Tuesday December 6
Umberto Ecco: The New Gods "Human beings are religious animals. It is psychologically very hard to go through life without the justification, and the hope, provided by religion. You can see this in the positivist scientists of the 19th century. They insisted that they were describing the universe in rigorously materialistic terms - yet at night they attended seances and tried to summon up the spirits of the dead. Even today, I frequently meet scientists who, outside their own narrow discipline, are superstitious - to such an extent that it sometimes seems to me that to be a rigorous unbeliever today, you have to be a philosopher. Or perhaps a priest." The Telegraph (UK) 11/27/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 9:21 am
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Basel Miami By The Numbers Art Basel Miami was a hit. This year's show features a record 195 exhibiting galleries, and drew about 36,000 visitors... Miami Herald 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 9:11 am
Sites Weighed For African American Museum Four sites in Washington DC are being considered for the Museum of African American History and Culture. "Many supporters of the museum and President Bush have said the museum should be on the Mall. The new museum would be part of the Smithsonian; officials there have estimated it would cost $300 million to $500 million. The study says costs could range from $356 million to $1.4 billion in 2006 dollars. The building is expected to be 350,000 square feet -- roughly the size of the National Museum of the American Indian." Washington Post 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 8:27 am
America's Crumbling History A new report says that heritage items in America's museums are deteriorating and require urgent conservation care. "Millions of items in American public collections that may be lost unless they receive urgent preservation attention. In a study to be released on Tuesday in New York, Heritage Preservation, a Washington-based conservation group, reports that many such collections are threatened by poor environmental controls, improper storage, inadequate staffing and financing and poor planning for emergencies like floods." The New York Times 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 7:40 am
Italy Vs. Marion True "Italian prosecutors began to make their case on Monday against Marion True, a former antiquities curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the American dealer Robert Hecht, who are being tried on charges of dealing in looted antiquities..." The New York Times 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 7:39 am
UK Art - Not Insured None of the thousands of artworks owned by the British government is insured. "Culture Minister David Lammy said the government carries its own risk for the works dating from the 16th Century to the present day. The collection includes pieces by John Constable, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud and works are shown in hundreds of government buildings worldwide." BBC 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 7:06 am
Basel Miami - A Riot Of Color What was hot at this year's Art Basel Miami fair? "One began to discern certain strands. One was for the artist simply to exhibit the most unnoticed of objects just so that one noticed them. Willys de Castro hung two wooden sticks on a wall. Anna Maria Maiolino had framed some torn squares of white plasterboard. After seeing those, one certainly looked at things such as taps in the bathrooms with more curiosity — but not for long." The Times (UK) 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 1:02 am
Greece Opens Seas To Looters? "The Greek parliament's unprecedented step last month to allow divers access to the once forbidden coastline has raised fears that archaeological riches preserved in an untouched world will be taken by ruthless thieves." The Guardian (UK) 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 12:50 am
Shed Wins Turner Prize "Simon Starling is no provocateur. Nor was he a shock winner - the bookies made him the even-money favourite. But none the less, it will come as no surprise to those who regard the Turner prize with disdain that he has won £25,000 for dismantling and assembling a wooden shed." The Guardian (UK) 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 12:10 am
- A Shed With A Backstory Simon Starling's Turner-winning shed is all about the backstory (of course). "His work was in its way the least satisfying installation in the show, mostly because his art is less about the things in the gallery than about how these objects came to be there in the first place." The Guardian (UK) 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 12:03 am
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San Francisco Symphony $2 Million In The Red The San Francisco Symphony posts a $2.25 million for its 2004-05 fiscal year on an operating budget of $56.1 million. The orchestra had projected a $2.4 million shortfall. San Francisco Chronicle 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 8:43 am
Sophie's Choice To Debut In DC "Washington National Opera will present the North American premiere of Nicholas Maw's "Sophie's Choice," based on the best-selling novel by William Styron, as part of the company's 2006-07 season." Washington Post 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 8:30 am
The Opera, Backstage "The sheer complexity of running a major opera house puts opera companies on the cutting edge of operations, with every step of the process scrutinized to maximize time and money, both precious elements in eternally short supply. Logistics, originally a military concept, is the science (and art) of getting the right people and equipment in the right place at exactly the right time. Since opera is a real-time performance, that means getting musicians into the pit, the audience seated, the lights down, the sets ready and the singers on and offstage at show time." International Herald Tribune 12/04/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 1:13 am
Plugging Holes At The ENO Why did the English National Opera replace its top leadership last week sithout advertising the jobs? Some are critical, but the company's chairman defends the decisions. "He wrote that as far as the appointment last week of former executive director Loretta Tomasi as chief executive officer and former programming director John Berry as artistic director was concerned, the board 'could either enter into an extended period of uncertainty and speculation surrounding these jobs, or confirm in post two individuals with proven artistic and managerial records who were already carrying out many of these responsibilities with full board confidence. It concluded that the latter course was in the best interests of the company'." The Guardian (UK) 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 12:41 am
What's The Right Price For Digital Music? "Piracy is clearly here to stay, but as iTunes has shown, the record companies' best strategy is to provide an easy-to-use service that offers music downloads at a fair price. But what price is "fair"? Apple says it is 99 cents a song. Of this, Apple gets a sliver—4 cents—while the music publishers snag 8 cents and the record companies pocket most of the rest. Even though record companies earn more per track from downloads than CD sales, industry execs have been pushing for more." Slate 12/05/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 11:49 pm
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Carnegie Hall, City Center Team Up New York's Carnegie Hall and City Center are forming a partnership "that will lead to a $150 million fund-raising effort to renovate City Center, and give Carnegie Hall's increasingly ambitious programmers access to a dance and theater space." The New York Times 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 8:37 am
Embattled Getty Expands Board The Getty Trust expands its board from 12 to 16. "The newcomers — Stewart A. Resnick, William E.B. Siart, Mark S. Siegel and Peter J. Taylor — bring a long list of financial and educational credentials at a time when critics have accused the trust's sitting board of inattention. But the newcomers' lack of arts expertise and diversity prompted board member Ramon Cortines to step down from his role on the board's nominating committee." Los Angeles Times 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 7:48 am
UK Arts Go Private UK arts are getting more funding from private sources. "A report released today by the charity Arts & Business reveals that private support for the arts has leapt from £393m to £452m in the last two years. However, there is concern within the industry that the figures could be seen by the government as an excuse to slash public arts subsidies." The Guardian (UK) 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 12:45 am
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Brubeck At 85 He's still performing 80 concerts a year. "While Tatum, Louis Armstrong and others were inventing jazz, Brubeck was hoping to learn it. Now, some 70 years later, he's the most successful popularizer in postwar jazz history." San Francisco Chronicle 12/05/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 10:22 am
Pinter In Hospital Playwright Harold Pinter, who had canceled going to his Nobel ceremony this week, has been taken to a London hsopital. "Pinter, who was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in December 2002, was born in Hackney, east London." Yahoo! (AP) 12/05/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 7:23 am
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Didion To Bring Book To Broadway Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking" is coming to Broadway. "The memoir, which was published in October and has since sold more than 200,000 copies, is to be adapted for the stage by Ms. Didion herself, with an eye toward a spring 2007 opening on Broadway. The play, imagined as a one-woman show, will be produced by Scott Rudin, the Hollywood and Broadway producer, and directed by David Hare, the respected British playwright. No casting has been announced." The New York Times 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 12:02 am
"Purple" Overamplified, Overheated, And Overhyped John Lahr writes that "The Color Purple" fails on a number of levels. "Marsha Norman’s libretto is a kind of color-me-purple comic-book outline: it gives us the externals of the plot but not, in any meaningful sense, the internal life of the characters, who function more as anecdotes than as dramatic influences on Celie. As a result, what is earned sentiment in the novel becomes mere sentimentality in the musical. Everything is as literal as a street sign, and sometimes not as interesting." The New Yorker 12/05/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 8:53 am
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Book Club To The World Iranian-born writer and English professor Azar Nafisi dreams of an international book club, enabled by the internet. "Just imagine, she muses, the potential for global enlightenment if millions of people came together as a community of readers to discuss the words and ideas of international authors, both living and dead, who can provoke the shock and recognition that how alike we are is far more than our differences." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 9:15 am
Wikipedia Makes New Rules For Contributors Plagued by complaints of misinformation, Wikipedia will "now require users to register before they can create articles. The website hopes that the registration requirement will limit the number of stories being created. 'What we're hopeful to see is that by slowing that down to 1,500 a day from several thousand, the people who are monitoring this will have more ability to improve the quality. In many cases the types of things we see going on are impulse vandalism'." Wired 12/05/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 11:32 pm
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Are DVD's The New Political Pamphlets? DVDs have become an effective way of getting political messages out. "DVDs are cost-effective in terms of marketing. If theatrical is prohibitively expensive, DVDs are a great way to get out a political message. You can get free media play in such conservative strongholds as the blogosphere and talk radio."
Los Angeles Times 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 7:51 am
NBC Says It Will Sell Shows As Downloads NBC is joinging the rush to video podcasting. The network follows ABC in making some of its series available for download. "The shows, taken from NBC, the USA Network and the SciFi Channel, include current and older programming, the companies said." Yahoo! (Reuters) 12/06/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 7:29 am
What Happened To The Movie Villains? "Why don't the movies have plausible, real-world villains anymore? One reason is that a plethora of stereotype-sensitive advocacy groups, representing everyone from hyphenated ethnic minorities and the physically handicapped to Army and CIA veterans, now maintain liaisons in Hollywood to protect their images. The studios themselves often have "outreach programs" in which executives review scripts and characters with representatives from these groups, evaluate their complaints, and attempt to avoid potential brouhahas." Slate 12/05/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 11:55 pm
Soderbergh's Anarchic Movie Strategy Director Steven Soderbergh is planning on releasing his new movie to "theaters, DVD, and high-definition cable TV - all on the same day. It's an experiment that threatens to uproot the film industry's long-standing 'release window' formula, which staggers a picture's release on various platforms to maximize profits." Wired 12/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 11:26 pm
BBC Evacuation Puts Radio Off Air BBC's Radio 2,3 and 4 went off the air for a while Monday afternoon. "The break in transmission was caused by a staff evacuation at BBC Broadcasting House in London which led to the networks being taken off the air." BBC 12/05/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 11:06 pm
Tax Credit For UK Filmmakers The British government proposes instituting a tax credit for producers making films in the UK, with 16% relief for large budget films and 20% for small budgets. BBC 12/05/05
Posted: 12/05/2005 11:03 pm
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Marks Takes Over Orlando Ballet Bruce Marks has been named interim director of Orlando Ballet. Marks' appointment follows the unexpected death of Orlando Ballet Artistic Director Fernando Bujones on Nov. 10. Marks became the first American principal dancer at the Royal Danish Ballet and remained there for five years. He was named artistic director of Ballet West in 1976, and then was appointed artistic director of Boston Ballet in 1985." Orlando Business Journal 12/01/05
Posted: 12/06/2005 1:36 am
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