New Tool In The Fight To Return Looted Art A Vienna-based restitution organization has unveiled a massive database listing thousands of art objects which may have been looted from Austria by marauding Nazi soldiers during World War II. "The items are now in museums and collections owned by the Austrian government or the city of Vienna. The origin of most are still in question, and it remains to be determined if they were in fact looted... The fund is required by law to auction off items for which no owners or heirs are found and distribute the proceeds to Nazi victims. No deadline has yet been set for processing claims."
Los Angeles Times (AP) 10/25/06 Posted: 10/25/2006 6:44 am
Dia Abandons High Line Project "With no director and a board in flux, the Dia Art Foundation has scrapped its plans to open a museum at the entrance to the High Line, an abandoned elevated railway line in Manhattan." The Dia's exit from the project leaves the door open for other New York museums to move in, and there is already speculation that the Whitney is interested.
The New York Times 10/25/06 Posted: 10/25/2006 6:16 am
Did Beaverbrook Inflate The Value Of His Art Gifts? Just how valuable were the paintings Lord Beaverbrook gave to a Canadian gallery back in the 1950s? Testifying at an arbitration hearing in Fredericton on Tuesday, Sir Maxwell Aitken "suggested that the original Lord Beaverbrook might have bent the truth about giving a series of valuable paintings to the gallery to persuade his rich friends to make similar donations to his pet cause."
CBC 10/24/06 Posted: 10/24/2006 6:41 pm
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Towering Impact Tower Records may have been a big corporation, but to many classical music aficionados in New York and other large East and West Coast cities, the chain's classical department was as close as you could get to a neighborhood record store. "Older record collectors have memories of wonderful, quirky independent stores run by managers who were passionate, if opinionated, about the music they sold. [And Tower's closing] will have a severe impact on niche markets like classical music. According to one industry insider’s estimate, Tower Records alone accounted for up to 50 percent of sales in the specialty genres." The New York Times 10/25/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 6:18 am
NJSO Finally Has A New CEO André Gremillet, a 39-year-old pianist who has spent the last few years running a pipe organ manufacturing company in Canada, has been tapped as the new president and CEO of the New Jersey Symphony. "Gremillet will inherit an organization that is straining under a mountain of debt and yet growing artistically under the baton of Neeme Järvi, the orchestra's conductor and music director." Newark Star-Ledger 10/25/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 5:34 am
K-W Bailout Sees No Business Support Donations have been trickling in in the last-ditch campaign to save Ontario's Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony from bankruptcy (the orchestra needs to raise $2.5m by month's end,) but corporate support has been largely nonexistent. "Money raised to date includes $782,680 donated by about 900 individuals. It also includes $250,000 from Waterloo Region, $170,000 from Kitchener, $85,000 from Waterloo and $230,000 pledged by 18 symphony board members." The Record (Kitchener, ON) 10/25/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 5:19 am
The Last Radio Orchestra "Radio orchestras, which continue to play an important role in the musical life of Europe and Asia, were once crucial organizations in the U.S. and Canada. The CBC Radio Orchestra is the last of its breed in North America. Supported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., this is the only surviving radio orchestra on the continent."
Los Angeles Times 10/24/06
Posted: 10/24/2006 10:14 pm
What Happened To Music After The Nazis? "The Americans were convinced that Nazi Germany had been a cultural desert and that the public needed and appreciated them for supplying the refreshing waters of hitherto unavailable music. What they failed to realize was that much good contemporary music was performed in Hitler's Germany and that until the war the country was not closed to the works of British or French or other European composers." NewMusicBox 10/24/06
Posted: 10/24/2006 6:12 pm
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Gould Theft Case Ends In Split Verdict "A New York jury convicted a Texas college professor on Tuesday of criminal possession of items that were owned by the late classical pianist Glenn Gould and were stolen from Canada's national library... Jurors, some of whom said the verdict was a compromise after 12 hours of deliberations over two days, acquitted Ms. Moore of stealing the items from the Canadian Library and Archives in Ottawa, as prosecutors said she had." The Globe & Mail (AP) 10/25/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 6:39 am
Arts Booming In Denver Arts and culture generated $1.4 billion for the Denver metro area in 2005, according to a new study. That's the largest economic impact ever measured for the region. The study also says that 14.1 million people in the area attended some sort of cultural event (not bad for a metro of fewer than 2.5 million residents.) Denver Post 10/25/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 5:28 am
Edinburgh Debt - Close Hospitals, Not Festivals Jonathan Mills has inherited a £1m debt with the Edinburgh Festival, of which he's just taken charge. "It is a huge debt on one level. But is there not going to be an Edinburgh festival because of this debt? No. I am not foolhardy or reckless, but if I was serious about being the festival director, then the debt didn't arise as an issue. The government has on occasion shut down hospitals and schools. But not festivals." The Guardian (UK) 10/25/06
Posted: 10/24/2006 7:14 pm
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Conductor (Re)Accused In Cult Murders "A Swiss orchestra conductor went on trial for the second time yesterday for his alleged role in a doomsday cult which lost dozens of members in ritual killings in Canada and Europe. Michel Tabachnik, 61, a composer who has led major orchestras in Canada, Portugal and France, is accused of criminal association and contributing to the deaths of members of the Order of the Solar Temple - 14 of whom were found burnt and lying in a star formation in a clearing in the French Alps in 1995." The Guardian (UK) 10/25/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 5:39 am
Getty Research Chief Steps Down Thomas Crow is stepping down as director of The Getty Research Institute to take a position in modern art history at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. "Prof. Crow, who is also professor of art history at the University of Southern California, joined the Getty as director of the Getty Research Institute in 2000. Prior to that, he had been Robert Lehman Professor of Art History at Yale University." Getty Press Release 10/24/06
Posted: 10/24/2006 6:45 pm
Boosey Gets A New Leader "Marc Ostrow has been promoted to become general manager of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., its New York-based affiliate company. The promotion follows Jenny Bilfield's departure after twelve years with B&H to take up a position as artistic and executive director at Stanford Lively Arts." NewMusicBox 10/24/06
Posted: 10/24/2006 6:00 pm
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Rent Composer Gets His Posthumous Due The U.S. Library of Congress has inducted the personal archive of late Rent composer Jonathan Larson into its collection. (Larson, whose rock musical is one of the most successful new shows of the last two decades, died of an aneurysm shortly before the show's Broadway premiere in 1996.) Larson is "the first of a younger cadre of Broadway songwriters to have his manuscripts, letters and other materials preserved at the library alongside those of Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter and Leonard Bernstein." Washington Post 10/25/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 6:54 am
Now She Can Take A Break In Style The winner of Canada's $100,000 Siminovitch Prize in Theatre says that she was completely burned out and planning to take a break from the stage entirely when news of her big win arrived... Toronto Star 10/25/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 6:52 am
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The Virtual Read Many businesses have joined online virtual worlds. Now a big publisher has set up virtual shop and created an online community... The Guardian (UK) 10/24/06
Posted: 10/24/2006 9:52 pm
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Death Of Any President Bound To Cause Waves Joanna Weiss says that the furor over the mockumentary, Death of a President, has little to do with partisan rancor or President Bush, who appears to be gunned down in the film. "Given the rise of ad hominem politics -- the bald hatred of President Bush and other politicians that breezes across the Internet each day -- Death of a President actually comes across as almost kind." But that doesn't change the innate unease that comes with imagining a sitting president assassinated. Boston Globe 10/25/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 6:27 am
- That's Right Neighbo(u)rly Of You With many American cinemas refusing to screen the controversial mockumentary, Death of a President, the film's Canadian distributor is mounting a campaign to convince Americans living near the border (mainly in upstate New York) to cross over and see the movie up north. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/25/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 6:26 am
Hacker Busts iPod's Exclusivity A prominent hacker is claiming that he has cracked the software that Apple uses to insure that the music it sells through its online iTunes store can only be played on an iPod portable device. "[The hacker's] company, DoubleTwist, said that it planned to license the code to other digital music player manufacturers." The company's attorneys believe that such a direct assault on Apple's market dominance would, in fact, be legal. BBC 10/25/06
Posted: 10/25/2006 5:45 am
CNN, NPR Decline To Run Ads For "Death of a President" "The movie, 'Death of a President,' caused a stir at the Toronto Film Festival in September where it debuted, and two major U.S. theater chains have declined to screen the movie when it debuts in the United States on Friday." AOL (Reuters) 10/24/06
Posted: 10/24/2006 6:16 pm
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Atlanta Ballet - Relegated To The Minors "It does seem a little ironic that while the Atlanta Symphony is more than a third of the way toward raising $300 million to build a new facility, the Atlanta Ballet can barely afford to keep its doors open." Now the company has let go of its orchestra, dooming it to the minor leagues. Atlanta Journal-Constitution 10/22/06
Posted: 10/24/2006 5:52 pm
Wrapping Your Head Around Butoh "People tend to think of Butoh in terms of aesthetic markers: white body paint, shaved heads, slow movement gained through intense muscular control, and a way of manipulating the body that is at once beautiful and grotesque, tragic and absurd. Influenced by German Expressionism, it tends to be imagistic rather than narrative. But while these elements often appear, defining Butoh in stylistic terms is dangerous." The New York Times 10/22/06
Posted: 10/24/2006 5:50 pm
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