Tuesday, June 6
Claim: Mozart Helps You See Better Listening to Mozart helps you do better on eyesight tests. "Brazilian researchers let 30 patients listen to 10 minutes of Mozart's sonata for two pianos, while another 30 prepared in silence. The research, in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, found the music improved performance in the tests." BBC 06/05/06
Posted: 06/05/2006 7:31 pm
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New Website To Track Nazi-Looted Art "The year-old project offers free access to claimants, enabling them both to search the site's extensive inventory of objects believed to have been looted during World War II, and to list objects they believe had at one time belonged to their families." Jerusalem Post 06/04/06
Posted: 06/06/2006 6:48 am
Kimbell Returns Turner Painting To Heirs The Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth Texas is returning a JMW Turner painting to heirs of the collector from whom it was stolen by the Nazis. This "puts a big hole in our collection. This was our only Turner and we don't have a Constable either, so we're missing both of these two great British landscapists. But this is one of those cases where the evidence was very strong that it was from a forced sale under the Nazi regime, and morally there was only one thing to do, which was to give it back." Dallas Morning News 06/06/06
Posted: 06/06/2006 6:45 am
Buildings Made Of Dreams "Engineering Art is in part a dating agency between creatives and science, through events that Dr Miodownik organises at Tate Modern to get architects, artists and designers just to feel materials, to 'innovate through their fingers', learn their properties and get them 'out there' on buildings. Their obsession with novelty means that architects are as sensitive to trends as schoolkids." The Times (UK) 06/06/06
Posted: 06/06/2006 6:06 am
Gender Imbalance - Museum Director Asks For Money To Buy Art By Women The director of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Lars Nittve, has asked the Swedish government for 50m Swedish crowns ($6.8m) to buy work by female artists. The museum, which houses 250,000 20th-century works, has around nine times as many pieces by men as by women in its collection The Art Newspaper 06/01/06
Posted: 06/05/2006 7:17 pm
JMW Turner Sells For Record £5.832 Million "The Blue Rigi was sold to an anonymous telephone bidder after a 10-minute bidding battle at Christie's in London. The work, which Christie's described as "the most important watercolour to appear at auction for over 50 years", had been expected to fetch about £2m." BBC 06/05/06
Posted: 06/05/2006 7:09 pm
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Remaking Scottish Opera Scottish Opera is trying to revive itself after a series of financial setbacks. "I don't see it as a need to 'rebuild' audiences, more a need to 'reconnect' with them. The issue is not that we haven't connected with Scotland, we just haven't been noticed." The Scotsman 06/05/06
Posted: 06/06/2006 7:25 am
"X" Marks The Spot Oakland Opera is a small company that does big things with contemporary work. Case in point - its revival of Anthony Davis' "X". "Operating on a shoestring -- Sunday afternoon's performance went ahead with neither lighting nor programs after a series of mechanical mishaps -- the company has once again assembled all the elements it needs for gripping musical theater. There seems to be no limit to what these folks can pull off." San Francisco Chronicle 06/06/06
Posted: 06/06/2006 7:19 am
Pondering The Allure Of Opera A gala at the Metropolitan Opera has Alex Ross thinking about the attraction of opera. "For a long while, during the macho decades of rock and rap, it seemed as though vocal floridity had been drummed out of pop music. But it turns out that there is an abiding hunger in the heartland for high notes, melisma, fioritura, and the rest. So why don’t more people warm to the grand original? One problem is that there is no way of capturing opera’s elemental thrill on television, or even on a recording." The New Yorker 06/05/06
Posted: 06/06/2006 6:31 am
Self-Interested - Bands Build Fans By Phone These days major recording labels want to see musical acts demonstrate they have a fan base before being signed. So bands are turning to promotions for mobile phones and other fan-building ploys to build their careers... Yahoo! (Reuters) 06/05/06
Posted: 06/05/2006 8:33 pm
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Smithsonian Inspector Quits The Smithsonian Institution's inspector general has resigned. "In the last 10 years, the number of positions in this office went down 30 percent while the federal appropriation has grown 70 percent," Washington Post 06/06/06
Posted: 06/06/2006 7:56 am
A New Push For British Culture The British government has invested heavily in the arts in recent years. Now it's time to go to the next level, writes Nicholas Serota. "We are confident we are attracting a growing audience, and can make a significant contribution to the success of the 2012 Olympics, when the eyes of the world will be on us. We want to show what the cultural sector has achieved in the past 10 years - and what it could achieve if the sort of investment it has received under this government is sustained. We want to get across our values, and our vision - and make sure they really are part of the government's, and the country's, core script." The Guardian (UK) 06/05/06
Posted: 06/05/2006 10:11 pm
The Author And The Heine Prize "Austrian author Peter Handke was informed last week that he would receive the Heinrich Heine Prize of the City of Düsseldorf. After an outburst of public indignation and counter-indignation, the decision was blocked this week by the Düsseldorf City Council." SightandSound (Germany) 06/05/06
Posted: 06/05/2006 7:33 pm
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Tom Stoppard's Czech Roots Playwright Tom Stoppard left Czechoslovakia 68 years ago. "He has said that he is 'English now' but that at some level he has never stopped also being Czech. His mother's death a few years ago may have subtly freed Stoppard to explore himself for traces of his origins. But no sudden self-discovery led to this play. It seems to have been prompted by reflecting on his friend Vaclav Havel's moral and philosophical writings, and by reading about the background to the Czech 'Chartist' dissidents in the 1970s." The Guardian (UK) 06/05/06
Posted: 06/05/2006 10:20 pm
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Hacker Sends Hoax Message About Director Quitting Theatre Paul Higgins has left the London fringe venue Theatre 503. But a hacker sent emails purportedly from Higgins saying he had left after a vote of no confidence. "The theatre is currently examining how someone could have gained access to the director’s account and says it is unaware of who might have held a grudge against him." TheStage 06/06/06
Posted: 06/06/2006 8:29 am
Julia Roberts' Broadway Turn - Not Selling Julia Roberts' star turn in "Three Days of Rain" was the talk of the city when it opened in April, but with two weeks left in the play's run, ticket brokers say they are finding themselves stuck with hundreds of seats — and are now selling ducats below face value... New York Daily News 06/05/06
Posted: 06/05/2006 9:17 pm
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How Many Books Did You Sell? (Shhhhhh!) BookScanning has become popular for a few reasons having to do with the culture of journalism and publishing. In general, the publishing world treats money the way old-line WASPs once did—as a subject that genteel people simply don't discuss. The only question considered to be more indelicate than how much one was paid to write a book is how many copies it has sold. Slate 05/02/06
Posted: 06/05/2006 7:27 pm
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A Little TV With Your Tank Not getting enough TV? One company wants to help, offering TV programming at the gas pump. "Pumping gas is boring and mundane. We live in a very can't-sit-still, multi-stimulus environment. We are convinced that people will be very favourable to this experience at the gas station.'' Toronto Star 06/06/06
Posted: 06/06/2006 7:31 am
So You Wanna Be A Star... Each year hundreds of families flock to Hollywood in the hopes of making stars of their children. "Some industry people attribute the flood of green arrivals to their exposure to behind-the-scenes TV programs, star biopics, celebrity news shows and teenage entertainment magazines, which give the untutored a sense of confidence about the way show business works." New York Times Magazine 06/04/06
Posted: 06/06/2006 6:26 am
Da Vinci Code racks Up Record International Box Office The Da Vinci Code has passed $400 million at the box office overseas. "Sony forecast the film version of Dan Brown's best-selling novel will "in the next couple of days" surpass 2002's "Spider-Man" (overseas gross of $417.9 million) and 2004's "Spider-Man 2" ($410.5 million) to become the studio's biggest international hit ever." Yahoo! (Reuters) 06/05/06
Posted: 06/05/2006 8:28 pm
TV Pilots Flee LA Los Angeles is losing the TV pilot business. A new study reports that filming is down "23 percent from last year's levels, costing more than 1,000 jobs and draining up to $70 million" from the local economy. "Twenty-five other states have used tax incentives to lure away pilot production, which takes place from February through May." Backstage 06/05/06
Posted: 06/05/2006 7:20 pm
Okay To Copy? We Wanna Know What are consumers allowed to copy and in what form? British MPs want producers to clarify. "The MPs' report made several recommendations and called on the Office of Fair Trading hasten the introduction of labelling regulations that would let people know what they can do with music and movies they buy online or offline." BBC 06/05/06
Posted: 06/05/2006 7:12 pm
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British Boy's Bolshoi Adventure Henry Perkins is only the second British boy in the Bolshoi Ballet's 230-year history to have been accepted into the prestigious school... The Guardian (UK) 06/06/06
Posted: 06/06/2006 8:39 am
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