Who Speaks What Where "The teachers and scholars of the Modern Language Association have been studying written and spoken language for 120 years. One of their recent projects created a map of where languages are spoken in the U.S., based on the 2000 census. The map holds some great nuggets of information." Chicago Tribune 07/13/04
Posted: 07/13/2004 10:47 am
Ditch Those Hard-To-Play Instruments "Scientists are developing ways of capturing human movement in three dimensions which would allow music to be created with the gesture of an arm. It would eliminate the need for music technicians to twiddle hundreds of knobs to achieve the perfect sound. The technique could also be used for scrolling a webpage, especially useful for people with limited mobility." BBC 07/11/04
Posted: 07/12/2004 5:28 pm
Art Of The Camera Phone "London-based photo-digital artist Henry Reichhold is using Nokia 7600 and 7610 camera phones to create huge panoramic images of events and places. Using the phones to snap a series of images and then stitching them together with software, he's produced stunning landscapes of London seen during both day and night." BBC 07/07/04
Posted: 07/13/2004 11:18 am
The Lacklustre Old Masters The buzz at Sotheby's last week was high as a Vermeer was put on the block. But "the atmosphere at Christie's Old Masters sale a few hours earlier could scarcely have been more different. There were empty seats, little buzz and a lacklustre mood. Several of the most important pictures failed to sell, including El Greco's Saint Francis meditating, estimated at £700,000 to £1 million, Il Vanvitelli's The Piazza del Popolo, Rome, expected to fetch £1 million to £1.5 million, and Bodegon with bread by Luis Melendez." The Telegraph (UK) 07/13/04
Posted: 07/12/2004 10:48 pm
Are Landmark Buildings Ruining Our Cities? "The true architectural icon is a building that is unmistakable, often provocative, and carries cultural signals far beyond its purpose. Obvious iconic landmarks include the Sydney opera house, the Pompidou centre, even the new Scottish parliament building - all of which initially met with disapproval. These modern icons simultaneously signal their function and their public importance. They convey the spirit of their age; they are both useful and memorable. But there are also less significant buildings that aspire to iconic status but do not always deserve the profile their sponsors demand." The Guardian (UK) 07/13/04
Posted: 07/12/2004 10:44 pm
Russian Fakes - A Growing Problem There is growing awareness that there are many fakes of Russian master paintings on the market. "London sales of Russian masters exceed £10 million a year. But behind the scenes there are growing recriminations in the secretive world of Bond Street dealers. One accuses Sotheby's, which dominates the market, of lack of competence. Another Russian dealer said: 'Western auctioneers now have fakes in their catalogues all the time'."
The Guardian (UK) 07/13/04
Posted: 07/12/2004 10:36 pm
Critic: Clear Channel's "Art" Vision Should Give Museums Pause Media giant Clear Channel is now in the museum exhibition business. But at least one critic has big reservations. "Nowhere in the promotional words from the corporation do we see the word 'art' or the phrase 'high-quality art exhibition.' The promotional phrases are all about size and scale. This should give any art museum pause. If "Saint Peter and the Vatican" is a harbinger of Clear Channel shows to come, it should give art museums further pause. There are a smattering of marvelous things in the show. For example, there's a small Bernini sculpture that should wow anyone who loves sculpture. But the presentation is way too heavy on gold, silver and bejeweled artifacts and too light on paintings and sculptures. San Diego Union-Tribune 07/11/04
Posted: 07/12/2004 10:18 pm
Painting Revises Account Of Captain Cook's Death "When the explorer Captain James Cook was killed on the island of Hawaii, the tragedy was immortalised as the murder of a peaceable man. But more than two centuries later, a painting has been discovered that shows a rather different version of Cook's demise, with the captain engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the islanders." The Independent (UK) 07/13/04
Posted: 07/12/2004 5:48 pm
Met Museum Vs. The Neighbors "The Metrpolitan Museum has long been the jewel in the crown of the Upper East Side, a sprawling wedding cake of a building celebrating the marriage of art and money. In the past few years, however, some of the museum’s neighbors have begun to see the Metropolitan less as a refined repository of priceless cultural artifacts than as a tacky tourist attraction of idling school- and sightseeing buses, souvenir sellers, and street performers—far more democratic than Fifth Avenue has ever considered desirable. Then, in 2000, the Met threw down the gauntlet, pushing a plan through the Parks Department that called for a 200,000-square-foot expansion" and the neighbors revolted... New York Magazine 07/12/04
Posted: 07/12/2004 5:42 pm
Aix - Reinventing, One Year After Nothing Last year's AIx Festival had to be canceled because of labor unrest. This year the festival starts over. "Aix has always been the prince of French music festivals since it was founded in 1948. It is based in a rich university town with well-preserved aristocratic mansions, winding streets and squares protected from the strong provençal sun by the essential plane trees; a white collar town full of lawyers that looks down on blue collar city of Marseilles, barely 30 kilometres away." Financial Times 07/13/04
Posted: 07/13/2004 12:04 pm
Nothing Amateur About This Music Competition The second Washington International Piano Amateur Competition wasn't about starting careers. "Participants seemed to take sheer pleasure in refining their technique and playing before an audience. It was also apparent that the amateur piano-playing world is a bit of an incestuous society, and the event was as much a chance for the participants to catch up with old friends as an opportunity to hone their Schubert or Beethoven. There was a nice purity to it all: comfortable people reveling in all the aspects of music and piano playing." Washington Post 07/13/04
Posted: 07/13/2004 11:52 am
Vancouver Symphony Sees 23 Percent Increase In 2003/04 Ticket Sales "After several tough financial years, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is reporting the largest leap in ticket sales it's seen in at least 20 years. Over the 200304 season, the company saw a 22.3-percent increase in its paid attendance, which translates into about 30,000 more customers." Why? Several new initiatives... Georgia Straight (Vancouver) 07/13/04
Posted: 07/13/2004 10:16 am
Opera - Stuck In The Past? "While every other art has remade itself several times in the past century, opera stuck to formula and shut the book on self-renewal. Considering the immensity of its contribution to 19th- century opera, it is anomalous that English literature has been bypassed by opera companies in modern times..." The Scotsman 07/13/04
Posted: 07/12/2004 10:57 pm
New Beatles Songs Found? The songs are in an old trunk bought at a flea market in Australia. "Beatles experts had yet to properly examine the cache - thought to have once belonged to one of the British band's close associates - but hope tapes within it could contain new material." The Age (Melbourne) 07/13/04
Posted: 07/12/2004 10:31 pm
Teachout Named To National Arts Council AJBlogger Terry Teachout has been named by President George Bush to be a member of the National Council on the Arts. Terry is also drama critic for The Wall Street Journal and music critic for Commentary magazine. Also nominated is "James K. Ballinger, who specializes in American art, has been director of the Phoenix Art Museum since 1982. He has overseen major exhibitions on the works of Diego Rivera, Frank Lloyd Wright and Frederic Remington." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 07/13/04
Posted: 07/13/2004 11:27 am
Bucky Gets A Stamp Fifty years after his patent on the geodesic dome was granted, Buckminster Fuller has been honored by the US Post Office with a commemorative stamp. "The stamp reproduces Boris Artzybasheff's painting for Time magazine's June 10, 1964, cover of Fuller -- who preferred to be called "Bucky" -- and his best-known discoveries and inventions." Wired 07/12/04
Posted: 07/12/2004 5:23 pm
Town Of Books, Town Of Dreams It's been a year since "Blaenavon, the small coal and iron town in South Wales, launched an audacious experiment - to build a new prosperity based on second-hand books in a post-industrial graveyard of dead jobs. The town's steep main street is a hill of dreams. The new booksellers have put behind them stalled lives, broken marriages, stifling jobs, and invested not just money but passionate hope." So how's it going? The Guardian (UK) 07/13/04
Posted: 07/12/2004 10:40 pm
A Book Printed, Then Hastily Withdrawn Why was a book about composer Rebecca Clarke sent to reviewers last month, then quickly withdrawn? "A tangle of alleged copyright infringement and mutual recrimination -- hitched to rising scholarly interest in the late Anglo-American composer Rebecca Clarke -- lurks behind the dueling letters and the book's withdrawal from circulation last month." Chronicle of Higher Education 07/12/04
Posted: 07/12/2004 10:14 pm
The Text-Message Novel A Chinese author has written a novel for text-messaging phone. "Qian Fuchang has reduced his novel Outside the Fortress Besieged into 60 chapters of 70 characters each, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported. Described as a steamy tale of illicit love among already married people, the novel will be available exclusively to mobile phone users." BBC 07/12/04
Posted: 07/12/2004 5:19 pm
NYT To Serialize Fiction This summer the New York Times is serializing fiction - starting with The Great Gatsby. "Unlike the way newspapers usually dabble with literature, the Times' plan originated in the paper's marketing sector, not among its editors. Each 16-page installment - sandwiched between the book's cover art and a full-page ad for the series' sponsor - comes as a tabloid-sized pullout." Hartford Courant 07/09/04
Posted: 07/12/2004 5:11 pm
Critic Faces The Criticized (It's Not Pretty?) TV critic Tim Goodman calls PBS the "worst-run media company in the world" in print, then runs into PBS head honcho Pat Mitchell. And Goodman's feeling a bit emotionally down. And... San Francisco Chronicle 07/13/04
Posted: 07/13/2004 11:41 am
Cable Beats Broadcast This Summer US broadcast networks are suffering the summer doldrums. "More viewers are watching cable than all the big networks combined. In June, about 57.7 percent of the TVs in the U.S. were watching cable, up 7.4 percent from the year before." New York Post 07/13/04
Posted: 07/13/2004 11:11 am
Bleeping Because Of FCC "Three foul words, including the F-word, have been bleeped from the new PBS drama Cop Shop, much to the chagrin of Richard Dreyfuss, its star and executive producer." Why the exorcising? FOFCC - Fear of the FCC. The Globe & Mail (Canada) (Reuters) 07/13/04
Posted: 07/13/2004 10:55 am
The R-Card... But Not All Movies aRe The Same The new R-Card allows teenagers to see "R"-rated movies without an adult. But "the problem with the R-card is that all R-rated movies are not equal. The rating has been assigned to movies as diverse as the charming "Billy Elliot" (theatrically released as an R for bad language and brief sexual references, but later edited for a PG-13 on video) and the ultra-violent "Kill Bill" (rated R for constant carnage as well as strong language and sexual violence)." Chicago Tribune 07/13/04
Posted: 07/13/2004 10:40 am
Staff Protests Treatment Of Voice of America Staff at Voice of America claim that their network is being ruined. "Nearly half of Voice of America's (VOA) 1,000 staffers have signed a petition protesting what they call the ''piece-by-piece'' dismantling of the 62-year-old service, which reaches 87 million people in 44 languages." USAToday 07/13/04
Posted: 07/13/2004 10:36 am
Stars Yes, But No Icons Anymore The passing of Marlon Brando has Renée Graham wondering where the movie icons of today are. Sure there are stars, but "there's nothing special to grasp or hang onto. Absent is that extraordinary, almost otherworldly sizzle that inspires our adulation and those performances that become a blueprint for behavior, both good and bad." Boston Globe 07/13/04
Posted: 07/13/2004 10:22 am
Two Hit Movies, Two Very Different Audiences Fahrenheit 9/11 and Passion of the Christ have been surprise hits this year. But their audiences are very different. "The top theaters for "Fahrenheit" have been in urban, traditionally Democratic strongholds, including Manhattan, Los Angeles, San Francisco and the Bay Area, Chicago and Boston. The highest grossing theaters for "Passion" were typically more suburban and far more widely dispersed, from Texas and New Mexico to Ohio, Florida and Orange County, Calif." The New York Times 07/13/04
Posted: 07/12/2004 10:55 pm
Betty Oliphant, 85 Betty Oliphant, founder of Canada's National Ballet School, has died at the age of 85. Emigrating from England in 1947, she became an icon of the Canadian dance scene. Some of the most celebrated dancers in the company's history – including dancers Frank Augustyn, Veronica Tennant, Karen Kain and Rex Harrington, and artistic director James Kudelka – are graduates of the institution." CBC 07/12/04
Posted: 07/12/2004 5:51 pm
