UK Building - All About The PR Why do British architects have a difficult time building in the UK? "The big difference between working in Britain and Europe is that here, you are not really expected to debate ideas. Money and marketing are what matter most. We live in an events culture in the UK. Architecture, arts and media are all increasingly driven by events agendas. Ideas are only valid if they fit in with media schedules. Original thinking and debate have been overwhelmed. So we get a lot of slick and often thoughtless architecture put up at speed. It doesn't matter much how it works, but how it looks, and whether or not it fits the latest fashion profile." The Guardian (UK) 11/21/05
Posted: 11/21/2005 8:18 am
The Man Hunting Iraq's Art Where are the rest of the some 13,000 artifacts stolen from the Iraq Museum at the start of the war? US Colonel Matthew Bogdanos - a Greek-American classics scholar and a New York prosecutor, whose toughness and tenacity had earned him the nickname "pit bull" has been on the trail for two years... The Guardian (UK) 11/21/05
Posted: 11/21/2005 8:10 am
Met In The Stolen-Art Crosshairs Italy says the collection of New York's Metroplitan Museum (and that of one of its trustees)has more than 30 objects stolen from Italy. Phillipe de Montebello "faces a careful balancing act as he fields questions from Mr. Fiorilli on those Greek and other ancient artifacts. While Italy's culture minister, Rocco Buttiglione, has emphasized that his government is not out to 'destroy the cultural potential of American museums,' the ministry has threatened to deny loans to museums that refuse to cooperate. And in a powerful reminder of the Italians' determination, a former curator from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles went on trial in Rome last week on criminal charges of conspiring to import looted antiquities for that museum's collection." The New York Times 11/21/05
Posted: 11/21/2005 7:49 am
Warhol, Pollock Stolen From Scranton Museum "Two pieces – Andy Warhol’s silk-screen print 'Le Grande Passion' and a painting by abstract expressionist artist Jackson Pollock titled 'Springs Winter' – were taken from the Everhart Museum’s main gallery at about 2:30 a.m., a museum spokesman said. Scranton police were notified minutes after the thieves tripped the museum’s motion sensors. The thieves appeared to have been aided by a large tent covering the museum’s back entrance for an event." The Times-Leader (Wilkes-Barre) 11/20/05
Posted: 11/20/2005 11:27 pm
The New Old Getty The Getty Villa's makeover is complete. "The addition operates like an anti-icon. As a means of disguising its bulk, it burrows into the canyon walls that rise on the edge of the site. The carefully choreographed and richly textured pathways that lead, rather indirectly, from a new parking garage to the galleries are lined by high walls faced in horizontal layers of concrete, red porphyry stone, travertine and bronze. They are meant to suggest the striated walls of a huge archeological dig that has unearthed, of all things, the 1974 villa. The overall effect is one of tasteful refinement and restraint — so much so that the architecture, at times, brings to mind a Calvin Klein boutique al fresco." Los Angeles Times 11/20/05
Posted: 11/20/2005 9:24 pm
- The Newly Restored Getty Villa The Getty Villa is reopening after a $250 million refit. "The complex, designed by Machado & Silvetti Associates of Boston, is genuinely an exquisite work of architecture. Reconfigured as an elaborate architectural narrative, it approaches the historical past with the scholarly attention normally reserved for real ancient ruins. But to what end? The gaudy beauty of the old Getty was its underlying message: the vision of a dying oilman thumbing his nose at the pretensions of the East Coast art establishment. By comparison, the newly expanded villa strives for Old World respectability. And in wrapping the old villa in the aura of good taste, it comes close to embalming it." The New York Times 11/20/05
Posted: 11/20/2005 9:21 pm
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The Case Of The Missing Conductor When the Austin Symphony took to the stage Friday night for its schedules concert, its conductor Peter Bay was conspicuously absent. "The mystery of the missing conductor deepened when the principal horn player, Tom Hale, bounded onto the stage, bowed and then rose to the podium. The principal horn player?" So what delayed Bay? The orchestra certainly didn't tell the audience... Austin American-Statesman 11/20/05
Posted: 11/21/2005 8:24 am
Rome's New Opera Sensation? A new piece by an aging rocker. "Two decades after Roger Waters broke with Pink Floyd, as bassist, lead singer and composer, fans flew here from across Europe to hear his latest creation. And it seemed to matter little that he had written a 19th-century-style opera called "Ça Ira," or "There Is Hope." The New York Times 11/21/05
Posted: 11/21/2005 7:55 am
Royal Opera Quits Blackface Covent Garden has abandoned a long-established practice of black-face portrayals on stage. "The Royal Opera has been forced into a last-minute U-turn over the casting of a white mezzo-soprano in the role of a black woman. Stephanie Blythe was blacked up during rehearsals of Un Ballo in Maschera (The Masked Ball), but when the production opened at Covent Garden last Thursday her skin colour was its natural white. The company said it made the change because of the need to be 'sensitive to issues such as racism'. In doing so it overruled the production's director, Italian film-maker Mario Martone, who was informed just hours before the curtain went up - and did not agree with the decision." The Guardian (UK) 11/20/05
Posted: 11/20/2005 11:00 pm
Fulfilling The Promise Of Napster (Legally?) Napster creator Shawn Fanning is back, and he's got a new plan for music. "He doesn't simply want to impose fees for the same songs that are available through Apple's iTunes and other stores. He wants to create an open system that would allow anyone with music to share - big labels and garage bands alike - to register their works with Snocap and set the economic terms under which songs could be traded. Snocap would collect the fees, using software that listens to each song in participating file-sharing services, matching songs that listeners order with those in the registry and forcing users to pay the price the song owner demands." The New York Times 11/19/05
Posted: 11/20/2005 8:50 pm
The Audubon Tragedy Enters Its Final Act There may never have been a more tragic or bizarre breakup in the classical music world than that of the Audubon Quartet. Six years ago, three members of the Roanoke, Virginia-based group fired their first violinist, David Ehrlich, who promptly sued to prevent the quartet from continuing to perform without him. Since then, recriminations and lawsuits have flown unabated, bitterly dividing Roanoke's musical community and making several attorneys very rich. The courts have sided mainly with Ehrlich, and this month, two members of the quartet will be forced to surrender their home, their possessions, and - no kidding - the instruments with which they make their living, to pay the $611,000 court award to Ehrlich. Roanoke Times 11/20/05
Posted: 11/20/2005 12:03 pm
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Why We Go The cultural cognoscenti love to draw comparisons between art, music, and theatre patrons who are in it for the love of the form, and those who show up mainly for social reasons, or simply to get themselves noticed by other "arts people." But is there any real truth to this longstanding legend of the self-interested patron? According to a new study which focuses on why people attend cultural events, the legend is true, to a degree. "The most common major motivation claimed by respondents for attending any or all arts events over the last 12 months was wanting to socialize with friends and family, followed by having an emotionally rewarding experience and gaining knowledge." But arts organizations might want to take note of the study's other finding: attendees are rarely completely satisfied with the experience. Chicago Tribune 11/20/05
Posted: 11/20/2005 11:09 am
Using Art To Fan The Flames Of Bigotry Two new and surprisingly popular graphic novels released in Japan are causing observers to worry about a startling rise in Japanese animosity towards the country's Asian neighbors. The long-form comics, sporting the titles Hating The Korean Wave and Introduction to China, openly mock what some Japanese see as inferior societies, and even advocate open confrontation with China and South Korea. Worse, the visual depictions of the various nationalities reveals an ugly racism that has permeated Japanese society for more than a century. The New York Times 11/19/05
Posted: 11/20/2005 9:35 am
The Great Big GoogleLit Debate "If there was any point of agreement between publishers, authors and Google in a debate Thursday night over the giant Web company's program to digitize the collections of major libraries and allow users to search them online, it seemed to be this: Information does not necessarily want to be free. Rather, the parties agreed, information wants to be found. But when it comes to how information will be found and who will share in the profits, the various sides remain far apart - not surprising, perhaps, since the issue has already landed in federal court." The New York Times 11/19/05
Posted: 11/20/2005 9:15 am
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Mackerras at 80: What's Left To Do? Sir Charles Mackerras turned 80 while standing on the podium of the Royal Opera House this weekend, and while he is by no means alone in the ranks of living octogenarian conductors, there is little question that the career he has built in his six decades in the music business is the envy of the orchestral world. What makes Mackerras almost unique among conductors is his diversity of interests: "[perhaps no] other conductor has acquired quite so many specialties or put them into practice with so many ensembles." The New York Times 11/20/05
Posted: 11/20/2005 10:45 am
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'Phantom' To Break Longest-Running Record On January 9, Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera" will become the longest running show in Broadway history. "The performance will be number 7,486 -- surpassing the current champion Cats, which held at 7,485 shows and was also written by Webber." Backstage 11/20/05
Posted: 11/20/2005 11:36 pm
'Rent' - From Stage To Screen Taking the Broadway hit to the screen is a tricky thing. "Rent is the eighth-longest-running show in Broadway history, and since 1996 has grossed $460 million from its various North American productions. And Rentheads attending early film screenings are having a go at the movie online, parsing all 2 hours 10 minutes of it, song by song by song." Washington Post 11/20/05
Posted: 11/20/2005 11:05 pm
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French Political Official Gets Bio Pulped "Nicolas Sarkozy, France's energetic interior minister, somehow found time while quelling suburban riots last week to ensure an authorised biography of his estranged wife, Cecilia, is unlikely to see the light of day." How? He called the publisher, who then pulped 25,000 copies before they could go on sale. The Guardian (UK) 11/19/05
Posted: 11/21/2005 8:32 am
Repurposing Lit Theory At each subsequent stage in the history of the modern university, English professors have repurposed literary history to suit expedient needs. When English classes were one way of carrying forward the religious mood of schools once devoted to educating a ministry, literature was made an occasion for conversion or homily. Slate 11/17/05
Posted: 11/21/2005 7:40 am
Eats Shoots And (Does It Rudely) "Two years ago, Lynne Truss was vaulted into unexpected celebrity when, after a long and quiet career as a novelist and critic, she published a short, witty book on punctuation. Initially brought out in London with a hopeful first printing of 15,000 books, 'Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation' went on to sell some three million copies in hardcover." Now she's back with another sermon: "Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door." The book's basic contention is that people in public places no longer bother to treat one another with even a semblance of Old World courtesy or respect. The New York Times Magazine 11/19/05
Posted: 11/20/2005 9:06 pm
Beware Your Local Library? "To those who say libraries are special because of their devotion to intellectual freedom, law enforcement officials say terrorism has raised the stakes. They say librarians are naïve to think that libraries should be treated differently from other public places where people congregate without an expectation of privacy. They also argue that shielding libraries from government surveillance will just convince everyone from terrorists to pedophiles to patronize the local library, much as some of the Sept. 11 hijackers used library computers for some of their dealings." The New York Times 11/19/05
Posted: 11/20/2005 8:54 pm
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CPB Staff Asks For Rewrite Of Report Staff at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have asked an accounting firm to rewrite sections of a report that questioned some large CPB contracts. "The report's conclusions questioning the contracts and spending practices of the corporation could be incendiary on Capitol Hill, where conservative lawmakers have often sought to reduce the corporation's annual budget. In recent weeks, they have proposed cuts in its current $400 million budget to help pay for other programs, like the reconstruction of the South after Hurricane Katrina and an inoculation program against avian flu. Corporation officials said that the request to rewrite the report was made not to prevent the disclosure of embarrassing information, but because some officials had challenged parts of the report as inaccurate." The New York Times 11/21/05
Posted: 11/21/2005 8:00 am
Movielink To Deliver Hundreds Of Movies Online Movielink signs up Fox to make available hundreds of movies online. "Movielink was formed several years ago as a joint venture of five Hollywood studios to provide a legal alternative for consumers who want to download movies to personal computers. The studios are concerned that sites offering illegally copied movies will diminish their revenues. But the studios also see the Internet as a lucrative, future way to reach customers directly. Film downloading, unlike music, has been slow to develop as few homes had the high-speed Web connections needed to quickly get movies." Yahoo! (Reuters) 11/20/05
Posted: 11/20/2005 11:48 pm
Remaking The Video Experience It will still be a while before video on demand makes it possible to see whatever you want whenever you want it. "With the rise of portable video devices, viewers are starting to change the way they watch television. The networks, meanwhile, don't want to be left behind. In many ways, TV is where the music industry was five years ago when Napster came on the scene. Having the benefit of those lessons in how to lose the revenues and the attention of a fan base, television networks are seeking renumerative new ways to distribute their programs." Toronto Star 11/20/05
Posted: 11/20/2005 10:02 pm
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