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Thursday, January 29




Ideas

Why Johnny Can't Choose People want more choices in life, or so they say. But a new study suggests that people presented with more than a few choices have a much harder time making decisions, and may choose to make no decision at all, rather than cope with the stress of multiple options. So perhaps it follows that, when it comes to matters of public policy, our government needs to stop giving us so many options, and make a few well-reasoned decisions on our behalf. So said a psychology professor in a New York Times op-ed last week. But Ronald Bailey isn't buying that argument: "One suspects that his unspoken converse is that sound public policy consists of the government restricting options and forcing Americans to do what people like Professor Schwartz think is good for them." Reason 01/28/04
Posted: 01/28/2004 8:44 pm

Visual Arts

Gehry Comes Home Frank Gehry grew up in the same Toronto neighborhood which houses the Art Gallery of Ontario, and this week, he returned home to present the AGO with his plans for the museum's latest expansion. "Mr. Gehry's design includes a frontal promenade covered by a tilted 60-foot-high glass window the length of two football fields. There will be multistory light blue titanium walls intended to fade into the sky and turn gold on cloudy days. A grand glass roof will cover the museum's central Walker Court. And a giant winged spiral staircase made of Douglas fir will double as a piece of interior sculpture that soars into the court's glass ceiling." The New York Times 01/29/04
Posted: 01/29/2004 6:40 am

  • Subtle, But Sincere, Just Like Us Martin Knelman sees a great deal of Frank Gehry's own past, as well as Toronto's cultural progression, in the AGO design. "Rather than showing off, it makes connections, weaving together threads of its own past, its roots in an eccentric neighbourhood, and the ambitions symbolized by its increasingly impressive art collection. Like Toronto itself, Gehry's AGO refuses to call attention to itself. Rather it whispers and entices, draws you in, and reveals its secrets only to those willing to explore hidden pathways. It's the perfect articulation for a city whose essence is not skyscrapers but almost invisible ravines that tourists often fail to notice." Toronto Star 01/29/04
    Posted: 01/29/2004 6:35 am

  • $195 Million May Not Be Enough To Let Gehry Be Gehry To Lisa Rochon, the new AGO design looks as if someone told Frank Gehry that he needed to tone down his act a bit. The 600-foot canopy lacks the swoop and sense of motion we've come to associate with Gehry, and "his deft meshing of volumes is nowhere to be found in the big, hulking box that rises 140 feet... at the southern back of the gallery." Many of the design's limitations seem to have been budget-driven, but Rochon is buoyed by Gehry's declaration that the design is still, at some level, a work in progress. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/29/04
    Posted: 01/29/2004 6:32 am

Attendance Down In Chicago "Blaming 'the economy and the Xbox,' officials said Wednesday that more than half of Chicago's biggest museums suffered attendance drops last year, with the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry down by double digits." Some museums which saw increases in attendance could trace the surge to one or more 'blockbuster' exhibitions it put on in the last year. Most museum officials seem to agree that the central problem for arts organizations is that people are given so many entertainment choices today that no one organization can count on luring in huge numbers of patrons. Chicago Sun-Times 01/29/04
Posted: 01/29/2004 6:19 am

For When Your Art Has Be There Right Now An East London gallery is soliciting art from graphic artists, designers, and filmmakers for a new exhibition. Anyone who responds to the request will likely have his/her work displayed, but only if the art is sent, as requested, by e-mail or CD. Not surprisingly, a computer company is sponsoring the project, and recently installed thousands of dollars of printers, projectors, and other equipment there. "When a piece of art is received, via e-mail or on a CD, it is printed out on huge machines, mounted, then hung on the wall for all to enjoy." BBC 01/28/04
Posted: 01/29/2004 5:30 am

Saving The Whitney, Holistically When Adam Weinberg was announced as the new head of the Whitney Museum of American Art, observers could only wonder at the task ahead of the soft-spoken man who had just accepted the top job at one of the world's most tumultuous museums. "After more than a decade of crises and turmoil... the Whitney has entered what Mr. Weinberg said was a 'period of healing.' And while he said he did not want to appear to be a 'New Age director,' curators say his two favorite words are holistic and synergy." Still, Weinberg can't play Mr. Nice Guy forever, and most expect that some major personnel changes are in the offing. The New York Times 01/29/04
Posted: 01/28/2004 10:28 pm

  • The Whitney Biennial: Now With Sunshine! "When the 2004 Biennial opens this spring, the often controversial survey of contemporary art will extend well beyond the walls of the Whitney Museum of American Art. There will be art from one end of Central Park to the other, including grotesque sculptures of werewolf heads, a ferocious life-size tiger, a bronze bust of Michael Jackson and a 50-foot-tall inflatable pink rubber ketchup bottle topped with a snowmanlike head." The New York Times 01/29/04
    Posted: 01/28/2004 10:26 pm

Please Hand Cancel This Art The Post Office is generally not considered a federal agency to be trifled with. But Chicago artists Michael Thompson and Michael Hernandez de Luna just couldn't resist, after reading about Doonesbury readers who had been trying to mail letters with fake stamps published in the famous comic strip attached, and frequently succeeding. Thompson began cranking out his own satirical stamps a decade ago, and his works have included such classics as a May Day stamp with a picture of an airline crash, and a portrait of Abraham Lincoln with a gun visible behind him. But the game turned serious two years ago, when Hernandez de Luna tried to use a stamp emblazoned with a skull and crossbones and a single word: "anthrax." Reason 01/04
Posted: 01/28/2004 9:59 pm

Dollar's Woes Helping US Art Market "The US dollar's decline has boosted the US art market, with collectors increasingly inclined to buy at the big New York auctions where they can pick up pieces more cheaply... Because of the strong euro, works from European collections that would normally fuel the US market are now more costly for a New York investor. On top of this, insurance costs have rocketed. Both factors are tending to choke off the transfer of artworks to the US, although demand there remains strong." Financial Times 01/26/04
Posted: 01/28/2004 9:52 pm

When Art Attacks (Or Is Attacked) The Swedish prime minister's office has been deluged with thousands of e-mails protesting a Stockholm art exhibition which includes an installation piece the e-mailers view as anti-Semitic. The work, which features a photo of a Palestinian suicide bomber floating in a sea of blood, was vandalized by the Israeli ambassador to Sweden last week, and ever since, Israeli organizations around the world have been blasting the Swedish government for allowing the exhibition to proceed. The latest group to join the fray is the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization which has been urging its supporters to send the protest e-mails. CNN 01/28/04
Posted: 01/28/2004 9:35 pm

  • Previously: Art & The Politics of Diplomacy It all began when the Israeli ambassador to Sweden came across an installation at the National Historical Museum in Stockholm which features a pristine photograph of a recent Palestinian suicide bomber floating freely in a partially frozen sea of blood. Interpreting the work as an endorsement of anti-Israeli terrorism, the ambassador demanded its removal, and then hurled a nearby spotlight into the pool. Shortly thereafter, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called the ambassador to congratulate him.  The Guardian (UK) 01/22/04

Music

A Story To Make Every Violinist Wince You would think that, the more valuable your musical instrument, the tighter you would make your death grip on its case whenever you had occasion to transport the thing. But even great musicians can be distracted, and this week, world-renowned violinist Gidon Kremer, preoccupied with a colleague's cancellation of an upcoming tour, stood up and walked off a train in Baltimore, leaving behind his nearly 300-year-old Guarneri del Gesu, valued at $3 million. The violin was recovered in Washington by Amtrak officials, and transported north to Baltimore in time for Kremer's next performance. Baltimore Sun 01/29/04
Posted: 01/29/2004 5:56 am

Construction Delays Force ENO Cancellation "At a cost of £282,000 in lost ticket sales, English National Opera was forced yesterday to swallow its pride and cancel all performances of its re-opening show, Nixon in China. The Coliseum, its London base, will now open after its £41m rebuild on February 21, a date already postponed by a fortnight, for an as yet undefined 'special event' - which may just be a grand party with a few songs from the stage. The theatre will then close again and the first performances of The Rhinegold, the opening of the first new production in English of Wagner's Ring cycle in 30 years, will probably not happen until early March." The Guardian (UK) 01/29/04
Posted: 01/28/2004 10:08 pm

  • Previously: Coliseum To Reopen, But Is It Enough? The re-opening of the London Coliseum following a 4-year, £41 million renovation will take place at the end of February, and despite some last-minute technical glitches, "advance word is that the project will prove a big success, restoring the original kitschy splendours of Frank Matcham's 1904 architecture." But Rupert Christiansen writes that even the most successful renovation imaginable will not make the Coliseum a truly great opera house, and London has yet to make good on any of the plans devised over the years to erect one. Still, new opera houses are a tough sell with the public these days, so the Coliseum may be as good as Londoners are ever going to get. The Telegraph (UK) 01/28/04

100 Years of Trumpets, Trills, and Turmoil The London Symphony Orchestra turns 100 this year, a good long run for an ensemble with the LSO's lively history. "The orchestra was founded as Britain’s first self-ruling symphonic institution, and its players, who choose their principal conductor and guest conductors, have been notorious for a snarkiness that has caused more than one eminent maestro to turn tail and run." The LSO has always been ranked among the top orchestras in the world, but Charles Michener believes that they never truly ascended to greatness until just recently, when they chose Sir Colin Davis as their latest principal conductor. New York Observer 01/28/04
Posted: 01/28/2004 9:24 pm

Arts Issues

Looking For Respect (And Some Cash, Please) In Louisville It hasn't been a good year for the arts in Louisville, what with the local orchestra making cuts, and countless other arts groups struggling mightily in the new, and frequently donation-less, economy. The city already has a Fund For The Arts, but larger groups in the area complain that they don't get their fair share of the fund's allocated dollars. So what can be done? A conference of arts leaders and supporters came up with a number of ideas to boost the city's cultural scene, and the first order of business seems to be convincing more Louisvillians that they have an arts scene worth supporting. Louisville Courier-Journal 01/29/04
Posted: 01/29/2004 5:50 am

Training Your CEO It has long been the dirty little secret of the arts world that the majority of the people running the show don't actually have any particular training in how the arts world works, or how running an orchestra differs from running, say, a textile mill. It's not that most of these leaders are incompetent people, merely that they are almost forced to learn their job through trial and error. A new program in the UK is aiming to make better administrators out of the folks who run the country's arts groups, and possibly to attract better leaders to the industry. The Guardian (UK) 01/29/04
Posted: 01/29/2004 5:39 am

People

Biting The Hand That Writes The Notes Mauricio Kagel is not your ordinary composer. To begin with, he's never been all that enamored of classical music's grand traditions and more-than-occasional pomposities. And yet, as a dedicated modernist, he belongs to a school of composition which tends to be populated with the genre's most humorless specimens. So how does Kagel deal with being a part of an industry he frequently finds to be far too enamored of its own genius? By using his much-respected musical talents to poke fun, of course. Kagel invented the concept of "instrumental theater" back in the 1960s, and has used it to great effect: in one of his works, the conductor of a small chamber ensemble is instructed to fake a heart attack and "die" on stage. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/29/04
Posted: 01/29/2004 6:37 am

From Enemy Of The State To Official Symbol Nearly every musician knows Paul Robeson's story - the son of a former slave, educated at the best schools America had to offer, grew up to become one of the most admired singers in the world, until he began to speak out on behalf of civil rights for African-Americans, at which point he was very nearly run out of the business. The U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp honoring Robeson's contributions to American culture and society in February, possibly the first time that a branch of the U.S. government has cast him in a positive light. Memphis Commercial Appeal (first item) 01/29/04
Posted: 01/29/2004 6:06 am

Janet Frame, 79 "New Zealand writer Janet Frame, who was reportedly short-listed for the Nobel Prize for Literature last year and drew on her experiences in mental hospitals for her fiction, has died aged 79. Frame, who had leukemia, was regarded internationally as New Zealand's finest writer since Katherine Mansfield, who died in 1923. A recluse for much of her life, she was wrongly diagnosed as schizophrenic when young and spent eight years in mental hospitals, where she was reportedly given shock treatment 200 times. She was saved from a scheduled lobotomy in 1951 when a hospital superintendent learned that her first book, The Lagoon And Other Stories, had won New Zealand's leading award for fiction." Sydney Morning Herald 01/29/04
Posted: 01/28/2004 10:33 pm

A Troubled Mind Monologuist Spalding Gray, who disappeared January 12 from his New York home, had attempted suicide several times in the last year, and had been taking multiple combinations of antidepressant medication for more than two years, in order to deal with the spiralling emotional fallout which began when the author was involved in a near-fatal car accident in Ireland in 2001. Gray, who had battled hereditary depression and bipolar disorder throughout his career, was also escorted off the Staten Island Ferry a few days before his disappearance by security personnel who were afraid that he was preparing to throw himself off the boat. New York 02/02/04
Posted: 01/28/2004 8:31 pm

Theatre

Some Youth Amongst The Blue Hair "The two most frequently repeated bits of common wisdom about the theater are (1) Broadway is dead (or at least in a state of serious decay), and (2) there is simply no audience for live theater among the current 'younger generation' of twentysomethings... Regarding the youthful audiences, it's time to take a closer look at the reality." Hedy Weiss believes that many of the theaters she attends in Chicago do a fine job of luring 20- and 30-somethings to performances, and points out that some theaters consider it a core part of their mission to create theater for the younger demographic. Chicago Sun-Times 01/29/04
Posted: 01/29/2004 6:23 am

Publishing

Handicapping The Field "To get a sense of how The New York Times plans to overhaul its Book Review, just consider the candidates to succeed Charles (Chip) McGrath as the section’s next editor. All have strong nonfiction or current-affairs backgrounds — in line with the newsier direction the Times’ top editors say they want to take the section when they make the much-anticipated appointment as soon as February." New York Observer 01/28/04
Posted: 01/28/2004 8:59 pm

Media

"Fake Critic" Trial Will Proceed Sony will have to answer to charges that it invented a movie critic and attached quotes from non-existent reviews to several of its films. The studio admitted to having concocted the critic known as David Manning, but had argued that free speech laws shielded it from prosecution for the deception. The California Court of Appeals disagreed, declaring Manning's quotes to be commercial speech, which the Supreme Court has said does not enjoy full First Amendment protection. Los Angeles Times (Bloomberg) 01/29/04
Posted: 01/29/2004 6:43 am

Is Oscar Getting Hip? "Tuesday’s Academy Award nominations were filled with surprises, featuring more ethnic minorities in top categories than ever before, nods to comic performances as well as dramatic, the first best director nomination for an American woman and a plethora of nominations for small films. Oscar is apparently loosening up." Detroit News 01/29/04
Posted: 01/29/2004 6:30 am

Dance

Former ABT Star To Head Washington School "Former American Ballet Theatre soloist Rebecca Wright will be the new director of the Washington School of Ballet, the organization is expected to announce today. Wright succeeds the school's founder, Mary Day, who retires this summer." The school says that it very much wanted its new director to be someone with an impressive performance history, rather than merely an administrator. Washington Post 01/29/04
Posted: 01/29/2004 6:56 am

Um, Okay, So... Three Stars Out Of Four, Then? New York City Ballet is, like every other dance company on Earth, marking George Balanchine's centenary with a series of special performances highlighting the master's work. Unfortunately, says Robert Gottlieb, City Ballet chose to cast a decidedly washed-up ballerina in two of Balanchine's most beloved roles, and to allow "echt Broadway" star Susan Stroman to stumble through "a two-and-a-half-hour piece with barely a step in it beyond the most rudimentary. There’s so little dance content, you can hardly even call it pastiche; it’s a show, it’s a hit, but it’s not a ballet." New York Observer 01/28/04
Posted: 01/28/2004 9:08 pm


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