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Tuesday, October 19




Visual Arts

Turner Finalists Show Off This Week Work of the four artists who are finalists for this year's Turner Prize goes on display this week."Among the pieces on display is an interactive digital reconstruction of Osama Bin Laden's base in Afghanistan, created by artists Langlands and Bell. But one piece of their work has been removed because it features an alleged Afghan warlord who is currently on trial at the High Court in London." BBC 10/19/04
Posted: 10/19/2004 7:16 am

London's Contermporary Frieze London's Frieze Art Fair opens for its second year, and it looks like a hit. "When the so-called Young British Artists appeared in the 1990s, there was no main conduit to buy their works, but the Frieze Fair has filled the gap, giving international dealers an opportunity to sell their art in one room, under the banner of the art magazine Frieze." International Herald Tribune 10/19/04
Posted: 10/19/2004 7:11 am

The Logistics Behind The Art The new exhibition of paintings by Raphael at the UK's National Gallery is expected to be an illuminating look at a body of work that has rarely, if ever, been seen in one place. Tickets are already at a premium, and the National will undoubtedly clean up on the show, financially speaking. And that's good news for the exhibition's curator, who has been working on the show for a mind-boggling six years, because she has never been so exhausted in her life. The Telegraph (UK) 10/18/04
Posted: 10/18/2004 9:47 pm

Great Picture, But Not Worth The Hassle Seeing the Mona Lisa is almost a requirement for tourists visiting Paris. But objectively speaking, the experience is a serious waste of time and energy, fighting huge crowds and long lines for a fifteen-second glimpse of a painting squirreled away behind layers of glass. "Waiting to see the Mona Lisa has all the thrill of standing in an airport check-in queue. The crowd pushes forward, cattle-like and unquestioning, performing a ritual they know they have to go through with in order to complete a pre-ordained tourist experience." The Guardian (UK) 10/19/04
Posted: 10/18/2004 9:09 pm

The Future Of Modern Art At The Met "This summer, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced the establishment of a vast new department of 19th-century, Modern, and contemporary art, embracing European paintings from 1800 to the present, international 20th-century sculpture, drawings, prints, decorative arts, and design." The department's chief says that his first objective has been to mount an exhaustive study of the Met's current holdings, identify weaknesses in the collection, and develop a plan to fill in the gaps, particularly those in the 20th century collection. "The great unanswered question is the degree to which the Metropolitan will differentiate itself from New York’s other museums of Modern and contemporary art." The Art Newspaper 10/18/04
Posted: 10/18/2004 8:39 pm

Scared Of The Daylight Office construction is on the rise in the U.S., but new studies suggest that the workers who spend an ever-increasing percentage of their lives in those concrete monoliths are suffering from a lack of daylight. "There is a striking lack of understanding by CEOs, boards and corporate real-estate executives that designing buildings with greater access to daylight saves money and improves productivity and the bottom line." Great architecture is all well and good, but why can't architects design buildings for the people inside as well as the people on the street admiring the facade? The Wall Street Journal 10/19/04
Posted: 10/18/2004 8:22 pm

The Architect As Artist As architects continue to take their place as the new rock stars of the art world, an interesting crossover effect seems to be taking place. From Norman Foster's famous erotic pickle to Frank Gehry's trend-shattering Bilbao museum to Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum, some of the best art in the world today is being done by architects, a fact which the art world has been slow to accept. "Why is architecture so much less hyped than art? The fact is that artists are more glamorous than architects. Building is a business, and even younger architects find it hard to accept that Foster, a business genius, is also an aesthetic one." The Guardian (UK) 10/18/04
Posted: 10/18/2004 8:20 pm

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Music

Lincoln Center's New Jazz Palace Lincoln Center opens its new theatre complex devoted to jazz. Ben Ratlif says that while it's too soon to pass judgment on the complex's finer points, "already these rooms impressively translate into bricks-and-mortar reality how the planners of Jazz at Lincoln Center have raised the stakes for jazz to become visible and powerful in the city." The New York Times 10/19/04
Posted: 10/19/2004 6:51 am

Pappano Saves The Day The London production of La Forza del Destino that was thrown into chaos three weeks ago when La Scala chief conductor Riccardo Muti quit in a huff has opened on schedule, and Andrew Clark says that the Brits are very lucky. "When Muti withdrew [because of] changes made unilaterally to his scenery, [Royal Opera conductor] Antonio Pappano did a very noble thing. He dropped all his engagements, quickly learned the score and threw himself into rehearsals. The Royal Opera can count itself lucky to have a music director who not only leads by example, but is a born Verdian." Financial Times (UK) 10/18/04
Posted: 10/18/2004 8:54 pm

  • No, He Doesn't Andrew Clements declares the new La Forza a consummate disaster. Muti, whose departure may have been about more than scenery, was the only reason the Royal Opera House wanted the production in the first place, and when he cut out, "the company was left with the part of the package it never wanted: a staging of monumental awfulness. The music director, Antonio Pappano, gamely took over in the pit, but the Royal Opera deserves little sympathy for the mess, since it had been happy to compromise artistic standards in the first place by importing the show just to pander to an overrated conductor." The Guardian (UK) 10/19/04
    Posted: 10/18/2004 8:52 pm

  • Previously: Muti Quits Touring Production Conductor Riccardo Muti has withdrawn from a touring La Scala production of La Forza del Destino set for London's Royal Opera House, in a dispute over, of all things, scenery. The argument centers on several small chunks of wall used in the Milan production, which the ROH had deemed too large for its stage. After several weeks of argument, Muti had had enough, and abruptly quit the project. The Independent (UK) 09/24/04

Jarvi's Replacement Still A Long Way Off The Detroit Symphony is taking its time in the search for a new music director to replace Neeme Jarvi - in fact, the orchestra may play two or three full seasons without an official leader after Jarvi departs next summer. So why the delay? Part of the problem is the lack of great conductors in the world, but "a more subtle issue has been management's inability, dating back at least a decade, to lasso enough A-list guest conductors and nurture relationships that might blossom into a music directorship." Detroit Free Press 10/17/04
Posted: 10/18/2004 8:28 pm

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Arts Issues

Texas Artists Against Bush A group of Texas "writers, musicians and arts patrons are placing newspaper ads against President Bush this week, declaring 'the Texan in the White House doesn't speak for us'." Dallas Morning News 10/19/04
Posted: 10/19/2004 7:30 am

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People

Britain's Wunderkind Conductor Comes Home Daniel Harding is the definition of a conducting prodigy if ever there was one. Handpicked by Simon Rattle as the next great maestro while still a teenager, Harding's rise through the normally sluggish world of conducting has been legendary. Now, in an unexpected move, he is coming home to London, there to assume the post of principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Harding had been known to be looking for a full music directorship, but he will conduct a dozen weeks a year with the LSO, and will tour with the ensemble as well, which is nearly as heavy a workload as that assumed by most music directors. The Guardian (UK) 10/19/04
Posted: 10/18/2004 9:13 pm

The Met's New Top Woman For the first time, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art has named a woman as its president. Emily Kernan Rafferty, 55, has been with the Met for 28 years, "and is credited with leading the creation of the Met's Web site, and building its membership." She will take over in January, and will oversee the Met's $155 million renovation. Crain's New York Business 10/15/04
Posted: 10/18/2004 8:45 pm

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Theatre

That Broadway Melody (A History) A three-part TV series on the history of the Broadway musical runs on PBS this week. "If the series has one major theme, it's that the Broadway musical has always been subversive, ahead of its time in form and subject matter." The New York Times 10/19/04
Posted: 10/19/2004 7:07 am

Dreyfuss Quits The Producers Richard Dreyfuss has abruptly pulled out of the London production of The Producers only days before opening night, citing the toll the physical aspects of the role was taking on his body. Another possible explanation for his departure may be that Dreyfuss had drawn the ire of his co-stars when, in a recent interview, he "[joked] that the lavish production of Mel Brooks' Broadway smash hit was not yet fit for public consumption." Nathan Lane, who played the role to great acclaim on Broadway, will step in until January. The Guardian (UK) 10/19/04
Posted: 10/18/2004 9:32 pm

'Subversive' Theater On The Rise In Britain "While the RSC looks for a West End home in London and the cult of deadly dull celebrity theatre continues to bore and fleece, there's an exciting subversiveness going on in anti-theatreland. It threatens to rip up the pretentious splendour of red-padded fold-down seats, jam the 20p slots of those opera-glass dispensers and slash the suffocating, red-tasselled curtain that falls between the acts." All of which is to say, there's some seriously exciting theater going on in the UK, if you know where to look. The Guardian (UK) 10/19/04
Posted: 10/18/2004 9:17 pm

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Publishing

Radar Gets On The Screen Radar Magazine, which put out two "test" issues last year and has been involved in a long search to find funding, has found $25 million to open. Radar aims to be a general interest magazine aimed at capturing "the interest of young, single people who live in urban areas and are tastemakers in their own right" The first issue under new ownership will appear next April, with issues to follow every other month for the rest of the year before the magazine moves to a monthly schedule in 2006. The New York Times 10/19/04
Posted: 10/19/2004 7:00 am

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Media

Real Movie Sex: Now Legal In Britain! In an unprecedented move, Britain's film censors have approved for public viewing a movie "which features real sex scenes including fellatio, ejaculation and cunnilingus, some in close-up." The film, 9 Songs, premiered at Cannes this year to much controversy, but the film board ruled that "the sex occurred in the context of the development of a relationship between two people and did not raise issues of harm or sexual violence." The approval is the latest sign that the UK is moving away from hard and fast rules regarding what its citizenry can expose itself to. The Independent (UK) 10/19/04
Posted: 10/18/2004 9:40 pm


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