Royal Academy: We Are Not In Crisis "A director at the Royal Academy of Arts has denied the arts institution is in crisis over the discovery of an unauthorised £80,000 bank account set up by Professor Brendan Neiland, the keeper of the Royal Academy Schools who resigned three weeks ago." BBC 08/24/04
Posted: 08/24/2004 6:26 am
Please Look After These Paintings "A day after the brazen daylight robbery of 'The Scream' and a second Expressionist masterpiece by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, museum officials begged the robbers on Monday to show greater care for the treasures than they did while wrenching them free from the wall and smashing their frames." The New York Times 08/24/04
Posted: 08/23/2004 9:24 pm
First You Steal The Famous Artwork. Then What? "When James Bond villain Dr No displayed Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington in his lair, he launched the myth of masterpieces being 'stolen to order' for criminal masterminds." But in reality, "there are limited possibilities for a thief with a famous stolen painting on his hands." BBC 08/23/04
Posted: 08/23/2004 9:15 pm
(Another) Banner Ad Museum A Web designer has made her collection of 15,000 banner ad samples publicly available on her Web site. So what makes a good banner ad? (Is there such a thing?) Wired 08/23/04
Posted: 08/23/2004 8:49 pm
Scientists Challenge Hockney Theory "In 2001, David Hockney ... published his theory that great artists including Jan van Eyck and Caravaggio used lenses and simple cameras to 'trace' images onto canvas. But at the International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR) in Cambridge on Thursday, a group of leading computer experts will show that a central image that he used to prove his theory shows clear signs of human error." Sunday Herald (Scotland) 08/22/04
Posted: 08/23/2004 8:34 pm
You Mean Dali Didn't Make Color Copies? "Finnish police said yesterday they were investigating a large-scale art fraud in which dozens of high-quality photocopies of works by artists such as Salvador Dalí were passed off as originals and sold for up to €10,000 (£6,700) each." The Guardian (UK) 08/24/04
Posted: 08/23/2004 8:10 pm
'The Scream' Is Us It's no wonder that Edvard Munch's "The Scream" has such a strong hold on the public imagination, critic Adrian Searle writes. "The several versions of Munch's Scream have become a kind of shorthand of modern alienation and despair, icons of anxiety and hopelessness." The Guardian (UK) 08/23/04
Posted: 08/23/2004 7:39 pm
- Previously: Gunmen Steal "The Scream" While Terrified Visitors Watch Gunmen entered the Munch Museum in Oslo and ripped Munch's "The Scream" from the wall, stealing it. "Two masked thieves pulled the work and another painting, Madonna, off the wall as stunned visitors watched. One robber threatened staff with a gun before the pair escaped in a waiting car, a museum officer told the BBC." BBC 08/22/04
Greek Art: Not Just A Dig Site For cultural boosters in Athens, having the world descend on their city is a chance to show off the work of their artists -- and not just the dead ones. Alongside classical art, tourists drawn there for the Olympics are also encountering contemporary Greek art, which is very deliberately on public view. The Age (Melbourne) 08/23/04
Posted: 08/23/2004 5:03 pm
Of Literacy And Music The "serious" classical music world seems to be finally acknowledging more popular influences. "In an era of unprecedented domination by market forces it was only a matter of time before the most prestigious musical institutions will take the favorable verdict of the commercial marketplace not as a cause for suspicion, but as an indication of legitimacy. That many composers were disappointed should not be understood as a wholesale rejection of populist sympathies on their part." NewMusicBox 08/04
Posted: 08/24/2004 7:27 am
Where Opera Lovers Meet Flash Mobs BBC Three is betting that last year's flash-mob trend is still alive, at least in the ranks of opera lovers, whom it plans to lure to a performance this fall. "Flashmob - The Opera will see opera singers and 65 musicians joined by an impromptu crowd of people who will be alerted to the event by text message." BBC 08/24/04
Posted: 08/24/2004 6:33 am
A Roll Call Of Orchestral Mediocrity Which are the UK's worst orchestras? wonders Norman Lebrecht. "Competition has never been so fierce. Beyond London lies a marshland of orchestral mediocrity. With the gleaming exceptions of Manchester's Halle where Mark Elder has wrought wonders, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra which has adjusted under Sakari Oramo to post-Rattle quietude, the rest of the civic and regional bands are in varying states of disrepair, the legacy of a generation of industrial failure." La Scena Musicale 08/23/04
Posted: 08/23/2004 9:59 pm
A Portal Into A Moment In Jazz History Taken on an August morning in Harlem in 1958, the image known as "the greatest photograph in the history of jazz" is the sole focus of Harlem.org. Visitors to the site are invited to learn in detail about the photo and the jazz musicians who populate it: Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus and 54 others. The Christian Science Monitor 08/19/04
Posted: 08/23/2004 7:59 pm
Senior Discount? But Do You Really Need It? Aiming to bring more lower-income senior citizens through its doors, London's South Bank Centre has begun a pilot program that gives the over-60s discount only to those seniors who can prove they need it. Britain's largest pensioners' group, unsurprisingly, is not amused. The Guardian (UK) 08/24/04
Posted: 08/23/2004 7:55 pm
Elvis' Announcer Has Left The Building "The announcer who popularised the phrase 'Elvis has left the building' has died in a crash, on his way home from an Elvis convention in California." BBC 08/24/04
Posted: 08/24/2004 6:45 am
More Variety At The Times Charles Isherwood, the chief theater critic for Variety since 1998, will become The New York Times' second-string theater critic Sept 8. He replaces Margo Jefferson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Times veteran whose six-month tenure was remarkable for the ire it inspired in the theater community. Playbill 08/24/04
Posted: 08/24/2004 6:52 am
The Abbey At 100 Dublin's Abbey Theatre has a legendary past and, under Artistic Director Ben Barnes, a stable present. But as it stands on the brink of its second century, what lies ahead is less than certain. Financial Times (UK) 08/23/04
Posted: 08/23/2004 6:33 pm
On Singapore Stages, Attack Of The Clones As the number of Singapore's arts organizations rises, so does competition for government funding. Many theater groups are opting for safe programming that poses little risk at the box office, but the shift toward proven titles and sexy plays is edging out new and experimental work. "Once-diverse groups are in danger of becoming market-driven clones." The Straits Times (Singapore) 08/24/04
Posted: 08/23/2004 6:01 pm
Iowa Writers' Workshop To Lose Director "Frank Conroy, the longtime head of the celebrated Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, will step down at the end of the year." Yahoo! (AP) 08/23/04
Posted: 08/24/2004 7:27 am
Porn, The New Best Seller When there's money to be made, there's no reason for publishers or booksellers to be coy. "A wave of confessionals and self-help guides written by current or former stars of pornographic films is flooding bookstores this year, accompanied by erotic novels, racy sexual-instruction guides, histories of sexual particulars and photographic treatments of the world of pornography." The New York Times 08/24/04
Posted: 08/23/2004 3:58 pm
How PG-13 Became A Favorite Rating The PG-13 movie rating is 20 years old. Back in 1984, "with no middle-ground between PG and R, the ratings board of the 1980s frequently wrestled with the right way to classify movies that should and should not be viewed by children. The flaw in the Motion Picture Association of America's rating system was that it lumped all children -- from infants to 17-year-olds -- into the same group." Then along came Steven Spielberg, who "invented the category. And "instead of being solely an extra warning to parents, as it was originally conceived, it has evolved into the preferred rating of studios and filmmakers. PG-13 puts "hot sauce" on a movie in the viewer's mind." Back Stage (AP) 08/24/04
Posted: 08/24/2004 6:49 am
Remembering Ballet Russe The legendary Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo disbanded 42 years ago A new documentary about the company is "a saga of human indomitability and courage. 'To see people that old who relied on their bodies for their whole careers, finding their bodies betraying them and still carrying on with optimism and exuberance, still working every day, is remarkable. These people are examples of lives well lived'."
San Francisco Chronicle 08/24/04
Posted: 08/24/2004 7:55 am
