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Thursday, June 24




Visual Arts

US Military Base Damages Babylon The US military has set up a military base right in the middle of the ancient site of Babylon - an extensive archaeological site. Originally sent to protect the site, the base has done "permanent" damage to a valuable piece of cultural heritage. Morning Edition (NPR) 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 8:26 am

Holocaust Victims Group Sues Germany A group is suing Germany for $18 billion, claiming that the country is "making money by keeping artworks stolen from Holocaust victims. The legal action, by the Association of Holocaust Victims for Restitution of Artworks and Masterpieces (AHVRAM), is a first step against several countries." BBC 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 8:14 am

Art Dealer Confesses To Import Fraud Hicham Aboutaam, the co-owner of Phoenix Ancient Art, has pleaded guilty to falsifying documents concerning the origins of a silver drinking vessel that he later resold for nearly a million dollars. Phoenix Ancient Art is the same company which just sold an ancient bronze sculpture thought to be the work of Praxiteles to the Cleveland Museum of Art. The New York Times 06/24/04
Posted: 06/23/2004 10:55 pm

Afghanistan's Bactrian Gold Found "The Bactrian gold — 20,600 pieces of gold jewelry, funeral ornaments and personal belongings from 2,000-year-old burial mounds — has emerged from hiding intact, a shimmering example of the heights scaled by ancient Afghan culture. For years the gold was feared stolen, lost or melted down by the different forces that seized power over more than 20 years of war." The New York Times 06/24/04
Posted: 06/23/2004 10:48 pm

Assessing the Holdings of a Nation A UK charity is attempting to catalog every work of publically owned art in the Great Britain. "The nation's collection is one of the richest and broadest in the world. But many works hang unregarded in public buildings from hospitals to council offices to fire stations. More still, in some counties up to 90% of public pictures, are in storage in regional museums, often in terrible conditions. Not only are they unavailable to the public which owns them, but they can also be inaccessible to academics, with individual museums lacking the means to put out catalogues." The Guardian (UK) 06/24/04
Posted: 06/23/2004 10:17 pm

From Beige To Bold Architecturally speaking, Toronto has always been an exceedingly 'beige' city. But with countless cultural organizations planning and executing new cutting-edge buildings, the city is poised to emerge fom the shadow of Montreal and become one of North America's most architecturally diverse and fascinating metropolises. Financial Times (UK) 06/23/04
Posted: 06/23/2004 9:58 pm

Music

Because What Opera Really Needs Is A Few Revolutionary Nuns English National Opera has commissioned a new work from the Asian Dub Foundation, an experimental group "best known for their blend of breakbeats, rap and politics." No one seems quite sure what the opera, which will premiere in 2006, will consist of, but just in case anyone was worried that the ADF would take its usual act down a notch for the sake of high art, they have announced that the protagonists will be Libyan dictator Colonel Moammar Gadafi and his "revolutionary nuns." The Guardian (UK) 06/24/04
Posted: 06/23/2004 10:21 pm

Is British Opera Strangling Itself? With the quick demise of Savoy Opera, the attempted murder of Scottish Opera, and the seemingly endless melodrama at English National Opera, Norman Lebrecht is wondering whether the UK's opera world realizes the trouble it is in. "A view is forming, not unreasonably, that opera has reached saturation point in Britain, and most congestively in London where Covent Garden and English National Opera compete year round with visiting troupes at Sadlers Wells, the South Bank, the Barbican and the Proms, not to mention an incursion of festivals." La Scena Musicale 06/23/04
Posted: 06/23/2004 9:21 pm

Arts Issues

What Is The Freedom Center? Ever since the Freedom Center was announced as one of the cultural tenants of Ground Zero, observers have been asking exactly what the center is. So far, we've been told mainly what it isn't: "It will not be a palace of pro-American propaganda... or a place for sentimentally commemorating victims of the Sept. 11 terrorists." But the center's organizing principal - "looking at different parts of the world transitioning from tyranny to freedom" - sounds an awful lot like American flag-waving, and the center's developer is a longtime friend of President Bush. The New York Times 06/24/04
Posted: 06/23/2004 10:50 pm

People

Hermitage Director Blasts McCartney Concert The director of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg has blasted a concert by Paul McCartney outside the city's Winter Palace. "We prepared for this concert like we would for a flood, all the museum's departments were put on alert," the director said, contending that the noise level alone was "damaging" for some of the famous works in the Hermitage collection." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 6:12 am

Reconsidering Goosens A new film examining the tragic life and career of British conductor Sir Eugene Goossens is screening at the Sydney Film Festival, "impelling Australians to reflect on a shameful episode in their past." Goossens was brought to Australia to lead the Sydney Symphony in the 1950s, but his promising career was cut short when he was fired and deported after airport authorities discovered pornographic photos in his luggage. Goossens died in disgrace in London, but the film portrays him as "a victim of the tabloid press and a morally zealous vice squad detective." The Independent (UK) 06/24/04
Posted: 06/23/2004 9:32 pm

Theatre

"Action-Musical" Pulls In An Ethnic Audience A Toronto production of the "Terracotta Warriors", a $3.5-million "action-musical," is packing the theatre with ethnic Chinese patrons. "The production is "part of a new push by theatre producers to target niche ethnic markets in cities (Toronto, London, New York) where culturally diverse populations abound but theatrical representations of them remain scarce. Ethnic marketing is not a new concept itself but its application to theatre is. To put it bluntly: Blacks are a desired and untapped demographic. So are the Chinese and the South Asians." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 8:34 am

Which Shakespeare Is Shakespeare? The De Vere Society is marking the 400th anniversary of the death of Elizabethan nobleman Edward de Vere. Who was de Vere? The group claims he was the "real" Shakespeare, and claims all sorts of evidence. But other Shakespeare experts dismiss the claims: "They have quite a large following. Like every organisation of this kind, they ignore the basic evidence and construct conspiracy theories." BBC 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 8:11 am

Hall: West End Requires US Actors? Director Peter Hall says that plays are now so difficult to produce in London's West End, that producers are afraid to mount new plays without a big-name US star to goose the box office. He said "plays, rather than musicals, were proving increasingly uneconomic for West End theatres. But he denied the theatres were in terminal decline, saying early summer was traditionally a difficult time." BBC 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 8:02 am

Doing It Old School There are certain classical musicians who spend their lives attempting to play old music in precisely the way that the original musicians would have played it. So why shouldn't there be period theater as well? Maybe because we won't have any hope of understanding the accent... The Telegraph (UK) 06/23/04
Posted: 06/23/2004 10:39 pm

Is Chicago The New Theater Capital of America? New York's theater scene is in an undeniable slump, and Michael Billington thinks that it may be time to acknowledge that America's best theater is no longer centered in the Big Apple, but on the shores of Lake Michigan. "No fewer than 156 theatre companies, predominantly non-profit, operate in the city. And while New York, with its suffocating commercialism, seems increasingly hidebound, it is to Chicago that the true theatregoer now avidly looks." The Guardian (UK) 06/23/04
Posted: 06/23/2004 10:10 pm

Publishing

Clinton Book Sets Non-Fiction Sales Record "Clinton's My Life sold more than 400,000 copies in the United States in its first day of release, the most ever for a nonfiction book and double the believed previous record holder, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's Living History." Chicago Sun-Times (AP) 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 8:19 am

Media

The Cost Of Broadcasting Dirty Just Went Up The US Senate has passed a measure that would increase fines for broadcast indecency. "Under the new measure, the maximum fine would increase to as much as $275,000 for each indecent incident. The fines would keep increasing per incident until a maximum fine of $3million a day was reached. The US House of Representatives passed a similar bill in March that set fines for indecency at $500,000." BBC 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 4:52 pm

US Congress Proposes Expansion Of Copyright Liability "Top US Senate leaders from both parties have launched an assault on online music and video file-sharing services, introducing legislation that makes anyone who 'induces' illegal copying just as liable for breaking copyright law as someone who makes the copies." This significantly expands copyright liability beyond the actual copyright violators. Washington Post 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 6:18 am

Movie Studios Protest DVD "Cleaners" "Over Hollywood's long-standing objections, some members of Congress are endorsing legislation that would allow DVDs to be "sanitized" — stripped of scenes that parents don't want their children to see or hear — without first requiring the consent of studios or directors. To the movie studios, the bill is merely the most outrageous of a wave of anti-indecency legislation moving through Congress." Los Angeles Times 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 6:15 am

Let's Play 'Race The Censors'! Movie theaters in Melbourne and Sydney are "[rushing] to release the latest film by the French director of the controversial movie Romance before its possible banning by the Office of Film and Literature Classification review board. Anatomy of Hell (Anatomie de L'enfe), by director Catherine Breillat, is described as "an investigation into the nature of misogyny" and features several explicit scenes involving a woman and a gay man who uses various objects to penetrate the woman at her request." The film was originally set to receive an adult rating, but the Australian Family Association is appealing the rating in an effort to have the film banned outright. The Age (Melbourne) 06/24/04
Posted: 06/23/2004 9:51 pm


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