Virginia Museum Gets $100 Million Present
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has received a gift of $100 million in art and cash from collectors James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin. "The McGlothlin assembly includes works by American artists from the 19th and 20th century: George Bellows, Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, Childe Hassam and Martin Johnson Heade. The art ranges from oil paintings, pastels and watercolors to sculptures, and it forms "one of the most important American art collections still in private hands," Brand said. The art is valued at $70 million."
Washington Post
05/17/05
Posted: 05/17/2005 8:54 am
A Sacramento Parthenon?
A California developer wants to build a 29-story office tower in Sacramento. "The building would be topped by a replica of the Parthenon, the temple of Athena -- the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom -- set atop the Acropolis in Athens."
Sacramento Business Journal
05/17/05
Posted: 05/17/2005 7:46 am
Light Out - How To Fix Your Flavin
"Collectors and museums are investing in Dan Flavin's work like never before. So where exactly do they go when the bulbs in his installations blow? US companies such as General Electric and Mercury stopped producing the bulbs Flavin himself used for his works shortly after his death in 1996."
The Art Newspaper
05/13/05
Posted: 05/17/2005 7:08 am
Is The Art Market Finally Slowing Down?
"Since May 2003, combined sales at Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips doubled from $109 million (about £60 million) to $220 million last November. But last week they rose to just $225 million. Like a giant pot-bellied pig, the market is lying on its back, enjoying its excesses, but with little room left to expand."
The Telegraph (UK)
05/16/05
Posted: 05/17/2005 6:47 am
Scottish Parliament Warns National Gallery About Spending
A Scottish parliamentary committee has warned the National Gallery after it was disclosed that the museum had used money allocated for buying art to cover running expenses. "The committee launched hearings this spring after it emerged that in 2002-3 and 2003-4, first £400,000 and then another £1.15 million was diverted from the galleries? acquisitions fund for buying new art to running costs. Without it, the galleries would have run up a combined deficit of over £1 million."
The Scotsman
05/16/05
Posted: 05/16/2005 7:06 pm
Hermitage Plans Major Expansion
The Hermitage is planning a huge expansion that will create the largest galleries for 19th Century art in the world. "In recent years, the world's greatest museums have been expanding and reinventing themselves in response to mass tourism and a heightened interest in the visual arts. We have seen the creation of the Grand Louvre, the Tate Modern conversion of Bankside power station and a vast new building for MOMA in New York. Now it is the turn of the Hermitage."
The Telegraph (UK)
05/16/05
Posted: 05/16/2005 7:01 pm
The Greatest Painting In Britain (Uh-huh)
What is Britons' favorite painting? The National Gallery aims to find out in a poll. "Following on from the BBC's attempts to celebrate the greatest Briton as well as discover our most beloved book, the gallery is launching a public poll to highlight The Greatest Painting in Britain. And just as with Great Britons and The Big Read, this exercise will end up telling us far more about who we think we are than the quality of our aesthetic sensibility."
The Guardian (UK)
05/16/05
Posted: 05/16/2005 6:49 pm
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Chinese Pianists Dominate Cliburn Competition
Chinese musicians are everywhere. "For the first time it's the biggest supplier of pianists in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, which opens Friday at Fort Worth's Bass Performance Hall. Eight of the 35 contestants hail from the People's Republic. This from a country that as recently as 30 years ago outlawed Western music."
Dallas Morning News
05/14/05
Posted: 05/17/2005 7:36 am
Chicago Lyric A Hit In The Ledger
Chicago Lyric Opera had one of its strongest sweasons artistically. And it also managed to balance its budget for the 17th time in 18 years. "The season's budget was $58.2 million. Ticket sales brought in $30,035,108, while the annual fund-raising drive reached a record $21.5 million. The company also reached its goal of adding $50 million in pledges to its endowment fund, which currently stands at about $50 million."
Chicago Sun-Times
05/17/05
Posted: 05/17/2005 7:16 am
How Marketing Killed Classical Music In America
"Half a century ago, and before, individuals of vision - conductors, composers, entrepreneurs, even critics - heroically shaped the course of America's musical high culture. In more recent times, the fate of classical music in the US has been governed by the market place. The indulged and uninquisitive American electorate is paralleled by classical music audiences that ask for little and give little back. A tangible acuity of knowing attention still found in Berlin or Budapest is no longer much encountered in New York."
New Statesman
05/16/05
Posted: 05/16/2005 6:40 pm
Warner Music Losses Narrow With Downloads
Warner Music reports reduced losses as declining CD sales are made up for by online downloading. "The New York-based recording company reported a loss of $18 million for the fiscal second quarter ended March 31. That compares with the prior year's $45 million loss. The company didn't provide a per-share figure. Revenue grew 4.4 percent to $767 million from $735 million. Recorded Music revenue expanded 4.9 percent to $621 million, 'led by digital sales mostly offset by declines in physical sales, the company said."
Yahoo! (AP)
05/16/05
Posted: 05/16/2005 5:46 pm
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Eye On A Wheel Of Art
On the longest day of the year (June 21), artists are taking over the London Eye - the giant ferris wheel. "On that date, each of the 32 capsules will host a performance by a different artist, musician, dance troupe or acting company in an effort to highlight the campaign for fair trade with the third world."
The Guardian (UK)
05/16/05
Posted: 05/16/2005 6:53 pm
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Freni: A Diva At 70
The Metropolitan Opera holds a celebration of Mirella Freni's 40 years singing there. "At 70, Ms. Freni was reminding audiences that she would be by far the most interesting singer at her own gala. Not that the Met wasn't offering some of its best to join her onstage; the program inadvertently seemed to confess that today's stars are fewer and lesser than those who surrounded the honoree when she was in her prime a generation ago."
The New York Times
05/17/05
Posted: 05/17/2005 7:54 am
Surely Serota
"Thanks to Nicholas Serota, Britain now has the most popular museum of modern art in the world. While the Pompidou Centre in Paris is visited by 3.5 million people annually, and New York's Museum of Modern Art gained a million visitors from its reopening in November 2004 to March 2005, Tate Modern, which yesterday celebrated its fifth anniversary, is attracting more than 4 million visitors each year. This is a great coup, particularly since, by Serota's own admission, Tate Modern's permanent collection is fourth-rate, particularly weak in early 20th century art."
The Guardian (UK)
05/14/05
Posted: 05/16/2005 6:56 pm
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Uncovering East Germany's Vanished Literature
"Just the name 'subversive literature' has a provocative, candle-under-the-bedcovers feel. In communist East Germany -- perhaps the most spied-on nation in history -- however, almost everything fell under that dicey rubric. Poetry about freedom? Anti-utopian sci-fi? Political satire? All blacklisted. Now, 16 years after the Soviet puppet state crumbled, two former citizens have unearthed the vanished nation's hidden literature and -- adamant that it no longer be submerged in anonymity -- are pushing to get it published."
Der Spiegel (Germany)
05/16/05
Posted: 05/16/2005 9:05 pm
Where Goes The Novel
Post-modernism is over. But where does the novel as a form go from here? "A novelist has to find artistic means to slow down time (Proust), to get inside a single consciousness (David Foster Wallace), and to express thought without language breaking down completely (Joyce). So the novelist still has a wide open field here. But there are so many obstacles to creating this work of art that it's (oh, hell) mind?boggling (sorry). The novelist must make an astonishing number of judgments before a single word is written, and any of these judgments can threaten to undermine the project."
MobyLives
05/16/05
Posted: 05/16/2005 5:55 pm
Report: More Books, Fewer Buyers
Too many books are being published, even as sales are declining. "The number of books sold dropped by nearly 44 million between 2003 and 2004, even as the annual number of books published approaches 175,000. The Book Industry Study Group, a nonprofit research organization, reported estimated sales of 2.295 billion books in 2004, compared to an estimated 2.339 billion the previous year. Higher prices enabled net revenues to increase 2.8 percent, to $28.6 billion, but also drove many readers, especially students, to buy used books."
Yahoo! (AP)
05/16/05
Posted: 05/16/2005 5:51 pm
The Website That's Shaking Up The Poetry World
"Alan Cordle created Foetry in April 2004 after years of watching his wife, Kathleen Halme, enter poetry contests and becoming increasingly convinced that they weren't fair. At first, it was just Mr. Cordle and his computer. But the site gained momentum and soon it was attracting hundreds of visitors each day, many of whom also believed that something was rotten about these contests. They gossiped and gathered evidence."
Chronicle of Higher Education
05/20/05
Posted: 05/16/2005 5:39 pm
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XM Passes 4 Million Subscribers
Satellite radio seems to be gaining a toehold in the US. XM says it has passed the 4 million subscriber mark and was on track to hit its goal of 5.5 million subscribers by the end of the year. "XM said it added 1 million subscribers since late December. XM's rival in the satellite radio business, the New York-based Sirius Satellite Radio Inc., reported last month that it had 1.4 million subscribers and expected to have 2.7 million by the end of the year." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
05/17/05
Posted: 05/17/2005 8:46 am
Cannes Buzz Growing
The buzz is building at Cannes, as a series of strong films debut. Regulars are beginning to say this might be one of the strongest festivals in years, writes Roger Ebert. Chicago Sun-Times
05/17/05
Posted: 05/17/2005 7:13 am
Why Movie Grosses Are Meaningless
Weekend box office numbers for movies are completely bogus. "Once upon a time, when the studios owned the theaters and carted away locked boxes of cash from them, these box-office numbers meant something. But nowadays, as dazzling as the "boffo," "socko," and "near-record" figures may seem to the media and other number fetishists, they have little real significance other than to measure the effectiveness of the studios' massive expenditures on ads." Slate
05/17/05
Posted: 05/17/2005 6:52 am
Possible Actors Strike Against Video Game Producers
Actors are considering striking against video game producers. "The companies have refused to open the door to any form of profit participation for those actors who lend their voice, likeness and/or performance to a video game." Backstage
05/16/05
Posted: 05/16/2005 6:14 pm
Cannes And The Anti-America Movies
Films about the dark side of America are everywhere at Cannes this year, including a scathing portrait by Danish director Lars von Trier: "We are all under the influence -- and it's a very bad influence -- from America," said the 49-year-old Dane. "In my country everything has to do with America. America is kind of sitting on the world. "America has to do with 60 percent of my brain and all things I experience in my life, and I'm not happy about that," von Trier said. I'd say 60 percent of my life is American so I am in fact an 'American' too. But I can't go there and vote or change anything there. That is why I make films about America." Yahoo! (Reuters)
05/16/05
Posted: 05/16/2005 6:01 pm
Is PBS Headed For A Political Storm?
PBS is headed for a political showdown with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. "CPB?s drive for political balance on the air could lead to a public or private showdown with PBS over editorial standards. The corporation?s annual production aid to PBS, worth $26.5 million next year, will depend on its approval of the PBS standards on balance and other journalistic issues, now being reviewed by a panel of outside journalists. Further conflict could be expected if CPB hires Tomlinson?s reported candidate for president, Patricia Harrison, a former co-chair of the Republican National Committee who is now an assistant secretary of state." Current
05/16/05
Posted: 05/16/2005 5:22 pm
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