: 07/09/2003 10:15 pm

Publishing

Jealous Muggles Hit Back It had to happen, of course. With the Harry Potter series rocketing to the top of the list of literary blockbusters, other authors are beginning to take some nasty little swipes at Potter scribe J.K. Rowling. The latest entry in the bash-Harry sweepstakes comes from Booker Award-winning author A.S. Byatt, who calls Rowling's work derivative, simple-minded, and composed "for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip." The New York Times 07/07/03
Posted: 07/10/2003 5:26 am

• Could This Be A Real, Live, Literary Feud? If A.S. Byatt expected the literary world to line up behind her following her tirade against Harry Potter, she's still waiting. Authors and publishers have apparently chosen their side, and are calling Byatt "a snob," "churlish," and "jealous." One book critic also notes that Byatt is the very same writer who threw a "hissy fit" when author Martin Amis accepted a hefty advance for his future work. London Evening Standard 07/10/03
  Posted: 07/10/2003 5:25 am

HipHop In The OED? Editors of the venerable Oxford English Dictionary are considering the world of hiphop, and deciding which of the slang ought to make it in the new edition. "An unprecedented revision is underway that, finally, authoritatively, is expected to nail down those vexing questions of lexicology. To wit: What is the etymology of 'bling-bling'? The editors are drafting a possible entry for the hip-hop slang, which usually refers to diamonds or other flashy jewelry that clinks together." Los Angeles Times 07/09/03
Posted: 07/09/2003 10:09 pm

Media

Internet Radio Group To File Suit Against Recording Association Small Internet radio stations are planning to file an antitrust suit against the Recording Industry Association of America, accusing them of using high royalty rates as a way to force websasters out of business. The internet group claims that "the existing royalty rates structure would force as many as 90 percent of small commercial Internet radio stations to close if left unchanged." Washington Post 07/09/03
Posted: 07/09/2003 8:41 pm