AJ Logo Get ArtsJournal in your inbox
for FREE every morning!
HOME > Yesterdays


Tuesday, October 24




Ideas

Meditation: Better Than Caffeine "Meditation is often credited with helping people feel more focused and energetic, but are the benefits measurable? A new study suggests that they are. When researchers tested the alertness of volunteers, they found that the practice proved more effective than naps, exercise or caffeine." The New York Times 10/24/06
Posted: 10/24/2006 4:02 am

Have Awards Replaced Critical Judgment? "Ours is truly the age of awards. Prizes are becoming the ultimate measure of cultural success and value. In a time of information overload - of cultural excess and superabundance - our taste is being increasingly created for us by prize juries and award ceremonies. Art is beginning to resemble sport, with its roster of winners and losers and its spectacles of competition: the Oscars, the Baftas, the Brits. Indeed, the larger cultural festivals and prizes, such as the Venice Biennale, the Oscars and the Nobels, are consciously imitative of international sporting competitions like the Olympics." The Guardian (UK) 10/22/06
Posted: 10/23/2006 7:31 am

Click here for more Ideas stories...

Visual Arts

At Washington's House, A Determinedly Mediated Experience Mount Vernon has just spent $110 million on a face-lift that includes two new buildings, and visitors are going to be herded through the whole, highly choreographed museum experience, like it or not. "People are channeled with the same linear certainty as cars in a car wash. The goal of the visit, Mount Vernon, becomes a surreal glimpse of the real, framed by dizzying bits of entertainment."
Washington Post 10/24/06 Posted: 10/24/2006 6:00 am

A Coat Of Paint, And Brutalism Disappears After decades as a drab, new-brutalist monstrosity, London's Brunswick Centre has morphed into an appealing place to be. "The building has always had its admirers, but for decades this corner of Bloomsbury has been one of the most miserable places in London - a rain-streaked, litter-strewn concrete bunker of empty shop units, whose ambitious, space-age design only accentuated its sense of failure." The reason for the Brunswick's belated success? Someone finally honored the architect's original, very non-brutalist desire that the building be painted.
The Guardian (UK) 10/23/06 Posted: 10/24/2006 5:26 am

To Safeguard Cultural Heritage, U.N. Spreads Nuclear Technology "Curators at top museums in Europe and the United States have long reached for the instruments of nuclear science to hit treasures of art with invisible rays. The resulting clues have helped answer vexing questions of provenance, age and authenticity. Now such insights are going global. The International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations unit best known for fighting the spread of nuclear arms, is working hard to foster such methods in the developing world, letting scientists and conservators in places like Peru, Ghana and Kazakhstan act as better custodians of their cultural heritage."
The New York Times 10/24/06 Posted: 10/24/2006 3:38 am

Artist With Alzheimer's Paints His Eroding Self "When he learned in 1995 that he had Alzheimer’s disease, William Utermohlen, an American artist in London, responded in characteristic fashion. 'From that moment on, he began to try to understand it by painting himself,' said his wife, Patricia Utermohlen, a professor of art history. ... The paintings starkly reveal the artist’s descent into dementia, as his world began to tilt, perspectives flattened and details melted away. His wife and his doctors said he seemed aware at times that technical flaws had crept into his work, but he could not figure out how to correct them."
The New York Times 10/24/06 Posted: 10/24/2006 3:33 am

Russian Gallery Attacked "A group of men burst into a Moscow art gallery, destroying work by an ethnic Georgian artist and beating up the owner, it was claimed yesterday. The attack follows the seizure by officials of political art the same gallery had displayed."
The Guardian (UK) 10/23/06 Posted: 10/23/2006 6:49 pm

Inconceivable (What Art Is) "Perhaps conceptualism, minimalism, whatever we're going to call it (even the philistine term 'modern art' is still, unbelievably, current) has lasted so long because the public is still baffled by what is going on. The achievement of the high renaissance was obvious, and it was over in a moment; Mannerism lasted a bare 50 years. Eighty years on, we are still gazing uncomprehending at replicas of Duchamp's readymades."
The Guardian (UK) 10/23/06 Posted: 10/23/2006 6:38 pm

Tomb Robbers Lead Police To Ancient Egyptian Tombs Thieves trying to rob ancient Egyptian tombs were captured by police. "That led archaeologists to the three tombs, one of which included an inscription warning that anyone who violated the sanctity of the grave would be eaten by a crocodile and a snake."
Discovery 10/23/06 Posted: 10/23/2006 5:11 pm

Help For UK Museum Collections The UK's Heritage Lottery Fund is establishing a £3m fund to help museums whose acquisitions budgets have been slashed. "Museums have felt that in the flood of lottery money spent on new or remodelled buildings, the importance of the collections they hold has been forgotten. The situation has been predicted to become more acute, with the Heritage Lottery Fund squeezed by declining lottery ticket sales, and by the new lottery good cause, the 2012 Olympics."
The Guardian (UK) 10/23/06 Posted: 10/23/2006 4:52 pm

Click here for more Visual Arts stories...

Music

For £11,100, Rights To An Unknown's Lyrics An unknown London singer-songwriter harnessed the power of eBay to auction his words -- and it worked. "Jonathan Haselden has spent the last four months marketing his lyrics as a way of raising money to promote himself and his music. The idea is that individuals and companies can buy song lines, use them in any way they wish and, if all goes to plan, get a share of the royalties when the song is successful." The Guardian (UK) 10/24/06
Posted: 10/24/2006 5:05 am

Turn Down That iPod! (Or: High Volume = Risk) "Avid iPod users who wonder if they are putting their hearing at risk may find some relief in a new study that tries to arrive at guidelines for safe listening levels. The key to avoiding hearing damage, the researchers say, appears to be limiting not so much how long one listens to music but how loud it is played." Full blast, it seems, is an officially unhealthy setting.... The New York Times 10/24/06
Posted: 10/24/2006 3:50 am

Vivaldi Gets The "Amadeus" Treatment Hoping to duplicate the success of Milos Forman's "Amadeus" movie, movie producers are planning a biopic on the life of Vivaldi. "Amadeus is what we are going for. They set the template for this form, and there's been not much between then and now. That was a wonderful film. We want to make a film of that calibre. Maybe better." The Guardian (UK) 10/23/06
Posted: 10/23/2006 6:54 pm

The Opera Director And The Homeless Shelter "It's not unheard of for high-flying directors to return to grass roots. Graham Vick spends part of each year staging community productions with his Birmingham Opera Company. And Warner was partly responsible for establishing the outreach wing of English National Opera. Yet it still seems incongruous to find him at work in a community centre on the outskirts of Newcastle, patiently explaining stage technique to a homeless woman who has missed her cue." The Guardian (UK) 10/23/06
Posted: 10/23/2006 6:08 pm

The Buzz About Golijov Osvaldo Golijov, 45, ranks "among the most sought-after composers in the world. Certainly, no one else in the past three years has come close to receiving both a MacArthur Foundation 'genius grant' and a commission from New York City's Metropolitan Opera." Denver Post 10/23/06
Posted: 10/23/2006 6:00 pm

Click here for more Music stories...

Arts Issues

MoMA Is America's Top Arts Fundraiser The Museum of Modern Art "raised $239.2 million in its 2005 fiscal year ended June 30, a 106.5 percent increase over the previous year, according to a Chronicle of Philanthropy survey of the top 400 recipients of donations scheduled to be published today on its Web site. That year, the museum received its largest gift ever, $100 million in cash, from philanthropist David Rockefeller. The Metropolitan Opera Association led performing-arts centers with $93.4 million, followed by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts at $51.1 million." Bloomberg 10/23/06
Posted: 10/23/2006 4:58 pm

Click here for more Arts Issues stories...

People

Parks - "Historically Aware" And "Linguistically Complicated" Theatre Suzan-Lori Parks was the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for theatre. "The author of nine full-length plays, most of which are taught at drama schools across the country, and one of the founders of a wave of multilayered, historically aware, and linguistically complicated theatre, she aims to defeat what she calls 'the Theatre of Schmaltz' — 'the play-as-wrapping-paper-version-of-hot-newspaper-headline." The New Yorker 10/23/06
Posted: 10/23/2006 5:32 pm

Click here for more People stories...

Theatre

A Truly Ensemble Theatre Takes Wing "You wouldn't know it by looking at its current season, but Phoenix Theatre Ensemble is just getting started. It was only October 2004 when the company mounted its first show, but in the next seven months it will offer six new productions, the return of a previous play, and a community-based work on social justice. That level of output puts the Phoenix on a par with many large New York theatres and major regional companies. But unlike most of those groups, the Phoenix doesn't even have its own space. It doesn't have an office or a leader, either." Back Stage 10/23/06
Posted: 10/24/2006 7:18 am

Click here for more Theatre stories...

Publishing

Better Policing Through Literature? A major Mexican city has "become a crucible for an unusual experiment in enlightened police training." It is sending its officers to school to get culture. "The experiment began early in 2005 with reading and writing classes. It has since mushroomed into an entire literature course with its own constantly expanding editorial series. The principle is that a police officer who is cultured is in a better position to be a better police officer." The Guardian (UK) 10/23/06
Posted: 10/23/2006 7:09 pm

The Chosen Ones "All over Britain, tens of thousand of teenagers have begun working their way through books that have been chosen by exam boards as the best examples of contemporary literature. Anyone who has done Eng Lit A-level will know how these books - even the necessary "quotes" from these books - can become the ones you remember for the rest of your life. No author can foresee the judgment of posterity, but there is one certain way of extending the lifespan of one's literary creations: become a set text." The Guardian (UK) 10/23/06
Posted: 10/23/2006 7:06 pm

Click here for more Publishing stories...

Media

Canada Reworks Film Financing Rules "Telefilm Canada announced major changes yesterday to how it finances the making and marketing of English-language and French-language movies in Canada, changes it believes will put more Canadian films, including documentaries, on the country's screens and increase audiences for them." The Globe and Mail (Toronto) 10/24/06
Posted: 10/24/2006 6:48 am

Embracing YouTube's "Transcendental Amateurism" Film critic Peter Bradshaw has fallen prey to the addictive allure of YouTube. "In parallel with its own exponential growth, my fascination with YouTube has galloped into a raging obsession. Whole evenings, theoretically dedicated to writing, have been hijacked by a terrible need to click away from the Microsoft Word document, onto the internet browser, and from there the lure of YouTube is irresistible. What's not to be fascinated by? However slick or however rickety, the best of these mini-movies have an unmediated quality, a found-object realness that is completely lacking in anything available in the cinema or on TV." The Guardian (UK) 10/24/06
Posted: 10/24/2006 5:12 am

On The Annual Deluge Of Movies For Grownups "Why does Hollywood put out virtually all of its best adult-oriented movies in the last 12 weeks of the year? The simple answer: Oscar fever. The industry's obsession with the Academy Awards, which began as a symbol of achievement and are now a high-powered marketing tool, has transformed the end of the year into the Oscar Follies, offering a legitimate batch of award contenders surrounded by a scrum of hapless pretenders being released at year's end only because of studio delusions, blind adherence to conventional wisdom and arm-twisting by narcissistic stars and filmmakers. The result is often a bloodbath." Los Angeles Times 10/24/06
Posted: 10/24/2006 4:45 am

If The Electricity Is On, So Is Iraq's "Daily Show" A parody newscast in the style of "The Daily Show" is winning audiences in Iraq. "Debuting last month during Ramadan, while families gathered to break their fast after sundown, the show, 'Hurry Up, He’s Dead,' became the talk of Baghdad, delighting and shocking audiences with its needling of anyone with a hand in Iraqis’ gloomy predicament today. ... The show’s success is a testament to the gallows humor with which many Iraqis now view their lives — still lacking basic services and plagued by unrelenting violence more than three years after the American-led invasion." The New York Times 10/24/06
Posted: 10/24/2006 4:08 am

Click here for more Media stories...

Dance

Dangerous To Dance (Not Really) Contemporary dance has a rep in some circles for being hard to understand. What? "It never occurred to me that, for more than three decades now, I've been sitting among extremely nervous people, audiences so fearful of what they were about to see that they'd need to soothe their nerves with booze, Valium, or maybe just a really juicy Big Mac. Dance dangerous? Oh, my god! Should I have buckled my seat belt? Donned my helmet? Slipped on elbow pads? Will my local precinct sell me a bullet-proof vest?" Foot in Mouth (AJBlogs) 10/23/06
Posted: 10/23/2006 7:14 pm

Click here for more Dance stories...


Home | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy
Copyright ©
2002 ArtsJournal. All Rights Reserved