A Short History Of Booing "The first written record comes from ancient Greece. At the annual Festival of Dionysia in Athens, playwrights competed to determine whose tragedy was the best. When the democratic reformer Cleisthenes came to power in the sixth century B.C., audience participation came to be regarded as a civic duty. The audience applauded to show its approval and shouted and whistled to show displeasure." Slate 05/11/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:36 PM
Seoul Building Nam June Paik Museum "According to the government-run Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation, the museum will feature 67 of Paik's works, three of his personal belongings and a video archive of his 2,285 studies." Korea Times 05/09/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:41 PM
Art Students Find New Venue For Show Closed By City "A group of graduate art students whose thesis exhibition was shut down last week after a city official found it offensive have accepted an offer by their college to relocate the show to the Dumbo neighborhood in Brooklyn." The New York Times 05/12/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:30 PM
Canadians Go To Court Over Rodins "The dispute is the latest in a nearly six-year battle over the authenticity of a group of plasters attributed to the French master Auguste Rodin and destined for the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ont. The Rodins, 52 plasters and several dozen bronzes in total, were to have served as leverage for the creation of an ambitious "international sculpture park dedicated to 20th- and 21st-century sculpture" in the small city 90 kilometres north of Toronto. That plan is now in ruins and the MacLaren is more than $4-million in debt." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/11/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:28 PM
China Asks US To Ban Art Imports "In a request pending at the U. S. State Department, the Chinese government has asked the U.S. to ban imports of any Chinese artifact made before 1912. The proposed prohibition, which has come under fire from American art dealers and museum directors, would cover metal objects, ceramics, stoneware, paintings and calligraphy, textiles, ivory, and wooden or bamboo objects. The Chinese government says the sweeping ban is necessary because pillaging of archeological sites and smuggling of artifacts have become rampant in recent years, despite government efforts to stop them." Chicago Tribune 05/11/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:27 PM
Civic Pride Saves Art Chicago Why did Chicago's Merchandise Mart step in at the last minute to rescue the ailing Art Chicago? "Art Chicago helped establish Chicago as a cultural mecca. We produce over 25 shows a year in Chicago. Anyone who produces a show here gets a black eye if that show goes down." Chicago Sun-Times 05/11/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:26 PM
Irish Art Sales Surge Sales of Irish art have gone up along with the country's booming economy. "The rapid rise in prices has triggered demands for the government in Dublin to make more funds available to buy works for public galleries and prevent them being exported." The Guardian (UK) 05/12/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:25 PM
Winnipeg Symphony Music Director Departs Andrey Boreyko concludes his short tenure as music director of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. "Soon after taking the reins from former maestro Bramwell Tovey in 2002, he discovered WSO was in a "tragic" budget bind that threatened its existence. He and the musicians made financial sacrifices, the WSO rallied and Boreyko later extended his contract for an extra year to see the orchestra through its current season. But he bemoans the lack of public support for classical music in Canada." Winnipeg Sun 05/11/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:36 PM
Classical Award To Alsop The Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards have been presented. "BBC Radio 3 listeners voted Marin Alsop, conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, their favourite figure in classical music." BBC 05/09/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:34 PM
What Happened To Classical Music's Political Fire? "The retreat to the purely aesthetic in the past 30 years has led to a depressing lowering of the emotional and intellectual temperature of new music. We hear so many safe, high-gloss pieces that seem to have no urgent reason for existing. However, the good news is that the radical spirit hasn't gone. It's just that, as in pop music, you find it in people who might be old in years, but are marvellously young in spirit." The Telegraph (UK) 05/12/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:29 PM
Congress To Cap Smithsonian Salaries? A US Congressional committee has amended an appropriations bill to cap salaries at the Smithsonian. "There are 28 people at the Smithsonian that are paid more than Cabinet secretaries. There are 22 people at the Smithsonian that are paid more than the vice president [$212,000]. If you count pay and bonuses, there are six people making more than the president of the United States." Washington Post 05/11/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:34 PM
Mothers To Their Art "Any working mother or mother-to-be knows how challenging it can be to balance family and work. But women in the performing arts face unique challenges during pregnancy -- and after." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 05/10/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:32 PM
Lloyd Webber: Playwrights Need To Take Risks Andrew Lloyd Webber, testifying before the House of Lords, says playwrights need to take more risks. "We are not really seeing the young writers, or risks being taken in my particular area." He also called for "the same sort of tax advantages that are given to film and television, to be extended to commercial theatre". BBC 05/11/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:43 PM
Frey Admits More Fabrications In an author's note in his sequel to his best-selling (but discredited) "A Million Little Pieces," james Frey now acknowledges that "significant" parts of "My Friend Leonard," a best-selling story about his friendship with a gangster, were also invented. Yahoo! (AP) 05/11/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:39 PM
UK Out-publishes US For the first time in 20 years, the UK has published more books that the US has. "U.S. output dropped for the first time since 1999 while the number of British titles surged 28 percent, according to new data from research firm Bowker. Britain, with one-fifth the population of the United States, has long been the world's largest publisher of new books per capita in any language, but a steep decline in U.S. publication of general adult fiction and children's books helped boost the UK's total volume to the top English-language spot. UK publishers issued 206,000 new books in 2005 compared with 172,000 in the United States, which saw an 18 percent drop in production." Yahoo! (Reuters) 05/11/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:37 PM
Why We Won't Stop Using Paper Books "Our current students are unused to paper and attribute the frustration they feel when they use it as a mere lack of usability when in fact they simply haven’t figured out how it works. Older scholars, meanwhile, tend to forget about paper's unique utility because using it has simply become second nature to them." InsideHigherEd 05/10/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:20 PM
Of Smoking And Fatty Food German bass Rene Pape on the relative costs of addictions: "Yes, I smoke. But do you think it's healthy to eat fat-free food then five burgers with ten ounces of French fries then run into a fitness club like New Yorkers do? You think this is healthy? Do you think sugar-free food is healthy? Europeans are much healthier than Americans. Other people take cocaine. I'd rather smoke. Of course I won't smoke on stage as it disturbs my non-smoking colleagues and I don't want to do that. But I am not worried it will hurt my voice and I'm not planning to quit."
Posted May 12, 2006 05:20 AM
Karel Appel, 85 "With several colleagues, including the Danish artist Asger Jorn and the Belgian artist known as Corneille, Mr. Appel founded Cobra in 1948 at an international conference in Paris. The movement's original name was Reflex, but it came to be called Cobra, an acronym for Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam, the cities from which its founders came. The Cobra aesthetic — abstract, spontaneous, expressionistic, riotous with color — was a shot across the bow of de Stijl, which then dominated Dutch art with its rigid insistence on geometric form. It was also a reaction against the hegemony of French Surrealism." The New York Times 05/09/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:40 PM
Digital Radio Takes Off In UK More than 50 percent of Britons have access to digital radio. "BBC digital radio made large gains - rock music station 6 Music now has 359,000 listeners, and comedy channel BBC7 has 621,000. Radio 2 maintains its position as the UK's favourite station. However, its audience of 12.9 million is down by 389,000 on last year." BBC 05/11/06
Posted May 12, 2006 01:44 AM
CBC Buys Documentary Channel The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has bought majority interest in the Documentary Channel. "CBC bought the 53 per cent stake held by Corus Entertainment Inc., adding to the 29 per cent stake it already owned in the digital channel. The National Film Board of Canada holds another 14 per cent of the channel, which was launched in September 2001 in the first group of digital channels available in Canada." CBC 05/11/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:42 PM
Small Screen Dancing... "There is clearly a growing market for dance films and videos, the latest technological delivery system being the DVD. Walk into any store with a healthy selection of performing-arts DVD's, and those on dance seem to burst from the shelves (or the virtual shelves, if you're looking online)." The New York Times 05/12/06
Posted May 11, 2006 10:31 PM
