Is String Theory Tying Science In Knots? String theory, a complex equation-based way of viewing the universe, has been in vogue among the world's top scientists for decades now. But in the last few months, a growing chorus of voices within the scientific community has begun to claim that not only is string theory likely inaccurate, its relentless promotion as the only viable theory of unification is hurting science as a whole. The Observer (UK) 10/08/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 10:17 am
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London's Unimaginable Art Boom Keeps On Booming "A 2004 study estimated that there were more than 400 galleries in London - probably the tip of the iceberg, as temporary spaces come and go and artists open their studios to sell direct. An Arts Council England report has estimated the contemporary art market as worth £500m - unimaginable even a decade ago. The London art boom will be seen at its most intense next week, when Frieze art fair flings wide its doors... And, just when you think London cannot take any more, still more commercial galleries appear."
The Guardian (UK) 10/07/06 Posted: 10/08/2006 11:03 am
It's Official: Trekkies Have Too Much Money Auctioneers at Christie's New York were stunned this week when a 78-inch model of the Starship Enterprise that had been expected to sell for around $30,000 instead went for $576,000. There appears to be no truth to the rumor that the winning bidder attempted to pay for his new acquisition with his mom's credit card.
BBC 10/08/06 Posted: 10/08/2006 9:29 am
Sure, The Art's Nice, But How's The Traffic? The Denver Art Museum unveils its $62.5 million renovation this week, and museum officials are readying for a deluge of curious visitors. In fact, regulating human traffic flow is one of the major ongoing concerns for museums looking to upgrade their digs.
Denver Post 10/07/06 Posted: 10/08/2006 8:53 am
- Libeskind's Denver Work Bodes Well For SF Officials at San Francisco's Contemporary Jewish Museum have been keeping a close eye on architect Daniel Libeskind's addition to the Denver Art Museum, since Libeskind is also designing the Jewish Museum's new digs. "His Denver building shows that what seems outrageous on paper can be bracing in real life."
San Francisco Chronicle 10/07/06 Posted: 10/08/2006 8:52 am
- Great Shell, But The Inside Could Use Work Blair Kamen says there's no question that Daniel Libeskind has designed a gem of a building in Denver. But how does the new wing do as a showcase for the art it was built to house? Well... "It is a startling, sometimes over-the-top piece of architectural sculpture, a surprisingly sensitive shaper of urban spaces and a disappointingly spotty art museum in which basic functional problems have not been adequately solved, like how visitors, especially those who are blind, will move around without conking their heads on the architect's insistently tilting walls."
Chicago Tribune 10/08/06 Posted: 10/08/2006 8:52 am
From Here? No One's From Here! The California Biennial seems awfully un-Californian this year, to judge from the diverse array of states from which the featured artists hail. Of course, that in itself could be said to be fairly Californian...
Los Angeles Times 10/07/06 Posted: 10/08/2006 8:03 am
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The "New" SPCO: Still A Work In Progress It's been three years since the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra dumped the idea of a music director, and abandoned the traditional American symphonic business model in favor of a more democratic approach that allowed musicians a role in artistic leadership, and placed board members and managers in the middle of the musical side of the organization. So how's it working out? That depends entirely on whom you ask. Star Tribune (Minneapolis/St. Paul) 10/07/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 8:48 am
Where's The CanCon? The Canadian Opera Company has been getting plenty of good press since opening its new home in Toronto this summer. So you would think it would be the perfect time to showcase some homegrown Canadian operas, right? Wrong. "The company has had a lot of time to think about bringing some Canadian rep to its new stage, and so far that thinking has yielded no result." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/07/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 8:45 am
LA Opera Celebrates Something Los Angeles Opera turns 20 this year. Unless it actually turns 58. It all depends on what your definition of an opera company is. More importantly, LA Opera has one of the more entertaining and colorful histories you'll read, full of all the backstage wrangling and boardroom controversy that you'd expect. Los Angeles Times 10/07/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 8:43 am
You Can't Tell The Players Without A Scorecard The St. Louis Symphony has been on the rise ever since David Robertson took over as music director last year, but the amount of turnover among the orchestra's musicians has hit a near-record high. 17% of the SLSO started work within the last two years, a very high number for an American ensemble. But there probably isn't anything to be alarmed about: a combination of natural attrition and the sudden filling of several long-standing vacancies accounts for the influx of new blood. St. Louis Post-Dispatch 10/07/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 8:37 am
New Contract, Old Cuts Unveiled In Newark The New Jersey Symphony has a new two-year contract with its musicians that provides nominal raises but maintains several cuts implemented last year, including a four-week reduction in the length of the NJSO season, and a 12% cut in the number of full-time players in the orchestra. Ratification of the deal will allow the NJSO's season to start on time later this week. Newark Star-Ledger 10/07/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 8:33 am
Good Start, But A Long Way To Go Ontario's Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony has pulled in $320,000 of donations in the two days since announcing that it was in imminent danger of bankruptcy. That leaves the ensemble with just over $2 million to raise by the end of the month. The Record (Kitchener, ON) 10/07/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 8:29 am
- Previously: Another Canadian Band On The Brink The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, a regional ensemble in Canada's most populous province, says it needs to raise CAN$2.5 million by the end of the month to avoid immediate bankruptcy. That goal might well prove unreachable - the total contributions of the orchestra's board members to the emergency drive total only $230,000. The Record (Kitchener, ON) 10/05/06
Wouldn't Recognize Home If They Saw It September is the time when most orchestras settle in for the long winter season at their home concert hall, but no such relaxing schedule awaited the Cleveland Orchestra this fall. "The ensemble and music director Franz Welser-Möst began their winding journey in mid-August at Blossom Music Center [in Kent, Ohio.] Then they tested out the new concert hall at Miami's Carnival Center for the Performing Arts, performed in eight European cities and opened the 2006-07 Severance Hall season." Now, they're in New York, wrapping up a 3-concert residency at Carnegie Hall. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 10/07/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 8:26 am
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A Diamond In The Rough Is Still Stuck In The Rough "Every institution, from an opera company to a private foundation to a major newspaper, should have an articulate mission, a reason for being. But a performing arts institution needs a performing arts space that enables it to fulfill that mission." In other words, quality architecture is as important as a quality performance. The New York Times 10/08/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 10:13 am
Aggressive Superiority And Misplaced Enthusiasm? Great. The whole standing ovation thing is just completely out of control, and most in the arts would agree. But is it possible that the automatic ovation crowd is actually becoming even more annoying than they already were? "No longer content to give standing ovations to performances that don't warrant them, the ovaters have begun to question why others aren't standing too." Houston Chronicle 10/07/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 10:04 am
Objectivity Never Makes Anyone Happy Richmond, Virginia is home to a new Civil War Museum that addresses head-on America's divergent viewpoints on race, regional pride, and the war that very nearly destroyed a young country. To do that, the museum presents, without judgment, the views of what it sees as the three distinct players in the Civil War struggle: Northerners, Southern Confederates, and the African-Americans caught in the middle. But not everyone is happy with the museum's willingness to present the Confederate viewpoint without explicitly condemning it. Washington Post 10/07/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 9:43 am
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Aiming High "She controls a vast international art empire, and numbers Clinton, Kissinger and Bianca Jagger among her network of powerful friends and supporters. Next week she opens a multimillion-pound art institute in London, designed, she says, to make the world a better place. Welcome to the world of self-styled cultural philanthropist Louise T Blouin MacBain." The Observer (UK) 10/08/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 10:15 am
In The Spotlight, Right To The End Legendary Chicago actor Gene Janson, who crafted a decades-long career portraying "avuncular father figures, embittered academics and crusty old political types," collapsed on stage and died last week. He was 72. Chicago Tribune 10/07/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 9:29 am
Call It An Active Retirement Jonathan Miller is retiring from the world of opera. Again. Maybe. But regardless of his career status, he's still one of the more fascinating interviews in the business. "Amid bomblets tossed at traditional opera audiences, the Metropolitan Opera, religious Jews (he is Jewish), American political culture, Belgian colonialists and German conceptualist directors, Mr. Miller weaves a narrative of his directing method: a focus on the 'negligible detail' and 'subintentional actions.'" The New York Times 10/07/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 9:25 am
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Controversial To Past The End It was four years ago this month that a plane carrying Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone and his family crashed in a remote northern town, killing all on board and putting a shocking end to what many American leftists had hoped would be a long and prominent political life. Now, on the eve of another crucial Senate election in Minnesota, a prominent St. Paul theater is mounting a play dramatizing Wellstone's life. It's a risky move - Minnesota is not the Democratic stronghold it once was. "Politicos' reactions to the play have been muted because more attention is being paid to the coming elections than to the arts. But for those who are aware of the show, the late senator is proving to be as controversial in death as he was in life." St. Paul Pioneer Press 10/07/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 9:34 am
Is New York In A Theatrical Slump? "The fall theater season has kicked into high gear, but so far there isn't a single musical throwing off real sparks. Broadway isn't used to this: Every new season in recent memory has delivered at least one show (sometimes two or three) that's captured New Yorkers' imaginations - and plenty of their spending money." New York Post 10/07/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 9:17 am
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Agreeing To Disagree What's the greatest English-language novel of the last quarter-century? A recent survey of American literary experts says it's Toni Morrison's Beloved, but in the UK, the poll went in an entirely different direction. "In the novel, as in everything else, there are Anglo-Saxon and American attitudes. We celebrate a literary tradition of astonishing variety. They want to believe in the Great American Novel, the classic exemplar, the last word. We don't really believe in the last word, prefer not to be told what's best and would rather make our own discoveries. They subscribe to the pursuit of (literary) happiness." The Observer (UK) 10/08/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 10:57 am
Alberta's Legendary Indie Turns 50 This week, Edmonton celebrated the 50th anniversary of the opening of one of Canada's most successful independent booksellers. "Hurtig Books proved virtually an immediate success, the only full-service, independently operated book retailer between Toronto and Vancouver. Within a decade, it was being hailed by many as the best bookstore in Canada and, after a couple of moves to ever-larger premises as well as the opening of two satellite outlets, had become one of the biggest book retailers in the country, perhaps even the biggest." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/07/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 10:53 am
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Career Moves In Reverse "At 41, Sylvie Guillem is reinventing herself. Having become perhaps the most celebrated ballerina of her generation, she is now becoming a contemporary dancer. As they exit their 30’s, most dancers try to minimize risk to extend their time on the stage. But ballet’s reigning diva is embracing it. Only a handful of ballerinas make it past 40, so Ms. Guillem, bored by the classics and determined to test new forms and her own limits, is exploring her options while she still has them. And she is doing so by performing the most physically demanding movement of her career." The New York Times 10/08/06
Posted: 10/08/2006 10:25 am
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