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Tourists See Leonardo Thieves A couple of tourists ran into the men who were stealing a Leonardo painting last week as they were getting away. "We heard the alarm going off and the first man climbed over the wall and said not to worry, 'Don't worry love, We're the police. This is just a practice' he said. When the second man came over the wall we felt something was going on. The third man over the wall was carrying something under his arm which appeared to be the same size as what we've been told about the painting." BBC 09/09/03
Posted: 09/09/2003 12:21 am
Chicago Art Institute Director Resigns James Wood announces he will leave. "The Art Institute has begun planning to build its first major new wing in 15 years, designed by Renzo Piano and expected to cost nearly $200 million. Mr. Wood said that it would be wise for a single director to oversee the final planning, construction and opening of the new wing, and that therefore he had to decide whether to leave now or stay on the job until at least 2008." The New York Times 09/09/03
Posted: 09/08/2003 11:59 pm
City Of Light "Chandanagore is the capital of Indian illuminations. The small town employs up to 12,000 people, who work nine months of the year creating extravagant shows for major festivals. Sridhar Das is the town's most renowned light artist. In the past few years, he has made waterfalls, monkey gods, dragons spewing fire, the triumph of good over evil, portraits of Nobel prizewinners, political statements, environmental messages, even pontifications by politicians. His workshops are a cross between a foundry and a tapestry studio." The Guardian (UK) 09/08/03
Posted: 09/08/2003 11:19 pm
Old Cuba In Danger Cuba is after the tourist trade. "Tourists have come: two million visitors are expected in Havana this year. However, the special city they have come to see is in danger of vanishing - not simply because of age, humidity, termites and general lack of maintenance. The word in Havana is that when the president, Fidel Castro, dies and the US finally lifts its longstanding economic embargo, Havana will be transformed, and not necessarily for the better." The Guardian (UK) 09/08/03
Posted: 09/08/2003 11:05 pm
Has New York Lost Its Ability To Build Great Buildings? New York has lost its reputation as a place that great architecture can be built. "Between about 1890 and 1960, New York was an architectural powerhouse, a laboratory for architects who couldn't dream of achieving anything on that kind of scale anywhere else. From early Gothic skyscrapers like the Woolworth Building (1913) through the Art Deco of the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings (1930 and 1931) up to the Seagram Building (1958) and the smooth corporate Modernism of Fifth Avenue, architects who wanted to build big looked to New York. But... it is extraordinary that in the world's greatest and richest city, almost nothing (excepting a few good retail interiors) of international significance or interest has been built in New York since the appearance of unfortunate postmodern skyscrapers at the end of 1970s." Financial Times 09/08/03
Posted: 09/08/2003 9:08 pm
Nazi-Loot Website Goes Online A new website designed to track down art looted by the Nazis goes online. "So far 66 museums have given details of their collection to the site, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Chicago's Institute of Art. The Nazis were thought to have looted more than 1.5 million pieces of art. More than 100,000 items of museum quality are still missing, and some of them are said to have made their way to the US." BBC 09/08/03
Posted: 09/08/2003 8:49 pm
Universal Price Cut - Just Desperation Universal's decision to cut prices by 30 percent is a blockbuster. "It's a historic move - the first time prices have been trimmed across the board by a major label in the 20-year history of the CD - but it comes at a time when the music industry as we know it is fast becoming history." The price cut is too little too late. Chicago Tribune 09/08/03
Posted: 09/08/2003 9:01 pm
Sibelius Songs Found The scores for four long lost songs by Jan Sibelius have been found. "Although the existence of the scores was known, it was thought they were lost because there was no record of their whereabouts." BBC 09/08/03
Posted: 09/08/2003 8:53 pm
Recording Industry Files Lawsuits Against File-Traders The recording industry began filing lawsuits against file-traders. Monday 261 suits were filed. "On average, the music traders had made over 1,000 music files available to others on P2P networks like Kazaa. The most egregious offender sued had shared over 3,000 files." Wired 09/08/03
Posted: 09/08/2003 8:41 pm
A File-Trading Amnesty You Should Resist "Should you take the RIAA up on its amnesty offer? Maybe not. The "Clean Slate" program promises that the RIAA won't pursue legal action against P2P pirates who send in a notarized affidavit declaring that they've wiped all copyright-infringing materials from their disk drives and who vow not to file-share again. But lawyers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco say there are multiple reasons to sit tight for now, rather than rush to sign and deliver what amounts to an admission of guilt." Slate 09/08/03
Posted: 09/08/2003 8:38 pm
The Real Bach. Really. No, We Mean it "We've seen more releases of Mozart, Beethoven, and beyond with original instruments. In the process we hear scholarship go right and we hear it go wrong. Sometimes, we hear it go nuts. After all, research can take us only so far. We can't really know what music sounded like before recordings arrived, and the historical data is vague and contradictory. The older the music, the more uncertainty." Slate 09/08/03
Posted: 09/08/2003 8:32 pm
Arranged Marriage - Eschenbach And Philly Christoph Eschenbach takes over the Philadelphia Orchestra. "The most optimistic forecast for the Eschenbach era is that he will deftly charm big bucks from rich patrons, give a new mission and a social conscience to the orchestra's board and administration, and achieve a new level of visibility and stature for himself. Musically, Eschenbach could animate the magisterial qualities of the Philadelphia Orchestra with the personal vision and originality that have marked his best work." Philadelphia Inquirer 09/07/03
Posted: 09/08/2003 6:37 am
Foster To Head Yerba Buena Kenneth Foster has been appointed director of San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center. "Foster, 52, comes to the Bay Area from Tucson, where for the past nine years he directed UA Presents, the University of Arizona's performing arts program. There his duties paralleled those he will take up at Yerba Buena: programming leadership, audience development, fund-raising, budget oversight and staff management." San Francisco Chronicle 09/08/03
Posted: 09/09/2003 12:09 am
Simone Young In Hamburg Simone Young is the first woman to hold a leading position in a major European opera house. "After a sudden — and sensational — announcement by Opera Australia last year that the company would not renew Ms. Young's contract, she accepted the top positions at Hamburg, a trifecta of sorts: music director and general manager of the opera, and director of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra. She has big plans for Hamburg, where she has negotiated a contract starting in August 2005 that puts her in charge of the purse strings." The New York Times 09/09/03
Posted: 09/08/2003 11:52 pm
A Plan For An American National Theatre A new national theatre is being proposed for the site of the World Trade Center. "The national theater would cull the finest offerings from the country's regional stages and present them in the performing arts center that Daniel Libeskind, the master-plan architect, has called for at the World Trade Center site. The complex would include three theaters: one with 800 seats, one with 700 and one with 400. The backers envision 15 productions a year, five on each stage, each running six weeks." The New York Times 09/09/03
Posted: 09/08/2003 11:44 pm
City Lights At 50 San Francisco's City Lights is one of the world's most famous bookstores. "The shop and publishing house were founded by the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the publisher Peter Martin in 1953. It became famous as the home of the beats in the 50s and 60s - the place where you bought Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady - and it has never lost its countercultural image, although tour buses no longer pause outside to show visitors the 'beatniks', as they did 40 years ago. Situated in the North Beach area, surrounded by cafes, Chinese restaurants and strip clubs, City Lights has managed to survive despite the growth of the big chains and internet bookshops." The Guardian (UK) 09/08/03
Posted: 09/08/2003 11:28 pm
Joan Didion And The Cult Of Personality Since the publication of The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion has been celebrated as one of America's leading practitioners of a new kind of highly wrought personal journalism. In the New York Observer, Susan Faludi claimed that Didion taught a generation of writers how to make journalism "a personal expression." And Martin Amis characterized her style as "self-revealing" in an essay in which he went on to call her "a human being who managed to gauge another book out of herself rather than a writer who gets her living done on the side." But has her writing ever been that immediate, that personal, that raw? Has her confessional style ever been much more than just that—a style?" Slate 09/04/03
Posted: 09/08/2003 8:25 pm
911 - Same Old Hollywood Who said pop culture was forever changed after 911? "If you see a movie now, there’s no longer any question that it originated after the Twin Towers came down. And this past summer, it seemed like there were whole movies that stood as direct arguments against all those things we believed back in the fall of 2001. Movies will become less frivolous? 'Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle.' Movies will become less violent? 'Bad Boys 2.' It’s not important that those movies weren’t smash hits. They did well enough, and what’s more important is that Hollywood believed, post-9/11, that such movies were what American audiences wanted." Newsweek 09/05/03
Posted: 09/09/2003 12:43 am
Dance In The Face Of Tragedy On September 11, 2001 the dancers of American Ballet Theatre were in Kansas City. They decided to perform anyway. "They begin to move. Each step they take is a step that dancers have taken for 300 years. Every step binds them to centuries of tradition and, by extension, to all the women and all the men who struggled to create what is lovely. At the close of the nation’s most dreadful day, they give us a stay against reality; in the wake of devastation they give us Order. In the wake of brutality they give us Grace. In the wake of horror they give us Beauty. In the face of senselessness they give us meaning. These wraithlike creatures are spiritual warriors. What the terrorists sought to take from our world is precisely what they return to it." Newsweek 09/05/03
Posted: 09/08/2003 8:20 pm | 
