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Wednesday, September 29




Ideas

Imagine All The People, Investing Too Much In A Song John Lennon's counterculture, anti-consumerist anthem, Imagine, has already had its message bastardized by any number of commercial enterprises, and now, a new sneaker sporting lines from the song is selling for $60 a pair. But maybe the problem isn't the money-grubbing marketers, but the song itself, which has always been more commercial pablum than true protest: "it rewards its listeners for piously imagining a better world rather than doing anything concrete to improve it. A form of emotional vanity, Imagine allows us to congratulate ourselves for simply having a conscience. No wonder it's become pop's favourite comfort blanket, invariably reached for in troubled times." Financial Times 09/28/04
Posted: 09/28/2004 8:01 pm

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Visual Arts

Copyright, Or A Father's Ire, Forces A Painting's Removal A Damian Loeb painting that borrows an image from a 1990 Tina Barney photo was pulled from a University of Hartford exhibition, but why? "Was it merely a question, as the University of Hartford insists, of a painting removed from an important show because of suddenly discovered 'copyright issues'? Or did an angry, powerful university parent, incensed that images of his children were included in a work titled 'Blow Job (Three Little Boys),' demand that the painting be taken down?" Hartford Courant 09/29/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 5:38 am

For Blatantly Political Art, A Renaissance "From the art capital of New York City to the nation's midsection, visual artists are participating in partisan politics with a vigor not seen since the 1960s." While large institutions are generally staying above the fray, some gallery owners have risked offending wealthy clients by making their political stance (usually liberal) known. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 09/29/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 5:20 am

No Donations? Not So Fast In the midst of a legal battle over artwork with the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation has said it will suspend donations to Canadian nonprofits. But under Canadian law, doing so may imperil its tax status as a charity. The Globe and Mail (Canada) 09/29/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 4:00 am

  • Previously: Beaverbrook Suspends NB Grants "The Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation is suspending hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to New Brunswick institutions and using the money saved to help fund its controversial legal action to gain clear ownership of 200 art works at Fredericton's Beaverbrook Art Gallery." The Globe and Mail (Canada) 09/21/04

When The Kids' Pictures Stay In The Camera Digital cameras promised to make photography easier, and maybe they have. But with only 13 percent of digital photos being printed, the images aren't as permanently accessible as the old-fashioned kind that made their way into albums and picture frames. Without that tangible record of their past, are families losing an important part of their history? Philadelphia Inquirer 09/29/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 3:32 am

The Real Story Of The Iraq Museum Looting "Everyone knows about the looting of Iraq's museums during last year's war. What almost no one knows is that most of the museums' holdings had been stolen and sold years before—and not by mobs of Iraqis off the street... The earlier looting was carried out so systematically, and on such a large scale, that it dwarfs the thefts that occurred after the fall of Baghdad. Moreover, the April looting may have occurred in part because it would provide cover for the prior thefts." The Atlantic Monthly 11/04
Posted: 09/28/2004 8:57 pm

When Is A Munch Only Partly A Munch? A major work by Edward Munch (no, not that one,) is being offered for sale in an online auction based in Denmark. But Munch authorities in Norway are questioning the auction house's claims that the lithograph in question was actually hand-colored by the artist himself. The piece has been appraised at over $100,000, and as a whole is unquestionably authentic, but much of its value is dependant on whether Munch can be verified as the individual who filled in the color. Aftenposten (Oslo) 09/29/04
Posted: 09/28/2004 7:42 pm

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Music

A Sudden End For Georgian Orchestra An overhaul of television in the former Soviet republic of Georgia has spelled the end of the Television and Radio Symphonic Orchestra. "As part of the reduction processes underway at the state-owned 1st Channel, the television management disbanded (the) symphonic orchestra that was formed in 1937 and basically has been recording compositions of Georgian composers and created a 'gold fund' - high quality collection of records for Georgian television and radio for the last 70 years." The Messenger (Georgia) 09/29/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 7:37 am

Not Innocent, But Essential: "Smile" "Schubert's 'Unfinished' Symphony, Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan,' Dickens's 'Mystery of Edwin Drood': These are all works of art left incomplete by their creators, works that have invited speculation and fantasy for years. Those with a love for American popular music would immediately add 'Smile' -- the legendary, lost Beach Boys album, begun and abandoned in the mid-1960s -- to this list. ... So what are we to think of 'Brian Wilson Presents Smile,' a new CD released yesterday?" Washington Post 09/29/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 7:21 am

Less Airtime For David Hasselhoff? "Germany should have quotas for the radio airtime to be dedicated to pop sung in the native language, industry officials say. They estimate only 10% of German radio's play lists is sung in German, falling way short of France, Italy and Spain's 50% native language ratio." BBC 09/29/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 6:32 am

The Worst-Reviewed Opera Ever (Take Two) It isn't often that a production of a Mozart opera can inspire critics to foam at the mouth, and yet, the English National Opera managed it three years ago with Claixto Bieito's mounting of Don Giovanni. "A crude, anti-musical farrago", a "coke-fuelled fellatio fest", and a "new nadir in the vulgar abuse of a masterpiece" were but a few of the barbs hurled ENO's way. So what does a company do after such a spectacular critical failure? Bring it back for an encore, apparently, and the reviews ("I should sooner poke my eyes out and sell my children into slavery than sit though it again") aren't looking any better the second time around. The Guardian (UK) 09/29/04
Posted: 09/28/2004 8:14 pm

Who Can Save Israel's Orchestras? (The Russians Couldn't.) In the early 1990s, following the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian immigrants descended upon Israel in droves, and no industry was more affected than that of classical music. Initially greeted with skepticism, Russian musicians quickly became the backbone of the Israeli orchestral scene, and swelled the ranks of the nation's music schools as well. "The assimilation of the Russian musicians is now complete, but not for the better. Now the problem of classical music in Israel is their problem too, because the society turns its back on all musicians, and pushes them to the bottom rung of the ladder when it comes to priorities." Haaretz (Israel) 09/29/04
Posted: 09/28/2004 7:24 pm

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Arts Issues

Anxious Times Breed Uncertainty For Presenters For presenters of international performing artists, the task has never been easy. "And the challenge has become ever more daunting in an age of finicky audiences, straitened budgets and international uncertainty." San Francisco Chronicle 09/29/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 5:57 am

What Does Denmark Know That Canada Doesn't? While much smaller countries like Denmark put serious money into exporting culture, there isn't nearly enough funding to promote Canadian artists and writers abroad. "Our top performing arts companies have to focus instead on surviving, because government cutbacks have left them without enough money to operate at home, let alone travel." But culture may be the most important export Canada has to offer the world. Toronto Star 09/29/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 4:46 am

Because If We Edit Them, Then The Terrorists Have Already Won? A little-known corner of U.S. trade law is being challenged in court on First Amendment grounds by a group of editors and publishers. "The regulations, meant to keep Americans from trading with enemies, require anyone who publishes material from a country under trade sanctions [Cuba, for instance] to obtain a license before substantively altering the manuscript. The publishers say that keeps them from performing typical editing functions like reordering sentences and paragraphs, correcting grammar and adding illustrations or photographs." The New York Times 09/28/04
Posted: 09/28/2004 9:32 pm

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Make Up A New Law A new California law will require file-swappers in the state to register a legitimate e-mail address, or be charged with a misdemeanor. Critics are already charging that the law is merely an attempt to sidestep the intricacies of copyright law, and charge file-swappers with a newly invented crime. But the bill's passage is a major victory for entertainment industry lobbyists, who plan to use the win as a springboard to launch similar efforts in other states. Wired 09/28/04
Posted: 09/28/2004 7:14 pm

The Arts, Delivered Fresh In Under An Hour The Arts Council of Wales has rolled out a £2 million proposal to fund Welsh arts organizations outside the capital city of Cardiff. The stated goal of the plan is to ensure that no resident of Wales lives more than 45 minutes from what it calls "top-class" arts experiences. The Stage (UK) 09/28/04
Posted: 09/28/2004 7:08 pm

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People

The New Voice of Saturday Afternoons Opera is a tradition-bound enterprise, and there may be no more traditional radio audience than the 10 million fans who tune in each Saturday for live broadcasts of New York's Metropolitan Opera. So the retirement of Peter Allen, the Voice of The Met for the last 29 years, has caused no small amount of hand-wringing. This week, the Met introduced its new voice: Margaret Juntwait, a classical music host at WNYC radio. The New York Times 09/29/04
Posted: 09/28/2004 9:28 pm

Sometimes, The World Just Gets Too Close Back in 2000, artist Tom Muller set out to bring the world closer together by creating World Passports which could be ordered from any of several "world embassies" around the world. While completely useless in traditional border-crossing situations, Muller describes the passports as sending "a holistic kind of message, but using bureaucratic attitudes and ways to get there." Unfortunately for the artist, purchasing passport-making equipment turned out to be a great way to attract the attention of the world's law enforcement agencies in the months after the 9/11 attacks. The Age (Melbourne) 09/29/04
Posted: 09/28/2004 7:54 pm

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Theatre

Festivals May Saturate Market "The festival idea ... has almost irresistible selling points: There is strength in numbers. There is spice in variety. There is built-in word-of-mouth. There may be more outlay, true, but there may be more revenue." But are there simply too many festivals?
Back Stage 09/28/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 6:53 am

Neeson To Belfast: Keep Theater Open Liam Neeson has joined those fighting to save one of Belfast's oldest theaters, the Group Theatre, where many of Northern Ireland's leading actors got their start. BBC 09/29/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 6:22 am

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Publishing

A Bookstore Where The Paranormal Is The Norm Even in a market that may be tougher than ever for independent bookstores, there are niches -- like, say, the paranormal -- that the big chains just can't fill as well as a single passionate shop owner. At Germ, in Philadelphia, the "new and used books all fit under the umbrella of what might be called Apocalypse Culture: UFOs, Bigfoot, Kennedy assassination, ghosts, time travel, conspiracy, ESP, the unexplained, unknown and just plain peculiar." Philadelphia Inquirer 09/29/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 3:39 am

Emory To Become Home To Danowski Collection The largest English-language poetry collection ever amassed by an individual collector has been donated to Atlanta's Emory University. The collection of Raymond Danowski comprises "some 60,000 volumes and tens of thousands more of periodicals, posters, recordings and other items devoted to 20th-century poetry in the English language." The New York Times 09/29/04
Posted: 09/28/2004 9:24 pm

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Media

We Get It! You're Smart And Complicated! Go Away! Rex Reed has had it with the new generation of supposedly brilliant young filmmakers, a "group of anarchists that includes Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Spike Jonze, freaky Todd Solondz and the dismally overrated non-writer Charlie Kaufman, who wins critical praise for writing incoherent movies about why he can’t write coherent movies." The movies made by such arrogant youngsters are something of the Hollywood equivalent of the Washington politician who gets branded early on as a whiz kid, and spends the rest of his career insisting that he's the smartest one in the room, rather than actually doing anything to justify the label. New York Observer 10/04/04
Posted: 09/28/2004 9:06 pm

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Dance

Owning Martha Graham The fight between the Martha Graham Dance Company and the choreographer's heir over the ownership of her dances has been going on for three years now, and shows no signs of abating anytime soon. No matter which side of the issue you come down on, the question of ownership is a complicated one, and it has driven home to the dance world that explicitly defined contracts between choreographers and their companies are simply a necessity in the modern world. The New York Times 09/29/04
Posted: 09/28/2004 9:15 pm

Merce at 85 "For more than 50 years the American choreographer Merce Cunningham has clung to the opposite of the notion that inspires all civilisation: holding that decisions made by chance may be just as fine as those driven by logic and feeling... Randomness, one feels, ought to result in ugliness – isn't that what civilisation implies? Yet what Cunningham edits from this time-consuming procedure is extraordinarily graceful, even classical-looking." At the age of 85, Cunningham is now physically infirm, and yet his mind appears to be as busy as ever, and he continues to be one of the dance world's great inspirations to young up-and-comers. The Telegraph (UK) 09/27/04
Posted: 09/28/2004 8:24 pm


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