Europe's Museums Spruce Up For 21st Century "Ambitious new plans for the future are transforming the dusty halls of some of Europe's most revered galleries. In Germany, Spain, Italy and Britain, museums are scrambling to create bigger, more-dazzling exhibition spaces, smart new restaurants and shops, study centers and inviting public areas. The push reflects a shift in how the public regards its artistic institutions. 'People want more than the old-style museum. We are driven to become more an arm of the entertainment and education industries rather than the academic institutions we used to be'." Newsweek 08/02/04
Posted: 08/02/2004 8:23 am
Can Athens Be "Fixed" Before The Olympics? The plan was to give Athens a makeover before the Olympics. "Greece has spent millions of euros building dozens of Olympic venues and is spending millions more to remodel Athens for the 2004 Games. So far, the fruits are impressive: a modern new airport, national highways, a new train and subway system, and the refurbishing of run-down neighborhoods. But the 24-hour growl, drill, and rattle of the massive project has also exhausted the city, especially in the hot summer. Olympic organizers had to rush to finish Olympic venues, leaving little time for the ambitious makeover of the city." Boston Globe 08/02/04
Posted: 08/02/2004 8:06 am
New Art In New China China's avant garde is flourishing. "Talk about a cultural revolution. It wasn't long ago that government censorship severely curtailed creative freedom in China. Everything from nudity and abstract art to rock and roll and literary erotica was taboo. No longer..." China Daily 08/02/04
Posted: 08/02/2004 7:49 am
Can "Tolerance" Be Transfered? A new $200 million Museum of Tolerance in Israel designed b y Frank Gehry, is drawing skepticism. "In the culminating segment of a film made for the Center's facilities in Los Angeles and New York, for example, a middle-aged man says: 'Tolerance is based on a conviction there's room here for everybody.' That definition is a profoundly American one, reflecting the reality of a nation with vast space and no existential threats. It sounds irrelevant, even ludicrous, in an Israeli-Palestinian context. In this country, almost no one believes that there is enough land or political power for everybody to share equitably. Which may be why the proposed museum is already drawing withering and widespread criticism, years before its opening." The New York Times 08/02/04
Posted: 08/01/2004 9:56 pm
Museums' Who-Knows Problem "Museums don't like to call attention to it, but many of the ancient artifacts in their collections are what curators delicately call 'unprovenanced' — that is, they don't know where the pieces came from because they were removed from their original "find-spot" unscientifically, at best, or illegally, at worst. It's not a new problem." Los Angeles Times 08/01/04
Posted: 08/01/2004 5:47 pm
Will Big Music Kill Music? Come On...! "Some people are able to draw neat arguments around the consolidation of the music industry and its threat to music. I wish I could. I understand it in a practical sense. But then I succumb to the music and let it colour the whole argument, and I wonder if there isn't another picture some might be missing. I see the music industry as one thing, and then I see Trenchtown rude boys, or Monterey hippies, or late-eighties ravers -- pick your movement. These were people so committed to their music, they couldn't have cared less what the industry happened to be dictating at the moment. Going against dictates was the whole idea." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 08/02/04
Posted: 08/02/2004 7:57 am
Grammophones Go The Celeb Route In an attempt to "sex up" the classical Grammophone Awards, a celebrity endorsement ad campaign will be mounted - translation: celeb endorsement ads for classical albums. "The celebrities, who have not been named, are being drawn from theatre, TV, film and the arts. All are said to be "passionate" about classical music. They are expected to appear in TV slots on BBC Four, as well as on BBC Radio 2 and Radio 3, in advance of the prize being presented on 1 October." BBC 08/02/04
Posted: 08/02/2004 7:17 am
Did Axelrod Sell NJ Symphony Fakes? Five of the 30 rare violins sold by Herbert Axelrod last year to the New Jersey Symphony might not be what he purported them to be, suggests an investigation. "They are old instruments, certainly, dating at least to the 19th century. But, the experts say, it is likely they were crafted by someone other than the famed violin-makers to whom they are attributed. In short, the experts say, they are probably fakes, worth a fraction of their appraised value." New Jersey Star-Ledger 08/01/04
Posted: 08/01/2004 5:17 pm
- Previously: FBI Investigating Axelrod's NJSO Deal "The FBI is investigating the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra's high-profile purchase last year of Stradivarius violins and other rare instruments from Herbert Axelrod, the philanthropist who fled to Cuba in April after his indictment on federal tax fraud charges... At issue in the NJSO deal is whether Axelrod inflated the value of the stringed instruments... to make himself eligible for a large tax write-off. Axelrod, 76, claimed the strings were worth $50 million, a figure that has since been roundly questioned by violin dealers and appraisers. Axelrod ultimately agreed to sell the collection to the New Jersey orchestra for $18 million." Newark Star-Ledger 05/13/04
Musicians Union Exec Charged With Embezzlement "A former executive of the American Federation of Musicians has been charged with embezzling at least $400,000 from the union and spending some of it on clothes, jewelry, a trip to Cuba and a bottle of expensive champagne for Fidel Castro." Newsday 07/29/04
Posted: 08/01/2004 5:13 pm
Liverpool's Setback As Philharmonic Music Director Contract Not Renewed Liverpool is scrambling to deal with two cultural setbacks as the city gears up for its gig as European Capital of Culture in 2008. The Liverpool Philhramonic recently decided against renewing music director Gerard Schwarz's contract. It "follows hard on the heels of the city's decision against going ahead with Will Alsop's controversial 'fourth grace' on the Pier Head. The Philharmonic now faces a race against time to find a new music director who can be in place to take over the baton in the 2006-07 season." The Guardian (UK) 07/31/04
Posted: 08/01/2004 4:54 pm
Washington Opera's Tough Season The Washington National Opera finished its season with a $2 million surplus. But it was a tough season for patrons. The company spent the first half of the season in temporaryt quarters at Constitution Hall While the Opera House at the Kennedy Center was undergoign renovation. "Opera patrons, who paid up to $285 a seat, said parking was murder, the bathrooms were remote, and some sections of the hall were a sweat box. The longer the opera stayed in Constitution Hall, the more operagoers stayed home." Washington Post 08/01/04
Posted: 08/01/2004 4:45 pm
Dressing Up The Concert Companion With several orchestras seemingly ready to sign on to use the Concert Companion handheld device, interest seems to be building. "The newer devices have more features: They show video from the stage with up-close images of the conductor's and musicians' faces, and they contain program notes like those traditionally included in the concert playbill." Kansas City Star 08/01/04
Posted: 08/01/2004 3:14 pm
The Art That Changed Minds... "Many artworks have sparked ideas, shaped sensibilities. The list of mind-changers in our history is a long, familiar one, from Machiavelli's The Prince and Monet's Impression: Sunrise to Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. But to have a direct, political effect – provoke a war, shape a law, inspire a cause – is much rarer." Here are six works of art that had immediate impact on their times... Dallas Morning News 08/02/04
Posted: 08/02/2004 8:15 am
Attempt To Pin Down Noah's Flood Foiled Four years ago scientists thought they had found evidence that could "solve the age-old question of whether the Black Sea's flooding was the event recounted in the Biblical story of Noah." But "the scientists who visited the underwater site last summer off the northern Turkish coastal town of Sinop couldn't arrive at any conclusions. The settlement, about 330 feet underwater, was 'contaminated' by wood that had drifted in, foiling any attempt to accurately date the ruin and thus date the flood." ABCNews.com (AP) 08/01/04
Posted: 08/01/2004 5:26 pm
Edinburgh Fringe Play Upsets Gay Community A play at the Edinburgh Fringe has the gay community upset. It portrays "hidden violence and cruelty inside gay relationships. " But the playwright defends the work: "The message we usually give out is that we are a happy community, and some think that if we do anything to alter that picture we will alienate ourselves further from the rest of society. I think the time is right to make it clear we are exactly the same as heterosexuals when it comes to these problems." The Observer (UK) 08/01/04
Posted: 08/01/2004 4:59 pm
Cirque du Soleil - Canadian Ambassadors "Cirque Du Soleil is perhaps the best international ambassador in Canada's history. This entertainment giant has thrilled more than 40 million spectators since it began two decades ago, growing out of a small festival in the Quebec town of Baie-Saint-Paul. Cirque brought a new kind of circus into existence, made up of dazzling acrobatics and gymnastics, rather than animal acts and tawdry sideshow displays." Toronto Sun 08/01/04
Posted: 08/01/2004 4:51 pm
Chicago Tribune Awards Wilson Literary Prize Playwright August Wilson has won the 2004 Chicago Tribune Literary Prize. "With these awards we hope to celebrate great literary achievement, something very important in the history of Chicago and also a part of the Tribune's long history. In committing to these awards we also aspire to bring attention and support to a variety of local literacy efforts, in our belief that literacy and literary achievement are linked." Chicago Tribune 08/02/04
Posted: 08/02/2004 8:11 am
The Magazines Of "Buy This" The hot new things in magazines? New publications with stories about the products they advertise. "While some traditionalists gag at the notion of these so-called mag-a-logs, fretting that the line between advertising and journalism is already too blurry at many magazines, the publishing industry has little interest in anything else. Confronted by an advertising recovery that seems to be skipping magazines and by marketers who are demanding ever more direct access to their readership, publishers see shopping magazines as a low-risk, cheaper alternative to investing in less product-oriented titles." The New York Times 08/02/04
Posted: 08/02/2004 7:44 am
Welcome To The Library Of Unwritten Books "An art project travelling the UK, this library is collecting stories and ideas for books people would like to write - but never have, and probably never will. Its two librarians - Sam Brown and Caroline Jupp - have collected more than 400 stories over the last two years, and are aiming for a total of 1,000. Armed with a 'mobile recording unit' - a converted shopping trolley - they have been eliciting stories from strangers before turning each tale into its own mini-book." BBC 08/02/04
Posted: 08/02/2004 7:23 am
Uk Lit... Where To Look? "in the past half century, Anglo-Saxon literary attitudes have shifted decisively away from Europe, westwards (and southwards) to the US, Latin America and the Commonwealth. With the shift in British literary outlook away from European modernism and the successors of Sartre and Camus, our last continental icons, and towards the American postwar realists - Updike and Roth, Mailer, Bellow and Morrison - what is our position now towards continental Europe? What ought it to be, as political union expands? How to talk about it?" Prospect 08/04
Posted: 08/01/2004 9:38 pm
A New Progressive Book Club "The 75,000-member Conservative Book Club, founded in 1964, is responsible in the past couple of years for a dozen bestsellers. Thanks to the CBC's success, earlier this year media giants Bertelsmann Inc. and AOL Time Warner launched a right-wing book club of their own, American Compass. Yet despite the popularity of recent books by lefties like Michael Moore, Al Franken, and Tom Frank, there hasn't been a book club for progressives." Until now... Boston Globe 08/01/04
Posted: 08/01/2004 5:58 pm
Radio Giant Cuts Ad Time On Stations Radio giant Clear Channel is cutting back on ads on some of its stations. "This is not because CC has become community-minded. It's because, like a lot of mainstream media (including newspapers), they're losing customers, especially younger ones, to 'new media' - cable and satellite television, the Internet, MP3, satellite radio, iPod." Denver Post 08/02/04
Posted: 08/02/2004 8:19 am
Actors Union Sues Its Exec Director "Members of the Screen Actors Guild have begun legal action against the executive director of their union, Robert Pisano, saying his membership on the board of an online DVD rental company creates a conflict of interest that makes him unable to negotiate on their behalf in critical coming labor talks." The New York Times 08/02/04
Posted: 08/02/2004 7:41 am
UK Theatres Are Subtitling More than 100 movie theatres in the UK are showing their movies with subtitles. New laws coming into force in October, "require businesses to offer an equal level of service to disabled people." BBC 08/02/04
Posted: 08/02/2004 7:13 am
Kuwait Bans Moore Film Kuwait has banned Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. The kingdom says the movie is "insulting to the Saudi Arabian royal family. Authorities in Kuwait, a US ally, also objected to the film's criticism of America's invasion of Iraq. 'We have a law that prohibits insulting friendly nations'." BBC 08/02/04
Posted: 08/02/2004 7:11 am
Defending The New BBC And Its Arts The BBC is working for reauthorization and answering charges it has dumbed down - especially in its arts coverage. “It was a lot easier decades ago to capture an audience. There was an absence of choice. People look back at a golden age, but if you look at audience numbers and the overall amount of cultural coverage, it doesn’t compare with today. But programmes such as Civilisation loom larger in people’s memories because there wasn’t much choice. Today it is harder to draw people’s attention to things. There is a much greater range of programmes now than in the age of Dallas and Dynasty, which were peak-time American imports - and they aren’t there any more. There has also been a much greater fragmentation in the arts and music.” Financial Times 08/02/04
Posted: 08/01/2004 10:25 pm
d'Amboise Still On The Trail Jacques d'Amboise is 70, and taking the kids of his National Dance Institute to China. But he's always teaching. Four years ago he hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, teaching a trail dance to people along the way. "I hiked the whole thing. And more than that, I taught 14,000 people the trail dance. I did 40 big events, as wild as teaching prisoners in jail. That was terrific." The New York Times 08/01/04
Posted: 08/01/2004 5:06 pm
