The Gore! The Horror! (We Love It) We seem to be more and more fascinated by images of gore and mutilation. The raw aftermath of violence and death is increasingly captured in images that many people find both repelling and compelling. "The contemporary iconography of carnage is unprecedented and unique in its visceral force." The Observer (UK) 04/04/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 7:45 am
The Arabization Of Europe? Europe's population is getting older, more secular and smaller. It's a model that cannot sustain its current level of social services such as retirement and health care. Where to get a flush of new blood? Neighboring Arab countries have rising propulations... New York Times Magazine 04/04/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 6:51 am
The New Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum will soon reopen after a $63 million overhaul. "The project includes a new lobby, a multistoried new front entrance pavilion and a breathtaking public plaza with dancing-water fountains, cherry trees and a "front stoop" of public seating, all of it extending a common-people-friendly welcome mat to the borough of Brooklyn." New York Daily News 04/04/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 8:16 am
Utah Museum Returns Looted Painting The Utah Museum of Fine Arts has returned a small painting - "Les Jeunes Amoureux" by François Boucher to the son of the man it was looted from in Paris. It was "part of a collection of hundreds that disappeared after a Jewish art dealer, Andre Jean Seligmann, fled with his family to the United States. The painting was donated to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts by a collector in 1993." The New York Times 04/04/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 8:09 am
Emin Makes Up With 8-Year-Olds Artist Tracey Emin has patched up things with the class of eight-year-olds she's been battling with the past week. "After demanding the return of an artwork she made with a group of eight-year-old pupils, Ms Emin has now told the school it can keep it - and has offered to pay the cost of a frame." The Guardian (UK) 04/02/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 7:24 am
- Previously: Emin Vs. The 8-Year-Olds, Part II Tracey Emin worked with a school class of 8-year-olds to create a quilt. The school wants to sell it, but Emin says it's not technically her artwork (thus making it less valuable). Nonetheless, she wants the school to give the quilt to her rather than sell it. And she's angry over the request to sell: "As a result of this incident Tracey has since declined any further requests to work with schools or with young people." The Guardian (UK) 03/30/04
In Iraq: Destroying The History Of Civilization "Protecting antiquities remains a low priority for both the Iraqi and the occupation authorities, according to Iraqis and foreigners involved. Archaeological sites in Iraq have been looted since the end of the Persian Gulf war in 1991, often with the involvement of the government of Saddam Hussein. But in the lawless aftermath of the current conflict, thieves invaded Iraq's archaeological sites in large numbers and stole artifacts from the ancient buried cities of Mesopotamia. Almost a year later, thieves continue to plunder the sites and to erase the tangible record of the world's earliest civilizations." The New York Times 04/04/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 6:35 am
The Source - Looking At The Business Of Succeeding Art The first drafts of art history are written not by the art historians, but by those in the business of art - the dealers and collectors. But how is it that some artists/art works grab a toe-hold in this world, while others fail? The Getty is in the middle of a year-long exploration... The New York Times 04/04/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 6:27 am
Colorado's Next Conductor? Who will succeed Marin Alsop as music director of the Colorado Symphony? "The search apparently has been whittled down to a quartet. Nothing official, but we're banking on Roberto Minczuk, Jeffrey Kahane, Miguel Harth-Bedoya and David Lockington." Rocky Mountain News (Denver) 04/04/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 8:26 am
Music For Mind And Body A new study says that you can improve your health (mental and physical) by working out to certain kinds of music. "According to the journal Heart & Lung, a team of Ohio State University researchers has found that exercising to music — at least to Antonio Vivaldi — not only improves physical conditioning, it also improves mental conditioning. People get smarter if they work out while listening to certain music." Los Angeles Times 04/04/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 8:13 am
Tale Of Two Awards Shows Canada's Junos and Quebec's Felix Awards celebrate Canadian musicians. But where the Felix finds its winners from artists who make their careers almost entirely in Canada, the Junos have been increasingly dominated by Canadians who have struck it big south of the border. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/03/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 7:12 am
Who Was The Real Shostakovich? "Was he a faithful servant of the Soviet regime, as his public behavior and official pronouncements might suggest? Or was he a secret dissident who expressed with musical signs and subtexts all the protest he could not make in words? Or did he live and work, like so many Soviet citizens, in a complicated gray area between those extremes?" Two new books revive the controversy but fail to deliver the definitive answer. The New York Times 04/04/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 5:52 am
On Campus: Political Litmus Test? David Horowitz is "spearheading a campaign to end what he calls discrimination against conservative faculty and students. At its core is an 'academic bill of rights,' written by Mr. Horowitz, that asks universities, among other things, to include both conservative and liberal viewpoints in their selection of campus speakers and syllabuses for courses and to choose faculty members 'with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives'." The New York Times 04/03/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 6:03 am
Seattle's ACT Theatre - A Year After The Crisis Just a year ago, Seattle's ACT Theatre was "fighting for its life after a severe financial meltdown threatened to end the company's nearly 40-year tenure as one of Seattle's major professional theaters. Given the relative suddenness of ACT's fiscal emergency and its need to raise $1.5 million fast to keep its Union Street operation going, survival was no sure thing. But along with restraint and realism, there's the breezy scent of hope circulating through ACT's staff offices and rehearsal halls." Seattle Times 04/04/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 8:32 am
Tiny Theatre, Tiny Town The tiny Opera House in the small town of Reedley, California has a stage that's only 14 feet wide. The 1903 theatre has been restored and a local theatre company has taken up residence. "Whether Reedley can get used to a year-round theater company in a town that isn't big enough to support a movie theater is the question. Think of it this way: To sell out a season, almost 10% of Reedley's population (pegged in the 2000 census as 20,700) would have to attend each show." Fresno Bee (California) 04/04/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 8:19 am
Shakespeare To The Masses The National Endowment for the Arts' Shakespeare tour is the largest tour of Shakespeare in American history. Since September, seven professional companies have been presenting five plays around the county, and will have been seen by audiences in 100 cities and towns, as well as on 16 military bases. "Later this month, the NEA will announce the addition of 21 professional nonprofit theater companies to the tour as part of Phase II. They will do a range of the Bard's plays. By the time both phases are complete, at the end of next year, 'We hope to have introduced 1 million children to Shakespeare'." Boston Globe 04/04/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 7:59 am
Tinkering With Edinburgh (It's What Makes It Great) Brian McMaster has been programming the Edinburgh Festival since 1992. He's constantly tinkering with ways to bring in unlikely audiences. "It is this engagement with the audience that makes the International Festival seem so alive. McMaster's tenure has coincided with increasing collaboration between all the festivals, so that there is growing self-assurance to the city. Once, almost every resident would meet August with a scowl, fleeing if they could, but now only the most curmudgeonly swears at the thesps on the high street. McMaster has brought us in, and without dumbing down." The Observer (UK) 04/04/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 7:34 am
The New Arab-American Playwrights A new generation of Arab-American women playwrights born in the 1960s and 70s is making its mark on New York stages. "Their religious roots vary: they are Christian, Muslim or Zoroastrian, and their national ancestry may be, to name a few, Iranian, Palestinian, Lebanese or Indian. But they are united by a commitment to take their hyphenated experiences to the New York stage, and by their perception that, although many of them are not Arab, that is how they often are seen in the United States at this tense moment in the country's history." The New York Times 04/04/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 6:16 am
Journalist Charges Nabokov Plagiarized Lolita Lolita is nothing if not controversial. Vladimir Nabokov's "relatives and supporters have rejected a claim that her character was plagiarised from a 1916 novel by a German journalist who went on to support Hitler. Michael Marr, a German literary scholar, suggested that a novella, Lolita, written in 1916 by Heinz von Eschwege, may have provided the foundations for the 1955 Nabokov novel." The Guardian (UK) 04/04/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 7:18 am
Movies On Demand. Anytime. Anywhere. New wireless technology allows people to download and watch movies wherever and whenever they want. "With an extended battery life that lasts about six hours, the software allows consumers to download movies at superfast speeds and then view them on a plane. It will be like having a Blockbuster video store in your laptop. You'll be able to download your personal movie to your personal handheld video player while waiting in line for a coffee, then go home and either watch it on the small screen in bed or plug the computer cable into a large display screen in your living room." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/03/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 7:07 am
Choreographers: A Room Of Their Own "The obstacles for an aspiring choreographer are formidable: he must find not only bodies who will work with little or no pay, but also a way to show the outcome publicly. Even those successful enough to get commissions from companies are usually constrained by limited time, punishing rehearsal schedules and the psychological pressures of a looming premiere. Peter Martins, the director of the New York City Ballet, has long believed that choreographers would be making more, and better, ballets if they had the chance to work without these limitations." The New York Times 04/04/04
Posted: 04/04/2004 6:21 am
