Autry And Cal Hist Team Up "The Autry National Center and the California Historical Society have entered into a 100-year partnership designed to enhance exhibitions at the Autry museum in Los Angeles and create a Southern California presence for the San Francisco-based historical society. The plan calls for joint projects that will bring the society's holdings out of storage and into the public eye." Los Angeles Times 06/10/05
Posted: 06/10/2005 11:16 am
New Art In Venice? (It Doesn't Bear The Titian Test) "The problem with the Biennale is that it takes place in Venice, the city in whose Frari church you can see Titian's altarpiece of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, one of the world's supreme works of art. It is the consummation of Venetian art, mysterious, modest and, as you find if you visit near the feast of the Ascension, still serving a community of worshippers. It seems a futile thing, championing the new in a city that is such a great advert for the old, but in recent years the Biennale has been so atrociously curated and so pathetically managed that it would disgrace a far lesser city." The Guardian (UK) 06/09/05
Posted: 06/09/2005 9:28 pm
Acropolis Repairs Drag On The poor Acropolis is in great disrepair, and preserving it has been problematic. "Thirty years after Greek conservationists launched the biggest restoration project in modern history, the works have become dogged by controversy, and the government in Athens has now revealed that at least 20 more years - and up to €70m (£47m) - will be needed to finish the project. The restoration is causing political ructions in Greece, not least because nobody knows where the money will come from." The Guardian (UK) 06/10/05
Posted: 06/09/2005 9:23 pm
Mandela Sues Over Artwork Nelson Mandela is suing his former lawyer over sales of Mandela's artwork. "Mr Mandela’s side now claims that unauthorised prints are being marketed which bear false signatures. It is argued that these sales are worth millions of dollars. Mr Mandela’s prints typically sold for over $10,000 each until last month." The Art Newspaper 06/09/05
Posted: 06/09/2005 7:33 pm
Discovered: Major Trove Of Ancient Roman Statues A site in Cyrene in Libya that has been under excavation for 150 years has recently yielded 76 intact Roman statues. “One morning, a collapsed wall in the Roman temple, which was discovered in the 1930s, revealed a marble serpent wrapped around a stone. We could not have known that this was only the first in a series of statues of every kind and size that we would pull from the ground. We just kept discovering them every day, for a month and a half, and found 76 in total.” The Art Newspaper 06/09/05
Posted: 06/09/2005 7:27 pm
Warhol Foundation Files For Copyright Violation The Warhol Foundation has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against a website that offers "museum-quality copies of famous masterpieces painted by our Thai artists totally by hand." The site offered "oil-on-canvas copies of famous works created by a studio of artists in Thailand. Many artistic tastes were represented – from pop artists like Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein to impressionists Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet – for prices ranging from $250 to $500 US." CBC 06/09/05
Posted: 06/09/2005 7:17 pm
Milwaukee Museum's Amazing Shrinking Endowment The Milwaukee Public Museum is in financial difficulty. And its board was unaware in January when told the museum's endowment stood at $6.4 million at the end of 2004. "That was wrong - the endowment was about $2.5 million at the time, down from $4.6 million at the end of August. Now, the fund contains less than $500,000." Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 06/06/05
Posted: 06/09/2005 6:12 pm
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San Antonio's 38 Strategies San Antonio's city council now has an arts plan that includes 38 strategies. "Public funding for the arts is about $2.78 per capita. That figure is about half of what other major cities allocate for the cultural arts. Yet, the economic impact of the local creative sector was $1.2 billion in 2003." San Antonio Express-News 06/10/05
Posted: 06/10/2005 8:00 am
Arts Journalism - The Best And Worst Of Times The National Arts Journalism Program has closed at Columbia University, and the timing is not auspicious. NAJP director Andras Szanto says that for arts journalism, "it's the best of times and the worst of times. It's the worst of times in the uncertainty, anxiety, insecurity, and dislocation facing arts journalists in institutions that are being staffed by outsourced freelancers with pay scales that are comparable to artists. Within news organizations, they're trying to keep up with an arts world that is being marginalized." Back Stage 06/09/05
Posted: 06/09/2005 7:37 pm
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Getty Leader's Grand Appetites Getty Center chief executive "Barry Munitz is a man of grand appetites, a player among Los Angeles' elite whose effusive personality and risk-taking management style have won praise even as they have alienated some of the trust's most respected staff members. During his seven-year stewardship, Munitz has led the Getty through a trying period of change. But he has also pushed the limits on how nonprofit organizations use their resources. Documents show that Munitz has spent lavishly, traveling the world first class at Getty expense, often with his wife, staying at luxury hotels and mixing business with pleasure." Los Angeles Times 06/10/05
Posted: 06/10/2005 11:31 am
Juilliard Piano Teacher, Cliburn Judge Harrassed Weda Kaplinsky is head of the Juilliard piano faculty. She was also a judge at this year's Van Cliburn competition, and seven of her students were among the 35 pianists admitted to the competition. For the past several months "Kaplinsky has been the target of an anonymous, orchestrated smear campaign, consisting of harassing e-mail messages, an anonymous letter, Internet postings, ominous late-night phone calls and a threatening statement overheard last week at Bass Hall." Fort Worth Star-Telegram 06/10/05
Posted: 06/10/2005 8:23 am
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Is There Such A Thing As Too Much Shakespeare? Washington, D.C.'s new six-month Shakespeare festival is quite the undertaking, featuring 22 different arts organizations (including one that specializes in tiny plastic ninjas,) and promising to more or less claim the nation's capital in the name of the Bard. "What would the Bard himself think of all this? He lived in a time when his plays were performed in ill-lighted theaters where the bulk of the audience stood rather than sat in a big pit quite near the stage. Some of these patrons came bearing spirits, with which to endure some of the longer, duller speeches, and even rotten fruits, eggs and vegetables, with which to provide constructive criticism for the actors." Chicago Tribune 06/09/05
Posted: 06/09/2005 6:16 am
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Who Counts In Chicago Publishing? "For years, Oprah reigned supreme as the city's bookselling heavyweight, metaphorically speaking, only to take a break and then return to the classics--Faulkner anyone? While this was happening, an heiress to a pill-pushing fortune turned the world of words on its head when she made Chicago's venerable little Poetry magazine the Valhalla of verse by giving it a god's fortune. So there you have the beauty and mystery of Chicago's book world: Oprah and Poetry." NewCity Chicago 06/07/05
Posted: 06/10/2005 7:17 am
Newspaper Pays Settlement For Breaking Book Embargo "The London Evening Standard has paid undisclosed compensation to publisher Jonathan Cape after the newspaper broke an embargo and threw the release of its star author Ian McEwan's latest novel into chaos." The Guardian (UK) 06/09/05
Posted: 06/09/2005 9:33 pm
The Great Book Giveaway (Will You Read It Then?) Robert Chalmers' book has been a critical success, but it hasn't been selling well. So he's decided to hit the streets of London to give it away. "The likes of HarperCollins and Macmillan can blanket-bomb towns with those huge bookshop displays. I've always wondered whether 'ordinary people' with no influence or literary connections would actually like my books - I mean, it's not like they're Dostoyevsky or something. So, we had this joke in the pub a while ago... and now, well, here we are." The Independent (UK) 06/08/05
Posted: 06/09/2005 8:26 pm
Publisher Tries to Sell Ads In Textbooks One of Canada's biggest textbook publishers - McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd. - has been "quietly trying to coax companies into buying advertising space in their texts. 'Reach a hard to get target group where they spend all their parents' money. Do you really think 18-24 year olds see those on-campus magazine ads? Do you really think they could miss an ad that is placed in a very well-respected textbook'?" Toronto Star 06/07/05
Posted: 06/09/2005 8:19 pm
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Banff TV Festival Lives "The Banff World Television Festival has undergone a major makeover after staving off bankruptcy and has opted for a bold new image as matchmaker." The Globe & mail (Canada) 06/10/05
Posted: 06/10/2005 8:28 am
Congress Considers Deep Cuts In Public Broadcasting Funding A US Congressional committee has passed major cuts in funding for public radio and TV. "By a voice vote, the House Appropriations subcommittee adopted a measure that would reduce the financing of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the organization that directs taxpayer dollars to public television and radio, to $300 million from $400 million. The subcommittee also eliminated $39 million that stations say they need to convert to digital programming and $50 million for upgrading aging satellite technology that is the backbone of the PBS network." The New York Times 06/10/05
Posted: 06/09/2005 9:39 pm
Device Says We Watch More TV Nielsen says its new electronic viewer measuring devices show Americans are watching more TV than previously measured. "The new local-TV ratings system, which replaces a written paper-diary system with a remote-control-like device, showed an 18.6 percent in TV viewing in San Francisco, followed by a 9.1 percent gain in New York, 1.4 percent in Chicago and 0.5 percent in Los Angeles. Among TV watchers, the demographic that saw the biggest increase was men between the ages of 18 and 49, an audience that advertisers pay a premium to reach." Yahoo! (AP) 06/09/05
Posted: 06/09/2005 7:50 pm
An End To Pakistan's Bollywood Ban? Pakistan's film industry is trying to get the country's government to end a ban on showing Bollywood films. "The ban was imposed after the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965. The local film industry has proven itself to be completely unable to meet the demands of the local market." BBC 06/09/05
Posted: 06/09/2005 7:11 pm
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