The Last Word John Updike writes that interest in the last words of great artists seems to have waned. But there is much to learn from the last utterances of the great... The New Yorker 07/31/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 8:41 pm
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Printing Philadelphia "A consortium of Philadelphia print curators and artists will launch a city-wide international festival of printmaking in 2010. Fashioned as the Documenta of the print world, the quadrennial Philagrafika will take place at museums, arts organisations, galleries and alternative spaces throughout the city." The Art Newspaper 07/27/06
Posted: 08/04/2006 12:56 pm
Prado Won't Get Giddy Over Expansion “It would be an error to concentrate on organising events to the detriment of the permanent collection just because we have new spaces. There are several museums that are exhausted because they have invested all their energies in realising a programme of temporary exhibitions. We will only organise exhibitions if they are necessary." The Art Newspaper 07/27/06
Posted: 08/04/2006 8:53 am
Chihuly Settles Lawsuit Over Copyright Glass artist Dale Chihuly has settled his lawsuit with a former employee whom Chihuly claimed was infringing on the artist's copyright. "If I had to do it again, I probably wouldn't. I'm not the kind of person who wants to sue somebody, and yet I did. I got kind of fed up. For some reason, some people don't think it's illegal to copy someone else's work. Maybe this suit clarified the point." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 08/04/06
Posted: 08/04/2006 8:17 am
Boston ICA Has To Delay Opening Of New Home Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art says it has to delay next month's opening of its new $51 million home on the Boston waterfront. "The decision has the ICA scrambling to reschedule programs, exhibitions, and parties once set to kick off Sept. 10. ICA officials would not give a new date for the opening, but said the delay would last weeks, not months." Boston Globe 08/04/06
Posted: 08/04/2006 6:50 am
Anonymous Call Leads To Return Of Hermitage Art Earlier this week the Hermitage Museum released a list of 221 works it said were stolen from storage. Thursday, an anonymous caller told police where one of the items was - a religious icon was stashed in a trash bin, according to local police. CBC 08/03/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 7:31 pm
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Aspen Festival Asserts Itself The Aspen Music Festival is billing itself as "America's Premiere Music Festival" since new CEO Alan Fletcher arrived this spring. Premiere? "Why do we segregate ourselves as classical? Newport Jazz is fantastic, but they're sort of intermittent. Monterey? Burning Man? Lollapalooza? Who would be the premier music festival if we are not that? So, as a marketing principle, I just thought, let's just go for it and see what people say." Denver Post 08/04/06
Posted: 08/04/2006 8:44 am
America's Orchestras Have A New Recording Deal "The deal, to be announced Friday, drastically reduces upfront payments to musicians but gives them a share of future revenue, making it more cost-effective to produce recordings. It also gives the orchestras ownership of the recordings, which they can license to distributors for limited periods. In addition, the agreement strengthens the musicians’ role by giving them veto power over recording projects." The New York Times 08/04/06
Posted: 08/04/2006 6:54 am
The Cellos On The Roofs Three intrepid British cellists have finished a 12 day marathon of performing, "which has seen them play recitals, usually on the roofs, at all 42 Anglican cathedrals in England." And why? The Guardian (UK) 08/03/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 8:49 pm
Hear Beethoven's Violin Beethoven's own violin has been used in a new recording. "It was played by German violinist Daniel Sepec on a CD of the composer's violin and piano sonatas. The instrument, which is engraved with Beethoven's insignia, was in his family's possession until the early 19th Century." BBC 08/03/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 7:25 pm
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Liverpool Adrift Robyn Archer's abrupt resignation from leading Liverpool's Capital of Culture program has left the effort adrift, writes Norman Lebrecht. "There is no disguising the sense of crisis in a vacuum of artistic leadership. Nobody in Liverpool seems prepared to take a decision on the Culture Year, let alone the helm, and the announcement from Manchester this week of a widely respected director for its expanding International Festival has further emphasized the glaring vacancy 25 miles down the road." Bloomberg.com 08/03/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 7:42 pm
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Taking The Measure Of Schwarzkopf Soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was a complicated artist, writes Tim Page. "Within the past two years, the music world has lost Renata Tebaldi, Victoria de los Angeles, Birgit Nilsson and Anna Moffo, all sopranos who blazed brightly in the 1950s and 1960s on early LP and stereo recordings; now, with Schwarzkopf's death, an era seems well and truly at an end." Washington Post 08/04/06
Posted: 08/04/2006 6:59 am
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, 90 "Dame Elisabeth was one of the most admired singers of the 20th Century, equally famous for her operatic performances and her concert appearances. Her specialties included the works of Mozart, Schubert and Hugo Wolf, and she was particularly associated with the role of Marschallin in Richard Strauss's comic opera Der Rosenkavalier." BBC 08/02/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 7:24 pm
- Remembering Schwarzkopf "In her lifetime she was widely — if by no means universally — regarded as one of the greatest sopranos of her generation. Yet even at the height of Schwarzkopf’s career, there were plenty of critical naysayers who found her singing fussy and mannered to the point of archness, and since her retirement in 1975, it’s my impression that their point of view, which I share, has come to prevail." About Last Night (AJBlogs) 08/03/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 7:20 pm
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Actors' Dispute At Toy Store "Simmering tensions between Actors' Equity Association and the American Girl Place doll store in midtown Manhattan boiled over [yesterday] when actors walked away from their jobs to protest management's refusal to establish a contract with the union." Backstage 08/03/06
Posted: 08/04/2006 8:49 am
Has New York Lost Its Political Nerve? "A brief glance at Broadway confirms that the American market for political theatre is at an all-time low. Domestic dramas dominate; the Tony Awards are bypassing the middleman and going straight to British practitioners. And although no one seriously expects commercial theatres - which are sponsored by large corporations - to champion provocative writing ("Everybody knows you don't bite the hand that feeds you," says Shinn), the subscription theatres, the not-for-profit venues which are the breeding ground for new work, seem to be losing their nerve." New Statesman 07/31/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 8:45 pm
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That Paris Thing Why are so many books set in Paris? "People who read these books aren’t interested in what really happens at different levels of society. They’re into the fantasy Paris, the Paris of sophistication and magic and Champagne drinking." The New York Times 08/04/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 10:28 pm
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Just Testing Before a movie or TV show gets to paying customers, it is extensively tested with audiences. "The graph tells the story the clients want to know - who likes what (actors, relationships, dialogue, setting, etc). Within two minutes, more than two-thirds of the women in the group had changed the channel. Most of the men, however, hung in to the bitter end. Not surprisingly, women in bathing suits score higher with men. Women's scores, by contrast, tend to rise when characters develop relationships (because women like to watch that sort of interaction)." Christian Science Monitor 08/04/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 8:55 pm
Meet The World's Biggest Movie Star "Shah Rukh Khan (also known as "King Khan") has been in more than 50 Hindi films and has won 13 Filmfare awards, regarded as the "Bollywood Oscars". He is the biggest star in Hindi cinema and this means billions of fans (Bollywood has a global audience of 3.6 billion; Hollywood has 2.5 billion)." The Guardian (UK) 08/04/06
Posted: 08/03/2006 8:53 pm
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