What's Wrong With Germany? If it is true, as Jimmy Carter once asserted, that nations can find themselves in a state of collective malaise, there is no doubt that Germany in 2004 would qualify as downright sickly, at least as far as its own residents are concerned. Strangely, when viewed from an objective standpoint, Germany doesn't seem to be any worse off economically, culturally, or politically, than most other European nations, but England and France "do not seem to be in quite the despairing mood that Germany is in. Is the difference perhaps, as some have been saying, Germans just enjoy complaining? Or does it run deeper?" The New York Times 03/24/04
Posted: 03/24/2004 5:46 am
They're Worth How Much? Well, Give 'Em Back! "Two foundations set up by the late Lord Beaverbrook are claiming ownership of two paintings at a New Brunswick art gallery named in his honour, saying they're too valuable to remain there. The Montreal-based Canadian Beaverbrook Foundation and its British counterpart have an appraisal report from Sotheby's auction house that suggests two unnamed works among the 200 in the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton should be displayed elsewhere." But representatives of the gallery don't want to give up the paintings, which they say were a gift to the province, and accuse the Beaverbrook estate of trying to reclaim the paintings because the family is in financial trouble. Toronto Star 03/24/04
Posted: 03/24/2004 7:00 am
Gehry Strikes Back Ever since Frank Gehry unveiled his design for the reinvented Art Gallery of Ontario, the plans have been under attack from community groups and preservationists concerned about cost overruns and the detruction of the existing AGO. Gehry is not known as a fiery figure, but the piling on appears to have gotten his hackles up. He hotly disputes the notion, advanced by a prominent columnist, that his projects frequently come in massively over budget, inviting the writer to produce numbers to back up his claim. And as to the charge that his plans would wipe out a popular sculpture atrium added to the AGO in 1993, Gehry claims that his design will leave a large part of the atrium intact, and that the overall expansion will enhance the space. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 03/24/04
Posted: 03/24/2004 6:14 am
Looking At Beck's Futures This year's Beck's Futures Prize show is up. "The 10 shortlisted artists will split £40,000, while the overall winner with get an additional £20,000. There is a rumour going round the gallery that if he wins, Andrew Cross will spend the prize money on six and a half miles of model rail track. "No," he says. "I'm going to buy a Saab." The Guardian (UK) 03/24/04
Posted: 03/23/2004 10:02 pm
Standoff in San Francisco San Francisco Opera, which is looking to rebound from a nearly $4 million deficit in 2003, may be staring down the barrel of a strike by the company's chorus, dancers, and production staff, an action which could cancel the SFO's summer season. The company previously reached an agreement for a 5% pay cut with its orchestra musicians, and says that it cannot afford more than a 2% raise for the members of the chorus, who are paid less than the pit musicians and are not guaranteed work. But the union representing the chorus insists that the current arrangement is unfair, and wants the singers' work weeks to be guaranteed, and for their salaries to be pegged to 90% of the orchestra's scale. San Francisco Chronicle 03/24/04
Posted: 03/24/2004 5:25 am
Musicians Demand: Equal Pay For Equal Play Violinists in the Beethoven Orchestra in Bonn, Germany, are suing for a pay raise - on the grounds that they play many more notes per concert than their musical colleagues - the flutists, oboists, brass, etc... The Guardian (UK) 03/24/04
Posted: 03/23/2004 9:48 pm
Big Music Sues 500 More Downloaders Music sales are up this year (and profits too) but that isn't stopping Big Music from suing downloaders. "The Recording Industry Association of America said Tuesday it is suing another 532 people -- including 89 on university campuses -- in its latest wave of lawsuits against alleged file swappers. Since September, the industry trade group has tried to sue 1,977 people in various parts of the country for allegedly trading music illegally on file-sharing networks. Most of the suits are pending. This time, the RIAA made a point of targeting people who trade on university campuses, who are most likely students." Wired 03/23/04
Posted: 03/23/2004 6:28 pm
The Queen vs. The Beatle Back in 1970, a UK gallery displaying several drawings by John Lennon was prosecuted by the crown for supposedly violating an obscenity statute by publicly showing Lennon's work. The case was thrown out on a technicality, and was chalked up to overzealous prosecution. But new documents released by the National Archives show that the case against Lennon's art could have been much more serious, had not the prosecutor been alerted to the potentially wider implications of such a prosecution, and reconsidered, lest his actions lead to a nationwide precedent of censorship. BBC 03/23/04
Posted: 03/24/2004 5:10 am
Art To Memorialize Rwandan Genocide A decade after the genocide that left more than 800,000 dead, Rwanda is building memorial centers. "Ten years on, Rwanda is erecting its first proper memorials - and racing to complete them by April 7, the anniversary of the first day of slaughter, when centres will open their doors to survivors, perpetrators, scholars and tourists. For those who have kept guard over mass grave sites lest the remains - proof of the genocide - disappear, these centres offer a chance to end their vigil and rebuild their lives." The Guardian (UK) 03/24/04
Posted: 03/23/2004 10:22 pm
The Lomax Legacy "The lifework of the late legendary American folklorist Alan Lomax has been acquired by the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress... Lomax, who took his first folkloric steps at the library in the 1930s, recorded and collected indigenous music, dances and stories from this country and others. He was especially fascinated by the idea that a culture's music or way of dancing speaks to its very core. He marveled at the relationship of one people's music to another's and he tried to break down musical expression into what he called 'cantometrics,' a quantifiable set of attributes such as tones, beats, phrasings." Washington Post 03/24/04
Posted: 03/24/2004 7:07 am
Tsing Loh Gets The Last Bleeping Word Public radio commentator Sandra Tsing Loh, who was unexpectedly fired from Santa Monica station KCRW last month after uttering an expletive in a prerecorded commentary, has landed across town at Los Angeles's KPCC. The hiring is something of a coup for KPCC, which is owned by Minnesota Public Radio, and which has been aggressively competing for a share of KCRW's L.A. audience since its purchase. KCRW had offered to rehire Loh after a wave of bad publicity, but she declined to return. Los Angeles Times 03/24/04
Posted: 03/24/2004 6:22 am
My Father, The Architect A new documentary by filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn is being called "a fierce yet tender reckoning with [architect] Louis Kahn's complicated legacy. The film explores not just the gift and gravitas of the man's global span of buildings, but also his mystery as a father." The younger Kahn's film is a direct and unapologetic effort to reconcile his father's global reputation as a designer who gave his all to the world with the private scandal of a man who kept three different families in various corners of the world. It could have been a fruitless effort, but then, the younger Kahn met a Bangladesh architect who managed to put it all in perspective... Denver Post 03/24/04
Posted: 03/24/2004 6:03 am
Zaha Hadid - Stranger At Home Architect Zaha Hadid, who won this year's Pritzker Prize, lives in London. "But while her small collection of completed works has catapulted her to recognition in America and on the Continent, she has not a single building to her name in Britain, where she has lived for 30 years. Although her designs won a competition for the Welsh opera house, local politics, which found her strangely angled planes too much to stomach, saw them off. Since then she has repeatedly entered British competitions such as one for a multi-million pound BBC music centre in west London, without luck." The Telegraph (UK) 03/24/04
Posted: 03/23/2004 10:36 pm
The Teacher, Her School, And Now A Church Anna Scher spent 35 years building one of Britain's most unconventional theatre schools, teaching thousands of students. Then she fell ill, and was replaced at the school. Though she's teaching again, the school. Now she's teaching again, but at the church down the street from her school, which sits empty... The Guardian (UK) 03/24/04
Posted: 03/23/2004 10:13 pm
A Theatre Grows In Brooklyn "A $22 million, 299-seat theater designed by the architects Frank Gehry and Hugh Hardy is expected to be the newest ornament of a growing cultural district in Brooklyn." The New York Times 03/24/04
Posted: 03/23/2004 9:46 pm
Power to the People Those "customer reviews" on Amazon.com may seem like a harmless way for readers to have their say about the books they purchase, but to book publishers, they represent a very real expansion of the traditional critical press. In fact, the most prolific of Amazon's amateur reviewers now receive upwards of 60 free books every month from publishers hoping for a favorable nod. As the culture of online media continues to evolve, and the notion of "expert" commentary and analysis becomes ever more blurred, these unpaid book critics are starting to have a palpable effect on the industry they cover. Los Angeles Times 03/24/04
Posted: 03/24/2004 6:36 am
Newly Discovered Kipling A newly deciphered story by Rudyard Kipling is being published. "Kipling wrote the story in 1897 when he was 32, apparently as a draft introductory tale for the Stalky & Co volume. "Deciphering Kipling's handwriting was fiendishly difficult. I doubt whether he himself could have read it. He was in such a hurry - his mind was running faster than his hand." The Guardian (UK) 03/24/04
Posted: 03/23/2004 10:27 pm
A New Yorker In LA Where do most of the New Yorker magazine's readers live? Obvious, right... but only if your answer was California. According the magazine's "latest publisher's statement, almost a million copies were sold during the second half of 2003. During the same period, the magazine's total paid circulation in California reached 167,580, exceeding sales in New York for the first time. (Paid circulation in New York for that period reached 166,630.)" Village Voice 03/23/04
Posted: 03/23/2004 6:22 pm
Martin Boosts Canadian TV Budget The Canadian government has pledged to increase its contribution to the Canadian Television Fund by $38 million a year, news which is being hailed by independent documentarians and producers nationwide. Cuts to the fund in recent years contributed to a dismal year for the industry in 2003, and new Prime Minister Paul Martin made a point of calling for the restoration of previous funding levels. But some other Canadian arts groups are none too pleased with the PM's priorities, as major arts organizations will see little in the way of similar funding increases. Toronto Star 03/24/04
Posted: 03/24/2004 6:55 am
Is Public TV Sucking Up To The Pentagon? "Perennially cash-strapped public television producers and filmmakers would ordinarily be thrilled that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting recently unveiled a long-awaited initiative to fund $20 million worth of documentaries on post-Sept. 11 terrorist attack themes. Instead, a recent forum in New York where the organization's executives explained more precisely what kinds of programs they are seeking for 'America at a Crossroads' turned into a shouting and name-calling session." At issue is the perception of filmmakers that the CPB is soliciting propaganda films promoting the Bush administration's view of the world. Los Angeles Times 03/24/04
Posted: 03/24/2004 6:32 am
Film Critic Takes Over Sydney Film Festival Lynden Barber, film critic for The Australian newspaper, has been one of the Sydney Film Festival's harshest critics. So maybe it's a surprise that he's just been named as the festival's next director. "It is a poacher-turns-gamekeeper appointment considering Barber, 48, wrote that film industry insiders were calling for a rocket under the festival after "another mediocre performance" last year. He quoted critics as saying the festival was aloof and slow to address deep structural problems." Sydney Morning Herald 03/24/04
Posted: 03/23/2004 10:51 pm
Jack Valenti Stepping Down From MPAA After 38 years, Jack Valenti is stepping down as head of the Motion Picture Association of America. "In his decades on the job Mr. Valenti, a spry, white-haired Texan who was a special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson, has become a familiar figure on the Hollywood scene. He is also known for creating the current movie ratings system." The New York Times 03/24/04
Posted: 03/23/2004 10:44 pm
NPR Replaces Edwards On Morning Edition After 25 years hosting National Public Radio's Morning Edition, Bob Edwards is being edged out of the job. "Mr. Edwards said he found out early this month that he was being reassigned. 'I was called into an office, and they said, `We're making a change,' You get a line like that, and I guess you should come back with some snappy rejoinder. But of course I did not. I was very surprised." The New York Times 03/24/04
Posted: 03/23/2004 10:41 pm
Winning Rambert Mark Baldwin has a tough job. As artistic director of Britain's Rambert Dance Company, there are expectations. "People regularly demand the impossible of Rambert: to show the latest young thing in dance, to bring a conservative public flooding to see it, and to be the world's main ambassador for British dance creativity." The Telegraph (UK) 03/24/04
Posted: 03/23/2004 10:33 pm
UK Announces New Dance Program The British government has announced a plan to help train and encourage dancers. "A network of dance training centres will be created around the country in the next few years, coupled with grants of between £600 and £3,000 a year to help children attend classes." The Guardian (UK) 03/24/04
Posted: 03/23/2004 10:09 pm
