Sort Of Like The Auto Writer Who Won The Pulitzer Baseball stadium designer Joseph E. Spear is a National Design Awards architecture nominee. "The other nominees are Rick Joy, Polshek Partnership and Rafael Viñoly. While Mr. Spear's buildings are no doubt seen by more people than those of his rivals, his stadiums are far less celebrated in the architectural world, a fact that may change, given the exposure and respect generated by the nomination." The New York Times 10/14/04
Posted: 10/14/2004 7:13 am
Carnegie International's Friends Are Of Necessity "When the 54th Carnegie International opened last Friday, the festivities served as a reunion for 57 people whose generosity funded nearly one quarter of the exhibit's cost. Known as Friends of the 2004 Carnegie International, these 57 affluent donors contributed more than $700,000 to the $3 million exhibit once it became clear that no single local corporation would serve as lead sponsor." It was the first time in recent history that a corporation failed to fill that role. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 10/14/04
Posted: 10/14/2004 5:22 am
Is A Harvard Rembrandt A Fake? "In a forthcoming biography of the colorful Hollywood artist, bon vivant, and art forger John Decker, Stephen Jordan includes an account of how Decker and his friend Will Fowler forged a Rembrandt 'Bust of Christ' for actor ('Stagecoach,' 'Gone With the Wind,' 'Lost Horizon') Thomas Mitchell, an amateur art collector. 'Not long after Mitchell passed away,' Jordan writes, 'the painting fetched $35,000 as an early Rembrandt. Today, the painting hangs at Harvard University's prestigious Fogg Art Museum -- hailed as a true Rembrandt.'" Boston Globe 10/14/04
Posted: 10/14/2004 3:59 am
Australia To Get New Portrait Gallery Australia's National Portrait Gallery has been short on exhibition space for a long time, but this year, "arguing that 90 per cent of its 1000-plus collection was acquired without government money, the gallery successfully lobbied the Howard Government for a campaign promise of $56.5 million to build a new place to show them. At its current home in the former parliamentary library in Old Parliament House, the NPG can display only about 100 works in its permanent hang." The new building will likely be near Australia's High Court building in Canberra. Sydney Morning Herald 10/14/04
Posted: 10/13/2004 10:28 pm
Leaving The Nest Magazines that attempt to explore the art world without confining themselves to a rigid format frequently fall prey to irrelevance or flippancy, but this autumn has seen the demise of what AJ Blogger Nancy Levinson calls "one of the strangest, smartest, most idiosyncratic and eccentric periodicals ever to maintain a quarterly publication schedule... Nest wasn't everyone's cup of oolong souchong, but it was the sort of periodical that's become increasingly rare, not to say endangered: a magazine shaped by the passions and ideas of its leading editor." Pixel Points (AJ Blogs) 10/13/04
Posted: 10/13/2004 9:30 pm
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Choosing The Conductor Of The People North Carolina's Asheville Symphony is looking for a new music director for the first time in 22 years, and it has narrowed its search to three candidates. Nothing unusual there, but the orchestra's method of evaluating the finalists is something quite different from the usual behind-closed-doors insider review. "After their performances, the conductors will each be rated by the 12-member search committee and an informal board of consultants of about two dozen people in the community who are reasonably knowledgeable about music and the symphony." In other words, the audience gets a quantifiable voice in the hiring process. Asheville Citizen-Times 10/14/04
Posted: 10/13/2004 10:39 pm
What Really Made Mozart Tic According to a new documentary, Mozart may have suffered from Tourette's Syndrome. Researchers believe that the composer "self-medicated" his condition with his music, able to control his tics so long as he was absorbed in his art. The documentary highlights Mozart's "inability to rein in impulses, the sudden boredom, his sense of mischief and his scatalogical obsession, which all point to Tourette's." The Telegraph (UK) 10/14/04
Posted: 10/13/2004 9:57 pm
Gay Chic Comes To The Opera The English National Opera will take the unusual step of launching its 2005-06 season with a potentially controversial new opera by Irish composer Gerald Barry. The work, entitled The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, concerns "lesbian love, passion and jealousy set against the backdrop of a fashion studio," and will feature an all-female cast. The ENO's new artistic director, Seán Doran, has made it clear that he intends to put his own stamp on the troubled company, and plans to mount at least two new works each season. The Guardian (UK) 10/14/04
Posted: 10/13/2004 9:15 pm
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Ashcroft Vows To Fight Intellectual Property Crime "While the entertainment industry has had some recent setbacks in its fight against piracy in the courts and in Congress, it has a new ally in John Ashcroft, who recently pledged to make cracking down on copyright violators a top priority. On Tuesday, the attorney general released a report from the Department of Justice's Intellectual Property Task Force that outlines plans to beef up enforcement of copyright violations." Wired 10/14/04
Posted: 10/14/2004 6:11 am
Lincoln Center Makes An Economic Case "Lincoln Center -- home to the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet and the New York Philharmonic, among others -- released a study Wednesday showing its significant economic contribution to the New York city, state and metropolitan area. Prepared by the Economic Development Research Group in association with Mt. Auburn Associates, the study finds Lincoln Center's total economic contribution in 2003 to the greater metropolitan region was $1.52 billion of business sales, which in turn supported 15,200 workers with $635 million in benefits and wages." Yahoo! (Variety) 10/14/04
Posted: 10/14/2004 5:15 am
Hemingway Home Restoration Held Up By Politics "In what architects describe as a preservation emergency, [Ernest Hemingway's Havana] house, known as Finca Vigía or Lookout Farm, is tumbling down. An effort to save the finca, an American cultural treasure and an important Cuban tourist attraction, seems threatened by a storm of politics." An American foundation has offered millions to fund the restoration of the house, but the U.S. government has refused to allow the project to go forward, claiming that it would promote tourism in Cuba, thereby helping the economy of the Communist nation. The New York Times 10/14/04
Posted: 10/13/2004 10:21 pm
Is America's Free Press In Danger? From the FCC crackdown to judges who feel free to lock up reporters who refuse to reveal their sources, first amendment activists have had a lot to complain about this year. Frank Rich claims that such recent events make the Bush Administration the biggest threat to free expression since Nixon, and worries that much of the nation seems perfectly willing to accept censorship and outright media intimidation, so long as the resulting "news" coverage conforms to their political point of view. The New York Times 10/17/04
Posted: 10/13/2004 10:08 pm
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Libeskind, Architect Of America's Healing? Daniel Libeskind, master planner for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, "has been baptized, metaphorically, in the hellfire of New York politics and architecture and emerged, well, slightly singed. But he's still ebullient, burbling about the strength of democracy and the value of compromise." USA Today 10/13/04
Posted: 10/14/2004 7:37 am
It's Just A Memoir, People It was big news when the first volume of legendary singer Bob Dylan's memoirs were released earlier this week. But the way some readers (and reviewers) are reacting, you'd think that a deity had descended from the clouds and chiseled the book onto stone tablets. "Dylan is, beyond question, a seriously remarkable songwriter. He brought - not alone, but with unique success - the seriousness and jokiness of a poet to popular music... [But the] Dylan priesthood serves a cult of worshippers obsessed with every scratchy bootleg; every relic; every word, or touch, or bit of blood, or piece of his hair or his clothes. Honestly. They're worse than Grateful Dead fans." Sydney Morning Herald 10/14/04
Posted: 10/13/2004 10:34 pm
Rothko, In His Own Words A new collection of writings by Mark Rothko is casting new light on the professional life and personal tragedy of the artist. "It reflects the author's intense intellectual curiosity and ambition, as well as a polemical streak. Though Rothko never directly refers to his own art, or even acknowledges that he is a painter, the book reveals something of his life at the time." The New York Times 10/14/04
Posted: 10/13/2004 10:03 pm
Jazz Legend May Make A Posthumous Move The board of Kansas City's American Jazz Museum is considering moving the remains of the legendary Charlie "Bird" Parker to a new site in the city's historic 18th and Vine District. At the moment, Parker's remains are housed at a local cemetery where a recent trash-dumping scandal caused the museum to consider the move to a more prominent location. Kansas City Star 10/13/04
Posted: 10/13/2004 8:25 pm
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The O'Neill Changes Course (Again) The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's shift to having a single artistic director oversee all of its programs was a factor in the sudden departure last year of James Houghton, the head of the prestigious O'Neill Playwrights Conference. Following the abrupt resignation last summer of J Ranelli, the center's first overall artistic director, the O'Neill is now looking not for someone to fill that spot but simply for an artistic director for the playwrights conference. (Second item.) Hartford Courant 10/14/04
Posted: 10/14/2004 4:56 am
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Out Of The Printer Tray, Into The Fire "Best-selling children's novelist, GP Taylor has accidentally burnt three of his original manuscripts while clearing his house before moving. Scarborough-based Graham Taylor was turning the embers on a bonfire when he noticed what was written on them." BBC 10/14/04
Posted: 10/14/2004 5:45 am
Bidding War Over The Next Big Children's Author For a high-school dropout, children's author Stuart Hill was garnering an awful lot of attention from the intellectual set last week. "His book was at the centre of a bidding frenzy last week at the Frankfurt Book Fair, when 20 European publishing houses fought for its rights. It has already been bought by Scholastic, which publishes J K Rowling's work in the US, and a film rights deal is in discussion." Why all the fuss? Hill seems to be the consensus choice of publishers as the "next big thing" in kidlit, and everyone wants a piece. The Independent (UK) 10/14/04
Posted: 10/13/2004 9:45 pm
9/11 Report Nominated For Literary Award The finalists have been announced for the National Book Awards, with a big surprise leading the non-fiction list: The report to the nation by the 9/11 Commission, which has been praised as being eminently readable by the standards of government documents, and which has been a bestseller since being released several months ago. On the fiction side, the big news is who didn't make the cut, notably novelists Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick. Also, for the first time ever, all the fiction finalists are women. The New York Times 10/14/04
Posted: 10/13/2004 8:36 pm
Edinburgh's Literary Rep Garners UN Honor The Scottish city of Edinburgh will shortly be named "City of Literature" by the United Nations' cultural group, UNESCO. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Burns all spent time living and/or writing in the city. A host of current UK literary stars had backed Edinburgh's push for the designation, which could have a significant financial impact for the city. The Herald (Glasgow) 10/14/04
Posted: 10/13/2004 8:05 pm
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And What Happened To Broadcasters Serving The Public Interest? When Congress gave broadcasters a new digital spectrum, it did so with the expectation of getting the old spectrum back. Now broadcasters don't seem to have any intention of holding up their end of what was for them an excellent bargain. "Last month, the Senate Commerce Committee killed a bill that would set a reasonable but firm deadline of 2009 for the return of the analog channels. In its place, the committee adopted a bill — backed by the broadcasters, naturally — that could enable them to hold on to most of their spectrum indefinitely." The New Yorker 10/18/04
Posted: 10/14/2004 7:24 am
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Playing The Blame Game In Harlem With a deficit of $2.3 million, Dance Theatre of Harlem is in trouble, and not for the first time. It has laid off dancers, canceled this season's performances and lost nearly its entire board. Former board members blame company founder Arthur Mitchell's incompetence; he blames theirs. At 70, the fiercely devoted Mitchell looks to the past -- his and the company's -- to answer questions about the future. The Village Voice 10/12/04
Posted: 10/14/2004 2:57 am
- Previously: Famed Harlem Troupe Shutting Down For The Winter "The Dance Theatre of Harlem, one of the most acclaimed dance troupes in the world, plans to disband its 44-member company and shut its doors for the rest of the 2004-05 season until its finances can be restructured." The shutdown will not be officially announced until this Tuesday, but officials from both the company and the union which represents dancers are confirming the story. The company's dance school will remain open during the hiatus, but some in the dance community are doubtful that the company's fiscal situation is fixable. Boston Globe 09/18/04
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