Religion - The Cultural Dividing Line Of Politics? The majority of Americans who attend religious services regularly vote Republican. The majority of Americans who don't attend religious services vote Democrat. "For more than a century, our culture has been divided on the question of whether individual moral actors may justly be held responsible for their deeds. Marx and Freud rocked the 19th century faith in moral responsibility and freedom of will, arguing that human beings are unknowingly in the grip of, respectively, powerful economic and psychosexual forces. Later analysts would discover other latent structures in society that supposedly determine our moral choices. Today, the ideological struggles of liberals and conservatives mirror the clash initiated by Marxists and Freudians with 19th century individualism." Los Angeles Times 05/19/04
Posted: 05/19/2004 6:24 pm
Picasso Stolen From Workshop A small Cubist painting by Pablo Picasso has apparently been stolen from a workshop at Paris's Pompidou Centre, where it was supposed to be restored. The disappearance was only noticed this past week, although no one has seen the painting since January 12. The still-life, entitled Nature morte à la charlotte, is valued at €2.5 million. The Globe & Mail (Agence France-Presse) 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 6:57 am
Court Rules Against Christie's in Urn Authenticity Case "In a decision expected to have major ramifications throughout the international art world, a British judge yesterday found the venerable auction house Christie's guilty of 'negligence' and 'misrepresentation' in the sale 10 years ago of two urns to Canadian heiress Taylor Lynne Thomson... If the complex, 71-page judgment holds, it should result in changes to the way auction houses in Britain and likely elsewhere attest to the accuracy of the information they present in their catalogues and by their staff for the objects they sell. Heretofore, auction houses have described their views on their consignments as being essentially 'opinions,' not statements of fact." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 6:54 am
Whitney on the Web The Whitney Biennial has a web site, of course, just like every other organization on the planet. But unlike many other attempts to merge art exhibits and websurfing, Jim Regan says that this site actually does an excellent job of complementing its real-life counterpart. "The overriding reason for visiting the site will be to view the Art and Artists section. With 108 candidates to choose from, displaying the options in an intelligible manner presents a challenge. This is what the Whitney site does so well." The Christian Science Monitor 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 6:24 am
Turner List Lesson: Shock Is Yesterday's News The Turner Prize jury surprises the art world with its choices for this year's shortlist. "Though the panel did not make it quite explicit yesterday, the lesson of its shortlist was clear: the not-so-Young British Artists, the shock-horror stars of the 1990s, have had their day. This is a shortlist of serious established artists who have been beavering away for decades and are now flirting with middle age." The Guardian (UK) 05/19/04
Posted: 05/19/2004 5:55 pm
Is Success Killing UK Museums? Britain's museums are a big success both in terms of the quality of their collections and with the audiences that throng to see them, writes Nicholas Serota. "But the museum economy itself is near breaking point. The success of free entry has placed ever greater demands on resources - at Tate Modern we have even found a sponsor for lavatory paper. With art prices reaching astronomical levels, we are having difficulty in renewing the collections that are at the heart of what we do." The Guardian (UK) 05/18/04
Posted: 05/19/2004 4:06 pm
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A Dumpster Full of Unanswered Questions So Peter Stumpf has his priceless Stradivarius cello back, thanks (apparently) to the benevolence of a woman who was ready to turn it into a CD rack. But why won't anyone at the L.A. Phil, Stumpf included, answer questions about the incident? Simple embarrassment might be part of the reason, but some observers speculate that the owner of a valuable instrument is much better off if the world doesn't have a lot of details about what harm may have come to it. In fact, the world of high-end instrument dealing is so shady these days that it doesn't seem unlikely that the Philharmonic might be hiding some of what it knows about the case of the stolen cello. The Christian Science Monitor 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 6:19 am
- Previously: Stolen Strad Recovered In Dumpster The Stradivarius cello stolen from a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic a few weeks ago has been recovered. A woman found it damaged in a dumpster and took it home, asking her boyfriend if he might be able to repair it. "The woman also told her boyfriend that if he couldn't, the cello might make an unusual compact disc case. 'Thank God my boyfriend doesn't work too quickly on things of mine'." Los Angeles Times 05/18/04
Jansons in Pittsburgh: Well Worth The Effort Lost in all the hoopla surrounding the impending departure of Pittsburgh Symphony music director Mariss Jansons is the memory of how long it took the orchestra to adjust to its leader. Jansons's style was so different from that of his predecessor, Loren Maazel, that it was several years before musicians and conductor seemed to feel at ease with each other. But the result of the collaboration has been widely deemed to be worth all the effort spent building a rapport - in recent years, the PSO has been hailed by critics as regularly coming up with "once-in-a-lifetime" performances. Jansons bows out this weekend, with the ultimate curtain-closer: Beethoven's 9th. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 5:56 am
NY Phil To Renovate Hall (Again) It was 1976 when the New York Philharmonic, in an effort to improve the acoustics of Avery Fisher Hall, gutted the place and mounted a huge renovation. It didn't help much, and last year, the Phil, not wanting to run the risk of another unsuccessful construction project, attempted a merger with Carnegie Hall. The merger fell through very publicly when the boards of the two organizations couldn't reconcile their schedules and goals, and the orchestra was once again stuck with Lincoln Center. Now, the plan for a new renovation of Avery Fisher is back on, at an expected cost of $300 million. Construction won't begin until 2009, and the Phil will have to find a new temporary home for a couple of seasons during the renovation. The New York Times 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 5:43 am
- No Guarantees The New York Philharmonic has no guarantee that a new Avery Fisher Hall will be any acoustically better than the one it has now. Still, it's a $300 million risk worth taking, says Anthony Tommasini, and not only for acoustical reasons. "The Philharmonic is exploring a bold plan to remove some 350 of its 2,738 seats to make room for a smaller recital hall. Quite apart from acoustics, the hall has long seemed an impersonal and inefficient public space. So these changes would be welcome, perhaps even exciting." The New York Times 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 5:40 am
All That Fuss Over A Hunk Of Wood The science of violin-making hasn't changed much since the days when Antonio Stradivari cranked out some of the greatest instruments known to man. But the music world has changed, in ways both subtle and obvious - top-quality instruments are now bought and sold for unthinkably high prices, and the science behind them is examined in all its minutiae by individuals hoping to unlock the secrets of the great masters. For one American luthier, the quest for the perfect instrument is quixotic, but fulfilling nonetheless. Washington Times 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 5:34 am
Comeback of the Moog What would classic rock music have been without Bob Moog? The New York engineer's musical invention - the world's first playable music synthesizer - revolutionized the genre when it debuted in the late 1960s, and helped keyboardists to emerge as important figures in rock music. "After a long legal battle, Bob Moog not long ago won back the rights to start marketing synthesizers in his name. The timing couldn't have been better. After years in the shadows of digital keyboards and software-based synths, the fat bass and piercing highs of analog keyboards have re-emerged -- big time." Wired 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 5:18 am
Study: Teaching Music Is A Health Hazard "The clash of cymbals, blast of recorders and off-key choirs mean music teachers are exposed to noise levels that can cause hearing loss, concludes a University of Toronto engineering study released yesterday." Toronto Star 05/19/04
Posted: 05/19/2004 6:57 pm
Remaking Davenport, Heavy On The Arts Times have not been good lately in Davenport, Iowa, one of the four adjoining Iowa/Illinois river towns known as the Quad Cities. But the city is trying to make its own good luck with a $113.5 million revitalization program focused on making Davenport a cultural center for the region. From the wholesale renovation of a ballpark frequently called the most beautiful in all the minor leagues to a $9 million dollar museum and performance venue celebrating the city's jazz/blues tradition to a spectacular new $34 million building housing the Davenport Museum of Art, civic leaders have unquestionably been putting their money where their mouths are. Chicago Tribune 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 6:37 am
Arts Consumers - Buying The Expectation "There's a simple truth about marketing arts and culture," writes Andrew Taylor. "Audiences don't buy arts and cultural events. They can't. The experience doesn't exist until well after they've made their purchase decision. Instead, when they are deciding to give their money or time, audiences are 'buying' an expectation, an assumption, a hazy feeling of what that experience might hold. Since audiences can't buy the cultural event, why do so many arts organizations spend all of their energy selling it?..." The Artful Manager (AJBlogs) 05/19/04
Posted: 05/19/2004 6:52 pm
NEA Awards $58 Million In Grants "The endowment announced this week the distribution of $57,958,600 to not-for-profit national, regional, state, and local organizations across the country, funding projects in the categories of arts on radio and television, folk arts infrastructure, heritage and preservation, learning in the arts, and state and regional partnerships. The NEA's budget for the year is $122.5 million." Backstage 05/19/04
Posted: 05/19/2004 4:16 pm
Getting To Know The New Guy As the Colorado Symphony prepares for the arrival of new music director Jeffrey Kahane, comparisons to outgoing MD Marin Alsop are inevitable. Alsop rose to international acclaim during her time in Denver, and the CSO caught some of the attention as a result. Kahane, by contrast, has never topped any overblown lists of conductors thought to be "the next big thing," but he is quietly beloved by musicians, audiences, and administrators nearly everywhere he conducts. He doesn't micromanage his orchestras from a musical standpoint, but behind the scenes, he seems to have his hands in nearly every facet of the organization. Denver Post 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 6:47 am
A New BAM For Washington? Washington DC's Shakespeare Theatre has "just broken ground on its own performing-arts facility - the Harman Centre for the Arts, for completion in 2007. It would be absurd to say that the centre - which will consist of a new 800-seat theatre, the Sidney Harman, as well as The Shakespeare Theatre's current home, the 450-seat Lansburgh - will rival the Kennedy's concert hall, opera house and smaller theatres in grandeur. It will nonetheless provide America's capital with another first-class performing arts destination, much as in New York, BAM complements the Lincoln Centre." Financial Times 05/19/04
Posted: 05/19/2004 6:13 pm
Fugard: Theatre Matters Athol Fugard represents the "conscience of his country." "I still believe theatre's amazing. It doesn't command the size audience that the movies do, or television, but I still think that somehow it's at the matrix of a society in a way that I don't think film and television ever are, certainly not television. Except of course when you get [a show] preceded by a stage production--something like Angels in America. And I think the impact of Angels in America on American society is going to be working itself out for many, many years to come." Backstage 05/19/04
Posted: 05/19/2004 4:25 pm
Man With The (NYT Culture) Plan As the New York Times' new culture editor, Jon Landman will oversee a plan to revampt the paper's cultural coverage. "Executive editor Bill Keller, in a staff memo, conceded that Mr. Landman — best known as the Metro editor who tried to warn higher-ups about Jayson Blair—'does not bring to the job a thick portfolio of cultural expertise.' So how’d he become the new culture boss? 'Bill asked me to do it,' Mr. Landman said. 'Sometimes life is simple'." New York Observer 05/19/04
Posted: 05/19/2004 5:08 pm
All Politics, All The Time at Cannes "If there's been a story that has actually managed to prick the bubble of star-struck and self-absorbed Cannes Film Festival, it's been politics. Politics of all kinds, local and international, electoral and cultural, screen and off, but especially the war in Iraq. If the premiere on Monday of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 made the biggest explosion in that regard, further rumblings have been felt just about everywhere." If film is a reflection of society, there can be no question that the current American government, with its neoconservative bent and aggressive foreign policy, is the hottest cultural topic in the world today, and no one at Cannes seems to be above throwing in his/her two cents. Toronto Star 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 7:08 am
Ebert: Palme d'Or Race Wide Open "The 57th Cannes Film Festival heads into its closing weekend with no clear favorite for the Palme d'Or, and with critics generally agreeing there have been good films but no sensation that has pulled ahead of the pack. The most rapturous reception was for Michael Moore's Bush-whacking documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, but the applause was as much for its politics as its filmmaking." In fact, Roger Ebert says that some of the best films he's seen this year at Cannes are playing on the fringes of the festival, and aren't even officially entered in the competition. Chicago Sun-Times 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 6:32 am
Moore's 9/11 To Win Cannes Grand Prize? Could Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 win Cannes's big prize? "Trade paper Screen International ranked Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 as a leading contender, based on the views of critics from around the world. The controversial film received a 15-minute standing ovation when it was screened at the festival on Monday. The last documentary to win the Palme d'Or was The World Of Silence in 1956." BBC 05/19/04
Posted: 05/19/2004 3:59 pm
EU Directors Meet To Promote European Film European Union delegates and film directors met together at Cannes. "The meeting resulted in a pledge to try and boost European film, which is under threat from Hollywood dominance. They also wanted European films to 'cross borders' within the continent." BBC 05/19/04
Posted: 05/19/2004 3:55 pm
Remembering Balanchine (and Remembering And Remembering...) Robert Gottleib is feeling weary of New York City Ballet's Balanchine tribute. "There’s been so much spin and so much P.R. that it’s hard to remember just what it is we’re celebrating. But once you’ve blown out the party candles, what do you have? More of the recent unpredictable, uneven level of performance that was unthinkable during the 35 years when Balanchine commanded the company." New York Observer 05/19/04
Posted: 05/19/2004 5:18 pm
