Remaking Downtown LA, Gehry Style Having received accolades for his design of Los Angeles's Disney Concert Hall, architect Frank Gehry is now planning to transform the look of America's second-largest city further, with the aim of creating a viable downtown on LA's Grand Avenue. "The $750 million project, which includes the first high-rises he has ever designed for his hometown, is the first phase of a $1.8 billion development plan by the Related Companies that will remake Grand Avenue as a pedestrian-based gathering point." The New York Times 04/25/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 5:53 am
Refco Collection To Hit The Block A world-famous photography collection owned by the bankrupt brokerage firm Refco is to be auctioned off at Christie's New York. "Photographs in the Refco collection, known to art experts worldwide, have had pride of place on the walls of the company's New York and Chicago offices for decades... Highlights include Richard Avedon's photograph Andy Warhol, Artist, New York City, August 20, 1969, which has an estimate of $100,000 to $150,000. And William Eggleston's Memphis, from 1969-70 has an estimated price of $40,000 to $60,000 on it." BBC 04/24/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 5:47 am
When's The Last Time Saatchi Chained Himself To A Tree? "Spanish art collector Baroness Carmen Thyssen threatened yesterday to chain herself to a tree on Madrid's most emblematic street, the Paseo del Prado, to stop proposed building works outside a museum of valuable paintings donated by her family. The baroness said a redesign of the street, planned to keep traffic away from the nearby Prado museum, would leave her own museum choking in exhaust fumes." The Guardian (UK) 04/25/06
Posted: 04/24/2006 9:13 pm
Should Museums Try To "Fix" Their Mostly-Male Collections? One of Sweden's more prominent museums has requested a special government grant of $6.6 million to purchase 20th century works exclusively by female artists. Officials at Moderna Museet say that the grant would help it "redress the gender imbalance in its collection." But are such "positive discrimination" plans really serving the best interest of art? The Guardian (UK) 04/25/06
Posted: 04/24/2006 9:05 pm
The Case For Holding Onto Stolen Antiquities Increasingly, the international debate over the ownership of antiquities which may once have been procured in less than honest fashion seems to be swinging around to a "give everything back if they ask for it" consensus. But the British Museum's steadfast refusal to hand over the Elgin Marbles that once belonged to Greece has stood out as a notable example of an institution claiming a higher right to an artifact. "In many instances, national treasures are better off outside their countries of origin - better cared for, receiving more attention, and more accessible... It is one of the paradoxes of culture that museums confer as much as acknowledge beauty." The Guardian (UK) 04/25/06
Posted: 04/24/2006 8:58 pm
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When The Weaver Met The Boss How can an octogenarian folk singer enjoy a career resurgence without singing a note? Just ask Pete Seeger, whose already impressive legacy is getting a major boost with the release of a new CD by rocker Bruce Springsteen. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/25/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 6:11 am
IU Music School Mourns Its Loss The plane crash that killed five students at the University of Indiana's School of Music has rocked the Bloomington campus, and students and faculty are just beginning to assess the impact of the disaster on the school. Indiana Daily Student 04/25/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 5:42 am
SPCO To Offer 35-Year Archive Of Concerts Online The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra has unveiled a new media agreement with Minnesota Public Radio which will allow online listeners to hear a large percentage of the orchestra's 35-year archive of radio broadcasts. Still undecided is whether the programs will be free to consumers, but the agreement is likely to get plenty of scrutiny from orchestras and musicians around the country, as the industry continues to debate how best to use new technologies, and how (if at all) musicians should be paid for such distribution. Minneapolis Star Tribune 04/25/06
Posted: 04/24/2006 9:41 pm
You Can't Judge A Drunk By His Symphonies "The characters and life stories of composers are as varied as those of any other group - schoolteachers or greengrocers, farmers or soccer managers. It is true that some lived flamboyant bohemian lives, but just as many carried on like accountants... Does knowing about the composers help us to understand their music? It is tempting to think that there is an obvious connection between the way a composer lived and the music he wrote (and most of them were 'he'). Sadly, this isn't the case." The Telegraph (UK) 04/24/06
Posted: 04/24/2006 8:20 pm
The Great Classical Dumb-Down Comes To Oz In Australia, some devotees of classical music are worried that some of the world's greatest art is being reduced to the level of a pop song, and that those intending to broaden the audience are, in fact, insulting its intelligence. "To be sure, classical music needs to reach out to new audiences if it is to survive in this country... But we are not going the right way about fixing the problem. Instead, we are dumbing down classical music through the constant release of 'best of' CD compilations and with programming that replaces quality with quantity. The main culprit is none other than the traditional champion of classical music in this country, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation." Sydney Morning Herald 04/25/06
Posted: 04/24/2006 8:15 pm
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DaVinci Riles Up The Faithful Around The Globe As release date approaches for the film version of The DaVinci Code, Christian activists worldwide are launching websites, issuing pronouncements, and generally doing whatever they can to denounce the story, which speculates that Jesus may have married and had children, and delves into the mysteries surrounding a certain secret sect. The Age (Melbourne) 04/24/06
Posted: 04/24/2006 8:53 pm
Scottish Arts Advocates Look For Funding To Match Their Ambition In Scotland, where public arts funding has been awfully hard to come by in recent years, there are fears that the arts are increasingly being seen as an unnecessary frill, even as Glasgow and Edinburgh make strides in the effort to expand and develop their respective cultural scenes. The Herald (UK) 04/24/06
Posted: 04/24/2006 8:30 pm
Baghdad Arts School Threatened By Continued Violence Iraq still teeters on the brink of civil war, and life in Baghdad appears years away from anything approaching normalcy. Somehow, though, the Baghdad Music & Ballet School has stayed open, even with a diverse student body consisting of Shiites, Sunnis, and Christians. "But violence has taken its toll, said principal Najiha Naif. Students have dropped out because many are afraid of getting killed on the way to class. Blasts have shattered the school's windows and mirrors. Gunmen have stormed the school ground to take cover during gun battles... Before war, the school had problems accommodating all the students who applied, Naif said. The centre now has 200 students and it survives in part thanks to foreign donations." Reuters 04/25/06
Posted: 04/24/2006 7:56 pm
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Philip Roth's Preemptive Disclaimer Lest his new novel suggest anything else, Philip Roth would like you to know that he's feeling just fine, and he's invited some photographers to snap a few shots to prove the point. "The reason for Mr. Roth's pre-emptive photographic strike is that 'Everyman' is a book about mortality. It begins in a graveyard and ends on the operating table. And Mr. Roth is hoping that the pictorial evidence on the book's jacket will stave off autobiographical interpretations." The New York Times 04/25/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 5:59 am
The Face of Curtis, Looking Ever Inward In 20 years of running the Curtis Institute of Music, Gary Graffman has raised the school's international profile, boosted its endowment, and expanded the school's training beyond simple pursuit of orchestral jobs, traditionally considered the plum positions in the classical music world. "Behind the scenes, Graffman also managed to keep the school tuition-free and mostly deficit-free during a challenging time." Philadelphia Inquirer 04/25/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 5:29 am
- Graffman's Legacy: If It Ain't Broke... As the Curtis Institute of Music prepares to transfer its top leadership post from pianist Gary Graffman to violist Roberto Diaz, Graffman says that all he ever tried to do was maintain an already outstanding level of musical achievement. He also feels that his whatever legacy he may have as longtime leader of one of the world's most prestigious conservatories is wrapped up in the quality of the school's students. "We try to adjust to the students, that they should not fit into a preset mold. We have to rein them in once in a while... The technical level of incoming students is obscenely high. It's scary in some cases." Philadelphia Inquirer 04/25/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 5:10 am
The Man Who Brought Beauty To Britain's Modern Landscape Civic engineering is a vital part of urban life, but rarely does it provide us with a glimpse at pure beauty. "Isambard Kingdom Brunel, whose bicentenary we celebrate this month, changed the face of Britain. A restless polymath, he imbued the kingdom with gloriously ambitious railways, sensational steamships, revolutionary bridges and a new industrial-era architecture... His monuments are all around us - and they are as dramatic and useful today as they were in their Victorian heyday." The Guardian (UK) 04/25/06
Posted: 04/24/2006 9:09 pm
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Rachel Corrie Gets A Reading In Toronto "The script of My Name is Rachel Corrie, a controversial play about the 23-year-old American activist who died in Gaza during a political demonstration in 2003, received a private reading without incident at Hart House on the University of Toronto campus Sunday night... While the play ran successfully in London for many months, a proposed production at the New York Theatre Workshop was cancelled shortly before its opening, because of fears that it would exacerbate 'an edgy situation' within the Jewish community. This cancellation sparked a worldwide controversy, with heated voices being raised on both sides. In light of that reaction, the Toronto organizers decided to make Sunday night's reading by invitation only." Toronto Star 04/25/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 6:33 am
Seeking A New Revolutionary A hundred years ago, British playwright Harley Granville Barker revolutionized the stage with his embrace of the political and his embrace of realism. In recent years, London theaters have been leading a revival of Barker's plays. But are the revivals missing a crucial point? "Today, Granville Barker's ideas have been assimilated into the mainstream - and now we must go beyond him in our new work. The kind of theatre he advocated - essentially the tentative beginnings of social realism - has been embraced for over 40 years. We need to move on again, and realise that if theatre is evolving beyond this, it is for a very good reason." The Guardian (UK) 04/25/06
Posted: 04/24/2006 9:17 pm
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A (Last?) Look At Endangered Languages "By the end of the century, linguists predict, half of the world's languages will be dead, victims of globalization. English is the major culprit, slowly extinguishing the other tongues that lie in its path... In the next two weeks, however, some of these endangered idioms can be heard at two international literary festivals that celebrate languages big and small, as well as the power and resilience of words themselves." The New York Times 04/25/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 6:04 am
Harvard Author Admits Plagiarism, But Not Guilt "Kaavya Viswanathan, the Harvard sophomore accused of plagiarizing parts of her recently published chick-lit novel, acknowledged yesterday that she had borrowed language from another writer's books, but called the copying 'unintentional and unconscious.'... On Sunday, The Harvard Crimson reported that Ms. Viswanathan, who received $500,000 as part of a deal for [two books,] had seemingly plagiarized language from two novels by Megan McCafferty, an author of popular young-adult books." The New York Times 04/25/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 5:20 am
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The Man Who Might Save Canadian Film The new head of Telefilm Canada is taking on more than a simple CEO's job. On his shoulders rest the hopes and dreams of Canada's entire filmmaking community, and if that seems hyperbolic, you probably aren't acquainted with the struggles of filmmakers north of the border. "As Telefilm's newly minted go-to guy for approving and funding English-language features, [Michael Jenkinson] replaces an antiquated (and generally loathed) national decision committee which had been responsible for spreading around roughly $80-million a year." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/25/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 6:18 am
Tribeca's Obsession With Reality To judge by the entries in this year's Tribeca Film Festival in New York, the days of movies as America's grand escape from difficult reality may be over. "In the shadows of [a few] glittering billboards seethes a mass of films, many taped on digital video or filmed with hand-held cameras, in which reality is the thing. An immersion in this year's festival might be described as an intensive course in compassion, suffering and outrage. For a festival born out of the ashes of 9/11, could it be any other way?" The New York Times 04/25/06
Posted: 04/25/2006 5:56 am
UK Public Opposes TV Fee Hike (Even To Help The Elderly) A plan by the BBC to cover the cost of providing digital TV access to disadvantaged groups such as the elderly and infirm with a hike in the country's television license fee reportedly has nearly half of UK viewers opposed. (The BBC is funded through collection of an annual fee - currently £131.50 - charged to anyone owning a TV in the UK.) UK broadcasters are supposed to convert completely to digital signals by 2012, but the government wants the BBC to help cover the cost of switching viewers over to the new technology. BBC 04/24/06
Posted: 04/24/2006 8:40 pm
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