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Tuesday, June 13




Ideas

Has America Lost Its Educational Edge? A new paper "argues that declines in U.S. participation rates in higher education, particularly among younger students, combined with misguided political priorities, have put U.S. higher education in position to fall behind global competitors — perhaps dramatically so." InsideHigherEd 06/12/06
Posted: 06/12/2006 8:48 pm

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"Humans: the artsy animals" Opinion Op-Ed by Edward Albee Los Angeles Times 5/30/06
Louvre Bans Photos Culturekiosque 4/29/06
We Love N.Y. AmericanStyle magazine 4/21/06
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Visual Arts

The Thrill Of Near-Death Experience "No one actually believes that any kind of art or painting is dead, but much work these days is either about art being dead or near death. This has caused a kind of feedback loop of infinite regress to form, along with a new batch of self-reflective critique art. Curators seem to love this hyper-self-consciousness—presumably because it's about the institutions they work for. Art that critiques the art object, the artist, the institution, or the market is lauded. Much good art has arisen from this position. So have questionable gestures." Village Voice 06/12/06
Posted: 06/13/2006 7:43 am

Turkey's Museum Security Problem Some high profile thefts at Turkish museums have drawn attention to lax security there. "Although 78 of the country's 93 state museums are equipped with electronic security systems, archaeologists in the field assert that those systems often malfunction or are insufficient. Thorough museum inventories, crucial to security measures, are rarely taken in Turkey's museums. And of the objects that have been documented in display cases or in warehouse storage, experts say, many were registered by unqualified workers lacking critical reference information." The New York Times 06/13/06
Posted: 06/13/2006 6:05 am

ArtBasel Director To Leave The opening of this year's ArtBasel has been marred by the resignation of the organization's charismatic director Sam Keller. "Keller will leave ArtBasel in 2008 to take up the helm at the Beyeler Foundation, replacing current director Christoph Vitali. The foundation, established in 1982 by the collector Ernst Beyeler on the outskirts of Basel, houses a permanent collection of modern art in a building designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano." The Guardian (UK) 06/13/06
Posted: 06/12/2006 8:18 pm

The Critic As Museum Director Before Ralph Rugoff was a curator and museum director, he was a critic. "For more than 15 years, the new director of the Hayward Gallery in London has shaken up art audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, inspiring them to engage with the kind of puzzling, cerebral work that tends to put off all but the most dedicated of contemporary art aficionados." The Guardian (UK) 06/12/06
Posted: 06/12/2006 8:11 pm

The New New London London is to be transformed by large buildings. "Power and money are what have made it both ugly and voraciously successful. It's a largely unplanned city, with buildings that come and go. Little or nothing stays still in London. The drive for money makes it a restless creature, forever biting off its own limbs and watching them grow back in new, bigger and shinier forms." The Guardian (UK) 06/12/06
Posted: 06/12/2006 7:53 pm

Was Picasso Really That Great? "By general agreement, he was the best artist of the twentieth century. How good was that? His sheer significance, as the god of modernity in painting, has always beggared ultimate judgment. Now the issue is being forced, at the Prado and the Reina Sofía, by direct comparisons of his work with that of the Old Masters who, from time to time, were important to him, either as models or as goads—notably Velázquez and Goya." The New Yorker 06/12/06
Posted: 06/12/2006 7:28 pm

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Music

Baltimore SymphonyBreaks 8-Year Recording Drought The Baltimore Symphony has gone eight years without recording a commercial CD. "Other than a limited-edition disc issued by the orchestra itself, there is no documentation of the BSO's extraordinary collaboration with music director Yuri Temirkanov. But Marin Alsop, who succeeds Temirkanov next year, will record with the ensemble this week. If all goes well, recordings will be a regular feature of her BSO tenure." Baltimore Sun 06/13/06
Posted: 06/13/2006 7:55 am

Oh My Ojai "Ojai used to be the music world’s best-kept secret. Now it is in danger of becoming too successful for its own good. Igor Stravinsky, Pierre Boulez and Peter Maxwell Davies are among the composers who have succumbed to its simple charms. Michael Tilson Thomas and Kent Nagano are two of the performers it recognised before they reached the limelight. Ojai is synonymous with musical adventure and yet the festival takes place in a small town 90 minutes’ drive north of Los Angeles, the last place you would expect to find an iconic festival experience." Financial Times 06/12/06
Posted: 06/12/2006 7:31 pm

Lebrecht: Why Warner Cut Classical Music "The tragic fact of the matter is that giant media players are pulling out of minority art, a myopic strategy that gives them no chance of tapping the next quirk in public taste or contributing to cultural evolution. Warner bought its way into classics just ahead of the Three Tenors 1990 boom and scored an eight-million follow-up CD at the Los Angeles World Cup. It gobbled up one independent after another – Erato in France, Teldec in Germany, Finlandia, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi – and went into overproduction along with all the others in the 1990s until the roof fell in and the outlet was slimmed down to a single stream of mainstream classics. That, too, ha now been deemed surplus to requirements." La Scena Musicale 06/12/06
Posted: 06/12/2006 5:20 pm

Any Music, Any Time, Anywhere "Pundits have been yammering away for years about a 'celestial jukebox' that will give everyone the ability to access all content ever created, from anywhere, at any time. This long-discussed concept is finally becoming a reality, at least as far as music goes." Wired 06/12/06
Posted: 06/12/2006 4:55 pm

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Arts Issues

In Iran - Scholar Arrested For "Relations With Foreigners" In Iran, Ramin Jahanbegloo turned "a small office in an arts and culture NGO into something of an international salon. Through force of will and a gregarious personality, he persuaded some of the world's most famous intellectuals to travel to Tehran, where they were treated like rock stars." Now Jahanbegloo is in jail. "He was arrested at Tehran airport on April 27, between a sojourn in India and a trip to a conference in Brussels, and locked up in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, where detainees are routinely subject to torture and abuse. Formal charges have not been laid, but Iran's minister of intelligence said Jahanbegloo was picked up because of 'relations with foreigners'." Maclean's 06/12/06
Posted: 06/13/2006 7:48 am

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People

Remembering Ken Thompson "In 2002, Mr. Thomson gave the Art gallery of Ontario $50-million to initiate the transformation of the facility plus $20-million to endow future operations. Alongside the donation, Mr. Thomson gave the gallery more than 2,000 pieces of art, including works by the Group of Seven and the Peter Paul Rubens masterpiece The Massacre of the Innocents. The value of that collection has been estimated at $300-million (U.S.) and has been described as the finest private art collection in Canada." The Globe & Mail (Canada0 06/13/06
Posted: 06/13/2006 6:52 am

Remembering Gyorgy Ligeti The composer was one of the most innovative of the 20th Century. "As a man who grew up in Hungary under German and Soviet tyrannies, when home was exactly where you did not want to be, who moved to Western Europe after the Russians extinguished Hungarian independence, and who had been footloose ever since, Mr. Ligeti had no simple notion of where he belonged, and this feeling informed his work." The New York Times 06/13/06
Posted: 06/13/2006 6:01 am

  • Gyorgy Ligeti, Composer "Because one never knew quite what to expect before hearing a new Ligeti work, his music sometimes startled listeners. Yet this eclecticism allowed him to escape some paradoxical aesthetic traps that were endemic to late 20th-century composition. He insisted that his music was 'neither tonal nor atonal' and while he never blithely reiterated the musical language of the past, neither did he strive to be modern or avant-garde at the expense of communication with an audience." Washington Post 06/13/06
    Posted: 06/13/2006 6:00 am

Canadian Art Collector, Patron Ken Thompson, 82 "The media mogul had been the lead donor to the Art Gallery of Ontario's current expansion campaign, having helped launch the project in 2002 by donating his much-lauded $300-million private art collection to the AGO as well as $50 million towards the renovation campaign and $20 million towards the gallery's endowment fund." CBC 06/12/06
Posted: 06/12/2006 6:03 pm

Gyorgy Ligeti, 83 "He was known for his avant garde compositions, including the 1962 piece Poeme Symphonique, which is played on 100 metronomes. His most famous works are those used in the Stanley Kubrick film, including Atmospheres and Lux Aeterna." BBC 06/12/06
Posted: 06/12/2006 4:46 pm

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Theatre

The Tony Box Office Bump Tony winners saw their ticket sales double at the box office Monday. "Perhaps the biggest surprise of all, though, was the television news. After two years of stagnant ratings, the Tony Awards telecast managed to draw in more viewers. According to preliminary Nielsen ratings, there were about 1.3 million additional viewers this year — 7.8 million, up from last year's 6.6 million — an increase of around 20 percent. The awards show started the night in first place for its time slot then slipped to second, behind the N.B.A. finals." The New York Times 06/13/06
Posted: 06/13/2006 6:11 am

Why Did History Boys Win Tonys? "For me, it’s still surprising that The History Boys should make it to Broadway at all, let alone pick up six awards from the 750-odd theatre professionals, critics and odd bods who constitute the Tony voters. But serious plays, especially foreign ones, seldom do well on Broadway. Serious plays, even witty ones, are what closed yesterday." The Times (UK) 06/12/06
Posted: 06/12/2006 9:02 pm

Staging The "Difficult" Musicals "There are plenty of so-called 'difficult' musicals, where 'difficult' actually refers to the sorts of challenge that raise the creative bar. Three of the most challenging musicals are about to open in Britain, two of them from the authorial pen of Oscar Hammerstein II." The Telegraph (UK) 06/12/06
Posted: 06/12/2006 8:33 pm

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Publishing

Book Club Is Code For...? There has been a phenomenal rise in the number of book clubs in America. But "these days, 'book club' is more like code for girly gab session than a meeting of the Algonquin Round Table." New York Daily News 06/13/06
Posted: 06/13/2006 6:46 am

Product Placement... In Books? "By now, television and movie viewers have become used to this kind of thing: when they see sneakers or cars on a show or in a film, they generally assume that these appearances have been paid for by the companies that make the brands. But product placement in books is still relatively rare. The use of even the subtlest of sales pitches, particularly in a book aimed at adolescents, could raise questions about the vulnerability of the readers." The New York Times 06/12/06
Posted: 06/12/2006 10:15 pm

Controlling James Joyce "Stephen Joyce is James Joyce’s only living descendant, and since the mid-nineteen-eighties he has effectively controlled the Joyce estate. Scholars must ask his permission to quote sizable passages or to reproduce manuscript pages from those works of Joyce’s that remain under copyright—including “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake”—as well as from more than three thousand letters and several dozen unpublished manuscript fragments... His audacity and his pique have amused some Joyceans, and at times the Joyceans have provoked him." The New Yorker 06/12/06
Posted: 06/12/2006 7:17 pm

Steinbeck Heirs Get Rights To Author's Books A US judge has ruled that the rights to ten works by John Steinbeck belong to his relatives. "The rights properly belong to the author's son, Thomas Steinbeck, and granddaughter Blake Smyle. The ruling came after the two canceled rights previously held by various individuals and organizations, including publishing house Penguin Group (USA) Inc. and the heirs of John Steinbeck's widow, Elaine, who died in April 2003." Yahoo! (AP) 06/12/06
Posted: 06/12/2006 5:04 pm

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Media

Indian Court Refuses To Ban "Da Vinci" India's supreme court has refused to ban "The Da Vinci Code." "The two judges in the court argued that no predominantly Christian country had banned the film. Christians comprise about 2% of India's billion people. Indian censors have cleared the film, but seven of 28 states have banned it." BBC 06/13/06
Posted: 06/13/2006 5:57 am

Coming Soon - An Explosion Of TV Channels? "As America careers toward its much-touted conversion to the all-digital transmission of television signals — the digital switchover is now set in stone for February 2009 — the debate over multicasting is looking like another shining example of the law of unintended consequences when technology comes into play." The New York Times 06/12/06
Posted: 06/12/2006 10:17 pm

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Dance

Navigating Stage Nudity In Boston "When Caitlin Corbett’s new duet 'Yield' was subject to a last-minute costume overhaul at the Boston University dance theatre last month so that dancer Nicole Pierce wouldn’t dance topless, the heavy-handed puritanism of the regulation exactly proved the choreographer’s point: our culture is so hypersexualized that we never get a chance to consider female anatomy in a neutral way." So what are Boston's regulations about nudity onstage? Turns out it's complicated... WBUR 06/13/06
Posted: 06/13/2006 6:29 am

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