Big Brains At Warp Speed The human brain was not a gradual product of evolution, says a new study. The new research suggests that "humans evolved their cognitive abilities not owing to a few sporadic and accidental genetic mutations - as is the usual way with traits in living things - but rather from an enormous number of mutations in a short period of time, acquired though an intense selection process favouring complex cognitive abilities." The Guardian (UK) 12/29/04
Posted: 12/29/2004 5:03 pm
Click here for more Ideas stories...
The Big Business Of Investing In Art "With its yearly sales now reaching an estimated $10 billion in the United States alone, art has quite literally become big business. While money invested in the stock market's S&P 500 Index -- a conservative bet on Wall Street's top 500 companies -- has earned an annualized 11 percent return over the past decade, that same money sunk into the contemporary art market would have produced a whopping 29 percent return." Miami New Times 12/30/04
Posted: 12/30/2004 9:19 am
Helping Britain's Abused Public Art A new award is being launched in Britain for public sculpture. It's intended to focus good will on the country's public art - much of which has been vandalized or neglected. "The background is a dismal inventory, gradually being revealed as the association compiles a national register of all the public sculptures in the UK, of the ignored, abused or trashed works of art scattered across the country." The Guardian (UK) 12/30/04
Posted: 12/30/2004 7:16 am
LA Man Arrested In Art Scam An LA man has been arrested for selling fake art attributed to artists such as Mary Cassatt, Marc Chagall and Roy Lichtenstein." A 66-year-old Mission Viejo doctor managed to generate interest among potential buyers in his collection, primarily of modern masters — a collection that turned out to be bogus." Los Angeles Times 12/29/04
Posted: 12/29/2004 4:55 pm
UK Museums - Free But They Still Cost Museum visits in the UK have soared since ticket charges were dropped. "The figures show that three years after the turnstiles were removed, visitors to galleries that used to charge have soared. There were nearly six million more visits this year than in the year before entry charges were scrapped. In London, visits to the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) are up by 113 per cent over the past three years, the Natural History Museum is up by nearly 96 per cent and the Science Museum by nearly 71 per cent." But who's to pay for keeping the doors open? The Independent (UK) 12/29/04
Posted: 12/29/2004 4:15 pm
Click here for more Visual Arts stories...
Shanghai's New Concert Hall Wonder Shanghai opens a glittering new $120 million concert hall. "With a new look, stunning architecture, advanced facilities and modern management, the center will be the crowning jewel of Shanghai's many performing venues." China Daily 12/30/04
Posted: 12/30/2004 6:59 am
Cleveland Institute Gets Into The Radio Game The Cleveland Institute of Music is launching a new weekly radio show on WCLV. 'Each show will explore the work of an artist or delve into a musical topic in-depth. CIM described the series in a news release as a combination of great music, interesting guests and slightly off-the-wall commentary." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 12/29/04
Posted: 12/30/2004 6:54 am
Was Tippett A Superstar? Big celebrations are planned for the centenary celebrations of Michael Tippett. But "is he really worthy of a place alongside those great masters? Or is his high stature just another symptom of that insecurity we Brits have about our composers, which makes us elevate them beyond their worth? He certainly wasn't a great innovator who left his mark on succeeding generations, the way Messiaen and Stravinsky have done. And his place in musical life is not quite first-rank." The Telegraph (UK) 12/29/04
Posted: 12/29/2004 5:53 pm
Oldest Flute Discovered Archaeologists have discovered one of the world's oldest known musical instruments — a 30,000-year-old flute finely carved from a woolly mammoth's ivory tusk in southern Germany. "The findings would point to the region as one of the key areas of cultural innovation at the start of the Upper Paleolithic and demonstrate that the origins of music can be traced back to the European Ice Age over 30,000 years ago. The flute would have been capable of playing relatively complex melodies." Discovery 12/29/04
Posted: 12/29/2004 5:09 pm
Click here for more Music stories...
Predicting What Tickets You'll Buy John Elliot is getting attention for his direct marketing analysis of arts audiences and how likely they are to buy tickets for a given show. He has "detailed computer analysis of consumers' purchasing patterns and statistical models to track down the most likely ticket buyers for cultural district shows. His secret weapon? A database of 425,000 households based on 14 years' worth of ticket sales." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12/30/04
Posted: 12/30/2004 8:19 am
The Arts Audience: Last-Minute Buyers The ticket-buying habits of arts groups are changing. "Across the board, concerts in general, everyone is waiting longer to buy tickets than five years ago. It used to be, you had a window that started six weeks out. Now, that's shrunk to three or four weeks, and you see a lot of sales in the week before the concert occurs. The trend creates several problems for performing-arts groups..." Philadelphia Inquirer 12/30/04
Posted: 12/30/2004 8:14 am
101 Culture Highlights Of The New Year Looking to plan your culture calendar for 2005? The Guardian has staked out the 101 culture happenings you don't want to miss... The Guardian (UK) 12/30/04
Posted: 12/30/2004 7:12 am
Click here for more Arts Issues stories...
The Mystery Of Bunuel's Ashes Where are the ashes of Luis Buñuel? The mystery is as surreal as the surrealist film maker's life... The Guardian (UK) 12/29/04
Posted: 12/30/2004 7:39 am
Sontag: Life Of The Mind "Susan Sontag passed an extraordinary amount of her life in the pursuit of private happiness through reading and through the attempt to share this delight with others. For her, the act of literary consumption was the generous parent of the act of literary production. She was so much impressed by the marvelous people she had read—beginning with Jack London and Thomas Mann in her girlhood, and eventually comprising the almost Borgesian library that was her one prized possession—that she was almost shy about offering her own prose to the reader. Look at her output and you will see that she was not at all prolific." Slate 12/29/04
Posted: 12/29/2004 5:20 pm
Click here for more People stories...
Broadway's Boffo 2004 Box Office Broadway had a healthy year at the box office in 2004. Productions took $748.9 million, up from $725.4 million the previous year. One of the big reasons: "Overseas tourists are now back at the same numbers as they were prior to September 11. Overseas visitors accounted for 12% of ticket sales, double that of last year. BBC 12/29/04
Posted: 12/29/2004 4:08 pm
Click here for more Theatre stories...
Intellectuals' Rockin' Eve The Modern Language Association has been meeting in Philadelphia this week. "Founded in 1883, the association was little noticed until the 1980s, when teachers of trendy new disciplines - African American studies, women's studies, queer theory - challenged traditional scholarship and brought the 'culture war' into the ivory tower. Ever since, the group has been criticized for pushing the envelope too far, for being too leftist, too socialist, too orthodox, for generating reams of scholarly papers with little practical application. There's a reason it tilts progressive: Humanities professors tend to be liberal and to push at boundaries. Conservatives and libertarians are more likely to go into business administration, economics and the law." Philadelphia Inquirer 12/30/04
Posted: 12/30/2004 8:09 am
Steinbeck's Hometown Shuts Libraries John Steinbeck's hometown of Salinas, California has decided to close down its libraries. "Earlier this month, council voted to shut down its three libraries by spring 2005, after residents rejected in November a number of tax increases aimed at funding city services." CBC (AP) 12/29/04
Posted: 12/29/2004 6:37 pm
The Definitive Holmes A California lawyer has published a major new edition of the 56 Sherlock Holmes stories, heavily annotated with his exhaustive footnotes. "The collection, published last month by W. W. Norton is being hailed as the definitive exegesis of Holmes and his times. As a single reference work 'The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes' seems unlikely to be superseded for some time." The New York Times 12/30/04
Posted: 12/29/2004 6:00 pm
Rome's Da Vinci Code Tour A new tour of Rome takes in the sites mentioned in the Da Vinci Code. "We have noticed in the past few months that lots of tourists, mainly American and British, have started coming to Rome just to see the sites in Angels and Demons. The four-hour tour, which costs €35 a head for groups and €75 for individuals, whisks tourists in a minibus around many of the sites. Participants need not have read the book." The Guardian (UK) 12/27/04
Posted: 12/29/2004 5:38 pm
Click here for more Publishing stories...
Standards About Sex (On European TV) In general, Europeans think American attitudes about sex in media are a bit uptight. But Europeans are themselves having some debates about what standards ought to be set for what is seen on TV... Seattle Post-Intelligencer (AP) 12/29/04
Posted: 12/29/2004 7:19 pm
The Documentary That Can't Be Shown In The US "Eyes on the Prize, the landmark documentary on the civil rights movement, is no longer broadcast or sold new in the United States. It's illegal. The 14-part series highlights key events in black Americans' struggle for equality and is considered an essential resource by educators and historians, but the filmmakers no longer have clearance rights to much of the archival footage used in the documentary. It cannot be rebroadcast on PBS (where it originally aired) or any other channels, and cannot be released on DVD until the rights are cleared again and paid for." Wired 12/22/04
Posted: 12/29/2004 7:16 pm
Click here for more Media stories...
