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Thursday, July 20




Visual Arts

For His Next Trick, He'll Turn Telemarketers Into Symphonies Could there possibly be anything good or useful about the scourge of e-mail spam currently clogging up the world's inboxes? It all depends what you do with it. "When Romanian artist Alex Dragulescu looks at junk e-mails, he sees patterns - bits and bytes that can be manipulated into colorful plantlike images or stark architectural forms." The Christian Science Monitor 07/20/06
Posted: 07/20/2006 6:43 am

Tate Criticized For Artist Acquisition The Tate has been rebuked by the Charity Commission for buying artwork made by one of its artist trustees. "The media attention drawn by the Ofili case has proved deeply embarrassing to the Tate, which has acquired a particularly high profile in the British art world since the splashy opening of Tate Modern in a converted power station on the south bank of the Thames in 2000. Next week the Tate is expected to announce a major expansion of Tate Modern." The New York Times 07/20/06
Posted: 07/19/2006 10:08 pm

  • Previously: Ruling: Tate Broke Law In Buying Ofili Work Britain's Charity Commission has ruled that the Tate Museum broke the law when it cought a £600,000 work by Chris Ofili. "Most major art institutions are set up as charities. By law, trustees cannot receive monetary benefit from their charity without express permission, usually from the commission. The Tate failed to seek permission, not only in the case of the Ofili work, The Upper Room, but in 17 previous purchases of work by artist-trustees going back 50 years." The Guardian (UK) 07/18/06

A Time For Skylines? Seattle's Profile Changes Seattle's skyline is changing. "This is not the time for American skylines. What was once a blazing symbol of optimistic speculation—the photographer Alfred Stieglitz proclaimed he saw the ship of America charging toward him the first time he set eyes on the Flatiron Building in New York—has become a problematic mess. The vaunted nature of skylines has been tarnished by awareness of their environmental, historic, and socioeconomic implications." The Stranger 07/20/06
Posted: 07/19/2006 9:18 pm

Merrill: Art's Not A Great Investment As art prices soar, buying art might look like a great investment. But Merrill Lynch reports oterwise. "While stocks or bonds are almost certain to make investors a profit over five years, art has a high chance of declining in value, the world's biggest brokerage company said. The probability of losses on small-cap stocks, corporate bonds and long-term treasury bonds is 3 percent or less if they're held for five years. Art investors have a 17 percent chance of losing money over five years, Merrill said." Bloomberg 07/19/06
Posted: 07/19/2006 6:25 pm

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Music

Assessing Year One Of The Robertson Era David Robertson's first year as music director of the St. Louis Symphony has been, in musical terms, an unqualified success. Robertson's programming was innovative, his concerts well-received, and critics noted a sharp uptick in the orchestra's playing. But ticket sales slumped badly for the SLSO this year, a possible after-effect of a musicians' strike in 2005, and the organization is still struggling to find a way to make itself relevant and appealing to a broader audience. St. Louis Post-Dispatch 07/16/06
Posted: 07/20/2006 6:55 am

Mixing It Up The art of the mixtape - a homemade collection of songs from any number of artists - may have peaked in the early 1990s, but even in the age of the iPod, the phenomenon remains strong, particularly in the hip-hop industry. "These days they often seem less like shady contraband, circulated by samizdat, and more like vital extensions of slick marketing campaigns." The New York Times 07/20/06
Posted: 07/20/2006 6:35 am

Stroking Sound Composers draw inspiration for their work from all corners of their world, and even works with a universal appeal can have highly personal experiences at their core. This weekend, a new music ensemble in Pittsburgh will debut a new work by Brett William Dietz, entitled Headcase, that takes the idea of personal inspiration to the extreme. The piece is a musical journey through a major stroke that Dietz suffered when he was 29. "The composition incorporates recordings of electronic sound and Dietz talking... There are projected images of Dietz's MRI scans, showing the areas of the brain that were damaged, and pieces of paper given to him in the hospital to write on in an attempt to communicate." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 07/20/06
Posted: 07/20/2006 6:05 am

Bayreuth's Unique Allure "The centrepiece of this year's festival is a new Ring cycle - a great event at any opera house, at Bayreuth something akin to the second coming. The production is in the hands of conductor Christian Thielemann, Bayreuth's favoured son, and director Tankred Dorst, an 80-year-old playwright who, despite never having directed an opera before, was appointed two years ago when Lars von Trier pulled out. Who says Bayreuth is conventional?" The Guardian (UK) 07/20/06
Posted: 07/19/2006 10:39 pm

Forget That $100 Million, I Play Classical In 1958, Saul Levine built his own classical music station in Los Angeles. Now 80, he still owns and runs the station and programs classical music even though he could probably sell for $100 million. "Whenever I get an offer I call my wife and she tells me to tell them to go away. She doesn't want me hanging around the house, and I would go nuts." Los Anegeles Times 07/19/06
Posted: 07/19/2006 8:22 pm

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Arts Issues

KC PAC Selects "Fundraising Powerhouse" As Its CEO "The Metropolitan Kansas City Performing Arts Center has made its most important personnel decision since selecting architect Moshe Safdie to design the facility in 2000. On Tuesday the center’s board announced the appointment of Jane Chu, 48, as president and chief executive officer of the facility... Locally Chu is known as a fund-raising powerhouse with research-based knowledge of performing-arts facilities. Toward her doctoral dissertation she is examining the finances and staffing of nearly 100 centers around the United States." Kansas City Star 07/18/06
Posted: 07/20/2006 6:59 am

Mission Critical - What For The Public University? America's public universities are in a bind. What is their greatest calling? "Public purpose is the defining characteristic of all public universities, but what does it entail? A review of the external demands on state universities reveals a long and daunting list. They must become more..." InsideHigherEd 07/19/06
Posted: 07/19/2006 6:43 pm

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People

Critic Henry Hewes, 89 "Henry Hewes, a longtime theater critic for The Saturday Review and the founder of the American Theater Critics Association, died at his home in Manhattan on Tuesday. He was 89... A past president of the New York Drama Critics Circle and the Drama Desk, and the editor from 1960 to 1964 of the “Best Plays” anthology, Mr. Hewes was also proud of his suggestion to Tennessee Williams that he turn a certain short story into a play; the play was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." The New York Times 07/20/06
Posted: 07/20/2006 6:38 am

Creating Monsters Filmmaker Lee Daniels has built his career on his own terms, tackling controversial plots and taboo subjects that most producers and directors would think twice about loosing on an unsuspecting public. But somehow, the man behind Monster's Ball and The Woodsman has convinced moviegoers that his twisted plots and startlingly imperfect characters are worth the price of admission. The New York Times 07/20/06
Posted: 07/20/2006 6:30 am

A Conservative, Thinker "There are plenty of conservative publicists in America now. There are not many conservative thinkers, proper, worthy of the name. Philip Rieff, for all his crotchety obliqueness, was one of them.(By the way, the ratio of philosophers to propagandists is hardly any better n the left.)" InsideHigherEd 07/19/06
Posted: 07/19/2006 6:39 pm

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Publishing

Who's Blogging Now? A new survey of the online blogosphere, as it's come to be known, reveals that fully 8% of Internet users now keep a blog of some description, and that bloggers in general are "a mostly young, racially diverse group of people who have never been published anywhere else and who most often use cyberspace to talk about their personal lives." The New York Times 07/20/06
Posted: 07/20/2006 6:28 am

The New Pynchon? (Or A Hoax) "Last week, Amazon.com put up a page that listed Untitled Thomas Pynchon at a svelte 992 pages and bore a description purportedly written by the master himself. In fact, it purported quite well indeed and also rather charmingly, promising an archetypal Pynchonian buffet of settings, characters, and old tricks ("Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically.") Then the description just vanished from the page. Was this a hoax?" Slate 07/19/06
Posted: 07/19/2006 8:12 pm

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Media

Baltimore Snubbed By Hairspray Producers They're making a movie version of Hairspray. Ah, you say, but there already is a movie version of Hairspray, and in fact, the current Broadway show is based on that earlier film by John Waters. True enough, but they're making a new one based on the musical anyway, and that's created a bit of a drama in the city of Baltimore, where the story takes place. The original movie was filmed there, and the city badly wanted to be the site for production of the new version as well. But due to a combination of cost issues and logistical problems, the entire movie will now be shot in Toronto, and Baltimore will have to be content with a few still photos of itself, digitally inserted into the action. The Globe & Mail (AP) 07/20/06
Posted: 07/20/2006 6:47 am

The Siren Song Of Video... YouTube is currently serving 100 million downloads a day. So what's the great attraction? "YouTube, Google Video and related sites have revived vaudeville, then stabbed it in the neck with the razor-sharp shards of a torn can of energy drink, kicked it in the ribs, and left it onstage to writhe for the amusement of millions. And you can be part of it!" Wired 07/19/06
Posted: 07/19/2006 7:05 pm

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Dance

This Week - Everybody Dance Big Dance week is a UK-wide project to encourage everyone to get up on the floor. And it accomplishes... The Guardian (UK) 07/20/06
Posted: 07/19/2006 10:45 pm

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