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Is Good Art Making A Comeback? "Thrillingly, for the first time in a while, art seems more important than the system. The professionalism of the recent past, the thing that made the late-'90s art world seem corporate and unsafe, is morphing into something less predictable, more homespun. The fringes feel frisky, good new artists and galleries are appearing, hype and fashionableness matter less, those capacious Chelsea galleries don't seem as off-putting, and art is becoming the focus again." Artnet.com 09/10/03
Posted: 09/10/2003 11:37 pm
Billionaire Disputes Greek Statue One of Europe's leading art collectors bought a Greek statue said to have been carved between 1878 and 1843 BC. But a few years later, François Pinault, the head of Christie's and Gucci, has some doubts, and now believes it is a modern copy. The Guardian (UK) 09/10/03
Posted: 09/10/2003 9:17 pm
US Considers Ban On Iraqi Artifacts The US Congress is considering legislation prohibiting the import of Iraqi artifacts unless accompanied by proof they were exported legally before UN and US sanctions. "The proposals would authorise US Customs to seize undocumented materials and return them to Iraq." The Art Newspaper 09/05/03
Posted: 09/10/2003 9:00 pm
American Museums Admit Art Looting "Some of America’s most celebrated institutions — including Harvard’s Peabody, The Field Museum in Chicago and the American Museum of Natural History in New York — are indicating for the first time in reports to the U.S. government that they were more involved in the looting of Native American burial grounds than they have previously admitted. Those institutions now are in the process of returning hundreds of thousands of artifacts and human remains to tribal groups around the country." Denver Post 09/02/03
Posted: 09/10/2003 7:34 pm
Dia:Beacon - Mindless Optimism? Hilton Kramer doesn't like much about the new Dia:Beacon building (or the art inside). "Most of the art in the Dia:Beacon collection requires huge amounts of space. Yet notwithstanding the gargantuan quantities of art that Dia:Beacon easily accommodates, so vast are its exhibition spaces that the place itself strikes the visitor as sterile and forlorn. Visitors wander about its endless interior with vacant stares and silent lips—not so much looking at the art as looking for it, even when they are in its immediate physical presence. Sooner or later, they are found huddling together for succor around the abundant wall texts, which, although easily read, tend to be even more confounding than the objects and spaces they are meant to illuminate." New York Observer 09/10/03
Posted: 09/10/2003 5:41 pm
Artifacts Returned To Baghdad Museum Some 3000 artifacts stolen from Iraq's National Museum have been returned. "More than 1,700 items were returned in an amnesty with 900 seized in raids and at checkpoints, airports and borders. Another 750 were recovered from four different countries." About 10,000 objects are still missing. BBC 09/10/03
Posted: 09/10/2003 4:57 pm
A Test Of Carnegie's New Hall A closed concert takes Carnegie Hall's newest auditorium for a spin. "Naturally, the question buzzing about the hall during this varied program was: How are the acoustics? I think a pass is called for on that one until I hear some full-fledged programs this weekend, though my very initial reactions were mixed. The sound seemed bright but not especially warm; details and definition came through better at soft volumes..." The New York Times 09/11/03
Posted: 09/10/2003 10:09 pm
- Teachout: Mixed First Impressions Terry Teachout has mixed first impressions of Carnegie's Zankel Hall. "I'm sure it's obvious that Zankel Hall didn’t make as favorable an impression on me as I’d hoped, but I long ago learned that first impressions of a new auditorium can be deceptive. What seems problematic on first hearing often proves less so later on (and vice versa)." About Last Night (AJBlogs) 09/11/03
Posted: 09/10/2003 9:57 pm
Another London Opera Company London is getting a third opera house. The impresario Raymond Gubbay, the commercial arch-rival and a bitter critic of subsidised opera, is to mount year-round productions at the Savoy Theatre. He will begin in April with two guaranteed crowd pleasers, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Rossini's Barber of Seville." The Guardian (UK) 09/10/03
Posted: 09/10/2003 9:26 pm
The Censorship Of Space Kyle Gann writes that music criticism has been reduced to shorthand that renders it toothless. "We critics are told that it’s up to us to defend classical music in the public marketplace - but the newspapers have taken away our tanks, bazookas, and machine guns and left us armed with garbage can lids and pea shooters. The space crunch is everywhere, in every publication. It used to be, when I’d write for the New York Times, they’d ask me one of the sweetest questions a writer can hear: 'How many words do you need?' No longer. Articles that would have once garnered 2000 or 2500 words now get half that. And according to what editors tell me, this is true across the board." PostClassic (AJBlogs) 09/05/03
Posted: 09/10/2003 5:32 pm
The "Neo" Blues Like most labels, the term "neo-Romantic" is problematic and inaccurate. "The problem with words beginning with the prefix "neo-" is that there is an implication that what it signifies is somehow a regression to something that has previously existed and is a reversion back to a something that had been discarded and was forgotten. Of course, most composers who have been categorized as "neo-romantics," both those who accept and reject the term, do not view their work as a reactionary anachronism but rather as an appropriate up-to-date sound world that is more contemporary-sounding than the now older modernist tradition they have been deemed apostates from." NewMusicBox 09/03
Posted: 09/10/2003 5:28 pm
Twelve-Year-Old Settles Download Suit The mother of the 12-year-old music downloader sued by the recording industry has paid to settle the suit. "Brianna LaHara, of New York, was one of 261 people served with a lawsuit by the Recording Industry of America (RIAA). She has admitted swapping music online, and her mother has agreed to pay $2,000 to settle the case." Wired 09/10/03
Posted: 09/10/2003 5:01 pm
Big Concerns About Miami's New $265 Million Arts Center Flaws in Miami's new $265 million Performing Arts Center, currently under construction, could "compromise its crucial sound quality, delay its opening and drive up its cost by up to $50 million, officials overseeing its construction and management charged Tuesday. These are issues affecting what the building looks like, what it sounds like, what it feels like."
Miami Herald 09/10/03
Posted: 09/10/2003 11:40 pm
Report: Canadian Arts Groups Up, Symphony Orchestras Down Canadian symphony orchestras have had a few difficult financial years. But "theatre, music, dance and opera entered the new millennium with a healthy financial surplus, thanks to record revenues of $543.7 million," according to new government figures. Toronto Star 09/10/03
Posted: 09/10/2003 10:43 pm
Government Report Criticizes Kennedy Center Management The General Accounting Office criticizes the Kennedy Center for inadequate management of its construction projects. "The report, which focused on the center's construction of new parking and exterior areas, said what originally appeared to be a $28 million job wound up costing about $60 million more and created only about half as many new parking spaces as estimated. The GAO said the poor management raised questions about how officials will handle the massive additions planned for the center over the next 10 years." Washington Post 09/11/03
Posted: 09/10/2003 10:33 pm
The Cult Of Adorno Theodor Adorno was born 100 years ago. He's "recognized as one of the leading critical minds of the 20th century, a man with an intellectual range that seemingly knew no bounds. He was a musicologist who studied in Vienna with Alban Berg and a composer in his own right, a social theorist steeped in the tradition of western Marxism, and a highly regarded commentator on literature and poetry.
Yet Adorno polarized many with his dialectical style and his uncompromising assault on the enlightenment, Hegelian idealism and existentialism." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 09/12/03
Posted: 09/11/2003 9:45 pm
Barnes & Noble Closes Down Its E-book Business BarnesandNoble.com was one of the biggest boosters of e-books. But the company has shut down its e-book division. "BN.com's decision comes at a time when e-book sales are reported to be steadily growing, the number of retail outlets for e-books is increasing and a host of new reading devices are entering the market. It was BN.com, in collaboration with Microsoft, that led the push to sell e-books when it launched an e-book superstore in 2000." Publishers Weekly 09/10/03
Posted: 09/10/2003 8:51 pm
Me-Too-itis Books seem to arrive in flocks these days. "Name any high-profile subject and you can pretty much bet that if one house is publishing a book on it, another house won’t be far behind. Much of the time, competing titles on the same topic appear within weeks of each other." New York Observer 09/10/03
Posted: 09/10/2003 5:46 pm
Joffrey Goes Live The Joffrey Ballet, whcih has performed frequently with recorded music, has made a commitment to perform with live music for the next season and beyond. Chicago Sun-Times 09/11/03
Posted: 09/11/2003 9:20 pm | 
