Get Smarter With Your Computer Nintendo's Brain Age software promises to make you smarter. "Developed in partnership with Japanese neuroscientist Ryuta Kawashima, the game promises to help you keep your brain in tip-top shape through daily exercise. As you complete the exercises, the game charts your daily progress and calculates how "old" your brain is according to the results." Wired 04/19/06
Posted: 04/19/2006 9:35 pm
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How To Grow Your Museum Without Letting Anyone In The Cleveland Museum of Art might be closed to the public for the next few years as it undergoes a massive $258 million renovation and expansion, but the museum's national and international profile may actually grow during the shutdown, thanks to a carefully planned series of traveling exhibitions which will highlight the Cleveland collection. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 04/20/06
Posted: 04/20/2006 6:49 am
Please Touch The Art Institute of Chicago has invested in a new technology designed to help it better serve a demographic usually left out of the museum-going experience: the blind. "The Michigan Avenue museum has re-created a handful of its art on portable, machine-etched plastic, which will help the blind to imagine what they cannot view. Called TacTiles, the 8-inch-by-10-inch boards replicate in relief the brush strokes of such masters as Renoir and Miro." Chicago Sun-Times 04/20/06
Posted: 04/20/2006 6:33 am
Growing Into Its Own Collection It's been three years since New York's Morgan Library last welcomed visitors to view its impressive collection of modern art, and when it relaunches itself next week following a $102 million renovation, it will do so with a flourish designed to elevate its status in the culture-rich Big Apple. "For the 82-year-old Morgan, the point is to proclaim that it is not just a well-preserved relic from Manhattan's Gilded Age, but a modern museum with world-class collections and a full schedule of special exhibitions. For the first time it will have space to show off considerably more of its own treasures, including a rare Gutenberg Bible, ancient Near Eastern seals and drawings by masters like Leonardo, Rubens, Degas and Schiele." The New York Times 04/20/06
Posted: 04/20/2006 6:09 am
A Royal Collection No One Sees Queen Elizabeth's Royal Collection of art is vast. "It has 7,000 paintings, 500,000 prints and 30,000 watercolours and drawings. Apart from these few rooms off Buckingham Palace, you can also see parts of the collection in the other Queen's Gallery at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, and in the various royal palaces that are open to the public. But this is a fraction of the whole. Furthermore, it remains unclear precisely what is in the collection, and where it is displayed (or not). There is no publicly accessible inventory of the Royal Collection." The Guardian (UK) 04/20/06
Posted: 04/19/2006 10:14 pm
Sotheby's: Our Price, Guaranteed Sotheby's is increasingly offering guaranteed sales prices to sellers. "If a picture sells for more than the guaranteed amount, the auction house keeps the extra money. If a picture doesn't sell, the house risks losing all or part of the guarantee if it can't resell the picture for enough money later." Bloomberg 04/19/06
Posted: 04/19/2006 8:58 pm
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Royal Scottish Slashes Ticket Prices, Gets Casual The Royal Scottish National Orchestra is joining the expanding ranks of orchestras seeking to re-popularize their product by making it more appealing to the casual listener. "Principally, [this includes] two new series of concerts: Symphonies at Six, the RSNO's first rush-hour series, and Naked Classics, a series devised to dissect and popularise classical music. Other new elements feature a design-it-yourself subscription series, a kids-go-free policy, and a dramatic reduction in the cost of concert tickets." The RSNO's young music director, Stephane Deneve, will also be getting involved in nearly every aspect of the season, leading family concerts and a Hallowe'en special in addition to his more traditional duties. The Herald (Glasgow) 04/20/06
Posted: 04/20/2006 5:56 am
Hiring Outside The Box The Philadelphia Orchestra has tapped the dean of the Eastman School of Music to be its next president and CEO. James Undercofler is a surprise choice for two main reasons: first, it is very unusual for an orchestra executive to come from the academic world; and second, Undercofler officially took himself out of the running for the position and signed a contract extension with Eastman a month ago. Philadelphia Inquirer 04/20/06
Posted: 04/20/2006 5:34 am
Overnight Sensation "Gustavo Dudamel, a 25 year-old Venezuelan with a film-star look in his eyes and the physical stature of Paul Newman without heels, has been storming concert halls on scant rehearsal this past year as a last-minute substitute. He helped the Philharmonia out of a hole at the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, deputised for Esa-Pekka Salonen and Zubin Mehta in Switzerland and Israel and went on air worldwide by stepping in for Neeme Järvi at the BBC Proms. He's smart, he's cute and, in case you're getting interested, he has just married a ballet dancer, Eloisa Maturen. All the right moves, in just the right order, and backstory to break hardened hearts." La Scena Musicale 04/19/06
Posted: 04/19/2006 10:29 pm
Overlooked - The Piano Duo "Nobody overlooks the qualities of a lone pianist, or the importance of the pianist in a trio. But when it comes to the pianist in a duo, the public seems to suffer from piano blindness." The Guardian (UK) 04/20/06
Posted: 04/19/2006 10:20 pm
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Will London Do Olympic Culture? Many Olympic cities have used the games to showcase culture along with sports. Most assume London will do the same for the 2012 games. But shouldn't the planning already be underway? The Stage (UK) 04/18/06
Posted: 04/19/2006 10:44 pm
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Foster Takes Canada "Though his iconic buildings grace much of the planet, it's only now, as conjurer of urban visions in Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary, that [Norman] Foster and Partners has seriously begun to infiltrate Canada..." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/20/06
Posted: 04/20/2006 6:41 am
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Not Good Enough For Pulitzer? Why did the Pulitzer board decline to name a winner for drama this year? More than a few playwrights feel snubbed. Adam Rapp, who was among the three finalists for his play "Red Light in Winter," said Tuesday that the lack of a drama award was like "a year without a Santa Claus" for playwrights. Los Angeles Times 04/19/06
Posted: 04/19/2006 9:48 pm
- What A Missing Pulitzer Means "The omission of a drama award, for the 15th time since the inception of the prizes in 1917, denies prestige, $10,000 and a key marketing tool to an American playwright. It also sends an implicit message that 2005 was an off year for new U.S. plays." Bloomberg 04/19/06
Posted: 04/19/2006 9:47 pm
Julia Roberts Broadway Debut Draws Mobs Julia Roberts' Broadway debut Wednesday night was a big event. "Hundreds packed the narrow city block outside the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on 45th Street in Manhattan. Even parking-lot attendants across the street sat three stories up hoping to catch a glimpse of the Hollywood royalty on hand to support one of their biggest stars." Yahoo! (AP) 04/19/06
Posted: 04/19/2006 9:46 pm
- Julia Roberts - So How'd She Do? "Though Ms. Roberts gives a genuinely humble performance, there is no way that this show is not going to be all about Julia. Ms. Roberts is the sole reason this limited-run revival, which ends on June 18, has become the most coveted ticket in town. Mr. Greenberg's slender, elegant play from 1997 about familial disconnectedness and the loneliness of intimacy has certainly never known — and probably will never know again — such fame and fortune. On the other hand, it's almost impossible to discern its artistic virtues from this wooden and splintered interpretation." The New York Times 04/20/06
Posted: 04/19/2006 9:43 pm
Mama Mia Heads To Silver Screen "Mama Mia," the ABBA jukebox musical is going to be made into a movie. The musical has been produced live worldwide and made more than $1.6 billion US. "Producers of the film project, including the musical's producer Judy Craymer and ABBA members Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, are hoping to release the film in 2007." CBC 04/19/06
Posted: 04/19/2006 8:54 pm
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Tonight, We Honor The Imprisoned Auth... Wait, He's Here?! "A novelist from Turkmenistan whose books have been banned and who has been under house arrest for two years became the first writer in 20 years to personally accept a Freedom to Write award from PEN American Center, the writers organization, at its gala dinner Tuesday evening in New York. His appearance was a last-minute surprise. Until Friday, government authorities had told the writer, Rakhim Esenov, 78, that he would not be allowed to leave the country." The New York Times 04/20/06
Posted: 04/20/2006 6:16 am
The $8 Million Gamble When Random House handed author Charles Frazier (of "Cold Mountain" fame) an $8 million advance for his next novel four years ago, the publishing industry gasped. "With just a one-page outline of the planned work, [Frazier] sold the second novel in an auction, and in so doing left behind the editor, Elisabeth Schmitz of Grove/Atlantic, who had discovered and nurtured him to success." The amount of the advance was unprecedented for such a new author, and now, as Frazier begins to hand in his manuscript, the industry will be watching closely to see whether Random House's investment was worth it. The New York Times 04/20/06
Posted: 04/20/2006 6:12 am
Ode To Lingua Franca "You recall Lingua Franca, don’t you? Fewer and fewer do, although if you ask some of the best and brightest editors and writers at the dwindling number of serious magazines and periodicals around these days, you’ll probably find Lingua Franca in his or her past. It was a monthly magazine about the clash of ideas in literature, politics, history and philosophy, controversies that would otherwise be obscured within ivory towers, written for the educated, but not necessarily academic, reader. It soon became a much-talked-about phenomenon inside and outside academia." New York Observer 04/19/06
Posted: 04/19/2006 10:38 pm
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Hollywood Vet To Head Telefilm Canada "Telefilm Canada will soon appoint former Torontonian Michael Jenkinson -- a brainy entrepreneur who has spent the past 13 years in Hollywood's hard-knocks production trenches -- to become its new feature film executive for English Canada, sources say. While Montreal-based Telefilm would not confirm Jenkinson's new posting, sources in the tight-knit entertainment community say the Jamaican-born film executive will take on this challenging job in mid-May. The federal funding agency annually doles out roughly $80-million to about 30 productions through its Canada Feature Film Fund." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/20/06
Posted: 04/20/2006 6:39 am
UK TV Exports Up Does British TV travel? Of course. The UK's top TV export last year was the Bafta Awards broadcast. "It tied with a wildlife documentary about chimps and Wild Sex, according to figures collated for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Sales of TV exports increased in the US by 10%, while there was an 85% growth in western Europe." BBC 04/19/06
Posted: 04/19/2006 8:50 pm
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The Past Is Grand, But The Present And Future Look Scary John Rockwell seconds the notion that the current Martha Graham retrospective shows a company in disarray. This season's offerings have been severely scaled back, the troupe's leadership is chaotic at best, "the dancers have been erratically paid, touring engagements look sparse," and perhaps worst of all, the company is facing yet another legal battle over its treatment of the Graham legacy. The New York Times 04/20/06
Posted: 04/20/2006 6:19 am
An Impersonation Of Martha Graham (Not Good) A celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Martha Graham Company shows the company is in trouble, writes Tobi Tobias. "The Graham company is in serious distress. Granted, it is no stranger to turmoil. The difficulties have always gone beyond the money troubles common to dance troupes, though the group's present financial straits are indeed dire." Bloomberg 04/19/06
Posted: 04/19/2006 11:05 pm
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