AJ Logo Get ArtsJournal in your inbox
for FREE every morning!
HOME > Yesterdays


Wednesday, February 8




Ideas

India's Sexual Problem India is modernizing itself at a breathtaking rate, and while the economic benefits of embracing technology and Western culture have been obvious for some time, the inevitable culture clash has begun. "What is happening now, at least for India's moneyed younger class, is a cultural shift akin to what happened in the 1950s and the 1960s in the United States. The topic of sex is coming out from behind closed doors and drawn shades... The result is a growing gap between affluent, urban young people who embrace the idea of sexuality and a prevailing society that still idealizes virgins; between a country struggling with an AIDS epidemic and the refusal by many men to even contemplate the use of condoms." Chicago Tribune 02/08/06
Posted: 02/08/2006 6:16 am

Click here for more Ideas stories...

Ideas stories submitted by readers
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story

Visual Arts

Score One More For The UK Export Ban Strategy "A gold coin dating to Anglo-Saxon times has been bought by the British Museum for more than £350,000. The deal by the central London museum makes it the most expensive British coin ever purchased... When the owner put it up for sale last year, the Government put a temporary export ban in place hoping it would be saved for the nation. The National Heritage Memorial Fund provided £225,000 of the £357,832 total cost." BBC 02/08/06
Posted: 02/08/2006 5:33 am

Discovered - 27,000-Year-Old Cave Paintings "An amateur caver has discovered prehistoric human remains and cave art in western France believed to date back 27,000 years, several thousand years older than the world-famous paintings at Lascaux." The Guardian (UK) 02/08/06
Posted: 02/07/2006 5:26 pm

Can 5 Million Austrians Buy Back A Klimt? An Austrian publisher, Hubertus Czermin, is tryin to mount a public campaign to save a Gustav Klimt painting that was recently awarded to the family of a victim of the Nazis. He's urging "5 million Austrians - 60% of the population - to each donate €20 (about £14) to raise the estimated €100m needed to buy back the work." The Guardian (UK) 02/07/06
Posted: 02/07/2006 5:23 pm

Dutch Agree To Return Old Masters The Dutch government will return more than 200 paintings to the family of a Jewish art dealer. The paintings were looted by Nazis in World War II. "The paintings, by Rubens, Rembrandt, Goya and other well-known painters, are valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. They will be returned to the family of Jacques Goudstikker, a major pre-war art collector who fled the Netherlands shortly before the German invasion in May 1940." CBC 02/07/06
Posted: 02/07/2006 3:57 pm

Click here for more Visual Arts stories...

Visual Arts stories submitted by readers
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story

Music

Classical Music's Online Future Looks... Bright? Really? The ambitious online venture Andante.com may have lost its battle to drag the world of classical music into the digital age last week, but Anne Midgette says that there is plenty of reason to believe that the war will eventually be won. "Classical music is thriving on the Internet. It is just that, like many other things on the Internet, it is not thriving in the form people in the 1990's or early 2000's expected it to take." The New York Times 02/08/06
Posted: 02/08/2006 5:51 am

At Long Last, Audubon Dispute Settled The feuding members of the Audubon Quartet have finally reached a settlement in their years-long dispute which racked up $1.5 million in legal fees and cost two members of the group their home and (briefly) their instruments. According to the terms of the settlement, the aggrieved former first violinist will receive $500,000 from the other three members of the group. All parties will cover their own legal fees. Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA) 02/08/06
Posted: 02/08/2006 5:18 am

Before You Hire A CEO, You Gotta Have A Plan "Eight months after the abrupt departure of its former president and CEO, Simon Woods, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra has put its search for a new leader on hold... The orchestra's search committee, having received credible feedback that it might be overselling the position and understating its problems, has suspended the search until the end of the month. During that time, it will develop a three-year plan meant to show it understands its issues and has a concrete strategy for the future." Newark Star-Ledger (NJ) 02/08/06
Posted: 02/08/2006 5:13 am

Music Under Pressure Orchestras often try to apply overarching themes to their seasons, but the Los Angeles Philharmonic is taking the idea a step beyond the conventional with its 2006-07 season. "With the U.S. premiere of a new oratorio and a series of concerts devoted to music composed under Josef Stalin, the Los Angeles Philharmonic will tackle issues of art versus politics" and focus on composers under duress from oppressive regimes. Los Angeles Times 02/08/06
Posted: 02/08/2006 5:04 am

Sheng Premiere Put Off Over Problems With Score The Philadelphia Orchestra has postponed the premiere of a new work by composer Bright Sheng, apparently at the request of music director Christoph Eschenbach, who announced after going over the score that "we all felt we weren't ready to perform it in its current state." Sheng and Eschenbach plan to work together on revisions to the Concerto for Orchestra: Zodiac Tales and the orchestra still plans eventually to give the premiere. Philadelphia Inquirer 02/08/06
Posted: 02/08/2006 4:59 am

Sydney Hops On The Online Bandwagon The Sydney Symphony is going digital, striking a deal with Australia's largest internet service provider to offer streaming audio and video of ten concerts in the 2006 season, beginning with opening night. The videocast, in particular, sounds as if it will beak some new ground, with five cameras in place to record the action. "With no record companies to take a cut... Sydney Symphony could be looking at a lucrative new model for generating revenue from digital recordings." Gramophone (UK) 02/08/06
Posted: 02/08/2006 4:47 am

A Grand Unifying Theory Of Music History Historian Richard Taruskin has grand ambitions for his 4000+ page history of music. "He maintains that this is the first history of music which not only relates what was done but how and why. He aims, he writes, to present a social history of music; that is, he attempts to place the development of music in the general culture of the place and time it was created, to describe it in its social setting, to explain its genesis and its significance for the composers' contemporaries and at times for their posterity." New York Review of Books 02/06
Posted: 02/07/2006 4:24 pm

The Man Who Saved The Audubon's Instruments The donor who stepped in to save two members of the Audubon String Quartet from having to surrender their instruments in a legal dispute has come forward. "Those instruments are part of their musical personality, their musical identity. I thought this was an opportunity to address this one aspect of the situation." The New York Times 02/07/06
Posted: 02/07/2006 4:09 pm

Louisville Orchestra Musicians Make Concessions Musicians of the Louisville Orchestra's musicians say they'll accept a two-year wage freeze and stop trying to get the orchestra to cover the cost of dependent health insurance. In return, the players want the orchestra to agree to mediation for their new contract. Louisville Courier-Journal 02/07/06
Posted: 02/07/2006 4:01 pm

Click here for more Music stories...

Music stories submitted by readers
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story

Arts Issues

Getty Launches Katrina Relief Fund "The Getty Foundation's Fund for New Orleans — to be announced today in New Orleans by officials of the Getty Foundation, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the city — will allow nonprofit arts organizations to apply for financial support of two types: conservation grants, to be applied toward preserving art collections, archives, historic buildings and landscapes, and transitional planning grants, for 'longer-term organizational effectiveness and realization of an organization's mission.'" Los Angeles Times 02/08/06
Posted: 02/08/2006 6:30 am

Crumbling Tombs = Cultural Crisis Rome's Non-Catholic Cemetery may be small, but it houses the remains of a stunning array of internationally known individuals, from authors John Keats and Mary Shelley to Communist crusader Antonio Gramsci. These days, though, the cemetery is in serious disarray, and has been placed on the World Monument Fund's 2006 Watch List of the 100 most endangered sites on earth. "Many of its important monuments are crumbling like the bones they mark, damaged by pollution and years without archaeological maintenance." The New York Times 02/08/06
Posted: 02/08/2006 5:46 am

All This Over A Cartoon? Yes, And Get Used To It. The Danish cartoons currently sparking so much violence in the Muslim world have put Western authorities in a tough spot. On the one hand, "they're callous and feeble cartoons, cooked up as a provocation by a conservative newspaper exploiting the general Muslim prohibition on images of the Prophet Muhammad to score cheap points about freedom of expression." But "the new Molotov cocktail of technology and incendiary art has hastened the speed with which otherwise forgettable pictures are now globally transmitted." As a result, unthinkable violence results, and the West is left scrambling to mitigate the damage. The New York Times 02/08/06
Posted: 02/08/2006 5:40 am

Does San Francisco Really Need More Arts Funding? "When art brushes up against politics in San Francisco, the results can often seem surreal," and columnist Ken Garcia has some pointed questions for the mayor's new arts task force. Balancing the needs of the city's major arts organizations with those of smaller groups is an ongoing problem, and the task force's proposal does little to address it, Garcia alleges. "[Also] lost in the funding frenzy was the fact that San Francisco already spends more money per capita on nonprofit arts organizations than any U.S. city, nearly $15 for each of its 750,000 citizens." San Francisco Examiner 02/06/06
Posted: 02/08/2006 5:27 am

Freedom Of Expression - The Most Important Question Of Our Time? "The cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten raise the most important question of our times: freedom of expression. Are we in the west going to cave into pressure from societies with a medieval mindset, or are we going to defend our most precious freedom -- freedom of expression, a freedom for which thousands of people sacrificed their lives? A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend." Der Spiegel (Germany) 02/03/06
Posted: 02/07/2006 4:31 pm

Click here for more Arts Issues stories...

Arts Issues stories submitted by readers
Restoring Laurels Lost Los Angeles Times 2/5/06
Outrage of Muslim world is misplaced Philadelphia Inquirer 2/5/06
Colorado Music Teacher Defends Screening of Faust Video playbillarts.com 02/03/06
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story

People

The Man Buying Up London's Art A low-key collector is making waves in London, buying up entire shows of work before they even hit galleries. "A genial Rory Bremner look-alike with a facility for imitating accents, David Roberts doesn't flaunt his wealth. But he is rapidly becoming one of the most sought-after clients by contemporary-art galleries in the UK." The Telegraph (UK) 02/07/06
Posted: 02/07/2006 5:15 pm

Click here for more People stories...

People stories submitted by readers
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story

Theatre

Amazing What $14 Million Can Do "Troubled" does not begin to describe the history of the Chicago theatre recently known as the Shubert (now renamed for a corporate sponsor.) "Producers coveted it for its scale, which is similar to Broadway houses, but many theatergoers groaned at the thought of an evening at the 100-year-old Shubert, with its drab colors, its paucity of bathrooms and its congested, claustrophobic bottleneck of a lobby." But a $14 million renovation has not only opened the theatre up, it has revealed some striking architectural details not seen since the building's earliest days. Chicago Sun-Times 02/08/06
Posted: 02/08/2006 6:09 am

My Death, Now In Previews A prominent Hungarian director who is dying is staging previews of his own funeral. "Peter Halasz, who is also an actor, writer and satirist, is in the final stages of liver cancer, and will begin lying in an open coffin at an art museum in the Hungarian capital Budapest later this week. 'I'm curious how a funeral looks from the other side'." BBC 02/07/06
Posted: 02/07/2006 5:36 pm

Click here for more Theatre stories...

Theatre stories submitted by readers
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story

Publishing

Zadie Smith Wins Commonwealth Zadie Smith beats Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro and Nick Hornby to win the Eurasian regional heat of the Commonwealth Writers' prize with her latest novel, On Beauty. The Guardian (UK0 02/08/06
Posted: 02/07/2006 5:29 pm

Let's Stop Making Books That Don't Need To Be Books Where do books fit in to the modern culture? "Nobody, not even academics, who are hardier than most, want books in any other form than books. At the same time, we acknowledge that books have become as throwaway as everything else in our culture, so what do we do? First, we stop publishing books that needn’t be books. People who don’t really read don’t really need books — so let them have Jordan and Becks in lots of other ways. Audio, animated-audio, that is, audio with pictures — is just about right for most celebrity publications." The Times (UK) 02/04/06
Posted: 02/07/2006 4:37 pm

Click here for more Publishing stories...

Publishing stories submitted by readers
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story

Media

Bush Budget Slashes Public Broadcasting Money George Bush's proposed budget takes a big cut out of money for public broadcasting. "In the president's 2007 budget request, CPB funding will be cut by $53.5 million in 2007 and $50 million more in 2008. Those cuts don't reflect others made in funding at the Education and Commerce departments and the elimination of specific programs for digital TV conversion and satellite delivery system. Public broadcasting officials estimate that the entire budget cuts run $157 million over the two-year period." Backstage 02/07/06
Posted: 02/07/2006 4:05 pm

Click here for more Media stories...

Media stories submitted by readers
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story

Dance

What Killed Oakland Ballet? The most painful part of the demise of Oakland Ballet may have been how predictable it was, says Allan Ulrich. "For those of us who experienced the Oakland Ballet in action during its heyday... the mourning is mixed with rage. This didn't have to happen... The saddest -- and truest -- observation you can make about the Oakland Ballet is that it expired because, in its 40th year, it had so little reason to live." San Francisco Chronicle 02/08/06
Posted: 02/08/2006 6:35 am

New Director For Colorado Ballet The cash-strapped and beleagured Colorado Ballet has named former American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Gil Boggs as its new artistic director, replacing the fired Martin Fredmann. Boggs, who hasn't worked in the dance world since retiring from ABT in 1999, inherits a troubled company with an accumulated debt of $700,000. Denver Post 02/08/06
Posted: 02/08/2006 6:22 am

In Scotland: Dance To Get Fit Scotland is planning to spend £1.2 million over three years to encourage 144,000 children in 800 schools to take up dancing as a way of exercising. The Scotsman 02/07/06
Posted: 02/07/2006 5:32 pm

Click here for more Dance stories...

Dance stories submitted by readers
More reader-submitted stories... | submit a story


Home | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy
Copyright ©
2002 ArtsJournal. All Rights Reserved