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Thursday, February 26




Ideas

Plugged In, Tuned Out How are portable electronics changing our behavior? Take iPods, for example. "Music allows people to use their eyes when they're listening in public. I call it nonreciprocal looking. Listening to music lets you look at someone but don't look at them when they look back. The earplugs tell them you're otherwise engaged. It's a great urban strategy for controlling interaction." Wired 02/25/04
Posted: 02/25/2004 8:41 pm

Visual Arts

Supreme Court To Take Up Nazi Art Theft Case The US Supreme court is taking up the case of an American woman trying to sue Austria for paintings stolen from her family by the Nazis. "The court will decide by summer if she can sue the Austrian government to recover six paintings, worth an estimated $150 million, in federal court in California." San Francisco Chronicle (AP) 02/25/04
Posted: 02/25/2004 10:54 pm

Plan To Double Size Of Uffizi Florence plans to double the size of the Uffizi Gallery, and Italy's culture minister boasts the new gallery will rival the size of the Louvre. "By the time work is completed, visitors to the extensively remodelled Uffizi will be able to see 800 new works, including many now confined to the gallery's storerooms for lack of space." The Guardian (UK) 02/26/04
Posted: 02/25/2004 9:26 pm

Music

In RoadTrip: A Quick Stop In Scotland Sam Bergman on tour with the Minnesota Orchestra: The orchestra swings into its last two stops, beginning with Glasgow. "Musicians, particularly orchestra musicians, tend to be competitive by nature. The process by which we audition for our jobs is far too harsh an difficult for anyone without at least a trace of competitive fire to make it through. Even after we have our jobs secured, we tend to constantly look over our shoulders, wondering how other bands are doing, and how we stack up against them. Playing in the home of another orchestra, with the conductor a familiar commodity, we have a lot on the line, and the desire to measure up to expectations is ridiculously high." RoadTrip (AJBlogs) 02/26/04
Posted: 02/26/2004 7:37 am

America Gets Its National Opera Company The US Congress has marked the changing of the name of the Washington Opera to the "National Opera." "The renaming fulfills an act of Congress passed in June 2000 that designated the 48-year-old company as the National Opera. The involvement of legislators demonstrates "that we value music and we value Washington National Opera as an inherent part of our nation's fabric." Baltimore Sun 02/26/04
Posted: 02/26/2004 7:17 am

Classical Music - Too Old? Too Abstract? What's wrong with classical music, asks Greg Sandow. "The classical music world, on the whole, has no discernable relation to the present day. The music is mainly talked about in scholarly terms, as structures of abstract musical elements, or else as history. Or if emotion ever enters the discussion, there's a tone of piety, or sometimes vague inspiration, a feeling of transcendent exhilaration that, upon examination, has nothing to do with any specific piece that might be played. It comes from classical music as a whole." NewMusicBox 02/04
Posted: 02/25/2004 10:18 pm

Philadelphia Orchestra Gift And Its Obligations A $50 million gift to the Philadelphia Orchestra came with some strings. "The Annenberg grant is the biggest in the ensemble's history and is believed by orchestra leaders to be the second-largest gift ever made to an American orchestra. Taken as a whole, the 12-page agreement, which is signed by Annenberg and orchestra leaders, outlines a broad set of institutional ambitions for the world-famous ensemble - some new, others tried but hobbled in the past by a lack of money. Still, all of the programs outlined in the 12-page agreement cannot be paid for with the interest and other income eventually generated by the $50 million nest egg." Philadelphia Inquirer 02/25/04
Posted: 02/25/2004 9:04 pm

People

The Uncommon Editor "During her 46 years in the publishing business, Judith Jones has become the mouse that roared. If any single human being possesses unerring taste, it is possible that she is that person. Her publishing "finds" include a manuscript by an unknown teen-ager named Anne Frank, a cookbook by an unknown chef named Julia Child and a book of poetry by an unknown scribe named Sylvia Plath." Baltimore Sun 02/26/04
Posted: 02/26/2004 7:22 am

Solving The Medici Assassination "One of the most notorious crimes of the Renaissance, the attempted assassination of Florence's grandest son, Lorenzo dei Medici, has been solved more than 500 years later." Discovery 02/25/04
Posted: 02/25/2004 9:45 pm

Theatre

A Gay Broadway A new wave of gay theatre is hitting Broadway. "We're not talking the odd little play here and there. No, we're talking mainstream hits, the hottest tickets on and off Broadway, what American audiences are cheering in a burst of spring fever even as the culture wars gear up for ugly battle in the presidential election next fall. Queer theater is everywhere, from opulent musicals to profound meditations on truth and beauty to outrageously funny comedies. Miami Herald 02/26/04
Posted: 02/26/2004 8:02 am

The Misunderstood Maestro Orchestra conductors are "among the most alluring humans on earth, but few among the general public understand what they do. As a result, they forever resist credible dramatization in popular culture..." Philadelphia Inquirer 02/22/04
Posted: 02/26/2004 7:06 am

Fiddler - Handle With Care How do you freshen up a classic like Fiddler on the Roof without disturbing those finely etched images so many have of the show? One can "hardly ignore the special place the show holds in the public's affections. 'I told the whole team very early on that I wanted to take care of `Fiddler.' That's a phrase I've never used before. But there's already a vast audience that loves the piece, people who will be bringing their children to the theater, perhaps for the first time. And it's very important not to disappoint." The New York Times 02/26/04
Posted: 02/25/2004 10:11 pm

Hall Sets Record For West End Performances Jerry Hall set a record by appearing in six West End theatre performances in one night. "In just under three and a half hours, the Texan supermodel graced the stage in Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, Fame, Blood Brothers, Anything Goes and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Although she did not have any lines to learn - all were non-speaking roles and one lasted just 30 seconds - the performances last night earned her a place in the Guinness World Records." London Evening Standard 02/25/04
Posted: 02/25/2004 9:51 pm

Worrying About The White Barn "Nearly five years after the death of Lucille Lortel, a clause in her will may determine whether the historic, 148-seat White Barn Theatre in the Cranbury area of Norwalk, Conn., a major summer-stock venue for over 50 years and a key part of her legacy, will be sold or razed, and whether cluster houses will rise on the 18 acres surrounding the site." Backstage 02/25/04
Posted: 02/25/2004 9:15 pm

Shakespeare On Ice (Literally) "Several years ago, Rolf Degerlund, the director of the Ice Globe Theatre, had a vision. Returning to Sweden from London and a visit to the newly restored Globe, he thought, why not recreate the theater in snow and ice? 'What I imagined was actors playing Hamlet with clouds of frost coming from their mouths'." Slate 02/25/04
Posted: 02/25/2004 8:52 pm

Publishing

Of Writers And Politics (When It Mattered) A new biography of James Farrell harkens back to a time in American history "when an author's political convictions genuinely mattered. Nowadays, far from changing anybody else's mind, the typical writer is too apolitical even to think of changing his own." San Francisco Chronicle 02/26/04
Posted: 02/26/2004 9:07 am

Media

Twenty Years Of TV Infotainment The infomercial is 20 years old this year - what a landmark. "Infomercials were born out of a Reagan administration ruling in the mid-1980s that lifted restrictions on how much commercial time stations could air. As a result, struggling cable networks took hold of the concept and sold large chunks of time to the highest bidder." New York Daily News 02/26/04
Posted: 02/26/2004 8:50 am

Art Of The Home Theatre There are too many faceless movie-plexes out there. So many homeowners are commissioning their own home theatres, and some of them are pretty ambitious. "Theaters are not about slapping nice-looking fabrics on walls. You need to make the environment come alive with the architecture. It is the whole definition of the space, the aisles, the stairs to the mezzanine, the kind of memories of old movie palaces that have become part our architectural vocabulary. That's what I try to instill in my work, the echo of the grand spaces that were meant to dazzle the senses before the movie began." Los Angeles Times 02/26/04
Posted: 02/26/2004 7:54 am

Passion Has A Big Day At The Box Office The Passion of the Christ opened on 4,643 screens in 3,006 theaters on Wednesday and took in $15-20 million at the box office, a remarkable feat for a movie based on religion that major studios were reluctant to finance. Los Angeles Times 02/26/04
Posted: 02/26/2004 7:46 am

Getting The Arts Right On TV Drama may be dying on Canadian TV, "but we're very good at producing performing-arts TV. In fact, we're brilliant at it, and Canadian productions in the genre regularly awe international audiences. There are complicated reasons for this, partly rooted in the CBC's role in the Canadian culture. So many performers depend on the CBC for employment that the arts have become interwoven with the TV world. Thus, in Canada we make arts productions uniquely sensitive to television's needs and nuances. We don't just film arts performances for TV. We make and create television art..." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/26/04
Posted: 02/26/2004 7:43 am

Clear Channel Pulls Howard Stern Off Its Stations Clear Channel pulls Howard Stern off its stations "as public scrutiny over salacious speech and suggestive behavior on TV and radio is on the rise after Janet Jackson bared her breast during the Super Bowl halftime show. The move also came the day before Clear Channel chief executive officer John Hogan is to appear before a House subcommittee hearing on broadcast decency." USAToday 02/25/04
Posted: 02/25/2004 10:45 pm

Hollywood's Color Divide Why don't African-Americans have more power in Hollywood? "In the history of the movie studios no African-American has ever had the power to green-light a film. Part of the problem is that the movie business is similar to the Italy of the Medicis; without a patron to offer favor, there's no place to go but down." The New York Times 02/26/04
Posted: 02/25/2004 10:05 pm

Dance

Scottish Ballet Renews Bid For Controversial New Home Scottish Ballet is making another bid to relocate to Tramway. "The ballet company, which has wanted to leave its home in Glasgow's west end for many years, withdrew its bid for some £3.5m of funds in January. However, the ballet believes the Tramway site, in the city's south side and owned by the city council, is still the best option for a new home and is expected to reapply for funds in October." Glasgow Herald 02/26/04
Posted: 02/25/2004 10:52 pm


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