Is Ancient German Star Map A Modern Fake? "One of Germany's most acclaimed archaeological finds - a 3,600-year-old disc depicting the stars and the planets - is at the centre of a dispute following claims that it is a modern forgery." The Guardian (UK) 03/01/05
Posted: 03/01/2005 7:02 am
"Gates" Worth? Depends On What You Want To Measure (And Why) There's been a rush to tout economic benefits to New York because of the Christo Central Park Gates. "Such governmental attempts to spin artistic value into financial value are calculated to persuade taxpayers and politicians of 'the value of the arts to our communities, our states, and our nation'." But what do these benefits really amount to? And what about the aesthetic value of the work itself? Wall Street Journal 02/28/05
Posted: 03/01/2005 12:07 am
Art Theft On Rise In China Thefts of artifacts from Chinese museums are on the increase. "Forty cases involving 222 items stolen from protected sites and museums were recorded last year, an 81.8 percent increase year-on-year" in 2004. Taipei Times 02/28/05
Posted: 02/28/2005 11:57 pm
Spoof "Gates" A Hit Geoff Hargadon created "13 miniature plastic gates spread across his loft, often tracing the path of his cat, Edie" in a spoof of the Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Central Park "Gates." Hargadon -- "Hargo," as he's now known -- had to shut down his Web site featuring photos of "The Somerville Gates" after it received 5.5 million hits in one week. He's been fielding media calls nonstop and has been interviewed by reporters from Germany to Colombia. The art department at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C., said Friday that it wants one of the Somerville gates for its collection." Chicago Tribune (AP) 02/28/05
Posted: 02/28/2005 6:31 pm
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Clear Channel Hopes To Boost Its Ailing Concert Business When Clear Channel Communications Inc. dropped $4.5 billion five years ago for SFX, the giant concert promoter, the idea was to boost growth in fast-growing entertainment while the company's core radio audience matured. Instead, the once-promising acquisition has become Clear Channel's problem child, with consumers expressing dismay -- and staying away -- because of high ticket prices and poor service." Now the company hopes it has found its turn-around artist... Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (WSJ) 03/01/05
Posted: 03/01/2005 8:10 am
Sculptor Ices Performance A sculptor who created an entire orchestra of instruments from ice canceled his show in Sweden at the last minute because he didn't like the sound of the musicians warming up... ABCNews.com (AP) 02/28/05
Posted: 02/28/2005 8:52 pm
Ringtones - Recording Gold Cell phone ringtones "cost about two dollars and are typically no more than twenty-five seconds long. Nevertheless, according to Consect, a marketing and consulting firm in Manhattan, ringtones generated four billion dollars in sales around the world in 2004. The United States accounted for only three hundred million of these dollars, although Consect predicts that the figure will double this year." The New Yorker 02/28/05
Posted: 02/28/2005 8:11 pm
Conductor Arrested For Musician Employment Practices France has arrested a German conductor at a concert. "Fifteen members of the Cologne New Philharmonic were taken into custody, followed allegations that the 49-year-old conductor had been illegally employing musicians from eastern Europe without work permits. Instead of paying the standard rate, it is alleged, the conductor was giving his musicians just €30 (£21) a day and bussing them between hotels to different European venues." The Guardian (UK) 02/28/05
Posted: 02/28/2005 6:41 pm
Is Public Radio Getting Out Of The Classical Music Business? "There are more hours of classical programming on the air now than five years ago, but total listening to classical public radio stations has remained flat. News programming is much better than classical music at raising money to keep a station going. A listener-hour of NPR news may generate twice as much listener income and much more business underwriting income as classical or jazz." Current 02/16/05
Posted: 02/28/2005 6:10 pm
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Philly Concert Hall Struggles With Budget Only three years after it opened, Philadelphia's Kimmel Center is struggling to make ends meet. "Hobbled by a paltry endowment, the Kimmel still is not operating with a balanced budget. The last fiscal year ended with a $2.5 million deficit on a $32 million budget, and Kimmel leaders, after predicting that the current season would be their first in the black, now say their hopes of that happening are dimming." Philadelphia Inquirer 03/01/05
Posted: 03/01/2005 6:51 am
Glasgow: Squandering Cultural Capital? Did Scotland's politicians waste the momentum and creative good will wrought by the city's year as the European Capital of Culture? That's what the country's creative community believes, says a new study. "Research into the cultural impact of the event in 1990 which brought Luciano Pavarotti to the city and generated up to £14m for the local economy reveals policy-makers being blamed for an exodus of talent and concentrating on quotas rather than quality." Glasgow Herald 02/28/05
Posted: 02/28/2005 8:35 pm
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Springer - Still Coming To Broadway? Though plans to bring Jerry Springer the Opera to Broadway have been delayed, producers still intend to bring the show. "While the widely covered but small scale religious protests in the UK surrounding Jerry Springer—The Opera have not been helpful in the completion of raising the capital for the Broadway production, they have by no means brought an end to our New York plans. We are looking to complete the finance process over the next six months and are planning a Broadway opening in the first half of 2006." Playbill 02/28/05
Posted: 02/28/2005 8:55 pm
Pinter Giving Up On Plays Playwright Harold Pinter says he's giving up writing plays. "I think I've stopped writing plays now, but I haven't stopped writing poems. I think I've written 29 plays. I think it's enough for me. I think I've found other forms now." BBC 02/28/05
Posted: 02/28/2005 5:30 pm
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Thousands Of Items Missing From British Library More than 8,000 items have disappeared from the British Library since it moved to new premises. "Some disappearances were thefts, with collectors using razors to cut rare maps out of books. But the biggest theft is believed to have been carried out by a contractor who stole £17,000 worth of comics from a storage area. These included the first issue of the Beano to contain its iconic character, Dennis the Menace, dated March 17, 1951, and rare copies of the Dandy and Eagle." The Telegraph (UK) 03/01/05
Posted: 03/01/2005 6:45 am
Churchill's Epic History, A Sequel Winston Churchill's "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples" told an epic tale of 2,200 years of history. Now "historian Andrew Roberts has taken on the daunting task of picking up where Churchill's narrative left off, at the dawn of the 20th century. Roberts is writing a fifth volume to add to the four Churchill wrote. It will trace the main events of the 20th century chronologically, with the wartime leader himself a dominant figure." The Guardian (UK) 02/28/05
Posted: 02/28/2005 6:55 pm
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Satellite Radio Raises Subscription Rates In a sign that satellite radio is gaining a foothold, XM says it will raise its monthly subscription fee. "XM said it would raise the price of its basic service to $12.95 per month from $9.99 beginning April 2, matching Sirius' monthly fee." The company is trying to recoup some of the massive investments in programming it has made. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 03/01/05
Posted: 03/01/2005 8:13 am
Oscar TV Audience Down From Last Year The numbers are in, and this year's Academy Awards broadcast scored lower with viewers than last year. "Like the Golden Globes and Grammys before it, this year's Academy Awards broadcast, on ABC, was down in total viewers from a year ago. The program drew an average audience of 41.5 million viewers, versus the 43.5 million who watched last year. That was better than in 2003, when the start of the Iraq war a few days before the ceremony helped push Oscar ratings to their lowest in nearly 30 years. This year's show drew almost 8.5 million more viewers than that broadcast." The New York Times 03/01/05
Posted: 03/01/2005 8:03 am
Copyright Kills The TV DVD Wondering why you can't buy DVDs of your favorite TV series? "For many TV shows, costs to license the original music for DVD are prohibitively high, so rights owners replace the music with cheaper tunes, much to the irritation of avid fans. And some shows, like WKRP, which is full of music, will probably never make it to DVD because of high licensing costs." Wired 03/01/05
Posted: 03/01/2005 6:34 am
Of Protests And Pressure Groups Pressure groups are protesting over the content of TV shows. But should they be allowed to influence what gets shown? "It is now relatively easy for small numbers of protesters to organise what may appear to be mass protests. It is not clear how many emails originated from Britain and how many from America. But more important, we are not running some kind of Pop Idol competition in which the greatest number of votes gets a programme pulled from the schedule." The Guardian (UK) 02/28/05
Posted: 02/28/2005 7:33 pm
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A Shostakovich Premiere - 74 Years Late Seventy-four years after it was written, a Shostakovich ballet received its world premiere in Moscow last weekend. "For the first time in 74 years his 1931 score The Bolt rang out from a theatre pit, and its story was told in ballet on the stage above, in a new production by the Bolshoi Ballet." The Telegraph (UK) 03/01/05
Posted: 03/01/2005 7:05 am
How We Move - Making Contemporary Dance A new study looks at the creative process of making dance. "The publication, Thinking in Four Dimensions: Creativity and Cognition in Contemporary Dance, is the first to address the cognitive processes behind the creation of new works of contemporary dance." Arts Hub (Australia) 02/28/05
Posted: 03/01/2005 12:03 am
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