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Tuesday, May 18




Ideas

The Bare Breasts Of The 1600's "Women of the 1600s, from queens to prostitutes, commonly exposed one or both breasts in public and in the popular media of the day, according to a study of fashion, portraits, prints, and thousands of woodcuts from 17th-century ballads. The finding suggests breast exposure by women in England and in the Netherlands during the 17th century was more accepted than it is in most countries today. Researchers, for example, say Janet Jackson's Super Bowl baring would not even have raised eyebrows in the 17th century." Discovery 05/17/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 6:26 pm

Visual Arts

Turner Prize Shortlist This year's shortlist for the Turner Prize has been announced. "The four artists on the shortlist are Kutlug Ataman, Jeremy Deller, Langlands and Bell and Yinka Shonibare. The installation of video and photos from Afghanistan by Langlands and Bell is called The House of Osama Bin Laden." BBC 05/18/04
Posted: 05/18/2004 6:52 am

Denver To Get New Contemporary Art Center Denver is getting a new contemporary art center. "The 15,000-square-foot art center is expected to open in late 2005 or early 2006 as part of Belmar, a $750 million retail, office and residential development. This facility, modeled after leading contemporary spaces such as P.S. 1 in New York City, will serve as a kind of artistic research center with world-class exhibitions, scholarly publications and regular symposiums. The Lab finally gives the Denver art scene what it has desperately needed - a flexible, high-level alternative art space to complement the Denver Art Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver." Denver Post 05/17/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 6:30 pm

Uffizi To Be Greatly Expanded Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has decided that the Uffizi should be expanded to rival the size of the Louvre or British Museum. "A proposal to enlarge the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, under discussion since the end of World War II, has been fast-tracked by the Italian government. Mr Berlusconi has announced that Euros 60million ($72 million) project to double the size of the available display space from 6,000 to 13,000 square-metres is to be completed by 2006." The Art Newspaper 05/17/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 5:15 pm

Roomful Of Turkey (Feathers) "If you stick a quarter of a million turkey feathers dyed black on all four walls of a room in a major art gallery, you are bound to get some kind of reaction from visitors - if only splutterings about taxpayers' money. Curators at Manchester Art Gallery said this week that they were delighted that the responses to Susie MacMurray's installation, Flock, have been the most intense since the gallery reopened in 2002 after being extended and refurbished." The Guardian (UK) 05/15/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 3:37 pm

sponsor

Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative: Discover the power of mentoring. Launched in 2002, the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative programme pairs gifted young artists with renowned artists in their fields, for a year of one-on-one mentoring. The mentors for the Second Cycle are Sir Peter Hall, David Hockney, Mario Vargas Llosa, Mira Nair, Jessye Norman and Saburo Teshigawara. The Second Year of Mentoring begins in May 2004. http://www.rolexmentorprotege.com/

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Music

Haimovitz: Bach In The Clubs Cellist Matt Haimovitz has given up traditional concert life to play in nightclubs. "No one hearing Mr. Haimovitz at CBGB could doubt his integrity and passion as he continues a 50-state tour that included a performance at a pizza palace in Jackson, Miss. Still, just as there are trade-offs when restless young listeners go to a chamber music concert at a venerated recital hall where they are expected to sit quietly and pay attention, no drinking, no eating, there are trade-offs to hearing Mr. Haimovitz play at a place like CBGB, among them his use of reverberant amplification." The New York Times 05/18/04
Posted: 05/18/2004 7:09 am

Scottish Opera Gets Emergency Grant (But Company Cuts Are Made) The ailing Scottish Opera is to be given £5 million of public money to bail it out of a financial crisis on condition that its chorus members go part-time and administrative posts are cut. The opera's youth work could also be handed to a national youth arts company under plans to restructure the beleaguered organisation. Proposals to cut the 53-strong orchestra have been rejected, but the permanent contracts for the 35 chorus singers could be terminated, while administrative posts will also be scaled back." Glasgow Herald 05/17/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 6:36 pm

Australian Inquiry Into Orchestras' Health The Australian government is opening an inquiry into the health of the country's six major symphony orchestras. "Three of the six symphony orchestras were flagged in a recent Australian National Audit Office report as having had difficulty continuing as going concerns in 2002, and two, the Adelaide and Queensland symphonies, will post deficits for 2003." The Australian 05/18/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 5:54 pm

Ft. Wayne Phil To Post $300,000 Deficit "The Fort Wayne (Indiana) Philharmonic is expected to report a $300,000 budget shortfall at the close of the 2003-04 season and may have to mortgage its building." Indianapolis Star (AP) 05/17/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 5:06 pm

Jansons Legacy At The Pittsburgh Symphony This week Mariss Jansons leaves his post as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony. "Jansons inherited an ensemble of first-rate musicians. And with that beaming smile and charming personality, he navigated them to warmer artistic waters. If they were choppy at times, it's clear Pittsburgh and its orchestra ultimately benefited from him as captain, and he with them. The city that repaired his heart with a defibrillator and warmed it with a cordial writing campaign received in return the kind of passionate performances that result in the loftiest of musical standards." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 05/16/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 3:28 pm

  • Who Will Succeed Jansons In Pittsburgh? "With potential candidates streaming into the vacuum next season -- including Marin Alsop, Martin Haselbock, Peter Oundjian and Mark Wigglesworth -- it may take a year even to name a designate. Pinchas Zukerman comes often next year as a pseudo music director and Hans Graf will lead the PSO on an important European tour in 2005, but both appear to be far down the list. Candidates such as Donald Runnicles, Alan Gilbert, Leonard Slatkin and Antonio Pappano may now be in the running, though they need to get in front of the orchestra." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 05/16/04
    Posted: 05/17/2004 3:12 pm

Arts Issues

Vancouver Arts Presenter Appeals For Programming Help "After a season of 'financial suicide' at the Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts, the co-owner of the troubled facility is appealing to Vancouver theatre-goers to tell him what kind of programming they'd like to see. 'Most things haven't worked in terms of audiences even though we've offered a huge variety'." Vancouver Sun 05/17/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 5:50 pm

Italy's New Party Of Aesthetics Italy has a new political party. "The Party of Beauty’s manifesto is simple: stop destroying Italy’s landscape with uncontrolled development and stop inappropriate new building in the cities. “We have got to protect the identity of places”, said Mr Sgarbi, who is well known to the Italians as an art historian and tv pundit. “We have to give this battle some political bite. I am realistic about the number of people likely to go for us, but..." The Art Newspaper 05/17/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 5:13 pm

Company Sues Newspaper Over Donation To Arts Center "Cox Enterprises Inc., which owns nearly half of The Daytona Beach News-Journal, has sued the newspaper's board of directors, accusing them of wasting $13 million for naming rights to a community arts center in Daytona Beach. The lawsuit seeks to stop the transaction and return the money to the newspaper, or have Cox's ownership share bought out. Cox also wants unspecified damages and prior approval for any similar deals in the future." Baltimore Sun (AP) 05/15/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 3:42 pm

Denver Arts Post Big Gains In 2004 It's been a rough couple of years for the business of being an arts organization. But in Denver, at least, the tough times are decidedly over. Ticket sales and memberships are up in dramatic fashion in the first quarter of 2004. Rocky Mountain News 05/16/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 3:19 pm

People

Andy Goldsworthy In Nature "Officially, Andy Goldsworthy is a leading member of the Earth Art movement, which was founded in the long-haired 60's and is invariably billed in textbooks as an attempt to free the art object from the marketplace. Almost disappointingly free of self-importance, he describes his most formative experience as the time he spent as a farm laborer in Leeds, England, where he came to think of stacked bales of hay as 'minimalist sculptures.' Curiously enough, these days, Goldsworthy is more valued in America than he is in his native England, perhaps because the London art world tends to disparage the notion of landscape as too gentlemanly and old-fashioned, too English. New York Times Magazine 05/16/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 6:45 pm

Theatre

Scotland's Oldest Theatre Could Close "Owners of Scotland's oldest working theatre - the Theatre Royal in Dumfries - have warned that it could close if they are forced to abandon a planned multi-million pound renovation scheme. The playhouse, in Shakespeare Street, was built in 1792 and was saved from demolition in 1959 when it was bought by the Guild of Players. Robert Burns was a patron and JM Barrie was inspired at the theatre to write plays including Peter Pan. Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin were visitors."
BBC 05/18/04
Posted: 05/18/2004 6:59 am

Edinburgh Fringe Has NY On Its Mind The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is starting a new award, worth several thousand pounds, to pay for winning performers to take their show to a major New York theatre. After ticket sales increased by a record 10 per cent last year, the Fringe sees further opportunities to draw both American performers and audiences to the biggest arts festival in the world. It is also keen to offer a chance for performers from Britain, Europe, or even the United States to get their big break in New York." The Scotsman 05/17/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 7:22 pm

Publishing

Racing To Save Sherlock's Papers Scotland's "foremost expert on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has launched a last-minute campaign to ensure that recently-discovered papers by the Sherlock Holmes author, which are due to be auctioned by Christie’s, are saved for the British nation." The Scotsman 05/17/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 7:28 pm

The Modern Book Star Tour "As more and more celebrities--Sting, Madonna, Hillary Clinton and her mate--latch onto their inner author (and the attendant hefty advance), then take to the road to publicize their efforts, book signings are requiring far more preparation than the purchase of a large box of Sharpies. There are rules, there are regulations, there are wristbands..." OpinionJournal.com 05/
Posted: 05/17/2004 5:09 pm

Wood: The Problem With Novelists "The simple but profound problem with many novelists, as James Wood reads them, is that they have failed to realise the true nature of their chosen form; they are artists who have not yet learned how to reply to their calling. Stendhal once famously compared the novel to a mirror being carried down the road, innocently catching all the angles of life. By contrast, Wood argues, contemporary novelists too often treat their pages more like flypaper, ready to cling on to any randomly floating bits of cultural debris." The Guardian (UK) 05/15/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 3:47 pm

The Curse Of The Big Advance Hari Kunzru "received a sum approaching £1.25m for the UK, American and European rights to his first novel, The Impressionist, and, around the time of its publication, he was so predictably and so tediously hyped, there was every reason for assuming that he would soon disappear - yet another literary shout reduced to a whisper. For the truth is that however many long-haul air fares and pieces of groovy Sixties furniture an advance buys you (I gather he likes Verner Panton), such immensely fat deals are more a curse than a blessing. Even if, by some miracle, the first book is a hit, the second is doomed." The Observer (UK) 05/16/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 3:09 pm

Dance

Tacoma Ballet Dumps Orchestra, Hires Another Last Christmas the Tacoma City Ballet almost lost the Tacoma Symphony as its pit orchestra for Nutcracker two days before performances were to begin over a dispute over broadcast on the city's local TV channel. So when the company decided to expand its programming to include orchestral accompaniment for all of this season's productions, it dropped the Tacoma Symphony and signed its crosstown rival - Northwest Sinfonietta. Tacoma News-Tribune 05/16/04
Posted: 05/17/2004 7:08 pm


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