The Age Of Innocence (Or Just Naivete?) "This will be remembered as the age in which the internet was still trusted... despite the fact that Wikipedia's entry about Kazakhstan was recently amended to list Borat the fictional Kazakh reporter as president. [What once] promised to be a symphony of knowledge is turning out to be a monotone of static. When a computer and a search engine are considered as good as a degree, the result is a culture of shallow knowledge." Sydney Morning Herald 11/14/06
Posted: 11/15/2006 4:17 am
Air Guitar That Actually Plays Engineers in Australia - the home of rock legends including AC/DC and INXS - have developed a new T-shirt which enables the wearer to play air guitar and create real noise in the process. The Guardian (UK) 11/14/06
Posted: 11/14/2006 6:11 pm
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Met Bows To Grosz Estate, Won't Borrow MoMA Painting "In response to an ownership dispute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art says it has decided not to borrow a painting by George Grosz from the Museum of Modern Art for an exhibition of German Expressionist portraits that opened yesterday... MoMA, which has been discussing the issue with the estate for three years, counters that it has thoroughly investigated the claim and has concluded that it has no legal basis."
The New York Times 11/15/06 Posted: 11/15/2006 4:37 am
Auction Prices Continue Their Ascent Fifteen sales records were broken at a Sotheby's auction in New York this week as the art market continues to explode. Francis Bacon's Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe sold for $15 million, the most ever paid for a Bacon work, while sculptor Anish Kapoor's "untitled carved alabaster sculpture from 1999 generated $2.3m, about five times the sum it had been predicted to earn."
BBC 11/15/06 Posted: 11/15/2006 4:22 am
- Putting A Number On It "There is no mystery about the causes of the new boom. The rich have done very well over the last decade, and some of them, including hedge fund managers like Steven A. Cohen, are spending large sums of their money on art. New billionaires in China, India and, above all, Russia, have also entered the market. The mysterious part of the current mania lies in figuring out what exactly makes a piece of art worth $30 million instead of, say, $1 million."
The New York Times 11/15/06 Posted: 11/15/2006 4:21 am
More Trouble For The MacLaren "Supporters of [Barrie, Ontario's] MacLaren Art Centre, which got enmeshed in a controversial, multimillion-dollar deal involving dozens of sculptures attributed to French master Auguste Rodin, are casting a wary eye on the election Monday of a mayor who claims the gallery has received enough taxpayer help and needs to be more 'self-sustaining.'"
The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/15/06 Posted: 11/15/2006 4:16 am
Who Decides A Painting Is Real? "Most masters have at least a few disputed authorships in their oeuvre. On the say of one person the worth of a painting can rocket or plummet overnight. No wonder canvases have been the fields of such ferocious battles."
The Times (UK) 11/14/06 Posted: 11/14/2006 6:18 pm
Goya Snatched Near Scranton While Truck Left Unattended The Goya painting owned by the Toledo Museum of Art, and stolen as it was being transported to the Guggenheim in New York "was insured for just over $1 million and was in the hands of a professional art transporter when it was snatched Wednesday in the Scranton, Pa., area. The transport vehicle was unattended at the time of theft."
Toledo Blade 11/14/06 Posted: 11/14/2006 6:06 pm
Who Ought To Be Next To Run The Met? Phillipe de Montebello has been associated with the Metropolitan Museum since 1963 and director since 1978 - an unusually long tenure. He shows no signs of moving on, but CultureGrrl has taken it upon herself to compile a list of possible successors...
CultureGrrl 11/14/06 Posted: 11/14/2006 4:38 pm
Museum Art Sales Face Judgment Of Time So Buffalo's Albright-Knox Gallery is selling off some of its art. So what? "Museums are devoting more and more resources to acquiring large amounts of contemporary art, work about which the judgment of history--supposedly what museums are all about - is far from settled. Such acquisition policies may be acceptable, but not when done by getting rid of masterpieces whose importance has been validated by time and critical opinion and that provide a context for the work of the present. Ironically, this plan is driven by perceptions about the notably erratic and currently inflated contemporary art market, rather than by any dire financial crisis."
OpinionJournal.com 11/15/06 Posted: 11/14/2006 4:21 pm
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SPCO Extends Contracts Of Two Conductors Solidifying its commitment to working with a diverse array of "artistic partners" rather than engaging a traditional music director, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra has extended its relationship with two of its more successful partners. Conductors Douglas Boyd and Roberto Abbado will continue leading the SPCO regularly through 2010 and 2011, respectively. St. Paul Pioneer Press 11/15/06
Posted: 11/15/2006 5:27 am
If Only Everyone Would Give Everything Away For Free... Technological innovations such as MySpace and podcasting have allowed many as-yet-undiscovered musicians to promote their careers and present their product for public consumption without the assistance of the ever-more-aloof recording industry. But for established musical acts, the online music world is still an uncertain place. Everyone wants to embrace new media, but no one has quite figured out how to do it without abandoning all control over the product and its distribution. BBC 11/15/06
Posted: 11/15/2006 4:29 am
Big Raise Coming In Liverpool As its home city prepares for its moment in the spotlight at Cultural Capital of Europe, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic has reached agreement on a 21% pay raise for its musicians. The RLPO's base wage lags far behind the UK's top orchestras - even at the end of the new contract, musicians will earn just £25,000 per year - but the deal is being seen as an indication that the orchestra has stabilized fiscally after several years of restructuring. The Stage (UK) 11/14/06
Posted: 11/15/2006 4:12 am
Smooth Sailing In Indy The Indianapolis Symphony has reported a budget surplus for the third year in a row, and increased overall ticket sales by nearly 10% over last season. "The ISO musicians and management also recently ratified a new three-year contract that went into effect retroactively to September 4. The new agreement calls for ISO musicians' salaries to increase between 3% and 5% annually, for a total of 12.6% over three years." PlaybillArts 11/14/06
Posted: 11/15/2006 4:00 am
Conductor Quits As Opera Job Loses Appeal Conductor "Daniele Gatti's resignation from the Teatro Comunale di Bologna leaves two of Italy's top opera houses musically depleted, amid growing confusion about the role and responsibilities of modern music direcors." Bloomberg.com 11/14/06
Posted: 11/14/2006 4:40 pm
Refusing To Sing This Song "Once upon a time, songs referred exclusively to single-movement musical compositions involving a singer or singers." No more. Now most music is referred to as "songs", and Frank Oteri has had enough. "Everything is a song in popular parlance, whether it has words or not and no matter how long it is. As a result, the song paradigm—which still assumes a normative status of vocal, short, and in one movement—determines how all music is listened to. When's the last time an 'instrumental' got on the Billboard charts?" NewMusicBox` 11/14/06
Posted: 11/14/2006 4:24 pm
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Denver's Arts Building Boom Works On A Next Phase Denver has a new opera house and a new museum. Now the city is trying to raise $100 million to overhaul its concert hall. "The Boettcher overhaul would include an addition of a wrap-around, multistory glass lobby on its Speer Boulevard side and a reconfiguration of the 2,634-seat facility, reducing its seating to about 2,100 and enhancing its acoustics." Denver Post 11/12/06
Posted: 11/14/2006 4:36 pm
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Upshaw Diagnosed With Cancer Soprano Dawn Upshaw has been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer and has withdrawn from all of her engagements through the end of the year. OperaNews 11/14/06
Posted: 11/14/2006 5:29 pm
Two Men Of The Gavel Tobias Meyer and Christopher Burge are the chief auctioneers at Sotheby's and Christie's, respectively. "Meyer, who is also Sotheby's worldwide head of contemporary art, is German, in his early 40s, and looks like a Helmut Lang model. He is more of a celebrity outside of the auction world than Mr. Burge, having been the subject of a New Yorker profile, which described, among other things, his "sculptural" head, his Savile Row suits, and the dramatically designed apartment." New York Sun 11/14/06
Posted: 11/14/2006 4:33 pm
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Who Owns A Lighting Cue? A dispute has sprung up between the creative team behind the Broadway production of the award-winning musical, Urinetown, and presenters of separate productions of the show in Chicago and Ohio, over the use of staging, set design, and lighting elements that the Broadway team says belong to them. "[The] arguments concern a controversial area of intellectual property: creative input into a production beyond the script and music. While choreography is specifically protected by law, the situation for stage direction is not as clear." The New York Times 11/15/06
Posted: 11/15/2006 4:40 am
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What Makes A Great Thriller? Jerome Weeks is on the case: "The best spy thrillers, it seems, have told three central stories..." Book/Daddy (AJBlogs) 11/14/06
Posted: 11/14/2006 6:38 pm
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And They're Not Even Counting The Emissions Coming From Tom Cruise You can't swing a boom mike in Hollywood without hitting a celebrity hellbent on getting the U.S. government to do something about global warming and the destruction of the environment. But as it turns out, Hollywood isn't exactly the greenest industry around: a new study from UCLA found that "the industry created more pollution than individually produced by aerospace manufacturing, apparel, hotels and semiconductor manufacturing... Only petroleum manufacturing belched more emissions." Washington Post 11/15/06
Posted: 11/15/2006 5:33 am
The Trouble With Canadian TV The cost of producing original hour-long dramatic series is often crippling for Canadian television networks struggling to compete against big-budget Hollywood shows easily accessed by any Canadian with cable TV. One solution could be to move to a BBC-style model of limited-run series, or to create more miniseries instead of shows meant to run indefinitely. But the problem is deeper than mere formatting...
The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/15/06
Posted: 11/15/2006 5:10 am
Old TV Finds New Market "Old TV shows sell modestly - in the thousands - compared to the millions of units a hit contemporary series can sell on DVD. But sales often fall off quickly for these trendy hits while older series keep on slowly selling, especially as gifts. But there are challenges in putting out vintage series. It can be hard to find existing footage in good condition. Not all shows survived." Denver Post 11/14/06
Posted: 11/14/2006 4:30 pm
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Why Dylan Didn't Work As Dance "Perhaps the worst thing in the legions of problems with Twyla Tharp's Dylan fiasco (to close November 19 -- sooner than I guessed, but not too soon) is the revenge she seeks on the slippery songs. She wants them to give up their nature and hold still. But even in neutered Broadway renditions, the songs slip away, leaving her in a vacuum." Foot in Mouth (AJBlogs) 11/10/06
Posted: 11/14/2006 5:48 pm
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