As Usual, We Nominate "ArtsJournal" What word best describes 2005? On-Demand? Podcast? Sudoku? Truthiness? (Yes, Mr. Colbert, we see you waving.) The debate will rage today at the annual gathering of the American Dialect Society, as America's wordsmiths attempt to pinpoint, in a word or two, everything that 2005 was about. "In 2003, the word of the year was metrosexual, which seems to have stuck. The year before, it was weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, or maybe, in retrospect, it wasn't." Nominees for 2005 include "intelligent design," "blogola," and "muffin top." (That last one is the bulge of flesh that results when low-rider jeans are worn by non-rail-thin individuals.) And no, Wonkette fans, "Abramoffakkuh" is not eligible, having emerged after the New Year. Philadelphia Inquirer 01/05/06
Posted: 01/05/2006 6:37 am
A World Of Dangerous Ideas Each year John Brockman asks 100+ very smart people a question. This year "what you will find emerging out of the 119 original essays in the 75,000 word document written in response to the 2006 Edge Question — 'What is your dangerous idea?' — are indications of a new natural philosophy, founded on the realization of the import of complexity, of evolution." The Edge 01/06
Posted: 01/04/2006 10:02 pm
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You Mean That Building Doesn't Suck? A new pamphlet purporting to lay out the four greatest skyscrapers in the world has included San Francisco's TransAmerica Pyramid on its list. Bay Area architecture critics are stunned. "There's nothing brilliant about concrete and steel piled high in ever-narrower amounts. Nor is 'exquisite' the word that best describes an ungainly triangle with ear-like elevator shafts sticking out on two sides. And hey, I'm just picking at architectural nits. When the Pyramid was proposed in 1969, critics recoiled at the whole idea -- viewing it as a threat to the very integrity of the city they loved." San Francisco Chronicle 01/05/06
Posted: 01/05/2006 6:48 am
Portugese Museums Discredits Its Own Rembrandts "Two oil paintings purported to have been the work of Rembrandt have been shown to be fakes, the director of the museum where they are kept has said. The works were donated to the municipal museum in Faro, southern Portugal, in 1944 and were displayed for 25 years despite doubts over their authenticity. Tests have now shown the 17th Century Dutch master could not have painted them... because they used pigments not available until the 19th Century." BBC 01/05/06
Posted: 01/05/2006 5:57 am
New Art Center Planned In Boston "In 1988, with just $1,800, volunteers founded the Zullo Gallery in [Medfield, Massachusetts, outside of Boston.] The nonprofit space has remained on a shoestring budget ever since. But nearly 18 years and over 75 exhibitions later, Zullo is ready to take its biggest step yet. Plans are underway to create the Zullo Gallery Center for the Arts. In the works are expanded hours, year-round art classes for adults and children, more live music, special events ranging from film screenings to artist demonstrations, and an in-gallery cafe that will spill out onto a rooftop deck." Boston Globe 01/05/06
Posted: 01/05/2006 5:21 am
Seattle Museum Closes For Construction This week the Seattle Art Museum closes its main building for 16 months to construct an expansion. "Downtown, the museum will have 300,000 square feet, tripling the exhibition space and providing a free-admission, wrap-around public corridor full of art and art events. Besides that, there's plenty of room for further expansion. The building is 16 stories high, and initially the museum will occupy only the bottom four floors and rent out the rest to Washington Mutual. When SAM needs more room, it can hand the bank its walking papers for eight more floors. (The top four belong to the bank.)" Seattle Post-Intelligencer 01/03/06
Posted: 01/04/2006 11:00 pm
- Seattle Art Museum Fires Guards Two Seattle Art Museum guards were fired Wednesday for threatening to walk out, which the museum perceived as a security breach. Seattle Post-Intelligencer 01/05/06
Posted: 01/04/2006 10:51 pm
Selling To Buy More? Hmnnn... "Now that we have become such meticulous conservators of the past, museums and galleries have become overloaded with objects they lack the space to display and which have apparently minimal significance. Major national institutions are constitutionally forbidden to sell items, and laws relating to charitable bequests exert further restrictions. But elsewhere, if the trustees see fit, there is nothing to prevent the disposal of such stock - euphemistically described as 'deaccession'." The Telegraph (UK) 01/04/06
Posted: 01/04/2006 10:28 pm
NY Galley Owners Fight, Then Get Busted On Tax Evasion "A feud between Upper East Side gallery owners whose clients include some of New York's wealthiest collectors has resulted in both admitting to tax violations." The New York Times 01/04/06
Posted: 01/04/2006 9:50 pm
NY Curator Named To Head Miami Museum Terrence O'Tiley, chief curator of architecture and design for the Museum of Modern Art, has been named director of the Miami Art Museum. "He inherits a museum about to embark on its biggest mission to date: building a new home in Bicentennial Park and expanding the museum to fulfill the prominent cultural role voters and civic leaders envision. In 2004, Miami-Dade voters approved $275 million in county bond money to fund two museums -- MAM and the Museum of Science -- at Bicentennial Park." Miami Herald 01/04/06
Posted: 01/04/2006 9:45 pm
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Mostly Mozart, Mildly Modern In case you hadn't heard, 2006 is the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth, and classical music organizations the world over are falling all over themselves to pay tribute. So you might expect New York's newly rejuvenated Mostly Mozart festival to be throwing the biggest party of them all, and you'd be right, but organizers are taking the unusual path of viewing Mozart through the lens of contemporary society. As part of its tribute, Mostly Mozart has commissioned four new works, "three of them 'inspired' by Mozart." Throw in a Peter Sellars staging of a Mozart opera, a dance interpretation of the master's piano works, and "a digital art installation tied to the Jupiter Symphony," and it should be anything but a dull summer in New York. The New York Times 01/05/06
Posted: 01/05/2006 5:40 am
Met Opera Gets Record Gift It's $25 million. "The gift - not the more usual pledge, but money that is available now - is mostly unrestricted and will go immediately toward plugging any deficit this season, a figure that at the moment is expected to be several million dollars, Joseph Volpe, the Met's general manager, said." The New York Times 01/05/06
Posted: 01/04/2006 10:33 pm
Wigmore Hall Gets A New Lease The lease on London's Wigmore Hall has been renewed for 300 years. "The previous lease was to expire in 2012 and there were fears that rising rents could reduce the hall's activities. Of the £3.1m cost of the lease, £500,000 has already been raised." The Guardian (UK) 01/05/06
Posted: 01/04/2006 10:20 pm
BBC Bach A Hit In the ten days before Christmas BBC Radio 3 broadcast the complete works of JS Bach. It was a hit. The BBC "website received a record number of hits in December, with 3.1m page impressions during the season itself and 2.4m in the runup to it. Precise listener figures will not surface, however, because Rajar, which measures radio audiences, does not monitor the period around Christmas." The Guardian (UK) 01/05/06
Posted: 01/04/2006 10:14 pm
Harlem Boys Choir Evicted "After more than a decade based at a public school at Madison Avenue and 127th Street, where it helps run the Choir Academy of Harlem, the Boys Choir and its lesser-known sister chorale are being evicted by the city's Department of Education for what the agency describes as a host of financial and managerial improprieties. Although it has always had difficulty raising funds, the choir now faces its most serious crisis since it was founded in the basement of a Harlem church nearly four decades ago." The New York Times 01/04/06
Posted: 01/04/2006 9:55 pm
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Is There A Silver Lining In Detroit's Abysmal Arts Year? 2005 was a tough year for the arts in Detroit, with funding cuts and red ink dominating the cultural landscape. But if there's a bright side to be found in the latest round of government funding pullbacks, it may be that arts advocates have been prodded to begin looking seriously at a diverse array of funding mechanisms that may provide more long-term stability than the whims of finicky politicians would ever allow. Detroit Free Press 01/05/06
Posted: 01/05/2006 6:16 am
Better Late Than Never The Electronic Records Archive, being undertaken by the U.S. National Archives at a cost of more than $300 million, is supposed to finally find a way to catalog all of the significant material that doesn't fit on a piece of paper. As you might imagine, this is a monumentally complex project, and even the chief archivist doesn't seem entirely certain where to begin. "The National Archives has been receiving electronic materials since 1970, but plans for long-term preservation of it all didn't begin until 1998. And the government has only started to take it seriously in the past three years.The National Archives has been receiving electronic materials since 1970, but plans for long-term preservation of it all didn't begin until 1998. And the government has only started to take it seriously in the past three years." Wired 01/05/06
Posted: 01/05/2006 6:04 am
The Art Of Celebrity Self-Interest "Art magazines are indulging in the celebritization of artists, but they're bringing something stinky to the mix. Take ArtReview's annual "Power 100 List" and Art + Auction's "Power Issue," both considered art world jokes since they first appeared in 2001 and 1996, respectively. Recently each came out with a list; both were based on money and as self-interested as ever. In addition to museum directors, mega- collectors, auction house bigwigs, art fair pashas, art advisers, and the below-average overhyped painter Marlene Dumas, both lists are stocked with the magazine's advertisers and the artists they represent. It would be a hoot if it weren't so craven." Village Voice 12/29/05
Posted: 01/04/2006 11:13 pm
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Canada's First Great Poet Dies "Irving Layton, one of the first Canadian poets to gain international stature and a controversial presence on the national scene for decades, died in Montreal yesterday at the age of 93. Before Layton, Canadian poets tended to be regarded as tweedy romantics, celebrating nature in the Victorian tradition. Layton changed all that. His poetry owed more to his childhood experience of his acid-tongued mother and the verbal combativeness of the Jewish immigrant community in Montreal than it did to Longfellow or Wordsworth." Toronto Star 01/05/06
Posted: 01/05/2006 6:51 am
Canada's National Arts Centre Hangs Onto Its Leader Peter Herrndorf, who is credited with bringing the Ottawa-based National Arts Centre back to national prominence in Canada, has had his contract as NAC president extended by two years, his second such extension. In Herrndorf's six years on the job, the NAC has not run a deficit, and has nicely balanced the Centre's double mission - to serve both a local and national audience - even while continuing to live in and commute from Toronto, some 430km from the NAC. Ottawa Citizen 01/05/06
Posted: 01/05/2006 5:29 am
Postcard From A Soviet Life "Until his downfall, Anatoly Sukhanov, at 56, was one of the officially privileged and powerful. He had a spacious apartment, a chauffeured limousine and two children with assured futures in diplomacy and journalism, respectively. In charge of Moscow's principal art magazine, he has enforced the shining-face uplift of Socialist Realism, and dealt out turgidly reasoned warnings about the decadence of Western modernism and postmodernism." The New York Times 01/05/06
Posted: 01/04/2006 10:47 pm
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Ian Tops Most-Powerful Theatre List David Ian, chairman of Live Nation’s global theatrical division has topped the annual Stage 100 list of most influential theatre people. He replaces Andrew Lloyd Webber who led the list the past 5 years. "Theatre impresario Cameron Mackintosh is listed in second place this year, with Lloyd Webber slipping down to third equal with Howard Panter and Rosemary Squire, founders of the Ambassador Theatre Group." The Stage (UK) 01/04/06
Posted: 01/04/2006 9:39 pm
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Brits Using Libraries Differently "In 2004/05, visits to public libraries rose for the third year running, with the number of visits up by a total of 17m since 2001/02. However, the fact that the number of books borrowed is on the decline appears to suggest that visitors are using their local libraries for research or for multimedia facilities rather than for their traditional purpose of book lending." The Guardian (UK) 01/04/06
Posted: 01/04/2006 10:24 pm
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Brokebacklash In the month since its wide release, Brokeback Mountain has become far more than just a hit movie. The movie, focusing on a forbidden love between two cowboys in Wyoming, has evolved into a bona fide cultural flashpoint, with liberals claiming that the film's commercial success proves that the religious right is not as powerful a force as everyone supposes. But Brokeback has also inspired a predictable backlash, with a not-so-predictable comedic focus. "What's interesting about the gay cowboy jokes on television recently is, generally, there's no joke. Instead, we get a banal repetition of the idea that the rural, taciturn, masculine, traditional-cowboy stereotype could be confused with its urban, expressive, effeminate opposite." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/05/06
Posted: 01/05/2006 6:21 am
Stewart To Host Oscars An announcement is expected this morning from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences naming Daily Show host Jon Stewart as the new host of the Academy Awards. The Oscars have been searching in vain for a viable replacement for longtime host Billy Crystal for several years, with mixed results. Oscar Beat (LA Times) 01/05/06
Posted: 01/05/2006 6:00 am
Two More Awards Shows You Don't Care About Awards season is in full swing in Hollywood, with the Producers' Guild and the Writers' Guild being the latest groups to announce their nominations for best pictures of 2005. Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, the ensemble drama Crash, and biopic Capote are on both shortlists, with nods being given as well to Syriana, Walk The Line, Cinderella Man, and Good Night and Good Luck. BBC 01/05/06
Posted: 01/05/2006 5:53 am
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