Outsider Art Comes Inside "During the 1990s, the field of outsider art—a term for work by self-taught, often visionary artists, made in idiosyncratic styles or folk-art traditions—gained increasing respectability and value. In 2001, at the same time as a new headquarters for the American Folk Art Museum opened in midtown Manhattan, a wave of contemporary artists, many with M.F.A.s and major gallery representation, began to exhibit works that unapologetically resembled the style and intensity of the best of their self-taught predecessors." ARTnews 12/03
Posted: 12/10/2003 7:55 pm
Two Rembrandts Stolen Two Rembrandt etchings were stolen from a home in Melbourne last week. "Police said the etchings were taken along with their certificates of authenticity during a break-in at the family home. One of the etchings depicts a self portrait of the artist and the other a portrait of Rembrandt's mother." The Age (Melbourne) 12/11/03
Posted: 12/10/2003 6:23 pm
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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
Comeback In St. Louis? Two years ago, the smart money in the orchestral world said that the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra would be lucky to exist in 2004, and that even if it survived, its downward spiral of debt and disorganization would cost it its place in the top ranks of American orchestras. Since that dismal time, the SLSO has scrambled back from the fiscal precipice, shored up its organization, and, this week, hired one of the most celebrated young conductors of his generation, David Robertson, as music director. With Robertson on board, the orchestra is convinced that it will shortly complete one of the great comebacks in industry history. St. Louis Post-Dispatch 12/11/03
Posted: 12/11/2003 6:28 am
Telegraph: Iraq's Orchestra Inspiring The Washington Post may have dubbed it a "show concert," but the audience in Washington, D.C. was clearly moved by the music-making of the Iraqi National Symphony in its American debut this week. "The mournful strains of the balaban (a distant cousin of the oboe) and the haunting screech of the oud (the forerunner of the lute), [made] a captivating premiere at the Kennedy Center," says Alec Russell, and the Post failed to make mention of the hundreds of Iraqi expatriates who lined up all morning in the snow just to get tickets, or the rousing ovation of the (mostly) non-partisan crowd. The Telegraph (UK) 12/11/03
Posted: 12/11/2003 5:36 am
- Previously: Iraqi National Photo-Op Comes To D.C. Tim Page was looking forward to the Washington debut of the Iraqi National Symphony. He's still looking forward to it. According to Page, last night's performance, which was callously manipulated by politicians and press alike, and in which the INS was mixed in with members of the D.C.-based National Symphony Orchestra, wasn't a concert so much as a cynical photo-op for the Bush administration. "The State Department flew 60 musicians the 6,200 miles from Baghdad to Washington to play for less than an hour in tandem with members of the National Symphony Orchestra. As Winston Churchill might have put it, rarely have so many traveled so far to do so little." Washington Post 12/10/03
A Whiff Of Elgar A long-forgotten 42-second piece of music by Elgar is being recorded by the Hallé orchestra in the BBC's Manchester studios. It's "thought to have been the world premiere of a composition Elgar completed more than 80 years ago." The Guardian (UK) 12/11/03
Posted: 12/10/2003 6:48 pm
Let's Don't God Save The Queen! David Blunkett is a sportswriter who has had to endure more singing of England's national anthem than anyone ought to have to, he writes. What a sad little tune, without much redeeming value. "God Save The Queen offers neither entertainment nor cultural commentary... it stubbornly refuses to transcend the 18th-century stolidity of its four-square rhythms and trite melody." Maybe it's time for a competition for a new national song? The Guardian (UK) 12/11/03
Posted: 12/10/2003 6:32 pm
Clamping A Lid On Iraqi Orchestra Musicians The Wall Street Journal sends a reporter to meet with members of the Iraqi National Symphony during their visit to Washington DC. A small, but significant problem, though: how to get through the layers of officials to actually meet with any musicians? After a month of futile trying, Ayad Rahim finally gets a few minutes with three musicians, but nothing substantive. So much for "cultural exchange." OpinionJournal 12/10/03
Posted: 12/10/2003 3:56 pm
Funding The Arctic Arts A new initiative from the Rasmuson Foundation will create a 10-year, $20 million arts funding program in Alaska, with money from the foundation going to develop a cultural scene as unique as America's northernmost state. "Over the years, arts groups in Alaska have struggled for money. At the apex, 1982, the Alaska State Council on the Arts received nearly $5 million in state money, handing out more than $4 million in grants... for 2004, it is about $460,000." Alaskan arts groups have relied mostly on private donations to survive, but it can be hard to solicit donations to cover day-to-day operations. That's where the Rasmuson program comes in. Anchorage Daily News 12/11/03
Posted: 12/11/2003 5:22 am
Christians Against Ridicule Clive Hibbert is the president of Christians Against Ridicule. He writes that "over the last few decades there has been a shift in the way that Christianity is portrayed in the media that needs to be challenged. Rarely a day goes by today without underhand and insidious mockery of the Christian faith. It's nothing specific or too damaging in its own right, but the cumulative effect is more harmful than any one-off headline grabber. It is as if Christians have become the convenient and silent whipping boy for the sound-bite generation." The Guardian (UK) 12/09/03
Posted: 12/10/2003 7:46 pm
Illinois's New Poet Laureate "When legendary wordsmith Gwendolyn Brooks died in December 2000 after more than three decades as Illinois' poet laureate, she left behind some mighty big shoes to fill. On Wednesday, following a three-year search, poet and teacher Kevin Stein replaced her. A longtime English professor at Bradley University in Peoria and the married father of two, he edged out co-finalist Rodney G. Jones of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale." Chicago Sun-Times 12/11/03
Posted: 12/11/2003 5:48 am
The Literary Lion Of Tulsa For nearly half a century, Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko has been "a piercing voice of conscience, sometimes bitterly angry, other times overflowing with enthusiasm and hope. Many Americans see him as part Walt Whitman and part Bob Dylan; Russians know him as a wildly popular poet who embodies their country's spirit and has often screamed truths that others feared to whisper. His fame has spread far beyond his homeland, and today he is among the world's most widely admired living writers." And now he's in Tulsa... The New York Times 12/11/03
Posted: 12/10/2003 7:51 pm
Mixed Results For Ontario Theater Fests What with the down American economy and the SARS scare keeping many tourists out of Ontario, the last couple of years have been a struggle for the Shaw and Stratford festivals, southern Ontario's duelling theater showcases. The numbers on the latest season are out this week, and Stratford posted a modest surplus, while Shaw announced its first deficit in a decade. Still, Stratford exceeded 600,000 ticket-buyers for the fourth year in a row, even after having to cancel six shows as a result of the massive power outage which hit the northeast in August. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/11/03
Posted: 12/11/2003 6:12 am
TV Nation (On Stage) Plays are starting to look too much like TV, complains playwright Joanna Laurens. "Where are the subtle plays, plays that address current social issues by sidling up to them, not by hitting you over the head with them? That is what I want to see. I don't want the same experience from both television and theatre. The mediums don't function in the same way - and yet, they are increasingly being used interchangeably. Let's put this play on the screen; let's put this film on the stage. Let's clog up our theatres with naturalism." The Guardian (UK) 12/11/03
Posted: 12/10/2003 6:53 pm
UK Theatre: Wanker Nation? What can you tell about a country by the plays it produces? An American critic drops in to the London stage, and reports that British playwrights seem to have a dismal perception of today's UK. "The organised, shimmering intelligence of contemporary British theatre contrasts, shockingly, with its vision of a hopelessly incompetent wanker nation. Is the Great Brittle of these 12 plays, a country where no one has any faith in anything, true to the life people are living outside the theatre? Or is the truer portrait of Britain in late 2003 that piece of street theatre enacted by thousands of well-behaved, jolly protesters in Trafalgar Square last month, toppling the papier-mché statue of George Bush? The Guardian (UK) 12/11/03
Posted: 12/10/2003 6:41 pm
"Angels" - Missing Out "Angels in America" is such a creature of the theatre, that no matter how skilled the screen translation, it loses something on the TV. "For all its gorgeous writing, “Angels” doesn’t prove suited to film the way “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” did. Mr. Kushner’s plays are strict creatures of the theater in ways that many of his predecessors’ and most of his contemporaries’ are not. He is our foremost playwright of the imagination. I mean this partly in the sense that he can send characters darting off to Heaven or Antarctica without seeming foolish, but mostly in the sense that, on the stage, his plays demand that we engage our own imaginations." New York Sun 12/10/03
Posted: 12/10/2003 4:05 pm
A Home For Frankenstein The Bodleian Library got a £3 million gift from the National Heritage memorial fund to save a trove of Mary Shelley's papers in one place - and save the original manuscript of a Gothic classic. The award is to be used towards the purchase of a collection known as the Abinger papers, until now in private hands. The Guardian (UK) 12/11/03
Posted: 12/10/2003 6:44 pm
TIFF Picks A New Director "Noah Cowan, who began his cinematic career at age 15 selling tickets for the Toronto International Film Festival, was crowned the fete's new co-director yesterday. This self-described 'child of the festival,' was one of 12 American and Canadian candidates who applied for the job, one of the top film-related postings on the planet." Cowan was previously associate director of programming for TIFF, before leaving in 1997 to head up a distribution company in New York. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/11/03
Posted: 12/11/2003 6:11 am
Battle Of The Network Stars At The 49th Parallel Canada has always been concerned about the risk to its homegrown culture from the American pop culture juggernaut. But these days, the situation, particularly in the television realm, seems dire: the public funding upon which Canadian TV writers and producers rely is at record low levels, and Canadians seem increasingly willing to abandon homegrown product for American shows. With most Canadians now able to receive all the major American broadcast networks on cable, and many additional American programs being rebroadcast on Canadian channels, Canada's TV industry is at a loss as to how to recapture its audience. Edmonton Journal 12/11/03
Posted: 12/11/2003 5:59 am
Filmmakers For Global Peace Global peace may sound like an awfully lofty goal, especially for a group of artists with little to no political clout, but no one has ever accused filmmakers of allowing harsh reality to stand in the way of idealism. "This week through Sunday, Orlando is host to a cultural event that would seem much more happily scheduled in the 1960s, and maybe better in Woodstock, N.Y.: the first Global Peace Film Festival. It's the creation of Shaikh Abdul Alishtari, a genuine Moroccan sheik and founder and CEO of the Orlando-based GlobalProtector.net Web filter company, who came up with the idea just before the latest Iraq war." Chicago Tribune 12/11/03
Posted: 12/11/2003 5:51 am
Game On Video games have fast become the recreation of choice. "Figures for the overall size of the industry in 2003 will not emerge until March but, in 2002, the UK leisure software market value topped £1bn for the first time, compared with cinema box-office income of £755m and video/DVD rental worth £500m." The Guardian (UK) 12/11/03
Posted: 12/10/2003 6:37 pm
Hollywood's Got Game(s) Hollywood's top movie producers are teaming up with computer gamer producers to collaborate on projects. Why? "Nothing grabs Hollywood's attention more than money. And with video-game sales topping Hollywood box office receipts for the second year in a row (games raked in $30 billion in global sales versus the movie industry's $20.4 billion in 2002), Hollywood agencies have gone virtual." Wired 12/10/03
Posted: 12/10/2003 5:19 pm
