The New Cultural Paradigm We've moved into a new era in the culture, writes Frank Rich. "In post-9/11 New York, it's not those tired 20th-century battles about pornography and blasphemy that draw blood. The new culture wars often spring from 9/11 itself, starting with the future, aesthetic and otherwise, of ground zero." So here's "the leading front of the culture war: can architecture, commerce and artistic entrepreneurship (a new City Opera? a Museum of Freedom sponsored by American Express?) so quickly bind the gravest wound in New York's modern memory? Officially, we keep being told, the answer is yes..."
The New York Times 07/13/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 9:13 am
Gangs And Amateurs Rip Off Museums Theft from European museums is becoming a bigger problem. "Harried police investigators and heartbroken museum curators blame lackluster security guards, insufficient budgets and lenient laws for the rise in thefts. Problems have plagued not only grand institutions like the Louvre in Paris, but also lesser-known regional museums, churches and stately private homes. Thieves have increasingly targeted displays of diamonds, antique clocks, sculptures and rare furniture that can sometimes be sold more easily than well-recognized paintings by master artists. The trade is lucrative – some pieces of rare furniture are valued at $1 million or more." Dallas Morning News 07/13/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 8:19 am
Museum Board, Director, Resign In Selling Scandal The Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff was facing a $1 million deficit this spring, so its director and board decided to sell artifacts to finance operations. That has led to the forced resignation of the museum's board and director. "The museum's leadership came under fire after 21 of the museum's artifacts were sold to raise operating money, its geology department was closed and paleontologist David Gillette and his research staff were fired. Director Robert Baughman told members in June that the sale was necessary because the museum was so broke it had funds for only three weeks of operation." Los Angeles Times (AP) 07/13/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 8:12 am
Wave Of Personal UK Galleries Opening The success of Charles Saatchi's new gallery in London has spurred others, including Sir Elton John, to build and open their own public galleries. "Opinion is divided in the art world over the reasons for this sudden wave of philanthropy. While there are few who do not welcome the thought of these eclectic collections being made public, sceptics sense that the scale of investment being bestowed on the new galleries owes as much to vanity as it does to charity." The Independent (UK) 07/13/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 8:08 am
Whistler - So Tough He Responded To His Own Obituary In 1902 James McNeill Whistler collapsed from a heart attack and hung on to life for a week before recovering. But a local Dutch paper printed a premature obituary, promting a letter from Whistler: "May I therefore acknowledge the tender glow of health induced by reading, as I sat here in the morning sun, the flattering attention paid me by your gentleman of ready wreath and quick biography!" He recovered enough to go on to Amsterdam to see one of his paintings in the Rijksmuseum before returning home to London. And while never entirely well again, the world-famous artist lived another year, finally expiring 100 years ago this week, on July 17, 1903.
Chicago Tribune 07/13/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 8:01 am
Broad Gift Of $60 Million To LA Museum Philanthropist and art collector Eli Broad has given the Los Angeles County Museum of Art $60 million to build a new wing for art since 1945. "The cash gift, the largest in the museum’s history, will cover 'every penny' of a $50-million wing that will be named after Mr Broad and designed by an architect of his choosing, subject to board approval. Details are yet to be ironed out, but the rough outlines call for a 70,000-square-foot structure facing Wilshire Boulevard and bridging the gap between LACMA’s main campus and its under-developed annexe known as LACMA West." The Art Newspaper 07/11/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 7:32 am
Three Gorges Dam Floods Important Archaeological Sites "Nearly 1200 sites of historical and archaeological importance along the Yangtze River are now underwater as the first stage of China’s massively ambitious Three Gorges Dam hydro-electric project reached completion on schedule. On 1 June the waters began rising in the huge 375 miles long reservoir created by the 185 metre high and two kilometre wide dam. The archaeological findings have established that the Three Gorges region was one of the main meeting places between East and West in ancient China..." The Art Newspaper 07/11/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 7:27 am
Shaking Rattle At Beethoven Putting your stamp on Beethoven's nine symphonies has traditionally been the great conductor's calling card. It happens less these days, but Simon Rattle is the star of the day and he's got a new set of recordings of the symphonies. Tim Page reports that "this would hardly be my first (or, for that matter, my 10th) choice for a complete Beethoven. Rattle has attempted to meld historically informed performance practice with old-fashioned orchestral grandeur, which means that the tempos tend to be on the quick side while the sonorities are full and lush. So far, so good. But Rattle places such an emphasis on drama and ferocity that many of the gentler and more expansive qualities of Beethoven's art are lost." Washington Post 07/13/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 9:31 am
The New Glyndebourne The Glyndebourne Festival in the late 90s had fallen upon considerable disrepeair. "Now, with a new, young leadership team in place, the future of Glyndebourne looks generally bright. Such a popular and excellent festival is not likely to self-destruct. Still, whether the new administration can find a way back to what now looks like a golden age of a decade ago, or whether in the name of fiscal sobriety it will shy away from innovation, remains to be seen." The New York Times 07/13/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 9:20 am
Music - Better On Your Own Recording labels have generally been ruthless in dropping artists that haven't sold as well as expected. Now the tables are being turned. "These days, with the entire music biz in flux, a growing number of major-label artists, from Pearl Jam to Natalie Merchant to Jimmy Buffett, are biting the hand that doesn't feed them enough. They're finding that they can start their own record labels and do just fine outside the big-label structure, that going independent and using technology to their advantage can pay off both financially and creatively." Denver Post 07/13/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 8:33 am
Rebranding German Culture Is German culture stolid, dull and humorless? "To counter their stereotyping as humorless, rude, know-it-all, perfectionist workaholics with a historic tendency toward murderous chauvinism, Germans will soon be portrayed in advertisements across Europe as hedonistic, with-it, athletic sexpots. Think Claudia Schiffer, not Helmut Kohl." Boston Globe 07/13/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 7:52 am
Zeffirelli - An Energetic 80 "Reports of director Franco Zeffirelli's decline - physical, artistic and mental - have been exaggerated. He may be 80, and suffering balance problems - the result of an inner-ear ailment, contracted after a botched hip operation - but in the past six months alone, he has completed a film about Maria Callas, staged opera productions in Italy and the US, and had a huge success with Luigi Pirandello's Absolutely! (perhaps) in London. He is now back at Covent Garden, for the first time in nearly 40 years, to direct Pagliacci." Financial Times 07/11/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 8:27 am
Big Blue - An Art Of Business Story When they started in the late 80s, the Blue Man Group was "perfect for its time." These days, though, "Blue Man Group is not an art story, but a business story about art. They are the McDonald's of the music world. Blue Man Group Productions employs 450 people. Its four stage productions attract one million people annually. Basic math shows they're pulling in millions in revenue. Blue men have done Intel ads and are favourites of the late-night TV-show set. Their first CD, Audio, was nominated for a Grammy in 1999 and went gold. The original three blue men don't perform any more. They are executive producers who keep up the, uh, brand standard." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/12/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 8:38 am
Remaking London's National Theatre Fresh into the job as director of London's National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner has changed the way critics think about the institution. "The season has been risky, adventurous, yet critically acclaimed and popular. Hytner has the near-superstitious look of one who can't quite believe it is happening. 'All the shows that have opened so far are full at the box office. We can't do any better. It is all that I could have hoped for. We can only go downhill from here'." Financial Times 07/11/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 8:29 am
Australia's Top 100 What do Australians like to read? If a new poll is to be believed, fantasy rules. On a list of 110 favorite books, "J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings was voted the most popular book in Australia, and there were no surprises when it came to J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series being voted consecutively at number two, three, four and five. Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets was the most popular of the series, being voted Australia's second-best read." The Age (Melbourne) 07/13/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 7:37 am
This DVD Will Self-Destruct... A new DVD - one that will destroy itself in 48 hours, is being tested. This DVD, known as EZ-D to its makers, can be "played for 48 hours after being removed from its cover. It will then self-destruct—not in flames, its inventors hasten to add, but because contact with the air eventually renders its surface opaque, making it impossible for the laser in a disc player to read the data beneath. The idea is to revamp the video-rental market. At the moment, if you want to hire a movie for a couple of days you have to pay $5 or so for a videotape or DVD that may well be a bit scratched by previous use, and then go to all the hassle of returning it to the shop when you have finished with it. And you have to watch it soon after you have hired it, or risk paying a fine. None of this, except the 48-hour viewing period, applies to an EZ-D. It will stay in pristine condition in its case for a year, and once it has been watched—as many times as you like within the two-day window—it can be thrown away." The Economist 07/11/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 9:06 am
Reality Bombs, Reruns Soar Last summer reality TV dominated American TV screens, and reruns of winter shows died. So this summer networks flooded screens with new reality shows and the reruns (mostly) disappeared. So what's popular? "Thirteen reality programs had premieres during May and June, and not one has cracked the Top 10 list, according to the most recently available A.C. Nielsen Co. ratings (for the week ending July 6). Reruns of sitcoms and dramas, meanwhile, have dominated the upper echelons of the ratings." Baltimore Sun 07/13/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 7:43 am
The Squeeze On KQED San Francisco public broadcaster KQED has 200,000 members and counts itself one of America's more popular public stations. But corporate contributions have been down and the station has to reduce its budget by 10 percent - likely forcing some layoffs. "In 2003, corporate donations are expected to fall by as much as 30 percent. The station is expecting to receive about $6.5 million to $7 million, compared with about $9 million donated in 2002. At the same time, dues to PBS and NPR, which supply much of KQED's programming, have increased and the station is still working to comply with federal regulation that forced a conversion to digital broadcasting." Contra Costa Times 07/11/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 7:21 am
Tapping At A Higher Level "Like Mikhail Baryshnikov or Michael Jordan, Savion Glover has raised the technical baseline of his field: maneuvers once extraordinary are now commonplace. Such technique, especially speed, is often overused, but the greater threat is over-influence. Dancers understandably want to model themselves after Mr. Glover, but merely to imitate him would be to betray the example he's set — the way he absorbed the styles of his mentors and forged his own, as they had before him. Despite his frequent deference to both predecessors and contemporaries, the press often treats him as the only tap dancer worth noticing. Such attention (and its financial fruit) encourages imitation, yet even without it, Mr. Glover's reinterpretation of tradition is compelling enough to obscure other options." The New York Times 07/13/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 9:17 am
A Movie That Gets Inside Dance A new film by Robert Altman about the Joffrey Ballet puts a new spin on filming dance. "Working with director of photography Andrew Dunn, Altman often shoots from unusual angles, tracking gracefully from head to toe, for instance, or elsewhere using noteworthy crane shots and other devices to bring the viewer arrestingly, literally inside the dance." Chicago Tribune 07/13/03
Posted: 07/13/2003 7:59 am
