Traces Of Action, Evidence Of Torture Disturbing new photos have emerged of the violence committed by U.S. troops against prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and some of the most shocking images don't have a single human being in the frame. Instead, spattered blood serves as a metaphor for the horrors we have yet to hear about. "Comparing blood to paint, violence to art, is dangerous, even repellent. But in one sense, the blood on this floor is exactly like the paint drippings of Jackson Pollock, who captured the visible traces of action, the visual memory of gestures. In Pollock's painting, the gestures fixed on canvas were often graceful, melodic even, with paint obeying the law of gravity with a gentle quiescence. If this is blood, we can only imagine what the gestures were." Washington Post 02/16/06
Posted: 02/16/2006 6:45 am
Why Can't We Be High-Tech And Literate? Is our reliance on new technologies weakening our grip on the English language? With e-mail, text messaging, and countless other ways to do whatever it is you do faster, "dumbing down the language is not only seen as acceptable, but is tacitly encouraged as the status quo. Any number of my acquaintances excuse the bad writing and atrocious punctuation that proliferates in e-mail by saying, in essence, 'Well, at least people are writing again.' Horse droppings. People have never stopped writing, although it's reaching a point where you wish a lot of them would." Wired 02/16/06
Posted: 02/16/2006 5:23 am
Sweet By Nature Trying to pass on the sweets? Recent studies show why that might be hard. "The study strongly suggests that attraction to sweets and aversion to bitters is hard wired into the brain and is therefore programmed into our genes." Discovery 02/15/06
Posted: 02/15/2006 4:40 pm
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Hayward's New Chief London's Hayward Gallery, part of the prestigious South Bank Arts Centre, has plucked its new director from San Francisco's Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. Ralph Rugoff, who is "known for organizing unorthodox group exhibitions and writing provocative essays on contemporary art," will take up the post in late spring. Los Angeles Times 02/16/06
Posted: 02/16/2006 6:29 am
An Art Center The Frozen North Can Call Its Own "Cities are both real and imagined places. What's interesting about Winnipeg and the reputation of its visual artists -- both those who have left and those who continue to live here -- is that the real and the imaginary have become indistinguishable. Because of the emergence on the international art scene of a group of artists... Winnipeg is now viewed in New York, Los Angeles and London as a place that has produced an inexplicable number of good artists... What is unquestionably true, however, is that Winnipeg has developed a keen sense of itself as an art city, and the success of their peers is a model on which the current crop of artists can imagine how they might flourish in the rough-and-tumble art world." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/16/06
Posted: 02/16/2006 6:24 am
Detroit Museum Gets Big Bequest An heiress to the Ford Motor Co. fortune has bequeathed a $15 million collection of classic paintings to the Detroit Institute of Arts. Included in the collection are works by Renoir, Matisse, Picasso, and Degas. Detroit Free Press 02/16/06
Posted: 02/16/2006 6:13 am
Breaking News: TV Station "Pollutes" Chicago Loop Chicago's downtown Loop has been undergoing a dramatic revitalization in recent years, capped by the unveiling of the lakefront Millenium Park and Frank Gehry's towering bandshell. But the latest architectural addition to the Loop has some observers profoundly unhappy. The perpetrator is Chicago's WLS-TV, which has constructed a 42-foot monolith that it says mimics some of the art found in Millenium Park. Alan Artner begs to differ. "[WLS's creation] takes back the language into advertising and plays with it to pretend it, too, is art. But it's not. It's pollution that along with the rest of the frills added to the exterior of the building brings the sensory irritation of ABC studios in Times Square to North State Street." Chicago Tribune 02/16/06
Posted: 02/16/2006 5:47 am
Rare Blake Watercolor Sale Irks Experts A major find of 19 watercolors is about to be broken up and sold at auction. "The watercolors — illustrations created in 1805 by the poet and artist William Blake for a 1743 poem — are being heralded by scholars as the most important Blake discovery in a century," and experts are upset at the prospect of the sale. The New York Times 02/16/06
Posted: 02/15/2006 7:21 pm
A Prize Collection Under A Cloud The Metropolitan Museum hopes to get the major part of Shelby White's collection of antiquities. But an Italian "investigation into Ms. White’s collection seems to keep expanding. The stock of old evidence that Italian investigators are using becomes more dangerous to Ms. White’s collection as more of her pieces receive widespread notice. That is sure to happen as more than a dozen pieces in her collection—which has been admired by curators as one of the most impressive in the world, even as it has been disparaged by archaeologists as plundered treasure without provenance—are displayed at the Met, where she is a trustee." New York Observer 02/15/06
Posted: 02/15/2006 5:23 pm
A Record Price For Turner? Auction watchers are predicting a record price for a JWM Turner when it comes up for sale this week. "The Blue Rigi: Lake of Lucerne, Sunrise, is predicted to fetch more than £2m when it goes under the hammer at Christie's auction house on 5 June. The current record for a Turner watercolour on paper is £2.04m, set in 2001 by Heidelberg with a Rainbow." BBC 02/15/06
Posted: 02/15/2006 4:45 pm
Does St. Louis Museum Have Stolen Mask? Allegations have surfaced that the St Louis Art Museum has an ancient Egyptian mask in its collection that was stolen from a warehouse in Saqqara, Egypt in the 1980s. The Art Newspaper 02/15/06
Posted: 02/15/2006 4:30 pm
- St. Louis Mask Has A History In Dispute The St. Louis mask was the subject of accusations as recently as Jan. 19, when the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's David Bonetti reported that a "one-time forger and art smuggler" named Michel Van Rijn claimed that the mask was stolen in the 1990s. Modern Art Notes (AJBlogs) 02/15/06
Posted: 02/15/2006 4:23 pm
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A Matter of Choice "When it comes to consumer choice, it's hard to beat recordings of the popular classics. There are now around 100 different recordings of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, and nearly 200 of Vivaldi's Four Seasons." Conversely, you're lucky if you can find even a single recording of that contemporary work your local orchestra played last weekend, and finding more than one recording of a work written after 1970? Forget it. "But now things are changing. As new music loosens up, and finds a genuine public, so the record companies are taking an interest in it." The Telegraph (UK) 02/16/06
Posted: 02/16/2006 5:01 am
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High-Rises Clash With Green Space: Can Everyone Win? The city of Minneapolis has long prided itself on maintaining a highly livable and green-intensive urban environment, with dozens of parks, lakes, and the Mississippi River serving as the primary selling points. But a downtown population boom has developers champing at the bit, and high-rise buildings have begun to spring up all over the city, much to the dismay of some observers, who were hoping that Minneapolis would stick to its original vision. Minneapolis Star Tribune 02/16/06
Posted: 02/16/2006 6:34 am
Students Sue To Block Atlanta Art School Merger Since the Atlanta College of Art announced plans to merge with the Atlanta branch of the Savannah College of Art & Design, students and faculty have been up in arms, trying to galvanize public support for keeping the schools separate. Now, six students at ACA have filed a lawsuit asking for the merger to be blocked, and for damages to be paid to students who will see their tuition jump at the combined school. Atlanta Journal-Constitution 02/16/06
Posted: 02/16/2006 5:37 am
A Better UK Arts Council? How? So UK Culture Minister David Lammy thinks Arts Council England needs reform. "We must reform the Arts Council," Lammy said. It's got "to slim down", "get smarter" and prove that it is "more than a passive cash machine". But what exactly is he trying to accomplish, asks Rupert Christiansen? The Telegraph (UK) 02/15/06
Posted: 02/15/2006 7:09 pm
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The Presidential Soprano? Two years ago the Lithuanian government was trying to impeach the country's president. "Soprano Violeta Urmana was asked to stand as a presidential candidate i"I said, 'Are you kidding? I don't belong to a party, either social democrat or liberal.' 'Oh, that's better,' they said. 'But what about my singing?' 'You can sing, probably one or two times a year.' My husband couldn't sleep at night - he thought I shouldn't do it - but just for one day, I was thinking, 'Oh, for Lithuania, maybe I should.'" The Guardian (UK) 02/15/06
Posted: 02/15/2006 5:41 pm
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Vegas Avenue Q Closing After eschewing a national tour and opening in a special theatre in Las Vegas, Avenue Q was expected to usher in a new generation of theatre in the desert. But after only five months, and selling only 65 percent of its tickets, the show is closing. "The short-lived run of "Avenue Q" in Las Vegas will probably give pause to many Broadway producers who have seen long-running blockbusters and newly minted hits alike head to the desert chasing seemingly no-lose propositions." The New York Times 02/16/06
Posted: 02/15/2006 7:28 pm
Wedding Singer - A Hit In The Making? Hairspray was a big musical hit spawned in Seattle. Now the same company (The 5th Avenue) that birthed it is producing another musical-made-from-movie: "The Wedding Singer." "Could The Wedding Singer be the equivalent of Pearl Jam, a second cash megacow? Despite the predictable standing ovation that greeted Thursday's world premiere, the answer is, 'No way'." Seattle Weekly 02/15/06
Posted: 02/15/2006 5:50 pm
Sondheim Finds New Life In Smaller Chamber Productions "The current miniaturisation of Sondheim makes his more difficult works freshly viable. What it portends is a different kind of musical for our time – a chamber musical that can be produced without dependence on conservative theatrical owners and bankrollers, a genre that can take in everything from early Kurt Weill to the sort of work that never gets developed beyond festival fringes. It is exactly what spaces like Covent Garden's Linbury Theatre and the South Bank's Purcell Room were built for, not to mention downstairs at Carnegie Hall. When, I wonder, will these fusty places catch the wind? La Scena Musicale 02/15/06
Posted: 02/15/2006 5:04 pm
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Bookstores Have An Off Year In '05 According to preliminary estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, bookstore sales declined 1.8% last year, to $15.92 billion. Publishers Weekly 02/15/06
Posted: 02/15/2006 4:57 pm
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Denver Library To Offer Online Movies The Denver Public Library plans to become the first major library system in the U.S. to offer free downloadable movies, concerts, and videos to anyone with a library card and an internet connection. Patrons would "check out" the digital films just as they would a book, and the video file would remain playable for a week before erasing itself. Denver Post 02/16/06
Posted: 02/16/2006 6:09 am
Berlin Fest Gets Political The Berlin International Film Festival is all about politics this year, with "dramatized documentaries" playing alongside straight docs and other movies with a message. There is lighter fare as well, but from opening night in Berlin, it was clear that current events would be the main attraction. The New York Times 02/16/06
Posted: 02/16/2006 5:31 am
Olympics Lose Out To "Idol" NBC's broadcast of the Olympics Tuesday night got trounced by "American Idol." "Since its opening on Friday, the Turin games have been running well below the 2002 Salt Lake City games in viewership interest. Much of that was expected, but Tuesday's ratings was the first alarming sign for NBC that increased TV competition has taken a toll." Yahoo! (AP) 02/15/06
Posted: 02/15/2006 8:21 pm
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A Star Gala That Goes Kitsch In The Night The 'Stars of the 21st Century,' an annual gala that returned on Monday to the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center ought to offer much but delivers kitsch. "At fault is the vulgar attitude toward dancing displayed in the so-called "defilé," where all the gala participants leap and twirl, performing stunts like animals in a circus ring. The tastelessness of this finale, which spoils the curtain calls each year, has begun to leach into the gala proper." Newark Star-Ledger 02/15/06
Posted: 02/15/2006 7:56 pm
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