Quick, Impress Me... Too Late A new study suggests that you and your snappy new website have something on the order of 1/20th of a second to impress the consumers who click on your particular URL. "Researchers discovered that people could rate the visual appeal of sites after seeing them for just one-twentieth of a second... But the results did not show how to win a positive reaction from users." Wired 01/19/06
Posted: 01/19/2006 6:10 am
When Technology Substitutes For Going To Class Technology is a great thing for education, right? But teachers are increasingly finding that students who can get lecture notes and course materials online are giving up going to classes. This is good for learning? Los Angeles Times 01/17/06
Posted: 01/18/2006 10:39 pm
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Reining In Museum Architecture's Mission Creep When the new home of New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art is completed sometime in 2007, Nicolai Ouroussoff expects it to have a profound influence on an art scene that has sometimes forgotten that art and architecture are supposed to work together. "It is now razor-clear that the building will do more to freshen the bond between Manhattan's art and architecture communities than any building since Marcel Breuer's Whitney Museum of American Art opened on Madison Avenue four decades ago." The New York Times 01/19/06
Posted: 01/19/2006 6:46 am
What We Lack In Prestige, We Make Up For In Quantity Los Angeles is not a city known for its art fairs, but organizers of the new Art Week Plus are hoping that the confluence of four smaller fairs can lead to a whole greater than its sum. "Each fair has its own opening gala, designed as much for hobnobbing as art viewing. And along with pushing Rubenses and Rauschenbergs, promoters are touting the celebrity angle." Los Angeles Times 01/19/06
Posted: 01/19/2006 6:30 am
Iraq's Plundered Art After initial reports of looting of Iraqi art died down, so did concern. "Gradually, however, the extent of the loss and damage to Iraq's heritage across the country became clearer. Many of the Iraq National Museum's major pieces, too big and heavy to move, had been smashed. At Mosul, 16 bronze Assyrian door panels from the city gates of Balawat (9th century BC) had been stolen, as had cuneiform tablets from Khorsabad and Nineveh. In Baghdad, the National Library and State Archives building was burned down and the national collections of contemporary Iraqi and European art, including works by Picasso and Miró, were looted. Even more serious, perhaps, has been the damage to Iraq's archaeology." The Guardian (UK) 01/19/06
Posted: 01/18/2006 9:51 pm
Two Paintings Authenticated As Rembrandts Copenhagen's National Gallery has discovered that two paintings thought to be fake Rembrandts are in fact real. "International art experts have re-evaluated 10 canvases that bear Rembrandt's signature but were kept in storage for years because they were thought to be copies by his students. The five experts concluded that two of the paintings were by Rembrandt." The Guardian (UK) 01/18/06
Posted: 01/18/2006 9:30 pm
Serra Sculture Missing A 38-tonne Richard Serra sculture is missing from a leading Spanish museum. "The Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid bought the huge Serra sculpture in the 1980s at a cost of more than $200,000." BBC 01/18/06
Posted: 01/18/2006 9:07 pm
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Baltimore Symphony Chief Quits The controversial president of the Baltimore Symphony has resigned. James Glicker had been on the job only 18 months, and had drawn the ire of the BSO's musicians over the appointment of Marin Alsop as music director designate. The orchestra has also been struggling with accumulating debt and disappointing subscription sales, and Glicker's appointment as president roiled the organization from the start. Washington Post 01/19/06
Posted: 01/19/2006 5:18 am
Charleston Musicians: Don't Rush Us Musicians in South Carolina's Charleston Symphony have walked away from the bargaining table after being given an ultimatum by the orchestra's management that planning would not begin for next season unless a contract settlement was reached by February 1. The musicians' contract doesn't actually expire until the end of June, and the musicians claim that the ultimatum amounts to a "board strike." Charleston Post & Courier (SC) 01/18/06
Posted: 01/19/2006 5:04 am
- Well, Someone's Lying The Charleston Symphony's board president is denying that musicians were ever given a February 1 deadline to sign a new deal. The musicians maintain that the ultimatum was real, and point out that they accepted an 18% pay cut in 2003 to help the organization right its financial ship. Charleston Post & Courier (SC) 01/19/06
Posted: 01/19/2006 4:28 am
Long-Lost Music Released To The Web Universal Music is releasing 100,000 music tracks digitally. They haven't been available for years. "Records are normally deleted once they cease to sell in sufficient numbers to justify shelf space in stores. It is also not economical for firms to produce low-selling records. No such constraints exist on the net, and both record companies and Hollywood have recognised the advantages of digital content's "long tail" - they can market a huge back catalogue even if they sell only in small quantities." The Guardian (UK) 01/19/06
Posted: 01/18/2006 9:35 pm
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What Good Is A Plan If There's No Cash To Back It Up? The Scottish government is coming under increased pressure not to approve a proposed overhaul of the region's arts funding system without also significantly increasing what it spends on the arts. "Unless the Executive can show a substantial injection of new cash, it will be 'moving the deckchairs around on the Titanic', said one pessimistic observer of the arts scene." The Scotsman (UK) 01/19/06
Posted: 01/19/2006 5:53 am
Lincoln Center Redevelopment Gets New Blood Is Lincoln Center's big redevelopment back on track again? The controversial project has a new leader... The New York Times 01/18/06
Posted: 01/18/2006 10:17 pm
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Chicago Fest Hires Weschler Ren Weschler, the author and self-described "oldest guy in the room" at the literary journal McSweeney's, has been named as the first-ever artistic director of the Chicago Humanities Festival. Weschler, who won't move to Chicago, will be part of a new five-person team running the fest, which is being reorganized following the departure of longtime president Eileen Mackevich. Chicago Sun-Times 01/19/06
Posted: 01/19/2006 6:15 am
Fame As A Dead Body Chuck Lamb wanted to be famous. But "his dream was stalled until last month, when he realized that anybody could play dead. By posing as a corpse on the Internet, he thought, perhaps he could win a role as a lifeless extra on 'CSI: Miami.' He took two days to build the Web site, then waited for someone to notice. It was a short wait. Deadbodyguy.com received 300,000 hits in its first three weeks. There were 530 hits from Uruguay, 6 from Iran. In two hours, the site received 2,000 hits from Spain. 'I'm huge in Spain,' he said." The New York Times 01/17/06
Posted: 01/18/2006 8:31 pm
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Royal Shakespeare Closes Stratford Theatres The Royal Shakespeare Company is closing its Royal Swan Theatre for two years as it rebuilds. "Locals said they were unaware of a two-season closure and there are claims the town could lose millions of pounds of tourism spending, greater than first thought. While the RST is closed, the temporary Courtyard Theatre, with about 1,000 seats will be used." BBC 01/18/06
Posted: 01/18/2006 9:14 pm
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Taylor Prize Takes A Turn For The Tragic "This much can be said with certainty: The CAN$25,000 2006 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction, the richest prize of its type in Canada, will go to a book with a tragic story at its core. The four short-listed nominees, announced yesterday in Toronto... include James Chatto's The Greek for Love: A Memoir of Corfu; Laura M. Mac Donald's Curse of the Narrows: The Halifax Explosion of 1917; J.B. MacKinnon's Dead Man in Paradise; and John Terpstra's The Boys: or, Waiting for the Electrician's Daughter. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/19/06
Posted: 01/19/2006 6:26 am
Building Boom Threatens Books The beloved library at Trinity College Dublin has discovered that the city's torrid building boom is damaging its books. "The university has discovered to its dismay that a quarter of a million books, many of them irreplaceable and dating from the earliest days of print, have been damaged by building dust. The new Ireland is thus having a detrimental effect on the old, since this side-effect of Dublin's extraordinary building boom will cost millions to put right." The Independent (UK) 01/17/06
Posted: 01/18/2006 9:22 pm
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Sundance May Not Be Good For Indies, But It's Good For Film The Sundance Festival opens today in Park City, Utah, with 120 feature films and 73 shorts on the schedule. And as usual, the "true indie" filmmakers will complain that the fest has forgotten its roots and become a pawn of the major studios. These detractors certainly have a point, but Manohla Dargis says that "despite the hype and the frigid climes Sundance remains invaluable - wildly annoying, but invaluable. The American independent film movement may be a fiction, but it is the fiction we now live by." The New York Times 01/19/06
Posted: 01/19/2006 6:42 am
Is Hollywood Teaching Homophobia To Kids? You don't have to look very hard these days to find positive portrayals of gay characters in Hollywood films and TV series. But Nell Minow writes that, in entertainment aimed at kids, homosexuality (or the mistaken perception of it) is still a standard issue insult or an occasion for ridicule, and nobody in the industry seems to consider this a problem. Chicago Tribune 01/19/06
Posted: 01/19/2006 6:20 am
Piracy Not Abating, But Legal Downloading Up A new study says that, despite all the lawsuits and threats being propagated by the recording industry, illegal downloading of music is continuing at roughly the same level as before the anti-piracy efforts began. However, the number of tracks being made available for illegal file-swapping appears to have fallen somewhat. The industry also points out that "global sales of legal downloads [have] passed $1bn and music downloaded onto mobile phones [is] now worth $400m per year." BBC 01/19/06
Posted: 01/19/2006 6:03 am
Bafta Nominees Announced Nominations are out for the Baftas (Britain's answer to the Oscars,) and there aren't many surprises on the shortlist. Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain is up for nine awards, and political thriller The Constant Gardener scored ten nominations. The other films nominated for best picture are Crash, Capote, and Good Night and Good Luck. The Baftas will be handed out on February 19. BBC 01/19/06
Posted: 01/19/2006 5:59 am
BBC Sticks Up For License Renewal BBC bosses are defending their proposals for license renewal. Among them is a plan to increase the yearly licence fee to £180 by 2013. The demands of the digital switchover placed the BBC in "unprecedented circumstances", they said. BBC 01/18/06
Posted: 01/18/2006 9:01 pm
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