Art Market Downturn The new Art Sales Index reveals a downturn in art sales in the past year. "This massive annual worldwide survey shows that the international art auction market shrank by 10 per cent from £1.63 billion to £1.45 billion in the 12-month period that ended in August. In the US auction turnover was down by 11.7 per cent, while in Britain the decrease was 18 per cent." The Telegraph (UK) 10/20/03
Posted: 10/20/2003 12:47 am
Japan's New Modern Art Palace (Atop A Bank Building) Tokyo's new Mori Museum could reinvent the Japanese modern art world. "The 30,000 sq ft museum covers two floors at the top of the 54-storey Mori Tower. To help lure visitors, the £8 admission charge includes access to the observation floor, which commands staggering views all the way to Mount Fuji. The challenge is to get visitors as interested in the art as the scenery. The Japanese public remains wary of contemporary art and has traditionally been interested only in the big names of Western art: Monet, Manet, Renoir, Picasso." The Telegraph (UK) 10/20/03
Posted: 10/20/2003 12:43 am
Naked Butts Draw Crowds An exhibition of photographs of 600 human posteriors has caused a stir in Argentina. The "Carne de Identidad" (a play on the Spanish words for "identity card" - "carnet de identidad" and "flesh of identity" - "carne de identidad") exhibition has been drawing in the crowds in Buenos Aires. Its next stop is Chile and then, if the civil unrest there dies down, Bolivia. BBC 10/20/03
Posted: 10/20/2003 12:15 am
The Fashion Of Art Does an Armani fashion exhibit belong in the British Academy? "Prejudice, fear and suspicion still surround the status of fashion within many galleries. This sometimes takes the form of fashion being tolerated as a form of entertainment which will pull in the crowds, with no acknowledgement of the serious contribution it also makes to the educational role of the museum. More than anything else, however, it is fashion's slippery nature that helps to perpetuate the prejudice." The Guardian (UK) 10/18/03
Posted: 10/19/2003 11:59 pm
Getty: No To Taking Over Barnes Last Sunday, LA Times art critic Christopher Knight suggested that the Getty step in to rescue the Barnes Collection in suburban Philadelphia so it wouldn't be moved to downtown Philly. But Getty president Barry Munitz flatly turns down the idea. "It can't generate enough revenue, and why squabble incessantly with the neighborhood when you can have a new facility in the company of other great cultural institutions along that corridor? This keeps the collection intact and keeps the hanging pattern intact, and it will have the educational philosophy still at the core." Philadelphia Inquirer 10/18/03
Posted: 10/19/2003 11:44 pm
The Disney As Grace Note LA's new Disney Hall is "indeed a dynamic sculpture in the cityscape, but it entices rather than asserts. Its lilting abstract geometries flow seamlessly into one another, and its billowing walls, pieced together out of 10-by-4-foot sheets of stainless steel, seem alternately to reflect and absorb the changing natural light. And then there is the 2,265-seat concert hall itself, a surprise within a surprise, a spacious cocoon of rotund wooden forms with seating all around the orchestral stage." Washington Post 10/19/03
Posted: 10/19/2003 8:11 pm
How Much Is Music Worth? Is 99 cents a fair price for a downloadable music track? "Some analysts are beginning to realize that lower prices could greatly expand the size of the digital-music market, still minuscule despite iTunes' success. A July survey by Jupiter Research of 2,500 adults who use the Internet found that 35% of people are willing to pay 51 cents to $1 for a song by a favorite artist; 20% are willing to pay 50 cents or less; and 19% would pay more than $1 (26% say no price is right, they'll pay nothing). Problem is, online-music services cannot significantly lower prices without losing money." BusinessWeek 10/17/03
Posted: 10/19/2003 11:27 pm
North Carolina Conservatory - Tools For The Job The North Carolina School of the Arts has long had to contend with inadequate facilities. Despite the limitations, the school has turned out an impressive list of music graduates. But now the school is opening a new $10 million home, and with the right tools... Winston Salem Journal 10/19/03
Posted: 10/19/2003 11:26 pm
LA's Disney Hall - The Aesthetic Challenge "This hall is our opportunity to take that evolutionary step in creating an orchestra for the 21st Century. We now have the possibilities of enhanced programming and new concert formats, of providing a new gravitas with the community. I've always had this feeling that an orchestra should not just be an orchestra but, rather, something that has an intellectual and spiritual impact on the lives of people in the community. You cannot open a new building and simply carry on business as usual. There must be a match of programming and ideology, with the music matching the signals given out by the building." Chicago Tribune 10/19/03
Posted: 10/19/2003 10:46 pm
Opera House In A Laptop Canada's first real opera house is under construction in Toronto. For now, though, it exists in software. "In a opera house, sound is sacred. The worst nightmare is to pour the concrete, build the place, and then find out the acoustics are poor. So computer software has been heavily pressed into service to establish what kind of sound every person in the hall will hear - before the hall is built. This is something that has only become possible in the past four years, and Toronto's opera house will be the first to receive the benefit." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/18/03
Posted: 10/19/2003 10:43 pm
Getting Ahold Of A Strad There are only 500-600 Stradivari violins left. To play at in the top ranks of soloists, you want to have one of them. "Say you are a gifted young musician and you need an illustrious instrument to develop your musicianship, career and reputation. To buy one you have to be able to command the fees that only a career on the international circuit can provide. And for that you need a fine instrument. You are stymied." The Telegraph (UK) 10/18/03
Posted: 10/19/2003 10:39 pm
The NEA's Misguided Populism The National Endowment for the Arts is taking an ambitious but misguided step with its plan to bring Shakespeare to the hinterlands, says Michael Phillips. "Class is a commodity like any other, and with the Shakespeare touring projects the NEA is spending more than $2 million on a classy image makeover. These days the NEA does not concern itself much with tossing seed money to artists or companies who may be controversial or risky or untested. In [NEA chairman Dana]Gioia's words, the agency intends to focus on bringing 'art of indisputable excellence to all Americans.' It sounds right. It sounds inclusive, and unassailably democratic. Yet somehow a Shakespeare initiative sounds like an investment in yesterday's culture, not tomorrow's." Chicago Tribune 10/19/03
Posted: 10/19/2003 9:59 am
Rebuilding Iraq's Artistic Infrastructure It may seem a bit premature for a country in which large chunks of the population are still without power, private homes, and schools, but a group of U.S. arts leaders have been dispatched to Iraq to survey the damage caused to the country's cultural scene. Iraq's global cultural significance cannot be overstated - this is the cradle of civilization, after all - but at a time when the future could not be more uncertain, many arts leaders are concerned that even the country's most venerable institutions will have a hard time making the transition to a post-Saddam Hussein reality. Boston Globe (Reuters) 10/18/03
Posted: 10/19/2003 9:25 am
D.C. Arts Center Facing Eviction A seemingly endless battle between the city government of Washington, D.C. and a small arts center housed in a former junior high school came to a head this week, as the District served the Millenium Arts Center with an eviction notice. Accusations are flying back and forth - the MAC doesn't pay its rent; the city doesn't keep its word; etc. - but both sides seem almost eager to force a public confrontation over a dispute which has been simmering quietly for several years. Washington Post 10/18/03
Posted: 10/19/2003 8:46 am
Peter Hall's Theatreworld Peter Hall is one of the theatre's most distinguished citizens. But Hall, 72, is not a director emeritus grazing the pastures of praise, memoirs and lifetime achievement awards. Since relinquishing his role as head of the National, which he ran from its opening in 1973 to 1988, Hall has followed an independent and varied path, generating and staging works for the West End, Broadway and the world's great opera stages." Hartford Courant 10/19/03
Posted: 10/20/2003 12:55 am
Booker Winner Begins To Repay Debts Booker winner Peter Finlay has made good on beginning to repay those he says he swindled. "The colourful author of the comic novel Vernon God Little, which won the £50,000 prize from under the nose of Monica Ali's highly fancied Brick Lane, has paid the first £3,000 instalment of the £42,000 he has agreed to repay Robert Lenton." The Guardian (UK) 10/18/03
Posted: 10/20/2003 12:37 am
Ned Rorem, American Classic "Rorem's works have been criticized, even dismissed, for not being more memorable. More to the point, as much as he seems to occupy the creative moment 100 percent, Rorem doesn't haunt. The music is there and gone, leaving few if any footprints on your brain. As listeners, we're not used to that." Philadelphia Inquirer 10/19/03
Posted: 10/19/2003 10:36 pm
A "Golden Age" Of UK Theatre? Judges of a major UK regional theatre awards program, after years of warning of the dire state of regional theatre, have declared a new "golden age" of regional theatre. "It seemed to all of us that there were significantly more productions on a larger scale, lots of work for actors, lots of Shakespeare, lots of new plays, and lots of touring and co-production, with companies exploiting new productions by taking them around to other theatres." The Guardian (UK) 10/20/03
Posted: 10/20/2003 12:27 am
The Drama Of Prague .Even at its darkest moment, when the euphoria of the Prague Spring was crushed by the Soviet invasion of 1968, Czech culture threatened resurgence. 'A secret streamlet trickles on beneath the heavy crust of inertia, slowly and inconspicuously undercutting it,' Václav Havel wrote in his famous 1975 open letter to communist president Gustav Husak, which resulted in Havel's arrest. When the trickle became a torrent at the end of the 1980s, theatre played a vital role." The Guardian (UK) 10/18/03
Posted: 10/20/2003 12:21 am
Just When You Think You're Burned Out On Book Fairs It's easy to get burned out on book festivals after awhile. The self-promotion! The over-indulgence of bad books! But: "Generally speaking, you also need to read well in order to navigate and to function efficiently inside the world of electronic media. TV doesn't tell you how to understand TV. No medium has yet arisen that can challenge print as a medium of cultivating intelligence. And novels have a role to play in this regard, as well, because the language of a good novel is prose used to its maximum effect." Toronto Star 10/18/03
Posted: 10/19/2003 10:32 pm
The De-Musicfication Of TV Shows On DVD TV studios are releasing TV shows on DVD, and they're a hit with consumers. But music found in the original TV series is often being replaced. "It all comes down to a matter of money. (Studios are) saying, 'We couldn't afford to license the music we used in the show. It's happening more and more, actually.' Indeed, studio executives acknowledge that the price of obtaining those rights is prohibitive." Wired 10/19/03
Posted: 10/20/2003 1:15 am
The VIP Movie Ticket A New York movie theatre chain begins adding a surchare for its best seats. "It appears that Loews' already has isolated the best middle sections in three theaters at its 34th Street megaplex near Ninth Avenue. For a mere 50 percent markup from the customary $10, moviegoers can stop worrying that they'll be sitting too close to the screen or too far from the screen or that they'll miss the previews and look stupid trolling the aisles in the dark-and still be forced to sit separately from their friends." Newsday 10/19/03
Posted: 10/20/2003 1:04 am
Out Of Africa - The Continent's Most Innovative Dance Company "Burkina Faso - or "Land of Men of Dignity", surely the most beautifully named country in the world - is the home of Africa's most important film festival, held twice a year in the capital, Ouagadougou. The city also has a thriving music scene. Against all the odds, Burkinas had found ways in which they were not poor"... But "it is still a surprise to find that Burkina Faso is home to one of the most innovative contemporary dance companies on the European circuit." The Age (Melbourne) 10/20/03
Posted: 10/20/2003 12:05 am
