Venice's Big Step Forward The Venice Biennale seems to have taken a very real turn for the better this year, says Sarah Milroy, not least due to its inclusion of far more than the usual number of female artists. "Customarily, these shows are a real mixed bag, flabby, undisciplined affairs bloated with nepotistic inclusions... But in the two leading curated group exhibitions, there is little trace of the usual laziness. Curators Rosa Martinez (at the Arsenale) and Maria de Corral (at the Italian pavilion) have pulled together large shows that feel carefully shaped and are filled with interesting newcomers from around the world to a degree that made the show feel truly global for the first time in my 20 years of attending." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 6:07 am
Does Gandalf Really Belong In A Museum? The new trend in blockbuster museum exhibitions seems to be rooted in pop culture tie-ins, from baseball to Princess Diana to Lord of the Rings, and most museums don't even bother pretending that the shows are anything more than a naked attempt to sell tickets to younger audiences. "While no one talks of a wholesale shift from highbrow to pop culture, more museums are using the kitsch and cachet of contemporary phenomena to help balance the books and bring in younger crowds. While these shows can be interesting and well done, they are often peripheral to a museum's mission." On top of that, some experts worry that museums are jeopardizing their non-profit status by partnering with the for-profit companies that typically design the traveling shows. The Christian Science Monitor (Boston) 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 6:00 am
Munch To Reopen, Minus Its Star Attraction "The Munch Museum is set to reopen, 10 months after Edvard Munch's iconic painting The Scream was stolen. The Oslo museum closed in August 2004 after masked thieves pulled the work and another painting, Madonna, off the wall in front of visitors. Police are yet to recover the paintings, despite a reward of two million kroner [$308,210] on offer. A pastel version of The Scream and a lithography of Madonna will be put on display at the museum instead." BBC 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 5:16 am
A Biennale For Adults Michael Kimmelman likes this year's Venice Biennale. "Reactions to biennales are always Rashomon-like. That the current festival is generally regarded as pensive and a bit risk-averse is partly a response to the previous biennale, a fiasco that would make nearly anything else seem prudent and sober. Call this the first fairly adult biennale in memory." The New York Times 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 1:46 am
The Zen Of Tut Economics With the opening here on Thursday of "Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" - a two-year, four-city American tour with the stated goals of mass appeal and mass profits - many feared this more recent curse, of abject commercialism, would rise again. Yet unless vast sums are lost, this is one time when the curse may have lost its power." The New York Times 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 1:41 am
Pop Culture? Sure... But Is It Art? "Cultural institutions across the United States are drawing crowds as they open exhibits featuring the likes of "The Lord of the Rings," Princess Diana, and "Star Wars." But some wonder, as they stroll among the characters, costumes, and movie memorabilia, how is this museum material?" Christian Science Monitor 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 1:25 am
Goya Recovered A Goya painting has been recovered in Montenegro. "The oil painting, Count Ugolino, had been lifted from a gallery in Turin, northern Italy, in December 2001. Goya's work - which evokes a gory episode from Dante's Inferno - was retrieved during a raid on a flat near the Montenegrin capital of Pogdorica." BBC 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 1:14 am
Germany Remembers WWII In Its Art It seems like there's a memorial to war or the Holocaust on most streets in Berlin. "The Germans are correct in asserting that no other country has ever taken such a monumental (pun intended) step toward memorializing its own crimes. That's just not what national memorials generally do. But Berlin is a city in which almost every street evokes complex historical events; Germany is a country rich with sites of its tragic past." OpinionJournal.com 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 1:06 am
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Listening To Art Sound art - is it art? Is it music? "Sound art is moving into the mainstream. In Britain, it can be heard in our most celebrated buildings and, as most sound artists started off as musicians, it is making a noise in the music arena, too." The Telegraph (UK) 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 1:55 am
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Surviving The Dot-Com Boom And Bust For many arts groups, the tech bubble of the late 1990s was a boon unlike any other in recent history, a time when businesspeople were rolling in cash and eager to dole it out to needy nonprofits. But in San Francisco, one of the centers of the dot-com boom, the arts were nearly drowned by the concomitant tidal wave of rising real estate prices. "The real estate crunch may have eased when the boom went bust, but now the focus has shifted to battling even more aggressively for financial support, as public and private funding dried up." The crisis gave new direction to the Bay Area group known as Intersection for the Arts, which has been connecting artists, performers and audiences in an attempt to promote a citywide sense of community ownership of the arts. San Francisco Chronicle 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 6:33 am
House Strikes Library Access From Patriot Act The U.S. House of Representatives has blocked a controversial provision of the infamous Patriot Act, saying that it impinges on the privacy rights of individuals. The provision allows federal investigators access to libary and bookstore records in order to track the reading habits of Americans suspected of wrongdoing. The American Civil Liberties Union is celebrating the 238-to-187 vote striking down the provision. President Bush is most decidedly not. The New York Times 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 5:28 am
Power To The People? Maybe... Most politicians are not what you'd call on the cutting edge of new technology, and in the past few years, that has meant that most Congressional attempts to deal with the controversies surrounding new media, fair use, and copyright law have wound up being criticized as anti-consumer. The main problem seems to be that Congress doesn't really understand the issues involved. But there are exceptions, and Congressman Rick Boucher is Exhibit A. "While other lawmakers have long-standing relationships with the entertainment industry, whose chief concern is piracy, Boucher sees his pro-technology policies as a way to further education, communication and job creation. Boucher, a Democrat representing the rural 9th District of Virginia, has introduced a bill to restore some of the fair-use rights taken away by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act." Wired 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 5:21 am
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Vilar Selling Art To Make Bail As disgraced arts patron Alberto Vilar struggles to free up the $4 million in assets required by the court as part of his $10 million bail agreement, he has apparently decided to allow Christie's to auction off a part of his personal art collection valued at half a million dollars. "Vilar seemed on the verge of release to home detention and electronic monitoring yesterday when a prosecutor agreed he could be freed even though all the paperwork, including the signatures of four of his friends, was not completed. Judge Kenneth Karas disagreed, though, saying the government would be unable to seize adequate assets if the paperwork were not completed and Vilar fled." Philadelphia Inquirer (AP) 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 6:25 am
Still Too Soon, Apparently A Brooklyn performance artist's latest project has raised the ire of family members of 9/11 victims, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and at least one New York tabloid. Kerry Skarbakka said that he wanted to get inside the minds of the people who died leaping from the upper floors of the World Trade Center before its final collapse, and his chosen method involved donning a business suit and repeatedly leaping from the roof of Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art (he wore a harness), while photographers below took pictures of his fall. New York Daily News 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 6:14 am
Dungeons And Dragons Artist Dies David Sutherland, an artist whose work appeared in various Dungeons and Dragons rule books, has died. He was 56 years old. CBC 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 1:44 am
Singer Sells Career On eBay "A London-based pop singer is raising funds to kick-start his career by selling shares in himself on internet auction site eBay. In just three days, Shayan has raised £9,000 from buyers in London, New York and Toronto." The Guardian (UK) 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 1:29 am
Carlo Maria Giulini, 91 The conductor was music director of the Chicago Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. "Once, during a rehearsal with soprano Kathleen Battle, he left the podium and stood a few inches away from her face. "Your singing is very beautiful but your acting is too human," he said, quietly. He wanted a "purely spiritual" effect. He proceeded to conduct her from a distance of six inches, and she sang like the angel he expected." Los Angeles Times 06/15/05
Posted: 06/15/2005 12:07 pm
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"Little Black Sambo" Returns To Japan Seventeen years after it was removed from bookshops for its racist content, the children's story Little Black Sambo has made a comeback in Japan... The Guardian (UK) 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 1:35 am
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Offending Christians Still Not A Crime An attempt to bring the BBC under judicial review for defamation of Christianity has been blocked by the British courts. The case arose from the protests staged after the BBC announced plans to televise a performance of the popular show, Jerry Springer: The Opera, which includes hundreds of swear words and a scene in which God, Mary, and Jesus are guests on a talk show in hell. The request for judicial review was turned down flat by the UK's High Court. BBC 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 5:11 am
Corporation for Public Broadcasting Investigates Republican Lobbyist Fees "Investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are examining $15,000 in payments to two Republican lobbyists last year that were not disclosed to the corporation's board." The New York Times 06/16/05
Posted: 06/16/2005 1:50 am
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