Museum To Buy Winslow Homer's Home "The Portland Museum of Art expects to buy the Prouts Neck home and studio of Winslow Homer, the 19th century American painter known for his dramatic images of Maine's coast." Portland Press Herald (Maine) 09/30/04
Posted: 09/30/2004 6:32 am
The Painting ... It's Watching Me "The mystery of why eyes in certain paintings and photographs appear to move has been solved: it has to do with how we perceive two and three dimensions, a new study finds." Discovery 09/29/04
Posted: 09/30/2004 5:53 am
Conran May Leave Museum He Founded Sir Terence Conran, founder of London's Design Museum, has threatened to resign, worsening a problematic week that began with the resignation Monday of the museum's chairman, James Dyson. Sir Terence objected to the emphasis on "tinsel exhibitions" over more serious work at the museum, which is currently offering an exhibition on flower arrangements. The Independent (UK) 09/29/04
Posted: 09/30/2004 2:48 am
- Previously: Design Museum's Chairman Quits Vacuum cleaner magnate James Dyson has angrily resigned from his position as board chairman of London's Design Museum, declaring that the institution is "ruining its reputation" and "betraying its purpose". Dyson had been in a years-long feud with director Alice Rawsthorn over the true mission of the museum, and his resignation letter accuses her of allowing it to "become a style showcase [when it should be] upholding its mission to encourage serious design of the manufactured object." The Guardian (UK) 09/28/04
Cleaning Up A Classic One of the finest examples of Victorian Gothic architecture in Europe is getting a £15 million makeover. The John Rylands Library in Manchester, England is being thoroughly cleaned, renovated, and modernized in an effort to lengthen its lifespan and allow the permanent display of more of the treasures in its collection. "It is hoped the new-look library will attract up to 90,000 visitors a year - three times as many as visited it before the restoration." The Guardian (UK) 09/30/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 8:21 pm
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Cleveland Inching Towards A Contract Despite all the fireworks coming from Philadelphia and Montreal, there are a number of major orchestras making a real effort to negotiate a new musicians' contract without a lot of public sniping. In Cleveland, where the musicians and management recently agreed to extend their current deal in order to keep negotiating without a work stoppage, both sides say that progress, while slow, is definitely being made. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 09/30/04
Posted: 09/30/2004 6:42 am
Virtual Cathedral Music On Computer "While great cathedrals survive majestically from the 15th century into the 21st, most of the music heard within them has slept in libraries, and would continue to do so unless kissed back to life by an unlikely mechanical prince: a MIDI synthesizer." Now some of that music not only lives but is accessible via the Web, thanks to an associate professor at Princeton University, who "has translated 50 unheard scores into an ethereal though artificial sound - completely out of personal curiosity." Philadelphia Inquirer 09/30/04
Posted: 09/30/2004 3:46 am
Surviving The Wagner Marathon Everyone loves a good Ring cycle, right? Well, maybe not the musicians in the orchestra pit, who have to play for 16 solid hours to get through the four Wagner operas. Wagner's music is as physically demanding as classical performance gets, and injuries are a very real concern. In Australia, where the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra is gearing up for its first Ring, organizers have gone as far as bringing in physical therapists and other specialists to assist the musicians in completing the cycle without injury. Adelaide Advertiser 09/29/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 8:02 pm
Downloading Confusion "Rival technologies that baffle consumers will run more companies out of business in the nascent music download market than will head-to-head competition, one of the lead creators of MP3 playback technology warned Wednesday... Consumers nowadays can store thousands of songs in a pocket-sized device, play music and videos on their mobile phones and buy albums at the click of a button. But to their chagrin, a bewildering array of competing playback compression technologies and anti-piracy software options determines which songs play on which devices." Wired (Reuters) 09/29/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 7:44 pm
Or We Could Just Keep Forcing It On Unsuspecting Audiences Art students are, as a rule, fairly well engaged with the world of contemporary art, and a serious knowledge of current masters is considered as essential as being able to distinguish between French Impressionists. So why are so few music students conversant with new music? An outspoken official at the UK's Royal Academy of Arts thinks that the answer may be that no one has ever bothered to make new music as accessible as modern art has become. A "rigorously and cruelly curated new-music festival in London, like a Biennale" might help, and while we're changing the world, why not make new-music concerts free to the public, since they never make any real money anyway? The Guardian (UK) 09/30/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 7:27 pm
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If You Are A Terrorist, Your Grant Will Be Denied "The Ford Foundation, a major arts-supporting organization, checks its applicants and grantees daily against terrorism watch lists ... yet this is not unique: Philanthropies must now comply with laws designed to prevent terrorists from using not-for-profits to finance their activities. The question is how aware arts groups are of the practice." Back Stage 09/29/04
Posted: 09/30/2004 5:44 am
Rushdie To Congress: Leave Readers Alone Objecting to the government "noseying into what should be personal creative space," author Salman Rushdie presented the U.S. Congress with a petition signed by 180,000 people, calling for the repeal of provisions of the Patriot Act that give investigators access to individuals' book-buying and library records. BBC 09/30/04
Posted: 09/30/2004 5:21 am
Mistaking Cheerleading For Education Populism is one thing, but the new Museum of the American Indian seems so taken with the idea of pleasing the masses that it has actively ignored any serious discussion of the role of native peoples in the history of America, says Timothy Noah. "The new museum stubbornly refuses to impose any recognizable standard of scholarship, or even value, on the items in its galleries... The museum's curators regard the very notion of a Native American cultural heritage as anathema because it clashes with the museum's boosterish message that Native American culture is as vibrant today as it ever was. This isn't a museum; it's a public service announcement." Slate 09/29/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 8:57 pm
Do We Really Need Critics? In an age when fewer and fewer people read newspapers, and even fewer want to be told what to think about their choice of entertainment, who exactly are arts critics writing for? Increasingly, it seems that the only people who read reviews are other critics and the people being reviewed. "So are critics necessary? Many are genuine experts in their field, whether it be art, music or literature, and they offer erudition as well as opinions. But some, notably in the performing arts, clearly savor their power, a power that comes from burying, not from praising... And there lies the problem: most people who buy a ticket for a play or a movie or an opera or a ballet want, above all, to enjoy themselves." International Herald Tribune 09/30/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 8:33 pm
Journalist Sacked For Controversial Paintings? A British journalist is claiming that she was fired by London's Daily Mail because of her sideline as a Stuckist painter. Stuckism is a widely-reviled art movement founded in 1999 "to promote contemporary figurative painting with ideas and oppose the pretensions of Britart - particularly anything involving dead animals or beds". The newspaper denies that Jane Kelly's dismissal had anything to do with her artwork, but isn't saying why they would fire one of their top writers, either.
The Guardian (UK) 09/30/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 8:15 pm
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Avedon Suffers Stroke "Portrait photographer Richard Avedon suffered a brain hemorrhage Saturday while in Texas for The New Yorker, and has been hospitalized, a spokeswoman for the magazine, Perri Dorset, said yesterday." Boston Globe 09/30/04
Posted: 09/30/2004 3:17 am
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Theater, The Unavoidably Political Art Form In the U.S., "the largest new subject for theater is the complex of issues related to 9/11 and homeland security, in plays that have percolated through the development pipeline for three years. Arriving now, they inevitably impinge on electoral politics. But theater always does this: No matter how much it aspires to the 'universal,' it is grounded in real life, which pushes it toward politics." Is theater right now any more political than usual, or is it just the audience that perceives it that way? Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 09/30/04
Posted: 09/30/2004 2:34 am
Is A Revolution Brewing In The West End? The world of British theatre has been taken with the theme of rebellion against authority for some time now. But 18 months after the British/American invasion of Iraq, "polite skepticism and goofy satire are shading into something closer to wall-to-wall paranoia." From multiple plays which deal blatantly with current global events to a revival of One Through Over The Cuckoo's Nest, the productions currently on display in London's West End reveal a distinctly dark and seditious mood that is obviously striking a chord with the UK's theatregoers. The New York Times 09/30/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 9:04 pm
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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Army Enlists Children's Book To Help Families "The Kissing Hand," a children's book about a raccoon trying to assuage her baby's separation anxiety, rose in popularity after 9/11, when the American Library Association recommended it. The book has just sold an additional 14,000 copies to a single customer: the U.S. Army. In a first-time effort, the army plans to distribute the story to help military families cope with wartime separation. USA Today 09/29/04
Posted: 09/30/2004 4:52 am
Alice vs. Harry: Who's More Dangerous? Once upon a time, the Harry Potter books could be counted on to incite the most alarm among those who seek to protect America's youth by removing objectionable books from schools and libraries. Now Harry and his magic have been toppled from their No. 1 spot by a lesser-known series: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's well-reviewed "Alice" books, whose sexual content provoked numerous challenges in 2003. USA Today 09/29/04
Posted: 09/30/2004 4:40 am
And Weighing In At Over 800 Pages ... Short attention span? What short attention span? In seeming contradiction to the sound-bite culture they inhabit, readers are snapping up ever-heftier books, and this fall will bring more of them. USA Today 09/29/04
Posted: 09/30/2004 4:32 am
Scottish Publisher Keeps On Growing "Scottish publisher Birlinn has added another asset to its growing business with the buy-out of Tuckwell Press, the Scottish academic publisher. Tuckwell Press’s founders and owners, John and Val Tuckwell, are to work with the Edinburgh-based Birlinn. Birlinn is riding high on the huge sales of the novels of Alexander McCall Smith. The company bought the Polygon imprint in 2002, acquiring the publisher of the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series just as they exploded into a huge international success. McCall Smith’s sales have helped push Birlinn’s annual turnover to the £2 million mark." The Scotsman (UK) 09/29/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 8:43 pm
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Hollywood Conservatives: Not A Contradiction In Terms "The Republicans finally have Hollywood's answer to Michael Moore: 'Celsius 41.11 - The Temperature at Which the Brain Begins to Die,' a documentary made in six weeks that is billed as 'The Truth Behind the Lies of Fahrenheit 9/11!'" Although it premiered in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, box-office hopes aren't high. For one thing, the Federal Elections Commission has forbidden the film's producers to advertise it. The New York Times 09/30/04
Posted: 09/30/2004 3:04 am
Because Eggheads And Nerds Watch Movies, Too When a Hollywood blockbuster purports to have "a message" at its core, or to delve into complicated questions of science and ethics, you can pretty much count on the filmmakers to get all the details of the science wrong in their dogged pursuit of facts that fit neatly within the confines of narrative fiction. This shouldn't be a problem, of course, since movies are, well, fiction, but when thousands of people claim to get their news from comedy programs and believe that Oregon is located somewhere near Portugal, there's always a chance that certain knuckleheads could come away from the multiplex convinced that global warming could flood New York next week. All this explains why Chemical and Engineering News is now publishing film reviews... The New York Times 09/30/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 9:11 pm
Meet The New Head DJ, Same As The Old One Satellite radio is supposed to be the answer for music fans who have been driven away from the FM dial by generic, preprogrammed formats, personality-less disc jockeys, and other components of the broadcasting horror known as Album-Oriented Rock. But it just so happens that the guy at the helm of one of the two satellite broadcasters is the very same individual who sent traditional radio spiralling down the toilet 30 years ago! This time, though, his addiction to audience research and marketing data might just work in the listeners' favor: after all, satellite radio has the bandwidth to create a station for everyone, making one-size-fits-all radio unnecessary. Wired Magazine 10/04
Posted: 09/29/2004 7:50 pm
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