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Friday, July 15




Visual Arts

Claim: Pinault Plans For Paris Museum Have "Harmed" French Art World Jérôme Sans, co-director of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, has criticized billionaire François Pinault for his aborted plans to build a major museum oustide Paris. ?For a start, nobody really knows what was going into Mr Pinault?s museum. The contents of his collection are unknown to most people. The entire episode was a little like someone saying yes, ?I?ll marry you? and then at the last minute leaving the bride at the altar?. He stressed that ?this illusion [that Mr Pinault was to open a museum in Paris] has harmed rather then helped the French art world?. The Art Newspaper 07/15/05
Posted: 07/15/2005 7:08 am

A Plan To Reunite Iconic Cuban Artists In 1981 a group of Cuban artists got together for a controversial exhibition that "placed the 11 young artists on the map, set the course for contemporary Cuban art, and created an identity for a new generation of artists. When they gathered for Volume One, the young artists still dreamed of carving a niche in Cuba's art scene. And though they are scattered, they achieved that. Many would become internationally known while living in Cuba in the 1980s." Now they are scattered across several countries, but there is a plan to bring them together... Christian Science Monitor 07/15/05
Posted: 07/15/2005 6:48 am

Gehry To Build Skyscraper In LA Frank Gehry has been chosen to design a 40- or 50-story skyscraper next to his Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles as well as other elements of the $1.8-billion complex planned along Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. The street is the focus of an ambitious plan to cluster cultural buildings in the city. Los Angeles Times 07/15/05
Posted: 07/15/2005 6:40 am

China Invests In Assembly-Line Art "China's low wages and hunger for exports have already changed many industries, from furniture to underwear. The art world, at least art for the masses, seems to be next, and is emerging as a miniature case study of China's successful expansion in a long list of small and obscure industries that when taken together represent a sizable chunk of economic activity. China is rapidly expanding art colleges, turning out tens of thousands of skilled artists each year willing to work cheaply. The Internet is allowing these assembly-line paintings to be sold all over the world; the same technology allows families across America to arrange for their portraits to be painted in coastal China." The New York Times 07/15/05
Posted: 07/14/2005 10:08 pm

Cooperation Saves Brit Gold Collection A coalition of British museums has banded together to preserve one of the country's finest collections of silver and gold plate which would otherwise have been broken up and sold at auction. "The nine museums, including the V&A, the British Museum and the Ashmolean in Oxford, pooled their resources and secured hefty grants, including over £850,000 given by the National Heritage Memorial Fund to celebrate its silver anniversary, and over £400,000 from the Art Fund charity. The collection was built up by the financier Ernest Cassel, who was born into a poor Jewish family in Germany in 1852, arrived in Liverpool in 1869 with a violin and a small bundle of clothes, and by the time of his death in 1921 was one of the richest men in Europe." The Guardian (UK) 07/15/05
Posted: 07/14/2005 9:25 pm

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Music

Freud Named To Head Houston Grand Opera Anthony Freud, currently director of the Welsh National Opera, has been named general director of the Houston Grand Opera. BBC 07/15/05
Posted: 07/15/2005 7:05 am

  • Freud For Houston What can Houston Grand Opera expect from Anthony Freud, its new director? "Judging from his current work, Houston audiences will see a mix of traditional and new opera similar to that provided by longtime HGO head David Gockley." Hoston Chronicle 07/14/05
    Posted: 07/15/2005 6:47 am

Getting Past The Pain How has the pop music world responded to the horrific terrorist attacks in London? Well, it hasn't, really, at least not beyond the predictable canceling and rescheduling of concerts. But isn't pop's refusal to be kept down by world events part of its purpose? "For all the high moral ground staked out at Live8, sometimes pop has to do exactly what it says on the tin and add a little fizz to our lives. In the wake of tragedy, Charlotte Church singing about being a Crazy Chick can seem at best an irrelevance, at worst a trivial distraction, but people don't just listen to music to salve their souls and ease their consciences. Pop is there to raise a smile, to give us something to dance to, to help people forget their troubles." The Telegraph (UK) 07/15/05
Posted: 07/14/2005 9:57 pm

Proms '05: Still The Biggest, Still One Of The Best All carping and nitpicking aside, there really is nothing like the BBC Proms, the 111th edition of which begins this weekend in London. "There is something about the buzz of the atmosphere, the camaraderie of the Albert Hall, and the potent musical mix that ineluctably attracts seasoned, occasional and first-time concert-goers alike... While other European musical capitals largely shut up shop during the summer, London stages the world's busiest two-month classical festival, this year with 74 concerts, eight lunchtime chamber recitals, and the popular last night's Proms in the Park presented simultaneously in London, Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester and Swansea." The Telegraph (UK) 07/15/05
Posted: 07/14/2005 9:50 pm

Summer In The City Talk to orchestra execs around the U.S. about their biggest headaches, and slumping summer sales will likely make the list, even for big-budget bands like the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony. But in Minneapolis, where the Minnesota Orchestra has been mounting a major summer festival in the heart of the city for more than a quarter-century, ticket sales have actually risen in each of the last three years. Even so, the orchestra has been playing things awfully safe in recent summers, programming mainly crowd-pleasers and avoiding anything the marketing department might find unpleasant. Striking the right balance seems somehow to be more difficult in warm weather than cold... Minneapolis Star Tribune 07/15/05
Posted: 07/14/2005 8:47 pm

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Arts Issues

Aussies Fight Back At Lebrecht Australian artists have hit back at critic Norman Lebrecht's recent story wondering why so many Australians have gained power running London arts organizations. "It seems just a little bit rich to assume that we are some secret cabal trying to take over the world and run down the quality of British arts." The Australian 07/15/05
Posted: 07/15/2005 6:55 am

  • Previously: UK's Australian Invasion Why are Australians running some of the UK's biggest arts institutions? "Little in their sunkissed insularity has equipped them for the ethnic and economic diversity of British arts and their focus is so short-term that only the most desperate of boards would, it seems to me, choose a second-string Aussie above a locally experienced, lifelong committed Brit. It makes no sense at all. More alarming still is the effect of their mass defection on the morale and infrastructure of Australian culture." La Scena Musicale 07/06/05

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People

Water Music, With A Twist of Tragedy Composers draw inspiration from any number of sources, but current events are usually not terribly high on the list. But for Michael Berkeley, whose new Concerto for Orchestra will get its world premiere at the BBC Proms next week, news of the tsunami devastation in southeast Asia in December 2004 changed the course of his work and led him to embrace a muse many composers - particularly Britons - have turned to over the centuries: namely, the sea. The Telegraph (UK) 07/15/05
Posted: 07/14/2005 9:53 pm

Fringe Impresario Dies In London London theatre legend Dan Crawford, who turned a popular pub into one of the UK's leading venues for fringe theatre, has died of cancer, aged 62. "The hand-to-mouth existence of the King's Head, which Crawford founded with his second wife, Joan, in 1970 was part of its charm. Its £60,000 Arts Council grant was cut in 1984 and the place was sustained by Crawford and his third wife, film-maker Stephanie Sinclaire, on minor grants and donations. Meals of variable quality were served before the show. Backstage conditions, said Sheridan Morley - who was involved in several of its productions - made the Black Hole of Calcutta resemble a five-star hotel. Crawford's programme was a glorious mixture." The Guardian (UK) 07/15/05
Posted: 07/14/2005 9:31 pm

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Theatre

Wicked Good Box Office "Wicked" is in Chicago for an extended stay. It's earning more than $1.1 million a week at the box office. "Ponder for a moment the astonishing appeal of "Wicked." Many people think "The Producers" was a hit. Yet its tours have dribbled into decline. Overly dependent on its original stars and with a limited urban audience, "The Producers" was a solid performer, for sure, but its New York staying power actually is turning out to be nowhere near what many people predicted. "Wicked," which got lousy reviews compared to "The Producers," is a genuine popular hit. And those come around about as often as a tornado hits Oz." Chicago Tribune 07/15/05
Posted: 07/15/2005 8:56 am

The State Auditor And The Theatre Taxes A random audit of a small theatre in Seattle earlier this year led the State to rule that actors should be paid as employees rather than contractors. That means theatres have to make deductions and pay new taxes... and where does that come from? Actors' pay. "I don't think there's any producer in town who wants to screw [over] actors?it's just a matter of what you can afford to do. It sounds weird to [debate whether] actors should get minimum wage. Well, they should?but they weren't getting anything before, so the theaters that are actually trying to pay something are being told, 'Unless you can pay them the whole amount, don't pay 'em.' That's pretty much what's being said." Seattle Weekly 07/13/05
Posted: 07/15/2005 8:19 am

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Publishing

Children's Book Writers In Poverty With the mega-success of JK Rowling and her Harry Potter series, many believe children's book writers are raking in the dough. "Waterstone's had reported that 10 times more new children's books were being released every month now compared with 2000, and it found that publishers were spending much more on marketing the genre." But a new survey says that children's book writers earn barely subsistance wages - a full third of them earn less than the national minimum wage of £8,827 a year. The Guardian (UK) 07/14/05
Posted: 07/15/2005 7:29 am

Harry Potter & The Unprecedented Marketing Blitz How popular is Harry Potter? The sixth book in the series is expected to sell more than 2 million copies in Britain alone in the first 24 hours it is on sale. Ten million copies have been earmarked for the U.S. market, and eventual sales numbers could eclipse even those of previous volumes in the series. In order to achieve all this, of course, the marketers are working overtime, as they have before the release of each of the books. The Herald (Glasgow) 07/15/05
Posted: 07/14/2005 9:45 pm

But Isn't It Supposed To Be Fantasy? Harry Potter has seemingly become one of those cultural touchstones that is immune to criticism. Not that there aren't Harry-haters - there are, but they generally get chalked up as curmudgeons out to ruin everyone else's innocent good time. But Robert Winder has serious concerns about the craze, and they aren't just literary. For one thing, the "crass commercialism" of the series has become suffocating. For another, is it really wise to be giving kids one more portrait of the modern world as a place where good and evil are clearly defined, when all our energies are engaged in trying to make sense of a world dominated by gray areas? BBC 07/14/05
Posted: 07/14/2005 9:03 pm

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Media

Bias Wars: Next In Line To Lead CPB? "A leading Republican donor who once suggested that public broadcasting journalists should be penalized for biased programs is the top candidate to succeed the controversial chairman at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, according to people at CPB and others in public broadcasting." Washington Post 07/15/05
Posted: 07/15/2005 7:51 am

The $220 Movie It might be the ultimate low-budget film, but Jonathan Caouette's new documentary, Tarnation, cobbled together from footage Caouette shot over 21 years and edited on the filmmaker's computer at a cost of only $218, has become the hit of this year's festival circuit. "He describes the film as a 'love letter' to his mother, who developed a host of mental illnesses after being given electric shock therapy from the age of 16 to 25... As much as it is a record of that catastrophic decision made by his grandparents, Tarnation is about an astonishingly creative boy growing up gay in Houston, dealing with the legacy of that pain." Sydney Morning Herald 07/15/05
Posted: 07/14/2005 10:16 pm

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Dance

Reinventing The Bolshoi, Subtly Many dance aficianados view Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet as the gold standard by which all other companies must be judged. But even legends have to work to keep ahead of the pack, and the Bolshoi has been through some trying times in recent years as it tries to find its way through a world in which dance is evolving faster than ever, and "straight" ballet often gets short shrift. "Alexei Ratmansky is the latest artistic director to face the company's basic quandary: how to introduce new work yet preserve the signature style and heritage of what Muscovites consider a national theater." The New York Times 07/15/05
Posted: 07/14/2005 10:03 pm

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