Artist: I'll Let My Art Rot Rather Than Bow To Ransom Demand "The son of prominent Canadian sculptor Haydn Davies says his father is prepared to let one of his most famous works decompose in a field rather than surrender to what he terms the 'ransom demands' of the Ontario community college that originally commissioned, then dismantled the piece." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/03/05
Posted: 10/03/2005 8:37 am
Rare Map Thefts Rock Libraries Rare map dealer E. Forbes Smiley III has been caught and charged with the theft of maps from Yale's library. Smiley, who has been "buying and selling rare North American maps and atlases for more than a decade, scheduled to make another court appearance here on Monday, the case is turning into an embarrassment for prestigious libraries and elite collectors from Chicago to London. A field marked by tweedy scholarship in quiet, climate-controlled vaults has been rattled by disclosures of maps disappearing amid lax security and suspicions that big-money deals were being made with too few questions asked." The New York Times 10/03/05
Posted: 10/03/2005 8:29 am
Gund Bails Out On WTC Memorial Agnes Gund, one of New York's leading cultural figures, has resigned from the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation board. "Governor Pataki (and it saddens me to say, Senator Clinton has joined him) has caved and virtually ensured that there will be no cultural component to the redevelopment. I hate to walk away from this situation and leave it to you and the others to sort out. But I am afraid that the governor and those few family members have succeeded in destroying what could not be destroyed on that awful Tuesday, which is our hope." The New York Times 10/03/05
Posted: 10/03/2005 8:24 am
Moscow's Art Fair Steps Up "The Moscow World Fine Art Fair was set up by its Swiss-based organisers Art Culture Studio last year to tap into the huge amounts of money being made by Russia's capitalists, but in 2004, regulations prevented anything from being sold. This year's fair moved to a new and better venue and attracted more dealers, and Art Culture Studio persuaded the authorities to let dealers sell art rather than merely hold an exhibition." The Telegraph (UK) 10/02/05
Posted: 10/02/2005 9:41 pm
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Download Music Sales Up, Total Sales Down Sales of downloaded music have tripled in the past year and now account for 6% of record industry sales, worth $790 million. "However, revenue from sales of physical music formats, like CDs, fell 6.3% and the overall market by 1.9%. That translates to a global drop in the market from $13.4 billion (£7.6bn) to $13.2 billion (£7.5bn), for all music sales - regardless of format." BBC 10/03/05
Posted: 10/03/2005 8:08 am
Embracing Doctor Atomic John Adams' "Doctor Atomic" debuts in San Francisco. "In a risky stroke Peter Sellars assembled a libretto from interviews with the project participants, history books, conversation transcripts, declassified documents and poetry. His cut-and-paste job has produced a libretto of heightened emotional resonance and surprising dramatic continuity. With Mr. Adams's haunting score, what results is a complex, searching and painfully honest if somewhat problematic opera." The New York Times 10/03/05
Posted: 10/02/2005 10:30 pm
Do Artist Training Programs Work? Of course they do. Just look at Chicago Lyric Opera Center for American Artists. The training program was launched in 1974 to "give promising young opera singers professional-level training and stage experience." Look at what its graduates have accoplished... Chicago Sun-Times 10/02/05
Posted: 10/02/2005 10:12 pm
Illegal Downloads Still Dominate Canada "Canadians illegally download 14 music CDs or other files from the Internet for every file they take from the web legally, a new recording-industry poll suggests." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/02/05
Posted: 10/02/2005 10:09 pm
Shostakovich Centenery Calls For A New Look "Shostakovich subtly manoeuvred his way round the Soviet system and enshrined in his music a message that could be interpreted in different ways - optimistic, despondent, crushed or defiant. With the advent of his centenary year in 2006, there will be ample opportunity to consider what the music meant to Shostakovich and what it still means to us." The Telegraph (UK) 10/02/05
Posted: 10/02/2005 9:46 pm
Opera Central - Why Don't They Care? Colorado's Central City Opera is a terrific company. But it is neglected when discussions of great American opera companies come up. "The perplexing question is: Why? It certainly is not because of any lack in production quality. The diversity and daring of Central City's programming easily competes with any summer festival in the country. Part of the problem lies with geography. The company is not only a bit isolated, it is also a long way from either of the two coasts, where nearly all the major classical-music critics live. And travel budgets are being cut everywhere." Denver Post 10/02/05
Posted: 10/02/2005 9:27 pm
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Is Arts Covergae About To Change At The LA Times? "After five years of sagging circulation and advertising, new managers at the Times are pushing for more coverage of Hollywood and celebrities. They want shorter stories and more regional reporting in the intensely competitive bedroom communities around Los Angeles." Wall Street Journal 10/03/05
Posted: 10/03/2005 7:43 am
Denver Taking Back The Tickets In 1998, Denver's major performing arts organizations began selling their tickets through a single service run by the Denver Center. But the combined ticket selling hasn't gone well, and one by one, the organizations have gone back to selling their own tickets. Denver Center "did a great job for a lot of years, but they had to serve a lot of clients, and a lot of clients with really different needs. And then 'The Lion King' would go on sale, and it would be overwhelming for everybody," Denver Post 10/02/05
Posted: 10/03/2005 7:30 am
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A New Orleans Art Entrepreneur Tries To Rebuild "Jonathan Ferrara was a gallery owner, an innkeeper and a colorful and driving force in New Orleans' up-and-coming visual arts scene. Hurricane Katrina wiped that canvas nearly clean, and it left Ferrara - a man who has gone about life in bold brushstrokes since graduating from Towson High School 20 years ago - unsure what to do next..." Baltimore Sun 09/30/05
Posted: 10/03/2005 9:31 am
The Hurricane, The Violinist, And The Violin Maker Samuel Thompson survived Hurricane Katrina with little more than the violin that is his professional livelihood. He became famous after a photographer took a picture of him playing for victims at the Superdome. The Massachusetts woman who made Thompson's instrument was glad to see her instrument... Boston Globe 10/03/05
Posted: 10/03/2005 7:57 am
August Wilson, 60 The playwright has died of liver cancer only a few months after announcing the diagnosis. "Radio Golf," the last of the 10 plays that constitute Mr. Wilson's majestic theatrical cycle, opened at the Yale Repertory Theater last spring and has subsequently been produced in Los Angeles. It was the concluding chapter in a spellbinding story that began more than two decades ago, when Mr. Wilson's play "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" had its debut at the same theater, in 1984, and announced the arrival of a major talent, fully matured." The New York Times 10/03/05
Posted: 10/02/2005 10:18 pm
Gore Vidal At 80 "He also is one of the last great feuding writers, since Truman Capote died and Norman Mailer appears to have mellowed. The three of them -- but especially Vidal and Capote -- engaged in savagely entertaining literary dust-ups, in lengthy battles rife with high-toned insults and sophisticated put-downs that those of us with lesser imaginations file away for later personal use." Chicago Tribune 10/02/05
Posted: 10/02/2005 9:57 pm
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NYT's Ben Brantley On The State Of Theatre: "On Broadway, I think reviews are less and less relevant. So much of the Broadway audience now is tourists, who want to approximate the experience of going to a theme park. At the moment we are in the midst of 'the theatre of celebrity'. If you can get a star, preferably from TV or the movies, and especially if they are willing to take their clothes off - you are guaranteed a hit." BBC 10/03/05
Posted: 10/03/2005 8:18 am
What Oprah means To A Broadway "Color Purple" "Twenty years and 49 million regular viewers later, Winfrey's sudden and unexpected endorsement of the upcoming musical version of that very same Alice Walker story has propelled what was looking like a midtier Broadway opening heavily dependent on positive reviews into a critic-proof international megahit. Oprah's impact on a Broadway show is unknown territory -- Winfrey has never before formally got behind a Broadway show (or any other piece of theater, for that matter)." Chicago Tribune 10/02/05
Posted: 10/02/2005 10:07 pm
The West End's Old Shoes London's West End is stuffed full of Old Chestnut revivals. "All the big musical shows are designed to make audiences feel safe about going to the theatre. This is a valid, indeed admirable, function of the art form; most people don’t want to buy a £50 ticket for the shock of the new. We hanker after entertainment as a comfort zone. But there is a danger that by leaving new work almost entirely to the subsidised and fringe theatres, the West End will prosper only as a money-making mausoleum." Financial Times (UK) 09/30/05
Posted: 10/02/2005 9:33 pm
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Yahoo! Plans Its Own Digital Book Project Yahoo is starting its own program to digitize books, following Google's much publicaized project. "Yahoo will help digitise 18,000 works of American literature plus material from national and European archives. It hopes to avoid the legal action that has dogged Google's plan by adopting an opt-in policy on copyrighted works." BBC 10/03/05
Posted: 10/03/2005 8:20 am
Paris Review's New Look "The magazine's design -- size, paper, type font -- has been updated for a new sleeker look, but its contents have only slightly changed. No drastic moves here. As has been the case since the magazine's inception, fiction, poetry and author interviews remain the central focus. But to that mix, Philip Gourevitch has added non-fiction writing and photographic essays." Chicago Sun-Times 10/02/05
Posted: 10/02/2005 9:22 pm
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Americans Watching Record Number Of Hours Of TV "During the 2004-2005 television season, members of average American homes collectively spent 8 hours and 11 minutes per day watching TV. (The season ran from Sept. 20, 2004, to Sept. 18, 2005.) The figure - 2.7 percent higher than last year and 12.5 percent above viewing levels a decade ago - represents the greatest amount of time being spent watching TV in American homes since Nielsen began measuring national audiences in the 1950s." Baltimore Sun 09/30/05
Posted: 10/03/2005 7:28 am
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