Three More Architecture Stars For The WTC Project The World Trade Center site project is becoming some kind of Hall of Fame for architects. Now Norman Foster, Fumihiko Maki, and Jean Nouvel have been recruited to design towers ringing the memorial site planned for the southwest corner of the new World Trade Center. Already working on the project are Daniel Libeskind and Santiago Calatrava, who is working for the Port Authority to develop a transit hub on the site. New York Observer 10/02/03
Posted: 10/02/2003 6:55 am
Bellevue Art Museum Post Mortem Seattle arts groups are struggling. But it was still a surprise when the Bellevue Art Museum abruptly closed the doors of its new buildin. "Last week, the Bellevue Art Museum made the stunning announcement that it was closing its doors through at least the end of this year, only two and a half years after opening a $23 million, 36,000-square-foot Steven Holl-designed facility intended to be downtown Bellevue's cultural anchor." Seattle Weekly 10/02/03
Posted: 10/01/2003 9:18 pm
Koolhaas' Cool New House Rem Koolhaas's new building for the the Illinois Institute of Technology is a winner, writes Herbert Muschamp. The "$48.2 million project is a bazaar of a building, a souk of sensations that stands in vibrant contrast to the immaculately modern desert around it. Situated on the main campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, this is the Dutch architect's first completed building in the United States. If you want to know what all the fuss over Mr. Koolhaas has been about, this student center is an exemplary place to start. It's Koolhaas à go-go, a masterwork for the young and curious." The New York Times 10/02/03
Posted: 10/01/2003 8:33 pm
- Previously: Kamin: Koolhaas Could Have Done Better "Five years ago, when the celebrated Rotterdam architect Rem Koolhaas won a much-hyped design competition for a campus center at the Illinois Institute of Technology, there was breathless talk about the sexy new building, and how it would devise a new architecture for the 21st Century... Now the future has arrived, complete with a sensuous, 530-foot-long, stainless steel tube that wraps around the elevated tracks and swallows Chicago Transit Authority trains. It's a wild, often wonderful vision of urban life, a bit like entering an oversize pinball machine. It is, as advertised, full of brilliant concepts. But it is not a brilliant work of architecture." Chicago Tribune 09/28/03
What's A Monet Between Harrises? Know your art? Most Britons, it seems, don't. "In terms of knowing their masterpieces from their modern day art, most of the British public can't, confusing works by Monet and Rolf Harris. An Encyclopaedia Britannica poll published today finds that 7% believe that Water Lilies was painted by the Australian with the wobble boards instead of by French Impressionist Claude Monet." The Guardian (UK) 10/02/03
Posted: 10/01/2003 8:01 pm
National Gallery's Dire Straits London's National Gallery says the museum's lack of money is seriously compromising the institution. "Already staff shortages have forced occasional closures for a few hours on the gallery's main floor, where its principal collection is displayed. The situation is already dire in the lower galleries, which also hold hundreds of important paintings. Although members of the public make appointments to view, a general public opening is now only guaranteed on Wednesday afternoons." The Guardian (UK) 10/01/03
Posted: 10/01/2003 7:57 pm
The Blues - Now For The Facts The Martin Scorcese blues documentary project currently running on PBS is a riff on the music, but short on the basic facts. So a radio series that looks at the blues from a more clinical chronological perspective was put together. "The film teams knew that once the films aired there would be an outcry because they're not traditional documentary. There was a feeling that there was a need for that kind of content. So the folks who put the project together - Scorsese and the Seattle-based Experience Music Project - settled into a 13-part documentary that would be a true chronological documentary on what is the blues." Boston Globe 10/02/03
Posted: 10/02/2003 7:19 am
Remembering Vladimir Horowitz In the last three years of pianist Vladimir Horowitz's life, he was forever being labeled the last Romantic virtuoso. "As a younger generation of cooler-headed, more intellectual pianists came to the fore, Horowitz came to be regarded as a lovable dinosaur. The truth, as demonstrated by an outpouring of Horowitz films and CD’s re-released in honor of the 100th anniversary of his birth, is that he was that rare artist who sums up nothing but himself." New York Observer 10/02/03
Posted: 10/02/2003 7:10 am
CD Sales Decline Accelerates The drop in CD sales worldwide is accelerating, reports an industry association. "The International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI) says sales fell by 10.9% in the first half of 2003, but by just 7.1% in 2002. The body blames the fall on commercial piracy and unauthorised internet music sharing." BBC 10/01/03
Posted: 10/01/2003 7:14 pm
Celebrity Trumps Politics Arnold Schwarzenegger has brought the big Hollywood machine approach to dealing with the media to politics. Not that the movies and politics haven't been keeping time together for some time. But this is a whole new level. "If Schwarzenegger wins, he will have done so by studiously and stealthily avoiding the traditional news media, supplanting newspaper interviews with softball entertainment TV appearances along the way." San Francisco Chronicle 10/02/03
Posted: 10/02/2003 8:48 am
Edward Said - Outsider Edward Said inspired admiration, even if you disagreed with his politics. "He lived in the world as an exile, a condition from which he drew strength. Exile, as a metaphorical state, was something we all should aspire to, Said contended, since it gives one an outsider's perspective on the world. He was a theoretician who hated theory because he loved people. A true public intellectual, he would say, possesses not just access to the media but a public (constituency would be his term) to which he or she is accountable. Ground yourself in the world." Village Voice 10/01/03
Posted: 10/01/2003 9:06 pm
Baryshnikov's Knee Goes Down Mikhail Baryshnikov has injured his knee, and has had to postpone his upcoming tour. "When Baryshnikov, who is 55 years old, was rehearsing his solo program in late September, he tore the meniscus in his left knee. It's just a minor tear. His other knee is much more complicated." Village Voice 10/01/03
Posted: 10/01/2003 8:57 pm
Broadway Gets Into Gear The fall season on Broadway is a crowded one. And advance box office is looking good too... Newsday 10/02/03
Posted: 10/02/2003 8:42 am
Royal Shakespeare Looks To London Again In a reversal of policy, the Royal Shakespeare Company says it is looking for a permanent home in London. Last year the RSC gave up its digs at the Barbican. "It currently has an itinerant status in the capital, moving from venue to venue. This has reportedly hit box office receipts and, say critics, caused the company to lose its identity." BBC 10/01/03
Posted: 10/01/2003 7:20 pm
Coetzee Awarded Nobel "South African writer J.M. Coetzee, whose stories set against the backdrop of apartheid tell of innocents and outcasts dwarfed by history, won the 2003 Nobel Prize for literature, the Swedish Academy said Thursday." Baltimore Sun 10/02/03
Posted: 10/02/2003 6:31 am
The Web's Hot Type Publishers are waking up to the promotional possibilities of the internet. "Creating promos like this sends a message to an author that you're doing exciting, creative, new things to market their books. It also sends a message to a wider, younger, new web- and design-literate audience that these books are being addressed to them in their language." The Guardian (UK) 10/01/03
Posted: 10/01/2003 8:09 pm
NY Film Festival - A Dumping Ground? "Do not believe overpaid actors who cry poor mouth. Overstuffed programs in Venice, Montreal and Toronto have recently proved there is no such thing as a faltering economy in the movie business. Hundreds of new films are upon us like carrion birds, but why do the ones nobody will ever see again (or want to) reliably turn up in the New York Film Festival, and why are they always so lousy?" New York Observer 10/02/03
Posted: 10/02/2003 7:00 am
Moscow Film Fest Canceled - Is Censorship On The Rise? A film festival in Moscow showing movies "highlighting massacres allegedly committed by Russian troops in Chechnya" is canceled just before it was to start, as cinema organizers say that films that were to be shown are too political. The cancelation feeds fears that censorship is on the rise in Russia. "With [former president Boris] Yeltsin, we didn't have this. There was corruption and social disorder, the same as now, but at least nobody was afraid to tell the truth." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/02/03
Posted: 10/02/2003 6:46 am
