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Friday, November 14




Ideas

Shock Of The New (Good?) "Audiences and institutions have long believed that anything that unsettles is intended to provoke. The provocation hardly needs to be sexual. It can be childlike ("My 5-year-old could do that!") or primitive (Gauguin) or political (Grosz) or distorted (Cubism) or conceptually unsettling (Duchamp's urinal; Cage's "4' 33' " of silence). For a long while, when people raged against such provocations, I would take the defiant position of assuming, unless authoritatively informed otherwise, that the artist had no intention to provoke. Of course, there are deliberate provocateurs, sometimes for overt careerist ends. But what counts is the art. Great art is always shocking." The New York Times 11/14/03
Posted: 11/14/2003 9:37 am

Where Virtual Law Rules The virtual gaming community gathers to discuss the laws of cyberspace. "A host of questions are on everyone's minds: Are virtual worlds the new Wild West or a legitimate province of the courts? Is game play equivalent to speech as defined in the First Amendment? Is there such a thing as fraud in a metaverse? As the game universe becomes intricate, as transactions start to cross the boundary between the game world and the real world, it becomes more complicated as to what you're going to call defamation."
Wired 11/13/03
Posted: 11/13/2003 9:47 pm

Visual Arts

Saling Young - Strong Contemporary Art Sales This week's Phillips auction of art made since 1945 set record prices for several artists. The buyers were younger than the average blue-chip auction crowd, and "the growing appetite for these newer works was more apparent than ever. There are new young collectors drawn to contemporary art. These are really the blue-chip artists of tomorrow." The New York Times 11/14/03
Posted: 11/14/2003 9:44 am

A "Bento Box For Art" Herbert Muschamp says the New Museum of Contemporary Art's planned building for the Bowery, is a "seven-story bento box for art." "Like every substantial building that has gone up in Manhattan in the past decade, Saana's design demonstrates the fecundity that occurs when the idea of context is distinguished from mere adjacency. Add to, rather than fit in with: this is the crux of the distinction. When a building is dedicated to contemporaneity, as the New Museum will be, the design should add to the present." The New York Times 11/14/03
Posted: 11/14/2003 9:15 am

Cargo Handlers Arrested For Stealing Freud Two cargo handlers at JFK airport have been charged with stealing a Lucien Freud painting from a cargo warehouse. "The pair allegedly broke into a carton at the United Airlines cargo building on Tuesday and removed the artwork. Police identified the two men after viewing airport security video with officials from United Airlines." CNN 11/14/03
Posted: 11/14/2003 7:21 am

How To "Save" Art With £25 Million Should the UK be spending vast sums to try to keep precious artworks in the country? Tate head Nicholas Serota thinks so. So what would be a good use for the £25 million that some are proposing to spend to keep a Raphael from being sold and taken to the US? Critics and artworld folk offer some suggestions. The Guardian (UK) 11/14/03
Posted: 11/13/2003 11:30 pm

Seattle Art Museum - Time To Expand The Seattle Art Museum shows off its expansion plans. "SAM's downtown expansion is a unique, mutually beneficial partnership with Washington Mutual Bank that allows the museum to expand incrementally into its new 300,000-square-foot space. In the first phase, SAM will occupy about 95,000 square feet. The bank will lease the unused upper floors from the museum, allowing it to amortize the financing of the $63 million expansion. When SAM fully occupies its new building, it will triple its current size to 450,000 square feet." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 11/13/03
Posted: 11/13/2003 11:16 pm


SPONSOR
From One Generation To The Next
Some of the world's most distinguished artists gathered at Lincoln Center on November 10 to celebrate the completion of the inaugural year of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. www.rolexmentorprotege.com

Music

Music In Black And White Brita Brundage wonders about the complexion of Hartford's music scene: "I've noticed that groups playing traditionally black music forms in the area - be it jazz, funk, blues, Latin, even reggae and hip-hop - are made up almost entirely of white musicians. While there's nothing inherently wrong with white musicians playing music of any style, the question of legitimacy has started to gnaw at my ability to appreciate the music." Hartford Courant 11/14/03
Posted: 11/14/2003 8:54 am

CD Price Cuts = Mass Uncertainty As some music companies lower CD prices, everyone from artists to record store owners are wondering what the effect of the cuts will be. With profit margins down, for instance, will small indie record stores offer esoterica that stays around for a long time? And the recording companies... who knows what they'll even look like six months from now? The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/14/03
Posted: 11/14/2003 8:45 am

Classical Music As Racist Institution Charlotte Higgins is unequivocal: Classical music is institutionally racist. The extent to which it is dominated by white faces - audiences, performers, administrators and critics alike - is overwhelming. Black taxpayers may be paying their share of the bill for an important tranche of Britain's cultural life, but few are either participating in it or enjoying it. British theatre may be witnessing a flowering of extraordinary black acting and writing talent, but classical music remains determinedly white.
This lack of participation, however, does not reflect lack of appetite."
The Guardian (UK) 11/14/03
Posted: 11/13/2003 11:26 pm

Bye-Bye CD's? "The future of the album - both in its physical form and as a grouping of related songs - is being pondered by everyone from bands who refuse to provide their music to online services to technology analysts, who predict that the CD will become passé within the next five years. It's a pressing concern, given the decline of record sales since 2000 and the popularity of downloading singles by a public tired of paying $15 for an album with one hit and lots of padding." Christian Science Monitor 11/14/03
Posted: 11/13/2003 11:02 pm

Arts Issues

The Miami PA Center" Battle With Quality Control Construction of Miami's new $260 million performing arts center is well over budget and way behind schedule. An audit of the project shows that contractors have not been careful about quality control. And the budgeters didn't plan enough to pay for inspections. Indeed, the quality control program will "run out of the $900,000 earmarked for it about 13 months before the scheduled completion date." Miami Herald 11/14/03
Posted: 11/14/2003 7:48 am

Angry French Artists Kidnap TV French artists, aggrieved over a strike last summer, are increasingly making public protests. "They've driven a popular reality show from the air for two hours, taken a news show hostage for a minute of free advertising, and on Wednesday stormed a televised Parliamentary session. The new tactic is Act II of an uprising that started this summer when part-time show business workers shut down music and theater festivals across France." NJOnline.com (AP) 11/14/03
Posted: 11/14/2003 7:43 am

Tuition Increases - Don't Blame Colleges Tuitions have been rising faster than the rate of inflation. So some in the US Congress want to limit increases somehow. But those increases haven't been the result of higher-education spending sprees. "From New York to California it's the same story. The proportion of public-college budgets supplied by the state has dropped precipitously. Someone has to pay for public colleges. Should state colleges take the heat when the legislatures purposely shift the burden from taxpayers onto students and their parents?" The New York Times 11/09/03
Posted: 11/13/2003 11:13 pm

Philanthropy - A Crisis In Confidence? Some high-profile disputes about how recipients of philanthropy have spent money given to them have been in the news recently. "Not surprisingly, such public disagreements are starting to erode confidence in the nonprofit sector. A recent survey commissioned by Charles Schwab & Company, showed just 10 percent of affluent Americans age 45 and older are now planning to leave all or part of their estates to charities, universities, and other nonprofits. More than five times that number - 56 percent - said they plan to leave nothing to such organizations. Of those, 21 percent said they don't think the money would be well spent if given to charity." Christian Science Monitor 11/14/03
Posted: 11/13/2003 10:56 pm

People

Hughes Extortionists Jailed "Two men who tried to extort $30,000 from expatriate art critic Robert Hughes in return for favourable evidence at his dangerous-driving trial have been jailed for two years." The Australian 11/14/03
Posted: 11/14/2003 7:19 am

Theatre

Taboo - It's Rosie's Fault Critics are panning the Rosie O'Donnell-produced "Taboo," which opened on Broadway this week. Clive Barnes says that while the show was an eccentric charmer in London, on Broadway it's just out of place. "The Plymouth Theatre is not that kind of place at all, and a professional Broadway producer would have seen that at once. First-time producer Rosie O'Donnell, attracting more attention to herself than David Merrick in his heyday, seems almost virginal in her lack of experience." New York Post 11/14/03
Posted: 11/14/2003 9:03 am

  • The Return Of Cats? Ben Brantley forgot for a moment where he was at the opening of Taboo. The show, he reports, is "a dressed-up, low-down temple to the holy trinity of sex, drugs and soft rock 'n' roll, and the sort of place where good boys and girls go bad real fast. So why do I keep waiting for one of them to step forward and belt out "Memory"?" The New York Times 11/14/03
    Posted: 11/14/2003 8:06 am

2000-Year-Old Play Sees Light Again "A Greek play is to be staged for the first time in more than 2,050 years after fragments of the text were found in Egyptian mummy cases." The Guardian (UK) 11/14/03
Posted: 11/13/2003 11:22 pm

Publishing

Online Library For the Blind Launches The Canadian National Institute for the Blind debuts a new online library for the blind. "There are more than 10,000 audio, text, and Braille titles available on-line, including recent bestsellers such as Life of Pi and The Stone Diaries. Users can also search and order from a collection of more than 60,000 titles." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/13/03
Posted: 11/13/2003 9:58 pm

Media

The World's Top Directors Who are the best movie directors in the world? The Guardian makes a list of the top 40. Let's see... there's David Lynch, and... The Guardian (UK) 11/14/03
Posted: 11/13/2003 11:25 pm

Cultural Divide - Movie Critics Go To Battle Over Screeners The Motion Picture Academy's decision not to send DVD copies of movies to critics juding awards has provoked movie critics like no other issue in recent years. "Movie critics are flooding colleagues' computers with e-mails carrying subject lines like "United we stand" and "On strikes and self-immolation," not to mention "Shame!" Some critics' associations have canceled their year-end awards in protest. I know these people, and I assure you they're nice, civilized folks. But we critics can sting when we feel wronged, and passions are running high." Christian Science Monitor 11/14/03
Posted: 11/13/2003 11:04 pm

Mexico Arts Funding Cuts? - Overwhelmed By American Culture The president of Mexico proposes slashing arts funding. "President Vicente Fox's proposal to get rid of everything from government-owned movie studios to the national news agency has sparked fears that Mexico will be overwhelmed by an American cultural invasion. We will be left to the mercy and whims of distributors of Hollywood's worst productions." CNN 11/13/03
Posted: 11/13/2003 10:45 pm

Dance

Ace To Collaborate Choreographer Trisha Brown has an amazing record of getting other artists to collaborate with her. "Her 40-odd years of innovative creation and performance have brought about some memorable collaborations, most frequently with Robert Rauschenberg but also with Robert Whitman, Donald Judd, Nancy Graves, Terry Winters and Fujiko Nakaya. They have designed sets, costumes, environments, atmospheric effects and music for her. Add to these visual contributions the aural enhancements of the composers Laurie Anderson, John Cage and Dave Douglas." The New York Times 11/14/03
Posted: 11/14/2003 9:11 am


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