Genesis Of The Anguished Artist "When exactly did artists decide that they were different from ordinary mortals, that in all likelihood they were superior to the rest of us? Or, viewed differently, when were they granted such a privileged status? When did Western societies start venerating them as sensitive, misunderstood geniuses?" A new book suggests that the answer lies somewhere in the tumultuous 19th century... The New York Times 07/27/06
Posted: 07/27/2006 5:58 am
NYT Classics: Pithy In 20 Words Or Less The best writing in the New York Times? Jack Shafer maintains it's the capsule movie reviews in the TV listings. "The capsules spend 20 words—and usually fewer—to pass informed judgment on movies. Even if you never intend to watch any of the films, the capsules make for good morning reading." Slate 07/26/06
Posted: 07/26/2006 9:35 pm
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Still Museum Names Design Finalists Colorado's Clyfford Still Museum has named five prominent architectural firms as finalists in the race to design the museum's 30,000-square foot headquarters. When completed, the privately funded museum will house 2,100 of Still's works, donated to the city of Denver by the artist's widow. A final decision on the architecture is expected in early November. Denver Post 07/27/06
Posted: 07/27/2006 6:42 am
Irish Find 1000-Year-Old Psalter In Bog "Irish archaeologists are celebrating the discovery of their own Dead Sea scrolls after a bulldozer unearthed fragments of a psalter that may have lain in a bog for more than 1,000 years." The Guardian (UK) 07/26/06
Posted: 07/26/2006 8:39 pm
Canadian Museum Attendance Up "More than 35 million people made a trip to a museum, art gallery, historic site or zoo in Canada in 2004, a 10.7 per cent increase from 2002, according to Statistics Canada." CBC 07/26/06
Posted: 07/26/2006 7:53 pm
Americans Return Looted Artifact To Iraq American officials have returned an important artifact looted from the Iraq National Museum three years ago. "The headless stone statue of the Sumerian king Entemena of Lagash was turned over to the Iraqi government when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited Washington on Wednesday. The statue, which weighs hundreds of pounds, was taken by looters who slid or rolled it down the steps of the museum, damaging both the steps and other artifacts." CBC 07/26/06
Posted: 07/26/2006 7:51 pm
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Rochester Phil Rakes In The Cash Upstate New York's Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra has set an in-house fundraising record for the second year in a row, taking in nearly $2.2 million for the 2006 fiscal year. "At a time when many orchestras in the country are posting deficits, the RPO, flush from its fundraising success, made another kind of record this week, a recording of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F." Rochester Democrat & Chronicle 07/27/06
Posted: 07/27/2006 5:39 am
Ugly Estate Battle Settled in Edmonton The Edmonton Symphony has resolved a long-running dispute with the Winspear Centre for Music over the estate of a deceased philanthropist. "[Stuart] Davis, who died in July 2005, was a great supporter of both the Winspear Centre and the ESO, which plays at the venue. Symphony officials had been under the impression that Davis, a retired professor who found success on the stock market, had left a substantial bequest to the company in his will." When the truth turned out to be far more complicated, lawyers got involved and the dispute spilled into the press. Under the settlement, the ESO will get several hundred thousand dollars, and the Centre will get nearly CAN$2 million. CBC 07/26/06
Posted: 07/27/2006 5:34 am
Let's All Jump On Bayreuth (It's Time Again) Bayreuth has only just opened and German newspapers are pondering whether the festival circuit has become too much. "The festivals in Bayreuth and Salzburg are the most prominent examples of an increasingly close network of festivals that now stretch across Europe from the south Pole to Andalusia," The Guardian (UK) 06/26/06
Posted: 07/26/2006 8:42 pm
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Make Or Break Time For Toronto Arts Center Toronto's Hummingbird Centre for the Performing Arts, reeling from the recent departures of its two resident companies, is moving to rebrand itself as "a multipurpose, multicultural facility." But more than a repurposing will be necessary to keep the center humming: a new business plan recently approved by Toronto's city council compels Hummingbird to raise $60 million in the next year, or face becoming a tenant of the real estate company that's spearheading the center's ongoing expansion project. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/27/06
Posted: 07/27/2006 6:54 am
Curator, Know Thy Collection! Canada's national archives recently came tantalizingly close to acquiring a $200,000 map of the country dating from the mid-17th century. What stopped the sale? Turns out the archive already had one. How could such an embarrassing slip-up have occurred? Well, it's complicated, but part of the problem may be that the archive "has shifted cultures, from one based on specialized curators who knew their collections in depth, to a more open, democratized strategy." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/27/06
Posted: 07/27/2006 6:48 am
Spending Money To Raise Money "Seven Chicago grantmakers have teamed up to help small arts groups develop the business side of their operations. The group has pooled more than $600,000 to create the Arts Work Fund for Organization Development. It is aimed at area arts and cultural non-profits that have been around at least three years and have operating revenues of less than $1 million." Chicago Tribune 07/27/06
Posted: 07/27/2006 6:38 am
Ideas, Ownership, And Endless, Endless Lawsuits Issues of intellectual property in the film business are always tricky, particularly when one writer accuses another of stealing an idea or a movie plot, an accusation that can be difficult to prove legally. But claims of idea theft are way up in Hollywood these days, and a lot of the blame (or credit) for the uptick can be laid at the feet of a single lawyer, who has "spent the last two years capitalizing on having won a federal appeals court decision that makes it easier for writers who pitch an idea or circulate a script to make a claim of theft stick." The New York Times 07/27/06
Posted: 07/27/2006 6:04 am
Study: Arts Ed Helps Students Learn A study released by the Guggenheim Museum suggests that arts education helps students learn in other subjects. "The study found that students in the program performed better in six categories of literacy and critical thinking skills — including thorough description, hypothesizing and reasoning — than did students who were not in the program." The New York Times 07/27/06
Posted: 07/26/2006 9:23 pm
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Heinrich Hollreiser, 93 "German conductor Heinrich Hollreiser died on July 24, according to a statement on the Vienna State Opera's website. He was 93. Hollreiser was principal conductor (first Kapellmeister) of the Vienna State Opera from 1952-1961... He also led operas at Covent Garden, Bayreuth, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and the Metropolitan Opera during his career and guest-conducted the Vienna Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra." PlaybillArts 07/26/06
Posted: 07/27/2006 5:42 am
Man Sues Police For Foiling Art Rescue A UK man is suing police for preventing him from going back into his burning house to rescue his art. "Edmund Carlisle, 84, alleges that police falsely imprisoned him as he tried to get back into his 16th century home to rescue heirlooms and treasures he and his wife had collected over a lifetime." The Guardian (UK) 07/26/06
Posted: 07/26/2006 8:38 pm
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Why Are Novelists Bad Play Writers? "It's a curious fact that very few writers have ever been able to write both good novels and good plays. Almost invariably, even the most acclaimed and technically skilled novelist turns into a rank amateur when writing for the theatre." The Guardian (UK) 07/26/06
Posted: 07/26/2006 9:20 pm
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Iran Bans Da Vinci Code The Da Vinci Code has been banned in Iran after complaints by Christians. "Eight previous editions of the Persian translation of Dan Brown's book will remain in the country's shops but no further versions can be produced. The Da Vinci Code has sold 40 million copies worldwide and was turned into a film, which was not released in Iran." BBC 07/26/06
Posted: 07/26/2006 7:47 pm
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PBS Chief: FCC Needs To Be More Flexible The head of PBS is firing back at the FCC over the agency's new no-tolerance policy governing profanity on television, saying that it is "important for public broadcasting not to just roll over, but to be very clear that in order to tell some stories, we may need to use language that, at the moment, the FCC is not sure that they feel is appropriate for broadcast television." PBS is worried that it will have to cut or digitally obscure certain words in the latest Ken Burns documentary, focusing on World War II, in order to avoid heavy FCC fines.
Los Angeles Times 07/27/06
Posted: 07/27/2006 7:00 am
Kazaa Pays Up, Goes Legit A couple of years ago, Kazaa was the poster child for illegal file-trading services, and found itself on the receiving end of a blistering legal assault by the recording industry, which is determined to stamp out music piracy online. Now, Kazaa has agreed to pay out millions of dollars in penalties, and is hoping to follow in the footsteps of Napster, reinventing itself as a legal music downloading service. BBC 07/27/06
Posted: 07/27/2006 5:48 am
How YouTube Is Changing Culture "The thing about television used to be that once you saw it, it was gone. It was disposable, and it was mostly dispensed with—the old signals, from what we used to watch, streaming out past the Oort Cloud, carrying Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp away into infinity. Suddenly, via YouTube links, those lost moments click back into view, as if a telegram from your great-grandfather were showing up in your e-mail." New York Observer 07/26/06
Posted: 07/26/2006 8:33 pm
Film Production Down In LA "FilmL.A. on Tuesday reported a 6.8% drop in second-quarter film, TV and commercial on-location production days compared with the same period a year ago. The decline follows modest but steady gains of 4.1% during first-quarter 2006 and an annual growth rate of 4.3% in 2005, according to the nonprofit group, which facilitates permits for on-location production in the region." Backstage 07/26/06
Posted: 07/26/2006 7:55 pm
Da Vinci Code Helps Train Ticket Sales The Da Vinci Code movie is being credited in part for a surge in traffic on the Eurostar train between London and Paris. "Eurostar said the partnership with the movie - whose cast included French actress Audrey Tatou - helped generate 'strong interest in overseas markets', with travel agents reporting increased sales on the London-Paris route." BBC 07/26/06
Posted: 07/26/2006 7:45 pm
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