Visual Arts Restoring Frank Lloyd Wright's Legacy Frank Lloyd Wright's most famous house - Fallingwater - is being repaired. But "several of the other approximately 300 remaining single-family Wright houses in this country are far more endangered than Fallingwater: Commissioned by now-octogenarians in desirable areas, their sites, but not their modest-sized rooms, are attractive to affluent buyers who want to replace them with megamansions. Since 2000, the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy has acquired, repaired and resold these Wrights-at-risk." Wall Street Journal 08/20/03 Posted: 08/20/2003 8:57 am Denver Ponders Museum Building The Denver Art Museum is hoping that its new building, designed by Daniel Libeskind, will become an icon of the city, represent it visually the way the Guggenheim does Bilbao. "But what if the wing is just plain ugly? A number of average citizens and schooled architects wonder if the jarring style represented by Daniel Libeskind's design is more imposition than institution, more trend than truth, more spectacle than service to the community." Denver Post 08/20/03 Posted: 08/20/2003 7:09 am Artists Try To Recover Work From Bankrupt Dealer "Boston Corporate Art, established in 1987, sold primarily large-scale works to corporations and nonprofit organizations." But the company suddenly went bankrupt earlier this year owing artists thousands of dollars in commissions, and holding hundreds of works of art, which it proposed selling to pay off creditors. This week, artists prowled through the company's art looking to recover their own work... Boston Herald 08/20/03 Posted: 08/20/2003 6:43 am Aboriginal Artists Vs. The Prince England's Prince Harry is under fire for some aboriginal images he included in his paintings. "Some of Australia's best-known Aboriginal artists have recently become aware of the prince's paintings of lizard motifs and claim he has stolen their culture. That the artworks have been valued at £15,000 each has compounded the insult to poor desert communities." The Guardian (UK) 08/19/03 Posted: 08/19/2003 10:16 pm Taking Sides Over Harry "In a farcical way, the row over Prince Harry's art embodies a fundamental worldwide conflict between modernity and religion, the secular and the spiritual. It's a struggle in which the devil - modernity - could do with some better tunes. The case against Harry is not simply that his pictures are a pastiche, in their banally decorative way, of Aboriginal art, but that he has appropriated symbols with specific cultural meanings." The Guardian (UK) 08/20/03 Posted: 08/19/2003 10:12 pm Headless Crime A burglar breaks into a man's house and steals his electronic equipment. But he flees in terror when he discovers what he thinks is a human head floating in a jar. When later speaking to the police, the thief tells of his gruesome discovery. When police go to the scene of the crime they discover... an art project. The Guardian (UK) 08/19/03 Posted: 08/19/2003 10:04 pm Why Nothing's Wright In Baghdad Why were Frank Lloyd Wright's plans for Baghdad not accepted in the 1950s when he drew them up for the King of Iraq? "Wright's plans were deemed 'rather grandiose' by the revolutionary government and were not built. The simpler and cheaper university plan conceived by Gropius was built, as was Gio Ponti's design for a Ministry of Development building. In 1981, a portion of Le Corbusier's design for a sports complex was completed. The building was dedicated as Saddam Hussein Gymnasium." OpinionJournal.com 08/20/03 Posted: 08/19/2003 6:52 pm Previously: Frank Lloyd Wright's Grand Plan For Baghdad In 1957, the King of Iraq asked architect Frank Lloyd Wright to come up with a grand master plan for Baghdad. "Now, half a century and a 'war of liberation' later, some Islamic scholars think it's time for Iraq to take another look at the American architect's vision for the narrow, sun-bleached streets of low-rise 1950s Baghdad. If built, his plans, which included an opera house, university campus and post and telegraph building, could, they say, do much to disabuse Iraqis of the view that Uncle Sam is intent on erasing Islamic culture." The Guardian (UK) 08/19/03 Music SF Opera - A Season Of Negotiation San Francisco Opera is heading into its fall season with contract negotiations for many of its artists and production crews as yet unresolved. The company's orchestra is currently negotiating, with chorus, dancers and production staff next up... "The labor negotiations, like everything else at San Francisco Opera, are shadowed by the company's financial troubles. A 2002 operating deficit of $7.6 million forced substantial cutbacks. Two productions were eliminated from the 2003-04 season, and the annual operating budget was slashed by 25 percent." San Francisco Chronicle 08/20/03 Posted: 08/20/2003 9:18 am Opera House In The Maine A couple from the big city moves up to Maine, buy a dilapidated old opera house and set about restoring it. "While residents here are typically skeptical of newcomers, this village has welcomed the restoration. Last year contributions and revenues totaled more than $200,000, nearly double the income in the first year. Almost all the performances have been sellouts this summer." The New York Times 08/20/03 Posted: 08/19/2003 10:39 pm Recording Industry: We Won't Pursue Little Guys The recording industry tells a US Congressional committee that it isn't pursuing small-time music downloaders to prosecute them. "RIAA is gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits only against individual computer users who are illegally distributing a substantial amount of copyrighted music." Wired 08/19/03 Posted: 08/19/2003 9:43 pm Arab-Israeli Orchestra To Perform In Morocco Daniel Barenboim is bringing his orchestra made up of Jewish and Arab musicians to Morocco - the orchestra's first performance in an Arab country. "Barenboim will conduct the 80-strong group in the city's Mohamed V Theatre as they perform Beethoven's Third Symphony and Mozart's Concerto for Three Pianos." BBC 08/19/03 Posted: 08/19/2003 9:33 pm New Without Experiment Opera Australia's new director in Melbourne is comitted to new opera. But the commissions he's interested in won't be "experimental"... "We can't afford trial and error. It is very expensive and often nothing comes of it." The Age (Melbourne) 08/20/03 Posted: 08/19/2003 9:25 pm Arts Issues Little To Cheer As Cuts Mount "In this time of exploding budget deficits, economic paralysis, and persistent revenue contractions, 2003 to date has offered very little news on the subject of state and local arts funding to give cause for good cheer. Dozens of states and hundreds of localities have cut arts appropriations - by half, two-thirds, three-quarters, or more. And while it's been a useful time for arts advocates and thousands of not-for-profits to join together in common spirit, the whole definition of victory at the moment is oddly perverse: If cuts are less draconian than first feared, if arts agencies are spared abolition, that's considered a win. Missing in all this, meanwhile, are pro-arts words from elected figures." Backstage 08/18/03 Posted: 08/20/2003 9:04 am Edinburgh's Golden Summer This summer's Edinburgh Festival looks like it will be the most successful edition ever. "With two weeks to go, the Festival has already taken more than £2.38 million at the box office this year - more than the entire sales for last year’s event. And senior figures say the previous record of £2.4 million, set in 2000, should be broken soon." The Scotsman 08/19/03 Posted: 08/19/2003 10:49 pm People Rwanda Project Founder Dies Theatre producer and photographer David Jiranek died this weekend at the age of 45. Three years ago Jiranek "traveled to Rwanda to bring disposable instamatic cameras to the children in an orphanage founded and still run by a 90-year-old American matriarch, Rosamond Carr, to care for the young survivors of the Hutu-Tutsi genocide. An exhibition of the astonishing images created by the children became the basis for a photography exhibition shown in Rwanda's capital city and at various galleries in the United States, most recently this summer in New York." Straight Up (AJBlogs) 08/19/03 Posted: 08/19/2003 11:05 pm Theatre "The Producers" And "The Return" Broadway's "The Producers" will keep its top ticket price at $100, rather than raise them when Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick return to the show. "Speculation that people would hold off buying tickets to "The Producers" until Lane and Broderick were back has turned out to be unfounded. That is largely because the show is playing to tourists, who have no choice but to see "The Producers" now, while they're in town. As for what will happen to the show after Lane and Broderick leave in March, that's a big subject of debate on Broadway right now. Some think the show will go over the cliff." New York Post 08/20/03 Posted: 08/20/2003 7:54 am Ticket Maze (Or Price Gouging?) So you want tickets to the Goodspeed's new musical in Connecticut? Great. They'll cost you $47. Oh, but you're not a member? That's another $50. Or $500. What's going on here, wonders Frank Riszzo. "Are we in the Theater Twilight Zone? Is it a case of ticket price-gouging?" Hartford Courant 08/17/03 Posted: 08/20/2003 7:38 am Irish Slowdown "During the past 10 years, Irish playwrights Martin McDonaugh ("A Skull in Connemara"), Maria Jones ("Stones in His Pockets") and Conor McPherson ("The Weir") have emerged on the world stage. But between 2000 and 2001, Ireland's volatile "Celtic Tiger" economy slowed from an annual growth rate of 11 percent to just 2.5. And the most predictable victim of any economic slowdown is arts funding. Ireland is coping with an 8 percent cut to its national arts council's budget, its largest in history." Denver Post 08/20/03 Posted: 08/20/2003 7:33 am New Thinking About Musicals Can the musical be reinvented? That's a question for the Edinburgh Fringe. "Although it remains astoundingly popular, the musical suffers a strange reputation. Revered by the likes of Trevor Nunn, the classic American works of the 1930s-50s are seen as blue-rinse fodder, kitsch nonsense that has little appeal for young theatregoers. The 1990s saw a new trend for musicals tackling social problems - Rent dealt with Aids, and Ragtime was about racism in the US - but often these felt horribly glib. There is something about the form, about the way it forces characters to ignore the plot and break into song, that seems to demand silliness, irreverence and tongue-in-cheek charm." The Guardian (UK) 08/20/03 Posted: 08/19/2003 10:21 pm Publishing Writer Writes Her Revenge Ten years ago mystery writer Martha Grimes was dumped by Knopf, her publisher at the time. "Knopf dropped her, she said, probably because at that time she wasn't earning back her advances." Now - after a string of successful books, Grimes has written a story about the publishing industry that "may" bear a resemblance to real people in publishing. The New York Times 08/20/03 Posted: 08/19/2003 10:29 pm Dance Dancing On The Fringe The fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists (fFIDA)is the largest dance gathering in Canada. "Throughout fFIDA's history, one can track the climate of the times. In the early years, Canadian choreographers had a much more feminist and/or political and/or humorous bent. In today's 'retreat into yourself' mentality, the home crowd seems to be angst-driven or navel-gazing or obliquely abstract, with a considerable number of the solos depicting women in distress." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 08/19/03 Posted: 08/19/2003 7:34 am