Issues: December 2001

Monday December 31

THINK YOU KNOW ARTS? Think you know what happened in the arts this year? Been following the papers and keeping up with your daily dose of Arts Journal? Well, check out The Guardian’s Arts Quiz and see how well you score (AJ’s editor took the test and…ahem…only managed 11 right answers out of 20…) The Guardian (UK) 12/31/01

HURTING IN THE CAPITAL: In Washington DC “the fourth quarter of 2001 has been among the saddest, most frustrating and apprehensive for Washington’s arts groups. First the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, then the disappearance of the tourists, then the anthrax deaths, then the government’s warnings more attacks could be coming, all set against the tumbling economy. People have stayed away in droves.” Washington Post 12/30/01

WHERE ARE THE ARTISTS? The tragedy of Sept. 11 has made all of us return to the human project of making sense of the world with new vigor; but four months out from the bruising blow to the nation’s sense of security, there is little coherence to the sense being made by our professional ‘sense makers,’ the nation’s musicians, playwrights, poets and visual artists.” Washington Post 12/30/01

YOU JUST HATE TO GIVE THSE PEOPLE ANY ATTENTION, BUT… members of a New Mexico church (probably looking for attention) rallied against the Harry Potter books, claiming he was the devil. “JK Rowling’s novels were burnt alongside other items considered to be the work of the devil, including horror books by Stephen King, ouija boards and AC/DC records. Eminem CDs and copies of Disney’s Snow White film were thrown in a dustbin.” BBC 12/31/01

Sunday December 30

THE YEAR IN ARTS: Publications around the world choose the best and worst in arts in 2001. Here’s our compilation of “Best of/Worst of” lists. ArtsJournal.com

Friday December 28

ARE PACS ALL THEY’RE CRACKED UP TO BE? “PACs have become the hot new urban fix, following the festival market, the convention center, the baseball stadium, the sports arena, the aquarium, and the museum… Yet it took Lincoln Center 25 years to become a destination instead of merely a venue. That’s one of its forgotten lessons. Without the simultaneous development of shops, cafes, housing, and hotels, performing arts centers quickly become marooned by their own lofty intentions.” Dallas Morning News 12/28/01 (one-time registration required for access)

LOOKING BACK: The BBC traces the year in arts, month by month – from Matthew Kneale’s Whitbread win to Madonna’s Turner Prize announcement. BBC 12/27/01

FIGHTING FOR CONTROL: Two San Francisco institutions are duking it out for control of the theatre at the Palace of Fine Arts. “The Exploratorium science museum and the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, which sit side by side in the dreamy, city-owned Palace of Fine Arts complex in the Marina District, are trying to work out new leases with the city,” and the Exploratorium wants to take over operation of the theatre. San Francisco Chronicle 12/27/01

COMING TO TERMS WITH ART’S RESPONSIBILITIES: It has become almost cliched to point out the importance of art’s survival in a culture so shaken by the trauma of 9/11. But for artists themselves, who are now expected to have something relevant to say on the subject, the journey from horror to productive creation is not an easy one, and the decision of how to address the grieving of a nation without seeming trite or preachy is not an easy one. Christian Science Monitor 12/28/01

Thursday December 27

LANGUAGE VS. TECHNOLOGY? The education ministry of a prosperous Indian state is under fire from self-styled guardians of culture, following a proposal to allow high school students to study Information Technology (IT) as a second language. Opponents fear that, since students are only permitted to pick one language to study, IT will quickly become the course of choice, replacing Marathi, the local language which is in danger of dying out. Wired 12/25/01

POP GOES THE EASEL: As museums around the U.S. struggle with attendance figures and constantly evolving competition from new and exciting pop culture offerings, many are turning to pop art exhibits to draw in the younger set. From the Guggenheim’s motorcycles, to SFMOMA’s Reeboks, to a widely criticized display of Jackie O’s clothing at no less a gallery than New York’s Metropolitan Museum, it cannot be denied that museums are dumbing down. But is this a failure of the arts, or a success for marketing? The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) (AP) 12/27/01

Wednesday December 26

ARTS AFTER 9-11: “A massive infusion of irrationality is necessary to stabilize self-belief during a crisis. And that means the arts are going to be hit hard on two levels. The first is that the very nearly illiterate George W. Bush will set the limits on the public conversation about terrorism. The second level, far more devastating, is the retreat of artists from the arena of public issues. Conscious of their need to connect with an audience, why would they write the plays and novels for which the times will pillory them?” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/26/01

Monday December 24

NEA KEEPS KEEPIN’ ON: President Bush’s nominee for chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts was confirmed by the Senate last week. It’s been a tumultuous few decades for the NEA, though the political turmoil has calmed a bit in the past few years. But the government is not likely to pay the arts much heed until they get new champions. “The arts are a strange part of American life. Almost everybody loves them on some level, but they haven’t been educated to think about it as part of government.” New York Times 12/24/01 (one-time registration required for access)

THE START OF… Fifty years ago, Canadian Governor General Vincent Massey produced a report on culture whose “recommendations led eventually to the creation of the Canada Council and the National Library. But the report exerted other influences that were less obvious and less beneficial. What seems clear now is its political bias. It framed support of the arts in essentially political terms, and we have been burdened by those terms ever since.” National Post (Canada) 12/24/01

SMART AS A MACHINE: Machines don’t have the intelligence “imagined by Stanley Kubrick in 1968, when he released the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. This year, we can now say at the safety of its end, did not bring us a Hal, or anything like it. Computers can play a pretty good game of chess, transliterate speech and recognise handwriting and faces. But their intelligence does not touch our own, and the prevailing scientific wisdom seems to be that it never will.” The Economist 12/22/01

PERFORMANCE AFTER 9-11: “I have seen great performances this fall, and I have seen imperfect performances, but I have seen no indifferent performances. Artists’ work seemed more focused, more intense during these harrowing weeks. The less gifted among us can learn much from them.” San Francisco Chronicle 12/23/01

OLD PROBLEM: “As any regular patron can tell you, the people who turn out for music, dance and theater are more likely to be concerned with Medicare than with student loans. It’s a tricky population twist for arts managers to navigate as they try to accommodate their reliable, though aging, subscription base while also pulling in new blood for the future. It’s not a particularly new problem – the core audience has always been those who have no babies and some disposable income – but modern demographics and economics have given a new urgency to the issue.” Washington Post 12/23/01

A HOME OF THEIR OWN: For a decade, a dozen Chicago arts groups have been working on building a new mid-size theatre, a joint home they can grow into. The delays have been frustrating though, and several of the groups are just barely hanging on as construction is about to begin. Chicago Tribune 12/23/01

WHEN ART IS ISOLATED: Eyes glaze over for most people encountering issues of aesthetics. But maybe it’s not their fault. “I would say that western philosophy and western fine art are designed to be irrelevant to the lives of most folks. They are supposed to be incomprehensible to people like most of the students I have taught. We’re working with a conception of art in which most art is isolated in little cultural zones like the museum, the concert hall, the poetry reading, where art is supposed to function by sweeping us from our grubby little world and into the exalted realm of the aesthetic.” Aesthetics-online 12/01

WHAT IF ARTS AND SPORTS TRADED PLACES? “There are sports people and arts people, the two alien civilizations whose populations are greater than all others combined. Throughout history, sports people have had little tolerance for the artsy-fartsy types, just as arts people have looked down their noses at the beer-swilling lunkheads.” But “how would things be different if the arts were sports, and if sports were the arts?” St. Louis Post-Dispatch 12/23/01

Friday December 21

GOOD YEAR FOR AUSSIE ARTS: Despite an economic slowdown and a drop in tourism after September 11, 2001 was a terrific year for Australian arts groups. Ticket sales and subscriptions were up, box office was good, and most of the country’s arts institutions are optimistic.”The best result of all was achieved by the Melbourne Festival. The largest spring event staged reported record boxoffice returns of $3.5 million last month.” The Age (Melbourne) 12/21/01

MELLON DONATES TO NYC ARTS GROUPS: “The Andrew Mellon Foundation announced yesterday the first in a series of grants totaling $50 million to aid cultural institutions directly affected by the World Trade Center attack on Sept. 11. The first awards, $2.65 million each, will go to three New York groups that are grant-making organizations themselves: the Alliance of Resident Theaters/New York, the American Music Center and the New York Foundation for the Arts.” The New York Times 12/21/01 (one-time registration required for access)

Thursday December 20

CALIFORNIA LOVES THE ARTS: A survey on interest in the arts in California shows that 78 percent would be willing to tax themselves an extra $5 a year to support the arts (the state currently spends $1 a year on arts). Among the other findings: “83 percent of those surveyed attended a performing or visual arts event at least once in the past year, and 31 percent attended four or more performances a year.” Sacramento Bee 12/19/01

Wednesday December 19

NEA RELEASES SOME HELD-UP GRANT MONEY: “After holding back its initial approval, the National Endowment for the Arts has decided to give the Berkeley Repertory Theater a $60,000 grant for a production of Tony Kushner’s new play on Afghanistan. The endowment’s acting chairman held up two grants last month at the very last step in the approval process, a move that generated discussion about the NEA’s procedures and the artists’ work… Officials at the NEA have steadfastly refused to discuss the rationale behind the scrutiny since the acting chairman’s action became public almost three weeks ago.” Washington Post 12/19/01

NYT CHANGING ARTS COVERAGE? New York Times Arts & Leisure editor John Rockwell has announced he’s stepping down from the job. Rockwell says Howell Raines, the Times new editor, wants to change the paper’s cultural coverage. “I found out Howell Raines wanted to take this section in a new direction – which, I might add, is perfectly within his rights as executive editor. Howell wants to take it more in a populist direction, more popular culture’.” New York Observer (second item) 12/19/01

Tuesday December 18

ENRON COLLAPSE A BLOW TO HOUSTON CULTURE: The collapse of Houston-based Enron has some major cultural implications for the city’s arts organizations. The company was a big investor in art – both for its walls as well as support for the arts. “Many cultural institutions here, including the Museum of Fine Arts, the Houston Ballet, the Alley Theater and the Houston Symphony, will feel the repercussions as well, because the company contributed to all of them.” The New York Times 12/18/01 (one-time registration required for access)

NEWSFLASH – CALIFORNIANS WANT CULTURE: “The California Arts Council will release today the results of a statewide public opinion survey that indicates that California residents endorse government support for the arts and are willing to pay for it. The survey, the first of its kind for the state arts agency, indicates that 78% of Californians are willing to pay $5 more in state taxes if the money goes to the arts.” Los Angeles Times 12/18/01

Monday December 17

THE GIRLS’ EDGE: A new study has established that “girls have higher reading skills than boys, have more confidence in their ability to learn and, when taught together with other girls, even catch up in math where males still appear to have an advantage. Nevertheless, the political activists and their organizations, which spend most of their time concocting calls for action, are not satisfied with the girls: No matter how well educated they are, girls still tend to choose ‘typical female careers or fields of study in disproportionate numbers,’ according to the study.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 12/16/01

WOMEN FOR PEACE: Why have there been so few women Nobel Peace Prize winners? “One group of individuals the Nobel Peace Prize has consistently under-rewarded is women, and, strangely, this has never been a controversial element of the prize. The discrepancy is jarring. During the 100-year history of the Nobel Peace Prize, 109 prizes have been awarded. Ten have been to women. Women – under-represented in the democratic or anti-democratic regimes that choose to wage wars – are also under-represented in the garnering of plaudits for peace.” The Guardian (UK) 12/16/01

Sunday December 16

GETTING INVOLVED: “In recent years, the term ‘activist’ has tentatively resurfaced at art panels. Participants have voiced a mix of renewed interest in addressing social and cultural problems, frustration that so many of those issues remain little changed after decades of awareness, and reluctance to adopt the last generation’s model because, in retrospect, it was too absolutist.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12/16/01

Friday December 14

ART OUT OF CHAOS: A novelist – a non-Jew, non-musician – is stymied in trying to write about a musician in the Holocaust. She works her way through after a visit to the concentration camp where many artists were sent. “Theresienstadt had four working orchestras; in addition to symphonies and original operas, hundreds of chamber and lieder concerts were performed, and there were two cabarets. According to one historian, for most of the war Theresienstadt had the freest cultural life in the occupied Europe.” Boston Review December 2001

Thursday December 13

CONCERT HALL OR CIVIC REVITALIZATION? Philadelphia’s new Kimmel Center was built with the help of nearly $100 million of public money, leading some to ask whether the expense of creating such cultural monuments is balanced by the benefits it returns to the community. “Officials say the Kimmel will create 3,000 jobs and generate $153 million in annual spending on tickets, parking, restaurants, hotels and the like. The building itself isn’t expected to be profitable for several years.” San Jose Mercury News 12/13/01

KEEPIN’ IT REAL IN DC: The nation’s capital does not have a stunning track record when it comes to supporting the arts nationally, and the current administration has had a few other things on its mind lately. Nevertheless, “this year’s recently concluded Kennedy Center Honors gala… proved to be what it is every year — the most convivial and least pompous party in Washington, if you can imagine such a thing.” Chicago Tribune 12/13/01

Wednesday December 12

DIGITAL DIVIDE: “Artists have been exploring digital art since the 1960s, but only in the past few years has it become widely practical because of better technology and prices.” Cell phone symphonies, digital graphics, interactive art…”it’s evolved to the point where artists are getting better at taking advantage of the tools and making better art. We’ve reached the level of seeing more museum-quality work.” Chicago Tribune 12/11/01

Tuesday December 11

RUSTY HINGE: England’s “Arts Council is no more than the hinge on the door that should lead the public to the arts, and artists to their public. But has there been a creakier, dodgier hinge in the history of metaphorical carpentry? Has there been a single year out of the past 20 when the Arts Council has not been going through some ‘upheaval’ or ‘crisis’ — usually entirely of its own making?” Another “reorganization” isn’t helping. The Times (UK) 12/11/01

ART IN ECONOMIC TERMS: “No doubt about it, the arts today are a hard sell. This is a problem because, despite all protestations against commercialism and ‘selling out,’ art has always had a tendency to follow the money. To an extent still far greater than many critics are willing to concede, all of the arts are economically determined, and their failure can be described in simple economic terms. There has been no problem with the supply of art (leaving aside arguments over its quality), what has been lacking is the demand.” GoodReports 12/11/01

ISRAELI ARTISTS OBJECT TO FUNDING CRITERIA: The Israeli government tries to come up with a uniform set of funding criteria for cultural organizations – a kind of one-size-fits-all approach to cultural funding. “The question is how the money ought then to be distributed, and if it is at all possible to come up with uniform criteria where art is concerned.” But a set of rules drafted to set criteria has been strenuously attacked by the country’s arts institutions. Ha’aretz (Israel) 12/10/01

ALL IN ALL – A GOOD YEAR: The Australia Council released figures measuring last year’s artistic output in Australia. All, in all, it was a pretty good year – “new Australian works increased by 41 per cent compared with 1999, with new dance and chamber music works accounting for the increase. Audience numbers reached record levels in 2000. Audiences increased 4.5 per cent between 2000 and 1999. The Age (Melbourne) 12/11/01

  • THE PROFITABLE NON-PROFITS: “For the first time in almost a decade, the 21 dance, opera, theatre and chamber music companies made a significant profit. An aggregate profit of $4.6 million was reported last year, although this was reduced to $185,000 when the symphony orchestras were included.” Sydney Morning Herald 12/11/01

Thursday December 6

AN OFFICIAL POSITION ON FOLK MUSIC? A British government culture minister has taken a swipe at folk music, and folk fans are demanding an apology. In a debate in parliament on music licenses, Kim Howells observed: “For a simple urban boy such as me, the idea of listening to three Somerset folk singers sounds like hell.” BBC 12/06/01

COME BACK PETE: The Adelaide Festival might have forced Peter Sellars to resign as artistic director, but the Festival still wants him to produce his expensive multimedia opera at next year’s festival. “Sellars, who resigned last month over programming difficulties, has been persuaded to return to Adelaide to direct the El Nino singers and will be present for the festival, as will its creator, John Adams.” The Age (Melbourne) 12/06/01

Wednesday December 5

THE ART OF SCIENCE? Art has long been influenced by science. But science has rarely taken inspiration from art. “When an artist walks into a lab and sees equations written on the board, his usual response is to say, ‘I don’t understand any of this – it must be brilliant,’ But when an engineer wanders into an art gallery and sees stuffed animals, he’s very likely to say, ‘I don’t understand any of this – it must be garbage.'” Wire 12/04/01

Tuesday December 4

NEA CHAIRMAN HOLDS UP GRANTS: The acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts has delayed awarding two grants recommended by Endowment panels and the National Council on the Arts. One grant was for $100,000 to Berkley Repertory Theatre for production of a new Tony Kushner play. The New York Times 12/04/01 (one-time registration required for access)

THE LINCOLN CENTER MESS: “Lincoln Center’s constituents are bound together by architecture, and that architecture is in need of repair. They are not bound together artistically and never have been. The redevelopment proposal, now projected at $1.2 billion, seems focused on initiatives that have little direct relation to their artistic mission. Making the public space more attractive and accessible is a worthy goal but not the most important. The project should be a visionary effort, a chance for each organization to address longstanding issues that have affected its artistic growth. The problem is that each organization has its own agenda.” The New York Times 12/04/01 (one-time registration required for access)

Monday December 3

THE IMPOSSIBLE FUNDING GAME: The Ontario government has made $300 million available for arts projects in the province. But $1.2 billion in requests has come in. And, in order to navigate the politics and rules for getting the money, you have to turn yourself in knots. Is this any way to run a lottery? Toronto Star 12/02/01

STEPPING UP: Arts organizations around the country have reported at least slight declines in ticket sales since 9/11. But New York’s arts community was decimated by the attacks, as tourism, the backbone of the city’s cultural scene, took a hit. Now, the Andrew W. Mellon foundation has set up a special $50 million fund to help those organizations worst hit by the fallout. Andante 12/03/01

KENNEDY CENTER HANDS OUT THE HARDWARE: “President Bush hosted a Hollywood who’s-who on Sunday as actors Jack Nicholson and Julie Andrews, composer-producer Quincy Jones, pianist Van Cliburn and tenor Luciano Pavarotti were honored for their contributions to the performing arts at the Kennedy Center Honors.” Nando Times (AP) 12/03/01

Sunday December 2

BIG GIFT FOR KENNEDY CENTER: Catherine Reynolds has given the Kennedy Center $10 million to underwrite performances over the next decade. The money, she says, is unrestricted. That’s important to say, because she is the donor who was criticized earlier this year when she gave $38 million to the Smithsonian for a “Spirit of America” exhibit and suggested who might be featured in it. Washington Post 11/30/01

THE LINCOLN CENTER PROBLEM: The restoration of New York’s Lincoln Centre is an exciting project. So why has it gathered up so little public enthusiasm? “Of the $1.2 billion budget of the redevelopment plan for Lincoln Center that will soon be made public, only 15 percent is devoted to public space. It is, however, a crucial 15 percent. For in one respect the critics are right: the center’s public spaces are miserably flawed. To make them perform on the same level as the artists who tread its stages is one of the plan’s stated goals.” The New York Times 12/02/01 (one-time registration required for access)

Visual: December 2001

Monday December 31

FUSS OVER WORDS: The new Memphis Central Library opened in November. Outside the library dozens of famous quotations were inscribed in stone, among them “Workers of the world, unite!” “This phrase from the Communist Manifesto caught the eye of two county commissioners and a city councilman, and in these days of heightened patriotism a smoldering debate was ignited on a popular radio talk show, in the letters and opinion column of The Commercial Appeal of Memphis and in the three politicians’ own correspondence and phone calls. What is appropriate public art?” The New York Times 12/29/01

THE STORY OF THE FAKE PICASSOS: Turkey has taken down four paintings it had said were Picassos after they were proven to be fakes. “The paintings’ provenance had always been slightly questionable. They were acquired by the state after undercover detectives posing as buyers infiltrated an art smuggling ring. The Turkish authorities concluded that the pictures had been looted from Kuwaiti royal palaces during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.” BBC 12/30/01

WHERE ART MATTERS: No city celebrates contemporary visual art like London. From the Turner Prize controversy to the Tate’s success, and the V&A’s new look, art matters here. The New York Times 12/31/01

Friday December 28

A RIGGED AUCTION? After a John Glover painting sold on auction last month at what experts say was an extraordinarily low price, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is investigating to see if price collusion went on between bidders – two Australian galleries. “The commission is investigating the suggestion that art museums may have been discouraged from bidding, or talked each other out of bidding for the picture, to the detriment of the market-place and a fair price for the vendor.” The Age (Melbourne) 12/26/01

WHY IS AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE SO BLAND? “Among practicing architects here and abroad, it is axiomatic that there is much more contemporary architecture of high quality to be found in Europe than in the United States and that innovative, inspiring architecture – as well as architecture that is well built and long lasting – is constructed less frequently here than almost anywhere in Europe. American architecture is, as a rule, conventional, bland, and dull.” American Prospect 12/17/01

KEEPING MIES IN PLACE: A famous house in the Chicago suburbs, designed by Mies van der Rohe and long open for public viewing, is on the block, and preservationists fear it may fall into the wrong hands. At one point, the state of Illinois planned to buy the house and designate it as a landmark. “But the state’s fiscal picture has worsened dramatically because of the recession and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks… No easy solutions are in sight. And so, the Farnsworth House has entered a kind of official limbo.” Chicago Tribune 12/28/01

BANNING TREASURE HUNTING: “According to estimates by commercial salvors, there are some three million undiscovered shipwrecks scattered across the world’s oceans.” More and more of them are becoming accessible because of improvements in diving technology. So UNESCO has banned underwater treasure hunting, in an effort to protect sunken artifacts from plunder. UNESCO Sources 12/17/01

Thursday December 27

REBUTTING THE NYT: Earlier this month, The New York Times dissed the Milwaukee Art Museum and its new Calatrava-designed building. Deborah Solomon wrote: “The museum has only a B-level art collection – it does not own a Fauve Matisse painting, a Cubist Gris painting or a Surrealist Magritte or Dali – but has nevertheless managed to become a cultural landmark. As city planners everywhere have clearly realized, a museum can become a global attraction along the lines of the Tower of Pisa – and if the outside is good (and slanty) enough, it really doesn’t matter what is inside.” In defense, the MAM’s director has written to the Times: “Perhaps Ms. Solomon’s piece comes under the issue’s ‘conceptual leaps’ category, since she neither visited the institution nor saw the collection.” Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 12/26/01

POMPEII’S GRAPHIC PICTURES: In January some 2000-year-old frescoes go on display for the public in Pompeii. The pictures are highly sexual. “The eight surviving frescoes, painted in vivid gold, green and a red the color of dried blood, show graphic scenes of various sex acts and include the only known artistic representation of cunnilingus from the Roman era.” What was the purpose of the art? Ads for sex? Humor? The New York Times 12/27/01 (one-time registration required for access)

WAITING FOR THE NEXT NEW THING: “The contemporary scene, currently, is like a tide at still waters. Watchers are all waiting to see which way the flow will run. As the Turner Prize attests, the art world cannot churn out ground-breaking talents every generation. Having shortlisted six dozen candidates since it was established, its remit has recently seemed pretty sparse. And after this year’s shenanigans it may have to fight harder for attention in 2002. The public, like a wily old trout, may refuse to take the bait.” The Times (UK) 12/27/01

POP GOES THE EASEL: As museums around the U.S. struggle with attendance figures and constantly evolving competition from new and exciting pop culture offerings, many are turning to pop art exhibits to draw in the younger set. From the Guggenheim’s motorcycles, to SFMOMA’s Reeboks, to a widely criticized display of Jackie O’s clothing at no less a gallery than New York’s Metropolitan Museum, it cannot be denied that museums are dumbing down. But is this a failure of the arts, or a success for marketing? The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) (AP) 12/27/01

BEIJING’S NEW CAPITAL MUSEUM: Construction has started on Beijing’s new Capital Museum. It will cost $94 million and be 60,000 square metres large, reportedly the largest building built in the city since 1949. It is expected to open in two years. China Daily 12/26/01

TIME FOR A RETURN TO POMO? Postmodernist architect Charles Moore is enjoying something of a renaissance eight years after his death, with exhibitions and biographies extolling his work, and his view of architecture’s place in the world. “Modernism, Moore argued, was like Esperanto: an invented language that lacked cultural depth and resonance. Buildings should talk a language that people recognize.” Boston Globe 12/27/01

WARHOL TO GET 15 MORE: “The first major retrospective of Andy Warhol’s art in more than a decade will make its only North American stop in Los Angeles next year.” Although reproductions of the American icon’s work are commonplace, the exhibition will be the first major display of Warhol’s work since a New York viewing in 1989. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (AP) 12/27/01

Wednesday December 26

FEEBLE NONSENSE? So David Hockney believes that great artists of the past may have used lenses to aid them in their sketches. And he’s made his claims in a book that many critics are taking seriously. But critic Brian Sewell does not: “This is a silly and meretricious book, a demonstration of naive obsession, of remote improbabilities presented as hard facts, of shifting ground for every argument, self-indulgently subjective, a farrago of feeble nonsense that should never have been published and, had it been sent to Thames and Hudson by Uncle Tom Cobleigh or Jack Sprat, would not have been.” London Evening Standard 12/26/01

ENRON’S ART VENTURES: Enron had been making substantial investments in art before its recent collapse. “Most of Enron’s art-buying was for its new building.” In addition, the company supported Texas arts groups. “Last year, the firm gave $12 million to local charities, about one percent of its annual pre-tax revenues of $110 billion. (By contrast, the firm spent a mere $2.1 million on political lobbying in Washington.).” The Art Newspaper 12/26/01

THE SCULPTING ICON: Sculptor Louise Bourgeois turned 90 Christmas Day. “She has witnessed most of the art movements of the last century and influenced her share. She is still innovating. She puts demands on her viewers to go with her into a discomfiting zone of trauma and endurance.” The New York Times 12/23/01 (one-time registration required for access)

RECRAFTING A MISSION: There are few museums devoted to crafts. The Fuller Museum of Art in Massachusetts is thinking about becoming one – “The Boston area, one of the country’s strongest craft centers since the days of Paul Revere, is a logical locale for a craft museum. Boston was an important force in the Arts & Crafts movement.” Boston Globe 12/26/01

Monday December 24

CLEVELAND’S NEW MUSEUM: The Cleveland Museum of Art is about to start building a new home, designed by Rafael Vinoly. “With an estimated construction cost of $170 million, the museum job will cost nearly twice the $93 million it took to build the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. In dollars and square footage, the art museum project qualifies as one of the biggest and most complex cultural efforts in the city’s history.” The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 12/23/01

CHARLES’ WORST BUILDINGS: Prince Charles, a longtime critic of modern architecture, has decided to create his own “anti-award,” picking the five worst new buildings. “The prince, whose traditionalist views have been criticised as reactionary by many modern architects and critics, plans to announce an initiative aimed at highlighting what he considers the ugliest buildings around.” The Guardian (UK) 12/24/01

ANOTHER WHACK AT THE TURNER: Prizes such as the Turner proclaim they celebrate the new and experimental. “The trouble is that contemporary art so often is not new. It seems that many artists know nothing about even the most recent past, or if they do, have no scruples about copying it.” The Art Newspaper 12/20/01

HOMELESS THATCHER: A large marble statue of Margaret Thatcher is homeless after being rejected by the National Portrait Gallery. “The eight-foot sculpture of Baroness Thatcher with her trusty handbag was judged ‘too domineering’ by the National Portrait Gallery. It has left members of the House of Commons’s Works of Art Committee, which commissioned the £50,000 work, searching for a suitable home for The Marble Lady.” The Telegraph (UK) 12/23/01

Sunday December 23

PROTEST OVER KENNEDY APPOINTMENT: A member of the National Gallery of Australia’s board has resigned in protest over the reappointment of Brian Kennedy as the museum’s director. Boardmember Rob Ferguson says the board had decided not to renew Kennedy’s appointment, but that the board chairman recommended to the government the renewal anyway. The Age (Melbourne) 12/22/01

  • KENNEDY’S CONTROVERSIAL EVERYWHERE: Last month Brian Kennedy was offered the directorship of the Irish Museum of Modern Art. But he turned down the job. Now it looks like pressure was put on the museum by those close to the Irish Minister of Culture to not give the job to Kennedy. One said: “The Minister will not allow Brian Kennedy to become Director of IMMA.” Was the fix on? Irish Times 12/20/01

ARTISTS ON ART THAT MOVES THEM: For the past 15 months, Martin Gayford has been interviewing artists about the influence of specific works of art on their own work. “As I look back through the columns at what the artists have actually said, a few patterns emerge. The art of the 20th century has proved by far the most popular – chosen 30 times out of a possible 65 – followed by that of the 17th century (11), the 15th (seven), the 19th (six) and the 16th (five). The 18th, and 14th centuries each scored two, as did the ancient world. The most popular artists were Picasso, Rubens, Van Gogh, Matisse and – surprisingly – Delacroix, each covered twice. No one chose Michelangelo, Raphael, Degas, Poussin, Breugel, Ingres, Goya and a number of other great masters.” The Telegraph (UK) 12/22/01

ART/NOT-ART: Why get upset about things called ‘art’ when they seem so ‘not-art’? “You can hardly call something ‘not art’ when the only reason you heard about it was that an art gallery funded and displayed it and an art critic wrote about it in the art section of a newspaper. The battle is over: It’s already art, whether you like it or not. As soon as the question of its artness even occurs, it is part of a discussion that is inherently artistic; it is, henceforth, irrevocably and perpetually a part of the history of art. People said certain Impressionist works weren’t art, and now even Canadian Alliance members buy posters of them for their living rooms. You can’t get away from it.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/22/01

A DECADE OF MODERN: This winter, the Frankfurt Museum of Modern Art is saying farewell to the era of Jean-Christophe Ammann, its enterprising founding director, who is leaving at year’s end. In his brief but turbulent time in Frankfurt, Ammann brought life to the modern art scene. Like a dynamic and creative art entrepreneur, he rewrote the concept of what a museum is about, turning the place inside out to match the contemporary artistic zeitgeist.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 12/22/01

CARAVAGGIO’S DEATH CERTIFICATE: There has been much speculation in art historial circles over how exactly the great painter Caravaggio died. Now “an Italian researcher claims to have found the death certificate of Caravaggio and cleared up the mystery of how the genius of Baroque art met his end.” BBC 12/22/01

PAINTING THE QUEEN: Clearly not impressed by Lucien Freud’s efforts at painting a portrait of Queen Elizabeth, The Guardian enlists its readers to submit their own portraits of the Royal Handbag. Check out the entries hereThe Guardian (UK) 12/22/01

Friday December 21

HERMITAGE MASTERWORKS, SOLD FOR A SONG: Some countries lose their art to pillaging armies. It was different in Russia, where the treasures of the Hermitage were sold off by the Soviet government. “Our country has been thoroughly taken to the cleaners. Only pitiful crumbs remain of the cultural heritage we once had. Look at the lists of works sold in the 1920s, look at the artists in those lists. Almost any item from those lists, offered at auction today, would create a sensation. But they were sold off for nothing.” The Moscow Times 12/21/01

SUSPICIOUS (BUT ATTRACTIVE) ART: Some high-quality Afghan art has come on the market. But dealers are suspicious it may be looted. “Suddenly this week out of the blue we were offered a couple of Gandharan works which were pretty spectacular … of a type that were so distinctive that had they been out and around in the West I’m pretty sure we’d have known about them.” Sydney Morning Herald 12/21/01

TINY QUEEN WITH LOTS OF PERSONALITY: Lucien Freud has painted a portrait of Queen Elizabeth. It’s small – 6 inches by 9 inches. “The painting is not an official commission but a gift from Freud to the Queen. (This is a grand gesture which has a precedent, Freud notes, in the jazz suite that Duke Ellington wrote for the Queen, having a single record pressed and delivered to Buckingham Place.)” The Telegraph (UK) 12/21/01

  • THEY ARE NOT AMUSED: The critics have taken a look at Lucien Freud’s new portrait of The Queen. Many don’t like it. Some really don’t like it. Among the comments: “extremely unflattering” (The Daily Telegraph); “The chin has what can only be described as a six-o’clock shadow, and the neck would not disgrace a rugby prop forward” (The Times); “Freud should be locked in the Tower for this” (The Sun); and perhaps most to the point, from the editor of The British Art Journal, “It makes her look like one of the royal corgis who has suffered a stroke.” BBC 12/21/01

GOOG GETS 275 CONTEMPORARY WORKS: “The Bohen Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Manhattan, has given about 275 works by 45 artists to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The gift, worth about $6 million, art experts said, significantly augments the Guggenheim’s permanent collection, especially in film, video, new media and installation art.” The New York Times 12/21/01 (one-time registration required for access)

FOR REALLY AMBITIOUS PROJECTS: If you’re working on a large-scale sculpture, and need a bit more room, you might check out the Franconia Sculpture Park in northern Minnesota. With its sixteen acres, says the founder, “You don’t have the constraints of a studio. It’s an outdoor studio. We’re unique in that we’re a workplace and a showplace.” Chicago Tribune 12/20/01

ART IN THE DEEP FREEZE: Two artists are living at the South Pole . They’re “the first two painters to visit this frozen continent under the British Antarctic Survey’s Artists and Writers Programme. The initiative was launched this year as a step towards bridging the cultural gap between the worlds of science and the arts.” The Times (UK) 12/21/01

Thursday December 20

FIRE DAMAGES TAPESTRIES: This week’s fire at New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine did serious damage to two priceless tapestries. “The tapestries, The Last Supper and The Resurrection, depicted scenes from the life of Christ. They were two of a set of 12 known as the Barberini tapestries, woven under the direction of Florentine Cardinal Maffeo Barberini on papal looms in the mid-17th century. ‘They’re among our greatest, most treasured possessions’.” Newsday 12/19/01

WAS BACON BLACKMAILED? Artist Francis Bacon’s estate is suing the Marlborough Gallery, accusing it of blackmailing Bacon into not switching to another gallery when he wanted to. The estate “believes that Bacon was not paid properly by his long-time dealer for many of his pictures” and that the claim against Marlborough could be worth more than £100 million The Art Newspaper 12/18/01

WHY NO UK AUCTION HOUSE CHARGES: With ex-Sotheby’s head Alfred Taubman convicted of price-fixing in New York, why have no charges been leveled in Britain against Christie’s former chairman? “While the Christie’s-Sotheby’s collusion was going on, UK anti-competition laws were weak, and continue to be weaker than US antitrust laws. Before the UK Competition Act of 1998, which came into effect in March 2000 after the auction house conspiracy had ended, no penalties were imposed in the UK for price-fixing.” The Art Newspaper 12/18/01

AUSTRIANS TAKE OVER A BRITISH ART: It’s the one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of the death of JWW Turner, arguably the greatest watercolour artist of all time. He was British, of course – as the president of the Royal Watercolour Society notes, “it is a very British medium. It is the one thing we have given the arts.” But where are the fine watercolourists of today? “The wellspring of inspiration for the last two decades has been Austria.” The Economist 12/20/01

NOT QUITE PICASSO: The State Museum in Ankara, Turkey, may have to close its Picasso room. At least four of its eight “Picasso” paintings are fake. They’re copies of Picasso originals owned by the Hermitage Museum, whose director says, “Not only are they copies, but they are very bad copies. The originals are here with us at the Hermitage where they have always been.” online.ei 12/19/01

Wednesday December 19

APPROPRIATING ABORIGINAL: Over the past 30 years Australian Aboriginal art has become wildly popular. But “indigenous designs created over thousands of years were being used to decorate furniture and furnishings, clothing and carpets, doonas and desks. Ignoring copyright law, companies were stealing the patterns and shapes Aborigines had been creating for thousands of years.” One researcher has fought to preserve the rights of Aboriginal artists. The Age (Melbourne) 12/19/01

TRUMP’S BLOATED BLOB: When Donald Trump announced plans earlier this year to construct a new skyscraper on the Chicago riverfront, he swore up and down that this, finally, would be a Trump building to be architecturally proud of: more substance, less glitz. Well, the plans are out, and the design looks to be The Donald all over – in fact, it’s “hard to say which is more disappointing about Donald Trump’s plan for a bloated blob of a skyscraper on the prime riverfront site now occupied by the Chicago Sun-Times building — the mediocrity of the design or the facile, thumbs-up reviews it’s getting from Mayor Richard M. Daley’s top planners.” Chicago Tribune 12/19/01

MUMMY-BURGERS: Two Egyptian mummies have been buried in the foundation of what is now a McDonald’s restaurant for the past 70 years. “They were laid there at the instigation of their owner, the Rev William McGregor, who had built up a large collection of artefacts he had brought back from Egypt for a museum he opened at his home.” Birmingham Post & Mail (UK) 12/19/01

Tuesday December 18

AN OKAY LEAN: The leaning tower of Pisa was reopened to tourists over the weekend after 12 years of efforts to stabilize it. “The tower lurches vertiginously towards the cathedral museum, despite restoration work that has reduced its lean by 44cm and which, experts say, should make it safe for the next 200 years.” The Guardian (UK) 12/16/01

BUILDING BOOM: Across the American South, dozens of new museums are being built. “This boom is based partly on the desire of many Southerners to bring more fine art to their communities. Although some museums here have superior collections that are languishing in storage for lack of display space, directors of some others are still uncertain what they will hang on their new walls.” The New York Times 12/18/01 (one-time registration required for access)

WAYNE’S WORLD: When Wayne Baerwaldt takes the reins at Toronto’s Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, it could mark a watershed moment for new and innovative art in Canada, according to observers. Baerwaldt, who curated Canada’s entry at the Venice Biennale, and has, as curator of a high-profile Winnipeg gallery, earned a reputation as a tireless promoter of Canadian art and artists, will take over at the Power Plant in March 2002. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 12/18/01

Monday December 17

DISSENTING OPINION: Critics have greeted the Victoria & Albert Museum’s redo of its British galleries with enthusiasm. “In chorus, the writers sang the Gershwin song ‘S’wonderful, s’marvellous, you should care for me …’ and described the new display as a knockout, a triumph, a stroke of genius, a tour de force, a coup de thè‚tre and a sockeroo. It perhaps ill behoves me, then, to play curmudgeon with what is evidently the eighth wonder of the world, but that is precisely what I am compelled to do, though from melancholy regret rather than sheer cussedness.” London Evening Standard 12/16/01

AUSTRALIA’S MOST WANTED: Who are Australia’s most collectable artists? Some big names didn’t make the list… Sydney Morning Herald 12/17/01

ART MAGAZINE CLOSES: The 13-year-old LA art magazine Art issues has closed, surprising many in the art world. Its publisher said “the decision to cease publication had more to do with aesthetics than finances. The magazine garnered about $60,000 in grants, along with donations to the foundation and about 3,000 paid subscriptions in 2001. But more money would be needed in the future for the publication to thrive, he said. Those funds could probably be found, he said, but it would it take too much time from the editorial work that he loves.” Los Angeles Times 12/16/01

EVERYBODY’S GOT A NEW PROJECT: Besides the highly publicized announcement of a new Rem Koolhaas-designed LA County Museum, two other American museums have recently announced big new projects – a 100,000-square-foot $79 million addition to the Virginia Museum of Art, and a $170 million addition to the Cleveland Museum. The Art Newspaper 12/14/01

Sunday December 16

LET’S GET RID OF ANYONE WHO KNOWS ABOUT ART: Madrid’s Prado is one of the world’s great museums. But a series of scandals and missteps in the past decade has made it the object of ridicule. Recently, the museum’s latest director was removed and replaced by a bureacrat with no art experience. The “putsch has scandalised Madrid’s cultural elite. Is he qualified to go shopping for new Goyas? Madrid’s art world thinks not, but Eduardo Serra has the support of the conservative prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, who no longer trusts anyone from the art elite to run the museum.” The Guardian (UK) 12/15/01

ART FROM THE UNDERGROUND: In South Africa, how to counter dwindling attendance at traditional galleries and arts institutions? “The awards landscape is slowly expanding beyond the confines of rearguard formats and exclusive ‘art mafia’ decision-makers and it seems to be happening rather quietly, without much public investment. What has rocked the apathetic cultural boat over the last year has been the growing support for public art events that either have critical and engaged social awareness ambitions at their hearts or those that set out to spectacularly entertain in the form of art parties in our national galleries.” Daily Mail & Guardian (South Africa) 12/16/01

Friday December 14

NEW IDEAS FOR OLD BUILDINGS: English preservation got a shot of new blood this week with the appointment of the energetic rising star Simon Thurley. “English Heritage has, for the first time, a chief executive who is a buildings man, not a bureaucrat. It is a critical break with the Civil Service legacy that has hung like a miasma over the organisation. Life will not be easy with Thurley at English Heritage. As one very senior commissioner acknowledged yesterday, ‘It’s a brave choice, it won’t be quiet with Simon’.” The Telegraph (UK) 12/14/01

TOWARDS SETTING UP AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSEUM: The US Congress has passed a measure setting up a “presidential commission to handle planning and logistics for a National Museum of African-American History and Culture.” The new museum would help “demonstrate the significance of African-American history to American history.” CNN.com 12/13/01

THEY’RE REAL GOLD, BUT THEY’RE STILL FAKES: The Gold Museum is the most popular museum in Peru. Its prize holdings, however – thousands of pieces of pre-Columbian gold – turn out to be mostly fakes. A government commission reports that of “4,349 metal pieces analysed, 4,237 are false and more than 100 have aroused strong suspicions concerning their authenticity.” The commission had doubts about the gold for 20 years, but it was only after the death of the museum’s politically-prominent founder that the holdings were analyzed. The Art Newspaper 12/13/01

BANFF CENTER APOLOGIZES FOR ARTWORK: Canada’s Banff Center has publicly apologized for art one of its residents created. Artist Israel Mora masturbated into seven vials, “placed the vials into a cooler and wheeled it around Banff on a cart. He then hung the cooler between two trees. A message on the exterior explained the nature of the contents. Mora has said the vials represent seven members of his family.” The Center said: “There are some differences in public taste. We’re a publicly funded institution and we need to be cognizant of those things.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/14/01

TRADITIONAL TREE: The Tate Museum surprises everyone by putting up a traditional Christmas tree. “After years when the traditional tree sculpture in the London gallery’s foyer was either hung upside down from the ceiling or dumped in a skip to protest against consumerism, the artist Yinka Shonibare was determined to do something really controversial and make a jolly one. ‘Christmas is a happy time. This is happy tree’.” The Guardian (UK) 12/14/01

Thursday December 13A NEW KIND OF CONCERT HALL: “Philadelphia now breaks ranks with cities that have regressed toward infinite infantilism in the quest to revitalize their downtowns. Rafael Viñoly’s architecture is not nostalgic for ye olde city life. It’s not ironic about it, and it’s not cute. Apart from spatial amplitude, it makes few concessions to luxury or glamour. The exterior, particularly, may strike some concertgoers as harsh. It is only inside the building that the Kimmel Center reveals the elegance of its concept. Mr. Viñoly has designed an urban ensemble, composed primarily of city views. Classical music is the architecture here, the building an instrument in which to perform and hear it.” The New York Times 12/13/01 (one-time registration required for access)

  • L.A.’S NEW LANDMARK: In Los Angeles, Frank Gehry’s new Disney Concert Hall is taking shape. It’s sure to alter the cultural architecture of the city. “The crazily curved building – which evokes the hallucinatory shapes of Disney’s more fantastic cartoons – will surely be another milestone in the architect’s long career. Now 71, for much of his life he was underappreciated in his adopted city.” The Age (Melbourne) 12/13/01

ROCKWELLS RECOVERED: “Working with Brazilian police, the FBI has recovered three Norman Rockwell paintings valued at up to $1 million that were stolen from a [Minnesota] art gallery in 1978, taken out of the United States and hidden most recently in a farmhouse outside the town of Teresopolis, Brazil. An art dealer in Rio de Janeiro turned the paintings over to authorities after questioning by U.S. and Brazilian authorities this month.” Minneapolis Star Tribune 12/13/01

CARBUNCLE BOY HAS ANOTHER GO: Prince Charles is at it again, deriding Britain’s architects and their work: “Tall buildings are often nothing more than ‘overblown phallic structures and depressingly predictable antennae that say more about an architectural ego than any kind of craftsmanship’, the prince told the Building for the 21st Century conference in London, before quoting the American novelist Tom Wolfe’s quip that they left ‘”turds in every plaza’.” The Guardian (UK) 12/13/01IT’S OFFICIAL – NATIONAL POST DECLARES ‘END OF ART’: The editorial page writers for Canada’s National Post play art critic, weighing in with a judgment on Martin Creed’s winning artwork for this year’s Turner Prize: “Mr. Creed literally made nothing. He has achieved the logical end of art, for if anything and everything may be regarded as art – even a room devoid of anything except a light bulb – then nothing is art. This is obviously all to the good. The practitioners of contemporary art can all go home – and we can all ignore them.” National Post (Canada) 12/12/01

  • OTHER CRITICS DISAGREE: “It’s a very profound thing. He’s trying to make art with nothing – with the most ordinary, denigrated, degraded, run-of-the-mill materials like Blu-Tak or Sellotape. He is an up-to-date version of the conceptual artist. The art is a concept made momentarily transitory. He was asking the final question, which is about the spectator. He made the people going into the room look at the room and ask a question about what was the room doing. Rooms in galleries are beautifully lit; you don’t expect them to be suddenly in darkness.” The Scotsman 12/12/01
  • SOME FIND A MIDDLE GROUND: There is no doubt that Creed’s work is minimalist. But much of the fascination of his stuff is the sense that such conceptual pieces are “the product of an artist engaged in a kamikaze game of chicken with the critics.” Like it or hate it, you’ve got to give points for the brashness. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 12/13/01
  • AND THEN THERE ARE PROTESTERS (NATURALLY): A 52-year-old grandmother has been banned for life from the Tate after she went into Creed’s room and threw eggs at the walls. “What I object to fiercely is that we’ve got this cartel who control the top echelons of the art world in this country and leave no access for painters and sculptors with real creative talent.” BBC 12/13/01

STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW: This is all Chicago’s fault. The giant cows all over the city were cute for about five minutes, but then every other American city had to jump into the act, with pigs, Snoopys, and God knows what else on display as public art. Now, the District of Columbia is leaping into the fray. The animals of choice? Donkeys and elephants, of course. Washington Post 12/13/01

HOW TO ENJOY A TRAFFIC JAM: Phoenix’s Artlink shuttle, a self-guided monthly bus tour highlighting dozens of area galleries and studios, has added in-transit performance to its free service. Poets and musicians have been invited to climb aboard the shuttle to perform between stops, and early reports indicate that some patrons are actually staying on the shuttle longer than they intended so as not to miss a minute. Arizona Republic 12/12/01

Wednesday December 12

ART INSTITUTE ALLEGES FRAUD: The Chicago Art Institute has accused a Dallas financial firm of maybe defrauding the museum of millions of dollars. “As much as $43 million in museum endowment funds placed with the firm appear to be at risk, the Art Institute said. One fund containing $23 million from the museum is said to have lost as much as 90 percent of its value, according to the complaint.” The firm promised “protection from any plunge in financial markets.” Chicago Tribune 12/11/01

  • HEDGING ON THE FUTURE: So why was so much of the Art Institute’s endowment invested in one place? “A museum executive defended the Art Institute’s heavy investment in so-called hedge funds, investment vehicles that are widely used by institutional investors to minimize risk or maximize returns. While such investments typically make up 10 percent or less of institutional investors’ portfolios, the Art Institute allocated 59 percent of its $667 million endowment to hedge funds.” Chicago Tribune 12/12/01

UNFAIR BIDDING? Last month two museums in Australia (one of them the National Gallery) teamed up to bid on a painting at auction. The auction house was disappointed when the painting – John Glover’s 1833 painting of Hobart sold for $1.5 million, about $1 million less than it hoped for. Now the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is investigating the galleries for unfair bidding. “They could be fined up to $10 million if the Trade Practices Act has been breached.” The Age (Melbourne) 12/12/01

THUNDER STEALING: Three days before a major show of Rodin sculptures and drawings is due to open at Australia’s National Gallery of Art, the Art Gallery of New South Wales announces it’s been given a gift of nine important Rodin bronzes. “The timing was purely coincidental.” Sydney Morning Herald 12/12/01

THE MEANING OF ART: So some people – okay, a lot of people – wonder why a an empty room with the lights flashing on and off can win Britain’s top art prize. “Some people, undoubtedly, are afraid – both of the feelings art provokes and of having their preconceptions of what art ought to be upset. They want meaning on a plate, served up the way it has always been. They often seem to want demonstrations of familiar skills.” The Guardian (UK) 12/12/01

CHEATER CHEATER PUMPKIN EATER: So great artists might have used an optical device to help them draw. “Allusions to deception (or cheating) have now emerged in the reception to artist David Hockney’s new book, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters. But whatever the optical device (including a modern camera) and whatever the time period, one thing remains the same: Using an optical device does not make art easier; it makes art look different. That’s a point easily lost.” Los Angeles Times 12/12/01

HMNNN – IS IT REALLY A VAN GOGH? The recent attribution of a heretofore anonymous painting as have been painted by Van Gogh is a bit of a mystery. Not only is it now said to be by the Dutch master, but it’s also supposed to be a portrait of Gauguin. “Why should this extraordinary find, which its supporters now claim is worth an estimated £5 million, have been dismissed for so long? The answer lies in the fact that Man in Red Hat is a crudely executed work. Modest in size and hastily painted, the supposed Gauguin portrait is far from a masterpiece.” The Times (UK) 12/12/01

THEY WANT TAX CUTS WHILE WE’RE CUTTING PROJECTS IN PROGRESS? “The White House Office of Management and Budget has proposed a $45 million cut in next year’s capital budget” for the Smithsonian. That means that restoration of the Old Patent Office, home of the National Portrait Gallery, “the third-oldest public building in the nation’s capital” and the building for which “President Andrew Jackson laid the cornerstone in 1835 and Abraham Lincoln danced in at his inaugural ball” and which closed last year for a five-year renovation, may be delayed for at least a year…. The New York Times 12/12/01 (one-time registration required for access)

Tuesday December 11

NEW VAN GOGH DISCOVERED: “Dutch researchers have unearthed what they believe to be the only painting of artist Paul Gauguin by Vincent Van Gogh. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam say the painting, Man in a Red Hat, is a very ‘significant’ and ‘fascinating’ work.” BBC 12/11/01

EXTENDING A CONCEPT: “You think Martin Creed’s Turner Prize effort with the light turning on and off is silly? Or perhaps you still regard Tracey Emin’s unmade bed as the apotheosis of over-hyped conceptual art lunacy? Well, brace yourselves, conceptualist fans, because this is where it gets even sillier. Three models have formed “the world’s first purely media-driven art collective, so this, the very article that you are reading right now, is their ‘art’.” London Evening Standard 12/11/01

  • A CONTEXT FOR NOTHING: Turner Prize winner Martin Creed on the meaning of his work: “My work is about 50 per cent of what I make and about 50 per cent about what other people make of it,” Creed says. And when they make nothing of it? He shrugs. “It’s not necessarily a direct form of communication. It’s more like a kind of feeling. More like music.” The Times (UK) 12/11/01

THE NEW NEW YORKER MAP: It was 1976 when New York artist Saul Steinberg’s famous map of the world as viewed from Ninth Avenue appeared on the cover of the New Yorker magazine. Everyone wanted a copy, and versions were created for nearly every city on the East Coast. Now, the same magazine has placed on its cover a new map of Gotham’s famous neighborhoods, each rechristened with names like Kvetchnya and Mooshuhadeen. Always lovers of the inside joke, New Yorkers are snapping up copies. National Post (Canada) 12/11/01

HOW SOME MUSEUMS COUNT ATTENDANCE: Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center says it drew its best ever attendance attendance last year, with 1,022,000 visitors, putting it in 8th place among American art museums. But the number is unquestionably inflated with subgroups such as the “386,000 people who passed through the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden but not the museum.” Minneapolis Star-Tribune 12/10/01

ANOTHER VIEW OF ART HISTORY: University of Chicago art historian Michael Camille has caused a stir with his challenges to conventional readings of art history. “His reading of early Western art as an enforcement of power has provoked mixed responses, reflecting broad disagreements among commentators over the notion, as detractors put it, that culture is a conspiracy.” Chronicle of Higher Education 12/10/01

NEW CLEVELAND HEAD A BIG FAN: “A Cleveland businessman who fell in love with art in college and who wrote his senior thesis on the impressionist painter Mary Cassatt has been named president of the Cleveland Museum of Art.” The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 12/11/01

Monday December 10

CREED WINS TURNER IN ODD CEREMONY: Martin Creed has won this year’s Turner Prize. “Having said earlier he regarded Turner as ‘just a stupid prize’, he said of his installation: ‘It doesn’t make it a better piece of work just because it wins a prize’.” Presenter Madonna also took some swipes at the award, calling awards “silly” and asking: “Does the artist who wins the award become a better artist? Is it nice to win 20 grand? Definitely – but after spending time in this city, I can tell you that it won’t last very long.” BBC 12/10/01

  • SO SAY THE JUDGES: “We admired his audacity in presenting a single work in the exhibition, and noted its strength, rigour, wit and sensitivity to the site Coming out of the tradition of minimal and conceptual art, his work is engaging, wide ranging and fresh.” The Times (UK) 12/10/01
  • EXTENDING THE LINE OF CONTROVERSY: Even by the standards of a prize that has been contested by Chris Offili’s elephant dung paintings, Tracey Emin’s soiled bed and dirty knickers and Damien Hirst’s sliced and pickled animals, Creed’s work is widely considered exceptionally odd and is likely to quicken debate about the prize’s future.” The Telegraph (UK) 12/10/01
  • STAR TURN: Was the choice of Madonna to present this year’s Turner Prize a cynical grab for celebrity? Actually, the singer comes out of an art background. “Having grown up with people like Haring, Basquiat and Andy Warhol – who, incidentally, attended the singer’s first wedding, to Hollywood star Sean Penn – it’s no surprise that Madonna has become a serious collector of modern art.” BBC 12/09/01

MODERN SICKNESS: It’s only been open three years but Stockholm’s modern art museum Moderna Museet, is “being forced to close next month because of what is known as “sick-building syndrome,” a series of seemingly unrelated construction defects believed responsible for health problems reported by numerous staff members.” The New York Times 12/10/01 (one-time registration required for access)

THE NAME MEANS EVERYTHING: A painting thought to be by an anonymous insignificant artist, has been identified as a Van Gogh. “The painting, which has languished in a storeroom for decades, has been recognised as a Van Gogh after extensive scientific research by art historians at the museum and the Art Institute of Chicago.” The attribution is said to make the painting worth about $5 million. The Telegraph (UK) 12/09/01

TEXT=50 SECONDS, ART=4 SECONDS: The Washington Post’s Blake Gopnik conducts a little research and observes that visitors to a gallery spend far more time reading the explanatory texts on the walls than they do looking at the art. “People are understandably confused and threatened by the complexities of art. But when the devices used to help them overcome discomfort end up standing in for works on show, we have a major problem on our hands. Museums are supposed to be about experiencing visual art, but they’re in danger of becoming nicely decorated reading rooms.” Washington Post 12/09/01

DISNEY – AMERICA’S MOST FAMOUS ARCHITECT? “This may startle some, because we think of him as a cartoonist, filmmaker, TV host or theme park entrepreneur, not an architect. But that’s the point. Blessedly free of an architectural training, he was brilliantly self-taught in the defining art form of the 20th century – the movies. And he brought that mastery of the cinema and the forces of popular mass entertainment to his architecture. At his 1955 masterwork, Disneyland in Anaheim, and later on a larger canvas at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., Disney created the template for any number of major developments and suburban centers ever since.” San Jose Mercury News 12/09/01

APPLAUDING THE TEARDOWN: “The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s trustees’ unanimous endorsement last week of Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas’ plan to raze the museum’s four main buildings and replace them with a huge structure on stilts topped by a billowing tent of a roof has been greeted with mostly amazed applause.” Los Angeles Times 12/10/01

Sunday December 9

CREED WINS TURNER: Scottish artist Martin Creed has won this year’s Turner Prize, presented Sunday night in London by Madonna. Creed’s minimalist installation that consisted of an empty room with a light flashing on and off, had drawn the most controversy of this year’s finalists. The Scotsman 12/10/01

  • WHY CARE ABOUT THE TURNER? Is there really any point to being interested in the Turner Prize? It’s become so much more about the “idea” than anything visual. “There are still plenty of painters. There are still plenty of paintings which cannot be described because they are indescribably dreadful. And there are plenty of conceptual works which make a powerful visual impact. But when ‘the idea’ has become so dominant that it ousts the image from art, and when all the candidates selected for Britain’s premier prize represent one particular trend of thought, you do have to wonder why.” And yet there is a bigger idea behind it all… The Times (UK) 12/08/01
  • THERE’LL ALWAYS BE A TURNER: People get in a huff about the controversial Turner Prize and decry the aesthetic that it pushes. But this is nothing new. “The Turner Prize is our modern-day equivalent” of the great historic salons and annual official art shows of the past “in that it creates a moment when art becomes fully public. The prize is sometimes talked about as if it had no historical precedents, but in fact it fits into a history of exhibitions – more common in the 19th century than the 20th – that gave contemporary art a high public profile. In Turner’s Britain the Royal Academy show was just as popular and contentious as the prize that now bears his name.” The Guardian (UK) 12/08/01

WHO’LL TAKE OVER THE NATIONAL? Now that the popular Neil MacGregor has moved from London’s National Gallery to take the top job at the British Museum, jockeying for the National Gallery job is beginning. The flamboyant Timothy Clifford, director of the National Galleries of Scotland is at the head of the pack. “Other contenders include Charles Saumarez Smith, director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, and Christopher Brown, head of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The National Gallery’s trustees may also look for some American pizzazz to help update its commercial approach. The Tate Gallery and the V&A have recently had more success in attracting casual custom.” The Scotsman 12/08/01

STAR SEARCH: Dallas wanted a star to design its new performing arts center. Instead it got two, and they’re two of the hottest architects working today – Norman Foster and Rem Koolhaas. The question is – can they work together in a city that’s known for the generic modernism of its buildings? “Generic modernism is never more generic than it is in Dallas,” says Koolhaas. “There is a way of building here that is so typical and so featureless that it creates an opening for something really interesting.” Dallas Morning News 12/08/01

Friday December 7

TURNER FAVORITE: The Turner Prize will be announced by Madonna in a ceremony at the Tate on Sunday. Bookmakers have made installation artist Mike Nelson the favorite. His work contains “a plastic cactus, mirrors, doors and old tabloid newspapers with declarations of war, an array of army helmets and scrawled graffiti-like comments including ‘failed Marxist’ and ‘this is crap’.” BBC 12/06/01

BUT IT’S JUST NOT DONE “The auction market has had its share of corruption and dishonesty in the past – the Sevso silver scandal, fakes galore, the selling of Nazi loot – but no one ever imagined in their most cynical dreams that the very pinnacles of the establishment, the chairmen of Sotheby’s and Christie’s, could take it upon themselves to filch millions of dollars from their wealthy customers.” And yet they did… The Guardian (UK) 12/07/01

  • ADDING UP THE LOSSES: Sotheby’s and Christie’s have lost big-time. “Seldom has a scheme seemed to yield as little, in the end, for its participants as this one has. The $4 billion a year high-end auction business, controlled for centuries by the two companies, finds itself more cash- strapped than ever. Both companies have had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in legal settlements, lawyers’ fees, and, in Sotheby’s case, fines stemming from the collusion. They are also facing a shaky economy with a dwindling supply of multimillion- dollar art coming on the market, an upstart competitor with deep pockets poking at their duopoly, and reputations that might have been deeply damaged by the scandal and seamy revelations that emerged during Mr. Taubman’s 16-day trial in Manhattan federal court.” The New York Times 12/07/01 (one-time registration required for access)

AFTER ELI’S ART: Eli Broad is “possibly the richest man in Los Angeles and one of California’s heavyweight power brokers. Broad has purchased more than a thousand works of art since 1972, either personally or through his eponymous foundation. Broad’s the largest single charitable donor in the U.S. after Bill Gates, and gave away some $137 million last year.” Who will get his art when he’s ready to give it away? He’s being coy, and three museums across the country are hosting exhibitions from his collection. A tryout perhaps? New York Press 12/05/01

UNDER THE BIGTOP: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is a jumble of rundown buildings. In reimagining what it might be, Rem Koolhaas, who won the competition for a new design this week, has “literally wiped away the past, obliterating almost all of the existing LACMA campus. It is a brazen move that transforms a muddled collection of undistinguished buildings into a cohesive architectural statement of piercing clarity. The entire complex is reconceived as a system of horizontal layers, with the exhibition spaces stacked above an open-air plaza and offices.” The entire complex will be covered by “an organic, tent-like roof.” Los Angeles Times 12/07/01

LOST CITY DISCOVERED OFF COAST OF CUBA: Canadian explorers have found a sunken lost city off the coast of Cuba. “The explorers said they believed the mysterious structures, discovered at the astounding depth of around 2,100 feet and laid out like an urban area, could have been built at least 6,000 years ago. That would be about 1,500 years earlier than the great Giza pyramids of Egypt.” Discovery 12/06/01

Thursday December 6

PROPOSED CUTS TO SMITHSONIAN: The Bush administration is proposing big budget cuts for the Smithsonian, including transferring $35 million from the Smithsonian’s research offices, stopping restoration of the Old Patent Office building and taking $20 million from the institution’s budget to pay for security. “A congressional source familiar with the proposals said the OMB plan essentially cuts the Smithsonian’s mission in half because its scientific research programs would be decimated. ‘They could go down the tubes,’ he said.” Washington Post 12/06/01

EX-SOTHEBY’S CHIEF CONVICTED: Alfred Taubman was convicted in New York of price fixing in collusion with Christie’s, Sotheby’s main rival. “‘Hey, the law’s the law,’ said Mike D’Angelo, a postal worker who served as foreman of the jury as he and fellow jurors discussed the case outside afterward.” The New York Times 12/06/01 (one-time registration required for access)

KOOLHAAS WILL DESIGN NEW LA COUNTY MUSEUM: “Choosing between a tear-down and a fixer-upper, leaders of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art took the leap Wednesday. They unanimously approved a proposal by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas to demolish most of the buildings at the Mid-Wilshire site and replace them with a vast structure that sits on columns and is topped by a tent-like roof. Board Chairman Walter L. Weisman said the actual cost of the building might run as high as $300 million.” Los Angeles Times 12/06/01

THE REAL PROBLEM WITH THE BRITISH MUSEUM: “The British Museum’s difficulties are not just the well-reported cock-ups – the debts, the confusion about the Portland stone that has dogged the otherwise successful Great Court. The museum’s real problem is that it has no brain, just diverse limbs, flopping about. It doesn’t seem to know who it is for, or why, and is run by scholars and marketing people, two groups that often seem to regard the general public as idiots. The Guardian (UK) 12/06/01

OUTLAWING TECHNOLOGY IN THE MUSEUM: Simon Thurley is director of the Museum of London and a young rising star. But he’s banning technology that has become commonplace in museums. “He claims that the gadgetry so many museums have invested millions in during the past decade is ‘nonsense… A lot of it is rubbish and doesn’t work anyway. You press the buttons too hard and you break it’.” The Guardian (UK) 12/06/01

Wednesday December 5

NEW GERMAN LAW FOILS STOLEN ART RECOVERY: A new German law applies a statute of limitations of 30 years on property claims. “Among the big implications is on artwork seized by the Nazis. “Among other implications for the art trade, this would make it impossible for works stolen by the Nazis to be returned to claimants, despite repeated declarations by German governments that they will do anything to achieve a just and fair solution in such cases. The German museums association issued a press release deploring the new law.” The Art Newspaper 12/05/01

  • CUSTODY BATTLE: “Two museums in Eastern Europe want back a collection of Albrecht Durer drawings now owned by other museums around the world, including the Cleveland Museum of Art. But an official from the U.S. Department of State said Monday that the U.S. government acted properly after World War II when it returned the drawings, looted by the Nazis, to Prince George Lubomirski, who claimed to be the rightful owner. Lubomirski later sold the drawings to museums.” The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 12/05/01

REVIVING THE V&A: Of all the museums that are benefitting from England’s recent scrapping of museum admission fees, London’s Victoria & Albert museum may be experiencing the most dramatic turnaround. The V&A had been in something of a funk for the last few years, and was widely considered to be conservative to the point of stodginess. But a new director and a widely-praised expansion of the museum itself have sparked a dramatic turnaround. The New York Times 12/05/01 (one-time registration required for access)

LET’S GET REAL: When the National Gallery of Australia and a major bank announced a new $50,000 National Sculpture Prize, it was widely assumed that many of the entries would be abstract and conceptual. Surprise – most of the work is decidedly realist. The show “could have been designed as an argument for the resurgence of anatomical concerns in contemporary object-making, or at least as proof of sculpture’s traditional obligation to represent things.” Sydney Morning Herald 12/05/01

OBSCURA THEORY: David Hockney has proposed that “around 1430, centuries before anyone suspected it, artists began secretly using cameralike devices, including the lens, the concave mirror and the camera obscura, to help them make realistic-looking paintings.” Last weekend, art historians and scientists gathered in New York to debate the theory. On average, the art historians weren’t buying it…. The New York Times 12/04/01 (one-time registration required for access)

WHO GETS THE AUSSIE MUSEUM DOLLAR? Is the National Gallery of Australia getting a disproportionate share of funding and power at the expense of the country’s other museums? With many fewer visitors, the NGA gets much more money from the government. The Age (Melbourne) 12/05/01

Tuesday December 4

PRADO DIRECTOR QUITS: Fernando Checa has resigned as director of The Prado Museum, Spain’s most visible and visited art museum. The resignation appears to be the culmination of a long-running feud with the president of the museum’s oversight board. BBC 12/04/01

BERLIN MUSEUM REOPENS: Berlin’s Old National Gallery has reopened after a £50 million renovation to “erase some of the scars of World War II and the communist era behind the Berlin Wall. The ornate, neoclassical building houses about 500 of the most important German paintings and sculptures of the 19th Century.” BBC 12/04/01

DALLAS PAC GETS DESIGNERS: “A cool Brit known for technological lyricism and a Dutch iconoclast famed for pushing limits have been chosen to design the $250 million Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, the largest cultural project in the city’s history. Sir Norman Foster’s London firm will design the 2,400-seat opera house, the center’s showpiece, while Rem Koolhaas will do the adjacent 800-seat theater. The announcement Monday concludes an 11-month search that involved several dozen firms from around the world.” Dallas Morning News 12/04/01

WHITNEY CELEBRATES A DYING MOVEMENT: New media art has appeared to be on the downswing for the last year or so. Lack of public interest and outright critical hostility have driven the movement to the brink of irrelevance. But next year’s Whitney Biennial is trumpeting what it calls “the largest representations ever” of new media art, and given the festival’s wide sphere of influence, proponents are hoping for some fresh interest. Wired 12/04/01

SURE, THAT’LL CHEER ‘EM UP: Collector Charles Saatchi wants to donate some of his art – carved up carcasses and headless animals – to London hospitals. “If the Chelsea and Westminster hospital in London can overcome its initial misgivings, the most spectacular and expensive Damien Hirst of all, Hymn, a 20ft anatomical model based on a children’s toy, will soon grace its huge atrium. So far, however, the hospital’s pioneering art programme has seemed a little squeamish about the statue’s lurid single staring eye, and the fact that its innards are on open display.” The Observer (UK) 12/03/01

MAKERS BEHIND THE ART: So you think artists actually make their own big-scale works? “A lot of people don’t get it, because they still think that artists make their own work. They imagine that Damien Hirst is welding and grinding, when actually he’s off on a four-day bender.” Meet the man and his crew who fabricate some of the art world’s most famous sculptures. London Evening Standard 12/03/01 ‘

SFMOMA STILL HEADLESS: “David Ross’ abrupt departure from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has left the director’s position at the high-profile local institution empty for more than three months now. But in an interview last week, SFMOMA chairwoman Elaine McKeon said the search for his successor proceeds at full speed.” Still, the museum has had three directors in the last three years, and some wonder about the intraoffice politics. San Francisco Chronicle 12/04/01

Monday December 3

WHITNEY MAKES CUTS: New York’s Whitney Museum has seen its attendance fall by more than 25 percent since September 11. So the museum is moving to cut $1 million from this year’s budget. “The 70-year-old facility will trim 14 workers from its 210-person staff and cut back on its scheduled roster of 2002 exhibitions.” Nando Times (AP) 12/01/01

PRIVATIZING A HERITAGE: Watching over the cultural and artistic riches of Italy is a massive job, and prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, Rome’s answer to Rupert Murdoch, says the government just isn’t up to the task anymore. Accordingly, Italy’s 3,000 state-run museums will be at least partially turned over to private management in the near future, with the government maintaining only a cursory oversight role. The New York Times 12/03/01 (one-time registration required for access)

RISKY BUSINESS: Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers made it one of their missions to wipe out as completely as possible the nation’s considerable cultural heritage, including the deliberate destruction of hundreds of works of art from the country’s museums. “But it has now become apparent that an Afghan businessman and art lover, Sabir Latifi, managed to save up to 50 of the condemned works” at grave risk to his own safety. BBC 12/03/01

HEY, IT’S WORKING! “Thousands of visitors have poured into Britain’s top museums over the weekend after entrance fees were scrapped… The decision to introduce free entry follows tax changes in the last Budget – which allow free museums to reclaim VAT [tax revenue].” BBC 12/03/01

WORLD’S LARGEST ARTWORK: The same weekend an artist created the largest painting in the world, an Australian artist who “trained as a mining engineer has created the world’s largest art work, a 4.3 million-square-metre figure of a smiling stockman furrowed into the Mundi Mundi Plains” in Australia. The Age (Melbourne) 12/03/01

  • Previously: WORLD’S LARGEST PAINTING: “Eric Waugh has been working for five years on Hero, a painting that will stand twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty when all the canvas is pieced together. The massive work is to be unveiled on Saturday – World AIDS Day – on the grounds of the North Carolina Museum of Art. After the one-time exhibition, the 41,400-square-foot painting will be cut into 1-square-foot pieces and sold on the Web site art.com, a sponsor of the work. Waugh hopes to raise $4 million.” Washington Post (AP) 11/30/01

RUNNING OUT OF ART: Even though London’s auction houses hailed last week’s sales as including “important English art,” there wasn’t much important up for bid. “With so many pictures in museums, supplies of great British art are gradually drying up.” The Telegraph (UK) 12/03/01

Sunday December 2

WORLD’S LARGEST PAINTING: “Eric Waugh has been working for five years on Hero, a painting that will stand twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty when all the canvas is pieced together. The massive work is to be unveiled on Saturday – World AIDS Day – on the grounds of the North Carolina Museum of Art. After the one-time exhibition, the 41,400-square-foot painting will be cut into 1-square-foot pieces and sold on the Web site art.com, a sponsor of the work. Waugh hopes to raise $4 million.” Washington Post (AP) 11/30/01

  • PAINTING ASSEMBLED: “With the Guinness official watching to make sure every panel was put in place, a pre-arranged bit of theater began. The volunteers came up one panel short. Waugh threw up his hands. Had he left the final canvas in his studio? What now? As a baffled crowd looked on, a Fargo truck, with sirens blaring, made its way onto the ground. Three armed guards unloaded the final panel, put in place by Waugh and his sons.” Raleigh News & Observer 12/02/01

PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORD IN PERIL: Some 50,000 glass-plate photographic negatives made in the 19th and early 20 centuries sit in storage deteriorating in storage in Beijing’s Forbidden City. “We are afraid to open the boxes because we don’t have the conditions to protect the negatives. But the longer we wait, the greater the danger that the gelatin will not hold and the photos will be destroyed forever.” International Herald Tribune 12/01/01

THE UNDERGROUND MUSEUM: “Awarded the 2004 Summer Olympics, Athens quickly bored two subway lines through the heart of the city. With the ancient city sometimes no more than a paving slab away, workers overturned 65,000 square metres of ground and uncovered a wealth of glorious things. Thankfully, most artifacts survived and have now taken their place in the most mobile of museums – the subway.” National Post (Canada) 12/01/01

ON THE TRAIL OF A HOLBEIN: A writer’s attempt to find out everything he could about a Holbein painting hanging in London’s National Gallery leads to a complicated story involving a mysterious donor and a forgotten last novel by Henry James. The Guardian (UK) 12/01/01

MINIMAL FUSS: The problem with Minimalism is there’s just too little to it. “Prejudice puts minimalism close to the top of the pretentiousness charts: a philosophy that passes off next to nothing as if it was something, a creed that sells new clothes to emperors. But like all art, minimalism should be seen in its historical place – that it was a reaction to, and an advance on, what had gone before.” The Guardian (UK) 12/02/01

Publishing: December 2001

Monday December 31

A BIZARRE YEAR: “The creepy revolution that has been transforming the business most radically since the mid–90s or so — the eradication of independent publishing houses and booksellers by massive, international “mass–media” conglomerates — has been the over–riding story of our recent literary times, with each year bringing sickeningly deeper realization of the impact of that take–over upon our intellectual and spiritual lives, not to mention how much you pay for a book, and who gets to write them. This year, however, that story seemed to become, suddenly, old news, or at least news too wearying to acknowledge anymore.” MobyLives 12/30/01

POET IAN HAMILTON, 61: “Highly regarded British poet and biographer Ian Hamilton, whose unauthorized life of J.D. Salinger was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court, has died at the age of 61.” Nando Times (AP) 12/30/01

Friday December 28

DEFEATING THE ARAB MYTH: Novelist Hanan al-Shaykh is a remarkable writer, but she sometimes wishes that people would stop assuming she’s a remarkable woman as well, simply because she chose to leave her home in the Arab world to make a life in the West. In her newest book, she is determined to cut off at the knees some of the stereotypes that Westerners are forever laying at the feet of Arab immigrants. Nando Times (CSM News Service) 12/27/01

Thursday December 27

SADDAM HUSSEIN, HUMBLE AUTHOR: Saddam Hussein has published a second novel. “Al-Qala’ah al-Hasinah (“The Fortified Castle”) appeared this week in bookshops and all public libraries in Baghdad and was hailed on state-run television and by the newspaper al-Jumhouriya as a ‘great artistic work.’ The cover gives no clue to the writer’s identity, saying cryptically that it is a ‘novel by its author,’ while a note inside explains that the writer ‘did not wish to put his name on it out of humility and modesty’.” CNN.com 12/20/01

Wednesday December 26

THE STORY WITHIN: “English-language writing about Hong Kong and much of Asia has long been the province of Western expatriates or writers passing through, but increasingly this work is being done by Asian authors.” The New York Times 12/25/01 (one-time registration required for access)

Friday December 21

BRITISH ACADEMY SPLITS ITS BOOK PRIZE: “An acclaimed biography of Hitler and an account of the medieval English “empire” shared the first British Academy book prize, announced yesterday. The judges said both Ian Kershaw’s second volume on the Nazi leader, Hitler: 1936-1945, Nemesis, and The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles 1093-1343, by Rees Davies, fully deserved the prize as works of impeccable scholarship which were accessible to the general public.” The Guardian (UK) 12/20/01

THE FEARLESS BARRY TROTTER: Writer Michael Gerber has written a parody of the Harry Potter marketing machine called Barry Trotter and the Unauthorised Parody. “The book is a dig at Warner Bros’ enormous marketing campaign for the recent blockbusting film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and what Gerber regards as their excessively zealous control of the Harry Potter brand. ‘I got really annoyed when I heard about Warner Bros shutting down kids’ Potter websites,’ he said. ‘Their behaviour seemed mean-spirited and overbearing, not to mention silly. Potter fans have a very intense, personal relationship with the books, and I don’t think that’s something you can disregard, just because you’ve purchased the rights’.” The Guardian (UK) 12/19/01

THE NEW NEW JOURNALISM: The idiosyncratic personal-style journalism which marked much of the second half of the twentieth century may now be fading away. “The kind of exquisite description that brought forth drama from the everyday seemed excessive, even grotesque, when applied to mass carnage in downtown New York. Perhaps in part as a result, two different genres – genres deeply out of fashion in the 1990s – have now reemerged. The first is the essay – the non-reported, non-narrative, political or historical analysis. The second is the somber profile of a person in power.” The New Republic 12/20/01

A YOU-DUNNIT: Edinburgh writer Ian Rankin is auctioning off characters in his next crime novel. “The creator of Inspector Rebus is offering two places in his next work to the highest bidders. One will go to the person who bids the most in the e-mail auction and the other to the company which offers the most. The auction, to be held by e-mail, will raise cash for two charities supporting people with disabilities in the Third World and in Britain. ‘Worldwide fame and immortality. It’s not a bad deal really’.” The Scotsman 12/21/01

Thursday December 20

LIGHT HOLIDAY READING: “For the professionals there are two kinds of reading. There’s work reading, with an editing eye, as manuscripts come to the office in whole or part, to be read and re-read, the writer’s art in progress as it goes through its creative transmutations. And there’s zeal that comes with reading for fun those books that one selects carefully and puts aside for pleasure, for vacation reading. If such reading is exquisite recreation for most of us, imagine the luxury for someone who reads for a paycheck all year.” The New York Times 12/20/01 (one-time registration required for access)

KID LIT WAS DIFFERENT A GENERATION AGO: With the emergence of JK Rowling, and the resurgence of JRR Tolkien, it’s easy to assume that magic and fantasy have always been staples of children’s literature. But 35 years ago, Gore Vidal was complaining that “the librarians who dominate the juvenile market tend to be brisk tweedy ladies whose interests are mechanical rather than imaginative. Never so happy as when changing a fan belt, they quite naturally want to communicate their joy in practical matters to the young. The result has been a depressing literature of how-to-do things while works of invention are sternly rejected.” New York Review of Books 12/03/64

TO JUSTIFY FANTASY: “To read Shakespeare is respectable, but if you read Tolkien, well, aren’t you supposed to outgrow it? Unfortunately, among much of the literati, there’s a belief that fantasy literature is something less than what the classics of the Western canon teach. You know, fantasy is just escapism. But it’s also about the search for truth and for our place in the world, a yearning that has only heightened since Sept. 11.” Christian Science Monitor 12/19/01

Wednesday December 19

WHAT’S HAPPENED TO WRITING ABOUT FOOD? What could be more sensual than food? So why do so many modern cookbooks read so unimaginatively? “When it comes to cookbooks, it’s hard to be critical, because the poor modern recipe is about as original and engaging as the dishwasher manual, and every bit as literary.” Salon 12/19/01

THE STRESS OF BEING A READER: The guilt can be almost overwhelming. Sure, you read – good books, too, and hefty tomes that take weeks to plow through. “But at some point along the path to discovery, the reader confronts his or her reading mortality. There’s only so much time. And there are so many great books.” So how do you choose what to read, and what you can afford to let slip by? National Post (Canada) 12/19/01

Tuesday December 18

1 SONNET, 3 COUPLETS, AND A BUCKET O’ VERSE TO GO: What’s that? You say you’d love to spend your days sucking down verse after verse of cool, refreshing poetry, but simply haven’t the time, what with the conference calls, the board meetings, and all? Well, now you can have it all, with Poem-Me, the fabulous new British poetry service which delivers daily helpings of “thought-provoking” poesy right to your very own cell phone! Don’t wait another minute – order now! BBC 12/18/01

DYING REQUEST: The words of a terminally ill poet are flying off shelves at Barnes & Noble, and their author has signed a multi-book publishing deal to write more. Six months ago, no one had ever heard of Mattie Stepanek, and never would have, but for the sympathies of a publisher who agreed to his (apparent) deathbed request to have his work publshed. Stepanek is still fighting for survival, and still cranking out the verse. Oh, and he’s eleven years old. Minneapolis Star Tribune (courtesy Washington Post) 12/18/01

REMEMBERING SEBALD: When novelist W.G. Sebald was killed last week in a horrifying auto crash, the literary world lost one of its most intriguing stars. From one of his editors at Random House: “His project was the most heroic I know – he looked unflinchingly at things all of us find easy not to look at, and dragged them into the light.” Boston Globe 12/18/01

Monday December 17

DO BOOKS COST TOO MUCH? “Across the country this holiday season, recession-minded book buyers are suffering a wave of sticker shock. Cover prices have crossed thresholds over the last two years, and the big bookstore chains and online retailers have pulled back from previously widespread discounts. More shoppers face prices like $35 for hardcover nonfiction, $26 or more for a hardcover novel, $15 or more for upscale paperbacks. Customers show signs of resistance.” The New York Times 12/16/01 (one-time registration required for access)

WORD COUNTS: Word counts can tell a reader plenty about a piece of writing – like the cultural context, the tone, the hidden meaning. Any writer who overuses “very” for example, is probably over-enthusiastic. Computer word counting has made this kind of analysis of any text, easy for anyone. Sydney Morning Herald 12/17/01

Sunday December 16

PRIZE MESS: Literary awards are good for encouraging and promoting new books. But the ill-fated Chapters Prize, launched three years ago by the Canadian book superstore, forgot one crucial rule – administration counts. The Prize’s three year history (it was canceled in mid-contest this year) is an example of everything that can go wrong. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/15/01

Friday December 14

BOOK SALES REBOUNDING: In the weeks right after September 11, sales of books collapsed. Booksellers were pessimistic for the usually lucrative holiday season. “A key reason for that anxiety was the lack of attention that new books and authors had received from radio, television and other news media that were focusing their coverage, almost exclusively, on terrorism But higher-than-expected sales in the days after Thanksgiving have raised hopes throughout the book-selling world.” Chicago Tribune 12/14/01

HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN: Eighteen months ago, e-publisher MightyWords was the hottest thing in digital online publishing. Stephen King wrote a novella that the company sold for download over the internet, and hundreds of thousands of buyers jammed the site. But the market for e-books never developed and the company is closing. Toronto Star 12/14/01

ALLOWING WRITERS TO WRITE: “Northern Rock, the Newcastle-based bank, is giving three northern writers £20,000 a year for the next three years to do what they do best – write – a revolutionary concept in a world where the paltry sums available usually have lots of strings attached. The money, limited to writers who live in the north-east, is further proof of the widening gap in the way writers are treated in the north compared to their neglected southern cousins, and could spark an exodus north.” The Guardian (UK) 12/13/01

POWER OF THE WORD: “The King James Bible is, without question, a monument to the rhythmic power of the English language, but it also circumscribes the language itself, defining its linguistic and metaphoric possibilities – and thus the possibilities of how we think about ourselves and our place in the world.” Reason 12/01

Thursday December 13

THAT’S WHAT BEING A RECLUSE WILL GET YOU: A collection of letters by famously moody author J.D. Salinger and his daughter Margaret has failed to sell at an auction in New York. Sotheby’s had estimated that the collection, which spans 35 years of correspondence, would net upwards of $250,000. The bidding never got above $170,000 and was halted. Nando Times (AP) 12/12/01

Wednesday December 12

THE DARKER SIDE OF POOH: Winnie the Pooh is 75 years old and never bigger: “The spiritually minded can read The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet while logicians have to choose between Winnie-the-Pooh on Problem Solving and Pooh and the Philosopher. For literary critics there is The Pooh Perplex and The Postmodern Pooh while businessmen take lessons from Winnie-the-Pooh on Management. There is even a book for urban hipsters looking for the grungy side of the Hundred Acre Woods; Karen Finley’s Pooh Unplugged.” And yet, a case can be made for the insidious side of the Way of the Pooh. National Post 12/11/01

Tuesday December 11

NAIPAUL GETS HIS NOBEL, IF NOT IMMORTALITY: The Nobel Prizes, announced weeks ago, were handed out this week, and author V.S. Naipaul, one of the year’s most controversial recipients, picked up his literature Nobel. But unlike some of the Nobels, which tend to make lifelong heroes of their recipients, the Nobel Prize for Literature has been largely a hit-or-miss thing in the century that it has been awarded. Philadelphia Inquirer 12/11/01

Monday December 10

EXTRAVAGANT CLAIMS: A new biography of JRR Tolkien claims him as one of the great literary authors of the 20th Century. But “the tone of many reviews – including the New York Times Book Review, the London Review of Books and the Guardian – has been one of condescending scorn. The e-mail from bastions of higher learning have the same complaint. How can he treat Tolkien and his hobbits, elves and dwarves as literature?” Philadelphia Inquirer 12/09/01

TRENDSETTING: Some trends are easy to trace – it makes sense that a successful book about embroidery will spawn a cluster of imitators. But what drives the myriad boomlets of books about arcane things – like a wave of books with the color red in the title or the word “honeymoon”? Surely there’s some cosmic order to it all… Mobylives 12/09/01

Sunday December 9

PROTECTING ENDANGERED WRITERS: Salman Rushdie is the most famous, but there are many writers living under death sentences. To try to help protect them, The International Parliament of Writers was set up in 1993, “in the wake of the Rushdie fatwa and the growing incidence of similar attacks on writers. It aims to protect not only freedom of speech and publication but also the physical safety of writers. In its early days, the IPW (or PIE, as it is known abroad) came up with the idea of providing cities of refuge for writers forced to live in exile. There is now a flourishing network, hosting writers from many countries, writing in many languages.” The Guardian (UK) 12/08/01

Friday December 7

OPRAH THE GOOD: At first look, the highbrow literary book clubs of yesterday might seem not to have much in common with today’s Oprah Book Club. But “their respective goals are similar: to enlighten and to instruct and, importantly, to somehow elevate their audience in so doing.” The Atlantic 12/01

ROLE FOR WRITERS: “Even during the Soviet era, when virtually all of Russia’s finest writers and poets were exiled, killed, imprisoned, savagely censored, or forbidden to publish, Russian literature has persisted in addressing the core issues and dilemmas of human existence, taking humanity’s measure, and explaining Russia and Russians to themselves and the world.” The Idler 12/07/01

Thursday December 6

CANADA’S WELL-READ GIRLS: A new international test measuring the reading ability of kids, shows that Canada ranks high in the world, second only to Finland. But the terrific showing was due entirely to Canada’s girls, who scored well . Canada’s boys scored significantly lower – an average of 30 points lower – causing some to call for a plan to raise boys’ literacy. National Post 12/06/01

HOW TO KEEP THE PAGES TURNING: The publisher of Lord of the Rings only ran off three thousand copies the first time around, figuring not many readers would wade through 1077 pages. Yet tens of millions of them have, and the reason is “there is one big thing that Tolkien got right: he got rhythm. His instinct for the procedures of Dark Age saga was as reliable as his indifference to the mores of the machine age, and he soon established a beat — a basic pulse, throbbing below the surface of the book and forcing you, day after day, to turn the page. We can no more leave Frodo stranded on his mission than his friends can.” The New Yorker 12/10/01

Wednesday December 5

THE POWER OF AN UNREAD BOOK: Recently, Canada’s largest bookseller announced that it would not carry, or place orders for, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s infamous manifesto. The announcement caused much discussion of the dangers of censorship, but, asks one critic, do you know anyone who has read Mein Kampf? Assuming not, isn’t the real power of the work its very existence, rather than its availability? The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 12/05/01

A SNIT OVER SNICKET: Children’s literature tends to focus on the supernatural and suspenseful, and is therefore an easy target for adults who mistakenly think that kids’ lives should be nothing but sweetness and light. Since September 11, author Daniel Handler has been criticized for continuing to churn out his popular series of darkly comic “Lemony Snicket” books, which feature evil plots, scary situations, and narrow escapes for its youthful protagonists. But Handler is turning the criticism around, and insisting that it is those who would shield children from the truth of the world around them who are irresponsible. Chicago Tribune 12/05/01

GETTING PAST THE WHOLE UGLY SUICIDE THING: “Ted Hughes was perhaps the greatest British poet of his generation but it was his tragedy to be chiefly known, particularly in North America, as the dastardly husband whose infidelities drove the fragile Sylvia Plath — feminist icon — to gas herself at the age of 30.” But a controversial new biography of the poet claims that such tragedies are no reason to ignore one of the geniuses of 20th-century writing. Toronto Star 12/05/01

Monday December 3

AN AUTHOR WHO WANTS TO DO IT: Burned by her last choice of a book for her Book Club, Oprah asked Rohinton Mistry, her latest choice, if he really wanted to be chosen. Mistry’s A Fine Balance is the first Canadian work she has chosen and only the second by a non-American. He said yes. Toronto Star 12/02/01

BOOK SALES RECOVERING: Booksellers are still cautious, but sales of books in the US since Thanksgiving seem to be up a bit over last year. Large booksellers are deeply discounting popular books, but even at independent stores sales are good. Publishers Weekly 12/03/01

People: December 2001

Monday December 31

POET IAN HAMILTON, 61: “Highly regarded British poet and biographer Ian Hamilton, whose unauthorized life of J.D. Salinger was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court, has died at the age of 61.” Nando Times (AP) 12/30/01

EDWARD DOWNES, 90: Edward Downes, famous to millions of opera lovers as the host of weekly Texaco Opera Quiz heard during intermissions of Saturday broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera, has died at the age of 90. Nando Times (AP) 12/30/01

Sunday December 30

IN APPRECIATION: Theatre critic Urjo Kareda has died at the age of 57. He was a critic at the Globe & Mail and the Toronto Star, and exerted an enormous influence on Canadian theatre. Toronto Star 12/30/01

Friday December 28

CLEMENT TIME: Financial Times dance critic Clement Crisp is one of the most respected critics in the UK. Crisp “commands English like a maestro controlling a vast orchestra of thousands upon thousands of instruments, some splendidly abstruse. Readers scurry to their dictionaries. Ballet, which of all the performing arts offers the highest challenge to any attempt to express it in words, has produced a tiny handful of star writers able to match the brilliance of the achievements they saw on stage with their own verbal artistry.” Ballet.co.uk 12/01

UNDERSTANDING RICHTER: Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter was not a man easily defined. A brilliant technician and musical master, he nonetheless refused to accept that any of his skills made him worthy of the praise he received, both at home and abroad. “He wanted the focus to be entirely on the music, and not on himself; a tremendous musical personality, he detested the cult of personality.” Boston Globe 12/28/01

BORING ME SILLY: More and more musicians are keeping online journals. But why are they so banal? “The common denominator of these notebooks is their superficiality. They have none of the serenity of Janet Baker’s late journal, nor the energy of the young Kenneth Branagh’s. They serve, ostensibly, as a token of the artist’s urge to communicate. But since the artist has, in most cases, nothing to say, they reduce art to mundanity and deflate our eagerness to hear it.” The Telegraph (UK) 12/26/01

DEFEATING THE ARAB MYTH: Novelist Hanan al-Shaykh is a remarkable writer, but she sometimes wishes that people would stop assuming she’s a remarkable woman as well, simply because she chose to leave her home in the Arab world to make a life in the West. In her newest book, she is determined to cut off at the knees some of the stereotypes that Westerners are forever laying at the feet of Arab immigrants. Nando Times (CSM News Service) 12/27/01

Thursday December 27

KAREDA PASSES: Legendary Canadian theatre manager and critic Urjo Kareda has died in Toronto at the age of 57. “Mr. Kareda was a former theatre critic at The Toronto Star and literary manager of the Stratford Festival as well as artistic director of the Tarragon Theatre for the past 20 years.” Toronto Star 12/27/01

DIETRICH AT 100: “Marlene Dietrich’s 100th birthday is being celebrated in Berlin, the home city of the late Hollywood star.” Among many events celebrating Germany’s dark diva, “the Berlin Film Museum is staging a special exhibition and showing never-before-seen private films of the late star.” BBC 12/27/01

WARHOL TO GET 15 MORE: “The first major retrospective of Andy Warhol’s art in more than a decade will make its only North American stop in Los Angeles next year.” Although reproductions of the American icon’s work are commonplace, the exhibition will be the first major display of Warhol’s work since a New York viewing in 1989. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (AP) 12/27/01

Wednesday December 26

SIR NIGEL HAWTHORNE, 72: The actor died at home. “Sir Nigel achieved world-wide fame as the bumbling yet suave civil servant Sir Humphrey in the TV hit Yes Minister, but was a classical actor with a wide repertoire ranging from Shakespearean leads to raw comedy. It was once said that he spent the first 20 years of his distinguished career being ignored and the rest of it being discovered.” The Guardian (UK) 12/26/01

THE SINGING ICON: Julie Andrews is 66 and facing a career without her famous singing voice. “Ms. Andrews is a rare version of an icon. There is no great enigma that trails her, none of the dark shadings of Judy Garland, or the smokiness of Frank Sinatra, or Madonna’s air of entitlement. This doesn’t mean she will come over to your house for lunch, but if she did, you would talk easily with her, and she would listen closely.” The New York Times 12/23/01 (one-time registration required for access)

THE SCULPTING ICON: Sculptor Louise Bourgeois turned 90 Christmas Day. “She has witnessed most of the art movements of the last century and influenced her share. She is still innovating. She puts demands on her viewers to go with her into a discomfiting zone of trauma and endurance.” The New York Times 12/23/01 (one-time registration required for access)

Sunday December 23

CARAVAGGIO’S DEATH CERTIFICATE: There has been much speculation in art historial circles over how exactly the great painter Caravaggio died. Now “an Italian researcher claims to have found the death certificate of Caravaggio and cleared up the mystery of how the genius of Baroque art met his end.” BBC 12/22/01

Friday December 21

DOESN’T PLAY NICE WITH OTHERS: Despite the PR, there’s very little “classical” about violinist Vanessa-Mae. “It seems she prefers to use her instrument to engage in mock fights with the others on stage – guitar, bass, keyboards and drums – just like a child attacking its playmates with a wooden sword in the sandbox. In the sandbox, there is always one child who must have its way; otherwise it starts to scream. Here, that child is the sometimes almost unbearable Vanessa-Mae.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 12/21/01

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: A Canadian actor picked to be in the movie Matrix II who overstayed her visa in Australia was detained in jail while her case was processed. She didn’t enjoy the experience: “It was just terrible. I was in jail with prostitutes and people that had been fruit pickers.” She’s been banned from the country for the next six months and will likely have to give up her role in the movie. National Post 12/20/01

Thursday December 20

THE BBC PHIL’S NEW MAN: Gianandrea Noseda, a “37-year-old Italian who cut his teeth as a conductor with Valery Gergiev in St Petersburg, has just been appointed principal conductor of the Manchester-based BBC Philharmonic, succeeding Yan Pascal Tortelier.” He likes fast cars – and collecting orchestras. BBC 12/20/01

Wednesday December 19

THE SINGING COP: “If Verdi were to write a new opera, it might run like this: A young man loves to sing, but at first he doesn’t succeed. Then he joins the police, where he sings the national anthem. Thanks to his great voice and the mayor’s patronage, – he cuts a CD and gets to study with Placido Domingo. But Verdi can put his pen down – it’s true.” The Christian Science Monitor 12/19/01

Tuesday December 18

WAYNE’S WORLD: When Wayne Baerwaldt takes the reins at Toronto’s Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, it could mark a watershed moment for new and innovative art in Canada, according to observers. Baerwaldt, who curated Canada’s entry at the Venice Biennale, and has, as curator of a high-profile Winnipeg gallery, earned a reputation as a tireless promoter of Canadian art and artists, will take over at the Power Plant in March 2002. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 12/18/01

DYING REQUEST: The words of a terminally ill poet are flying off shelves at Barnes & Noble, and their author has signed a multi-book publishing deal to write more. Six months ago, no one had ever heard of Mattie Stepanek, and never would have, but for the sympathies of a publisher who agreed to his (apparent) deathbed request to have his work publshed. Stepanek is still fighting for survival, and still cranking out the verse. Oh, and he’s eleven years old. Minneapolis Star Tribune (courtesy Washington Post) 12/18/01

MÖDL DIES: “Renowned German mezzo-soprano Martha Mödl has died at the age of 89, the National Theater in Mannheim announced on Monday. Mödl, one of the most respected Wagner singers of her time, died Sunday after a long illness in a Stuttgart hospital.” Andante (courtesy Agence France-Presse) 12/17/01

REMEMBERING SEBALD: When novelist W.G. Sebald was killed last week in a horrifying auto crash, the literary world lost one of its most intriguing stars. From one of his editors at Random House: “His project was the most heroic I know – he looked unflinchingly at things all of us find easy not to look at, and dragged them into the light.” Boston Globe 12/18/01

Sunday December 16

PATRIOTIC FOG: “Because of the events of September 11, John Adams finds himself accused of being an ‘anti-American’ composer, a label with uncomfortable echoes of the McCarthy era of the 1950s.” In the New York Times, musicologist Richard Taruskin charged Adams with “romanticising terrorists” in his 1991 opera The Death of Klinghoffer – and, by implication, with romanticising the perpetrators of the attacks on the World Trade Centre, too. Taruskin’s article provides some flavour of the atmosphere in the US today. “If terrorism is to be defeated,” he wrote, “world public opinion has to be turned decisively against it.” That means “no longer romanticising terrorists as Robin Hoods and no longer idealising their deeds as rough poetic justice”. The creators of The Death of Klinghoffer – Adams, librettist Alice Goodman and director Peter Sellers – have done just that, he argued. The opera was “anti-American, anti-semitic and anti-bourgeois. Why should we want to hear this music now?” The Guardian (UK) 12/15/01

REJECTING CANADA? Actor Jim Carrey announced last week he was taking out American citizenship. Will Canadians take the news as another sign their country is in decline? Probably. But “in fact, Carrey’s citizenship move should not be read as a criticism of Canada. It is simply natural for people to choose to settle in the country in which they have had the greatest financial and popular success. It is natural for movie stars to choose to settle in the country that dominates movie production. There simply aren’t enough movies made in Canada, and they aren’t seen by enough people, to generate the fortune that a big star can make in Hollywood.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/16/01

Wednesday December 12

SIR JIMMY: Flutist James Galway is to be knighted this week by Queen Elizabeth. “After his knighthood for services to music was announced, in June, in the Queen’s birthday honours list, he said he was unsure whether to call himself Sir James or Sir Jimmy. The Queen is also presenting a CBE to academic Simon Schama, whose television series A History of Britain has been an enormous success for the BBC.” BBC 12/12/01

Tuesday December 11

MASUR GETS TRANSPLANT: New York Philharmonic music director Kurt Masur is recovering from a kidney transplant operation. “The 74-year-old conductor suffered no complications during the operation, which was done Nov. 29 in Liepzig.” Andante (AP) 12/10/01

NAIPAUL GETS HIS NOBEL, IF NOT IMMORTALITY: The Nobel Prizes, announced weeks ago, were handed out this week, and author V.S. Naipaul, one of the year’s most controversial recipients, picked up his literature Nobel. But unlike some of the Nobels, which tend to make lifelong heroes of their recipients, the Nobel Prize for Literature has been largely a hit-or-miss thing in the century that it has been awarded. Philadelphia Inquirer 12/11/01

Sunday December 9

CUTTING UP FOR JACK THE RIPPER: American novelist Patricia Cornwell has gone on an elaborate (and expensive) campaign to prove that Victorian painter Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper. “Even in the context of the crackpot conspiracy theories, elaborate frauds and career-destroying obsessions that London’s most grisly whodunnit has spawned, Cornwell’s investigation is extreme. Not only did she have one canvas cut up in the vain hope of finding a clue to link Sickert to the murder and mutilation of five prostitutes, she spent £2m buying up 31 more of his paintings, some of his letters and even his writing desk.” The Guardian (UK) 12/07/01

Wednesday December 5

BET THE NY PHIL THINKS THIS IS HILARIOUS: In what may be the strangest development to come out of the current world tensions, renowned French conductor/composer Pierre Boulez was detained by Swiss authorities, and informed that he was on their list of potential terrorists. Apparently, back in his impetuous youth in the 1960s, Boulez publicly declared that opera houses should be blown up. BBC 12/04/01

GETTING PAST THE WHOLE UGLY SUICIDE THING: “Ted Hughes was perhaps the greatest British poet of his generation but it was his tragedy to be chiefly known, particularly in North America, as the dastardly husband whose infidelities drove the fragile Sylvia Plath — feminist icon — to gas herself at the age of 30.” But a controversial new biography of the poet claims that such tragedies are no reason to ignore one of the geniuses of 20th-century writing. Toronto Star 12/05/01

DEPRIEST GETS HIS KIDNEY: “After waiting six months for a transplant, Oregon Symphony conductor James DePreist has undergone surgery to receive a kidney from an anonymous donor… He suffers from kidney disease, which is incurable, but DePreist has said a new kidney ‘lasts indefinitely.'” Andante (AP) 12/05/01

WALT’S CENTENARY: “Hollywood is celebrating the life and career of one of entertainment’s most influential figures. Walt Disney, who would have been 100 years old on Wednesday, played a pivotal role in developing family entertainment – most significantly as a pioneering animator. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organisation which stages the Oscars, is presenting a special tribute at its Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills.” BBC 12/05/01

  • HATING DISNEY: What could be more American than the love of that creator of Snow White, that father of The Mouse, that delighter of children worldwise, Walter E. Disney? Um, despising him, actually. Washington Post 12/05/01

Tuesday December 4MY AFTERNOON WITH TOLKIEN: JRR Tolkien spent years writing his Lord of the Rings. But he signed away rights to making a movie of it 30 years ago not because he thought anyone would ever actually make a movie. No, “the deal meant, at least, that film company lawyers would save him from the distraction of guarding his copyrights from people making Hobbit T-shirts or plastic Gandalf toys, and let him get on with his work.” The Telegraph (UK) 12/04/01

  • Previously: TOLKIEN FAMILY DISPUTE: A dispute over the soon-to-be-released Lord of the Rings movie has split members of the Tolkien family. “J. R. R. Tolkien signed away the film rights to The Lord of the Rings for just £10,000 in 1968, five years before his death at the age of 81.” New Zealand Herald 12/03/01

Monday December 3

HOSTILE WITNESSES: The trial of Sotheby’s chairman Al Taubman is the stuff Hollywood dreams are made of. (In fact, HBO is already planning a movie about the trial.) Character assassination, barely veiled threats, and repeated assertions that Taubman is a brainless idiot who “couldn’t read a balance sheet if his last million depended on it” are par for the course in a trial that was supposed to be about price-fixing in America’s auction houses. Chicago Tribune 12/03/01

  • NOTHING NEW HERE: The Taubman trial is just the latest in a long line of Love-Money-Betrayal in New York stories stretching back to America’s Gilded Age. Chicago Tribune 12/03/01

HSU DIES: “Fei-Ping Hsu, a Chinese-born American concert pianist who built an acclaimed career after spending part of the 1960s banished to a rural rice farm, was killed in a car accident in northeastern China. He was 51.” Nando Times (AP) 12/03/01

THE MUSICAL PSYCHIC: Psychic Rosemary Isabel Brown has died at the age of 85. “She claimed to have been in touch with Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin and some 20 other composers who had employed her as their contact on earth to receive their latest compositions. How was it that a woman apparently of little musical ability had one day sat at a piano and had begun to play Chopin with ease, and Chopin music that no one had heard before?” The Economist 11/30/01

Sunday December 2

REMEMBERING GEORGE: George Harrison’s demise removes the impressionable enthusiast whose inquisitive nature guided the Beatles beyond the frontiers which had hitherto constrained the attitudes and behaviour of four-piece beat groups from the industrial cities of the north. He may not have written the songs for which they will be remembered, but without his gift for discovery the group might have taken quite a different course and possibly a much less interesting and productive one. The Guardian (UK) 12/01/01

  • A NEW GEORGE: “A last album of George Harrison’s music was being finished in secrecy in the months before his death. He played tracks from the CD to his family and friends in his private room at a Los Angeles hospital last Sunday, four days before he died.” Sunday Times (UK) 12/02/01
  • WHAT GEORGE MEANS TO ME: “He has passed, but he has left us with a few tools to make our own passing easier. His music tells us to savor what matters, what we offer each other and ourselves.” Norfolk Virginian-Pilot 12/01/0

THE NEXT DISNEY? John Lasseter, the animation wiz behind Toy Story is being called the Walt Disney of the 21st Century. “He gives the impression of being a sane man who has, until recently, been considered crazy. ‘In order to work in animation, part of you has to be a child that’s never grown up.” The Telegraph (UK) 12/01/01

CRITIC’S CRITIC: By the end of his life (he died at age 85 last week) former Washington Post music critic Paul Hume had stopped listening to music, said his wife. It didn’t interest him anymore. But “the defining characteristic of Hume’s tenure was an intense love for everything about music and the making of it. That may seem like an awfully obvious thing for a music critic, but it can’t be taken for granted.” Baltimore Sun 12/02/01

Theatre: December 2001

Monday December 31

IRISH CONNECTION: London’s West End is full of Irish theatre at the moment. “A London theatregoer might be tempted to look for a movement, a tradition. But ‘We are likely to see connections between Irish playwrights with a kind of visitor’s logic, whereas they will see the differences’.” The Times (UK) 12/31/01

Sunday December 30

ROAD SHOW: The Full Monty is a hit on Broadway. But plans for a national tour took a dive. Now new producers for the tour have been found, and everything from the ad campaign to the way the show looks and loads and travels has been changed. Will it work? Los Angeles Times 12/30/01

SHAKING UP THE WORLD: England’s world of non-profit theatre has been static for 20 years. But a series of events coming in the new year promises to transform the theatre world and determine its future course. The Observer (UK)12/28/01

IN APPRECIATION: Theatre critic Urjo Kareda has died at the age of 57. He was a critic at the Globe & Mail and the Toronto Star, and exerted an enormous influence on Canadian theatre. Toronto Star 12/30/01

Friday December 28

ANGELS IN AFGHANISTAN: “Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul is no less current than the daily reports from the war in Afghanistan, even though the play was four years in the writing and finished before Sept. 11. After a brilliantly wrought first act that manages to embody the confusion of the West, along with its obsession about Afghanistan, within a single monologue, the play unwinds in a tangle of cross-purposes, in which nothing is as it seems.” Christian Science Monitor 12/28/01

Thursday December 27

OUT WITH A BANG? Several of London’s top theatre directors are stepping down from their institutions in 2002. “But what’s the best way to say goodbye to a top job in the theatre itself? With a bang, a whimper or something in between? Is there a temptation, especially if one has been financially embattled, to blow one’s annual grant on a self-indulgent splurge of spectacularly improbable work?” The Times (UK) 12/27/01

KAREDA PASSES: Legendary Canadian theatre manager and critic Urjo Kareda has died in Toronto at the age of 57. “Mr. Kareda was a former theatre critic at The Toronto Star and literary manager of the Stratford Festival as well as artistic director of the Tarragon Theatre for the past 20 years.” Toronto Star 12/27/01

Wednesday December 26

SIR NIGEL HAWTHORNE, 72: The actor died at home. “Sir Nigel achieved world-wide fame as the bumbling yet suave civil servant Sir Humphrey in the TV hit Yes Minister, but was a classical actor with a wide repertoire ranging from Shakespearean leads to raw comedy. It was once said that he spent the first 20 years of his distinguished career being ignored and the rest of it being discovered.” The Guardian (UK) 12/26/01

Monday December 24

OFF-BROADWAY’S BIG YEAR-END: From November to early March, Broadway is blah as far as new productions opening. Why? It’s all about jockeying for Tonys. Off-Broadway, on the other hand, has had a very productive end of the year… New York Post 12/23/01

THE ART OF SCIENCE: Time was the arts ignored the fields of science and math. No longer. “The new math-sci drama cluster has justifiably been hailed as a welcome trend. By investigating this terrain, one can address all the standard passions — love, competition, jealousy, benevolence, evil — while tackling issues of philosophical and social importance. And maybe teaching us a little something to boot.” Seattle Times 12/23/01

Sunday December 23

THE COWARDLY WEST END? Playwright Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore, “a brutal satire on terrorism and undoubtedly the best and most talked about new play of 2001, has still not been given a West End transfer, despite opening to ecstatic reviews at Stratford in May.” McDonagh says it’s because West End theatres are cowardly about presenting controversial work since September 11. The Guardian (UK) 12/22/01

Thursday December 20

KUSHNER AND KABUL: Tony Kushner’s play Homebody/ Kabul is the most awaited play of the year. “Homebody/ Kabul, directed by Declan Donnellan, is Mr. Kushner’s first major work since the lightning bolt that is Angels in America struck nearly a decade ago. As a whole, this tale of cultural quest still has its own journey to make before reaching the level of Angels (which went through many years of gestation before reaching Broadway). But it definitely has the potential to get there.” The New York Times 12/20/01 (one-time registration required for access)

  • LONG ROAD: “The play might well be called Passage to Afghanistan, in tribute to another influence. As in E.M. Forster’s India, a woman is lost here as well. But while it’s occasionally incoherent and overlong, Homebody/Kabul is a passionate and fascinating play, bubbling with ideas.” New York Post 12/20/01
  • RUGGED TRIP: A play that’s “like an overheated mind boiling over with multilingual opinions about the world. Unlike Kushner’s longer and more sweeping Angels in AmericaHomebody/Kabul isn’t roaring agitprop, even though it implicitly argues for consistent Western engagement with Afghanistan. His elliptical plotting and over-articulation finally wear you out. Even with last-minute cuts, the play clocks in at 3 hours 45 minutes – and where the sharp, entertaining Angels made its time fly, Homebody meanders.” Washington Post 12/20/01
  • DAUNTING PROMISE: “The eerily timely work about Afghanistan, which runs almost four hours, is comparably mesmerizing and mournful, vast and intimate, emotionally generous and stylistically fabulist, wildly verbal, politically progressive and scarily well informed.” Newsday 12/20/01
  • CAN IT OUTLIVE ITS MOMENT? “At a time when the usual quotient of skepticism regarding America’s foreign policy has been muffled by an unofficial edict from above – America, love it or shut up – Kushner both loves it and refuses to shut up. Politicians, academics and telegenic pundits have weighed in on the current mood in America. But little has been heard from artists and playwrights on the order of Kushner.” Los Angeles Tribune 12/20/01
  • GOOD TIMING: “The world is so convulsed over that recently departed regime that Homebody is probably the first U.S. play in decades to be able to traffic in the intricate history of a foreign country without the need to provide an audience with footnotes. We’ve got CNN instead.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/20/01
  • LONG ROAD TO KABUL: “In many ways, it is a prickly and flawed work. As Kushner notes in an introduction to the text, ‘It was very hard to write this play.’ Originally five hours long, it was cut back to a little under four hours before its opening, and even then, in performance, it sometimes has the print of an unfinished work.” Chicago Tribune 12/20/01
  • HIGH AMBITIONS: “It is impossible to watch this play as a purely philosophical work. Nor does Kushner, an explicitly left-wing playwright, mean us to. He has done his homework, studied the internecine eruptions of Afghanistan throughout history, well before most of us (he wrote this in 1998), and he has his characters expound on the details at length. However, because we, too, now know some of these things upon entering the theater, we can focus less on the depths of Kushner’s learning, more on what he makes of it, and conclude that, at bottom, Homebody/Kabul is thin stuff, as politics and as drama.” Boston Globe 12/20/01
  • KABUL CABAL: It’s a “wildly ambitious, if only partially satisfying new play.” Chicago Sun-Times 12/20/01
  • NAGGING QUESTIONS: “This work, which lasts just under four (with two intermissions), reveals the writer’s enduring infatuation with his own cleverness and consequent reluctance to edit himself. There are mesmerizing moments, but they are mixed in with ostentatiously cute wordplay and long-winded, pedantic speeches — including a climactic sermon, delivered by a Taliban minister, full of predictable pacifist propaganda.” USAToday 12/20/01

WEST END THEATRE STRIKE? London’s theatre workers have voted by a margin of 99.7 percent to reject their latest contract offer and voted 98 percent to authorize a strike. “The average hourly rate in the West End is £6.33, and many earn much less.” BBC 12/19/01

THEATRE-AID: Some 150,000 tickets to New York cultural events are being donated to families who lost relatives in the World Trade Center. And “the League of American Theaters and Producers, backed by $1 million from New York State, is to deliver 3.4 million coupon booklets offering discounts on Broadway tickets, Midtown hotels, parking garages and theater district restaurants. The goal was to keep a flow of local audiences pouring into the theater district as the number of national and international tourists has dropped. A recent survey by the league found that since Sept. 11, half the Broadway audience has come from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, compared with about 43 percent last season. Over all, Broadway sales this season are about 85 percent of what they were last season.” The New York Times 12/20/01 (one-time registration required for access)

  • Previously: THEATRE BAILOUT ANGERS THEATRE FOLK: New York City’s plan to buy 50,000 tickets to Broadway plays in the new year as a way of boosting endangered productions has found some conscientious objectors. “Even as the measures to buffer Broadway were being announced, owners of smaller theaters across the city were increasingly upset about being left out. ‘I think its boneheaded. There’s a lot of insulted theater owners downtown right now’.” The New York Times 12/19/01 (one-time registration required for access)

Wednesday December 19

THEATRE BAILOUT ANGERS THEATRE FOLK: New York City’s plan to buy 50,000 tickets to Broadway plays in the new year as a way of boosting endangered productions has found some conscientious objectors. “Even as the measures to buffer Broadway were being announced, owners of smaller theaters across the city were increasingly upset about being left out. ‘I think its boneheaded. There’s a lot of insulted theater owners downtown right now’.” The New York Times 12/19/01 (one-time registration required for access)

SADLY, BROADWAY CARNAGE MAY BE AVOIDED: “It appears we may never get to see Stephen Sondheim and Scott Rudin go mano a mano in the courtroom.Though neither side is commenting, word around Broadway is that Sondheim’s camp is putting out settlement feelers to Rudin’s. The two Broadway giants are locked in a deliciously nasty legal battle over the rights to Sondheim’s unproduced musical ‘Gold!'” New York Post [first item] 12/19/01

A MIDDLE-EAST BARD: An English Shakespeare company takes Hamlet and Twelfth Night to the United Arab Emirates. But it’s hardly a cross-cultural experience. The production is staged in the Dubai Ritz Carlton for the (mostly) American and Brit tourists. And there aren’t even many of them – tourism in the Middle East being what it is post-9-11. The Independent (UK) 12/19/01

NEA RELEASES SOME HELD-UP GRANT MONEY: “After holding back its initial approval, the National Endowment for the Arts has decided to give the Berkeley Repertory Theater a $60,000 grant for a production of Tony Kushner’s new play on Afghanistan. The endowment’s acting chairman held up two grants last month at the very last step in the approval process, a move that generated discussion about the NEA’s procedures and the artists’ work… Officials at the NEA have steadfastly refused to discuss the rationale behind the scrutiny since the acting chairman’s action became public almost three weeks ago.” Washington Post 12/19/01

Tuesday December 18

LIVE-AID: The City of New York has announced plans to buy 50,000 tickets to Broadway shows in January. “The 50,000 tickets will cost the city’s administrations about $2.5 million at a time when New York city is trying hard to cut its greatly overspent budget. But the city’s leaders argue that by propping up Broadway, one of New York’s most famous attractions, as much as $12 million could be generated in revenue for struggling businesses.” BBC 12/18/01

WILLY-WORLD: Developers have unveiled plans for a new Shakespeare theme park in Stratford-on-Avon. “Details of the multimillion pound plan to build Shakespeare’s World, which would cover a 30-acre site and would target tourists and daytripping families, have been circulated this month to surprised Stratford councillors.” The Observer (UK) 12/16/01

Monday December 17

MY FAIR PROFIT: The West End revival of My Fair Lady has recouped its costs in record time for a lavish musical, breaking even in just 18 weeks. Advance sales of £10 million helped break the previous record for the musical Oliver!, which needed 35 weeks to make back its money. BBC 12/17/01

NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE: Australian producers proposed to charge $100 for a play featuring a (briefly) nude Elle Macpherson (hey – naked celebrities are a big draw on London’s West End). But after slow sales, the play was postponed. “Producers say that rather than being gripped by a new prudishness, theatre-goers are so blase that even the promise of a celebrity appearing naked isn’t enough for them to rush the box office. Meanwhile, the audiences who see live theatre only once or twice a year would rather spend their money on tried and tested family fare such as The Wizard Of Oz, which continues to do great box office business in Sydney.” Sydney Morning Herald 12/17/01

REBUILDING THROUGH THEATRE: For years drama classes at Sacramento’s Luther Burbank High School were “a dumping ground, the place for kids who needed an extra elective or some last-minute English credits.” But a new principal who believes students ought to have the experience of the arts “issued a decree – part of a plan to make the campus shine again – that drama would return to Burbank…” Sacramento Bee 12/16/01

CAMPAIGN FOR LIVE MUSIC: The British Musicians Union is mounting a campaign to protest the use of recorded music for live Christmas pantomime shows. “The pantomime season traditionally provides extra employment for musicians in theatre pits, but the MU says that there is a growing trend for productions to use pre-recorded tapes instead of live music.” BBC 12/17/01

Sunday December 16

ACTING AS ARCHAIC ART: What’s it like being an actor in Canada? “Being a stage actor is kind of like pursuing an archaic art, in the way people perceive it. Sometimes it feels as if you’re a member of a medieval guild still making horseshoes. Here it does feel a bit odd at times to be an actor, especially a stage actor, because people don’t really get what that is. People always have to say, ‘Well, have you done any commercials?’ so they can place you somehow.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/16/01

TV’S ERODING INFLUENCE: So much post-war drama owes its roots to live stage forms. “But today music hall, variety and revue are all virtually extinct, which means that writers have no popular bank on which to draw. TV, with its endless dreary round of soaps, quizzes and celebrity-led self-improvement shows, is our inherited common culture, giving dramatists little to work on.” The Guardian (UK) 12/16/01

THE GLORY AND EGOS BEHIND TANTALUS: Tantalus was an $8 million, 10-hour drama which debuted at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts in October 2000. It “was one of the landmark theatrical sensations of the last decade. It was also, as we soon discover in a new television documentary about its creation, a nest of backstage tension, tears, uncertainty, battered egos and stubborn wills.” Chicago Tribune 12/16/01

FIRST STOP – CHICAGO: Chicago is becoming the city of choice for trying out a play before heading to Broadway. Why? Well, it’s far enough from New York that “you can get work done.” And the city’s homegrown theatre tradition is strong – it’s a city that recognizes and appreciates good theatre. Chicago Sun-Times 12/16/01

Friday December 14

DEATH BY DEFUNDING: Twenty-five year-old Australian puppet company Handspan may go out of business because the state of Victoria has discontinued its annual $100,000 grant to the company. The company, which has an international reputation, says “the decision will almost certainly mean the company’s death. Its board will meet next week to decide whether to fold, or struggle to exist on project funding.” The Age (Melbourne) 12/14/01

A FUTURE FULL OF $480 TICKETS? So is anyone buying those $480 tickets to The Producers on Broadway? Evidently – “so far, the primary target audiences for these tickets are corporations that want to entertain clients or hotel concierges.” And the idea has been successful enough that a company wants to expand the super-premium idea to other hot shows. Los Angeles Times 12/14/01

Thursday December 13

FIGHTING THE L.A. THEATRE CLICHE: Los Angeles has a big theatre scene. But there are clichés about how and why theatre exists there, that it “exists in the shadow of the real reason people are in Los Angeles — movies and television. The result is that a lot of talented people are honing their chops on the stage, but they’re also constantly asking themselves, ‘Is the HBO guy here tonight? And can he help me’?” LA Weekly 12/12/01

Wednesday December 12

DISCARDING THE GUTHRIE: Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theatre is getting a new home. So what should happen to the old one? “On November 9, the Minneapolis City Council voted 8 to 3 to grant a demolition permit to the Walker Art Center, which owns the theater. Ten days earlier, a city-council subcommittee rejected a recommendation from the city’s Historic Preservation Committee that the 38-year-old building be spared the wrecking ball.” Historic preservationists are fighting back. CityPages 12/12/01

WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK: “Actors come in two types – those who read reviews and those who read them but tell you they don’t. Whether your notice appears in the Uttoxeter Bugle or the London Evening Standard, the possibility that you’re being heralded as the next Lawrence Olivier is simply too much to resist.” The Guardian (UK) 12/12/01

A STRONG OPINION IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE SHOW: Actor David Soul (from Starsky and Hutch) wins a case in British court against a critic who claimed that Soul’s play was ‘without doubt the worst West End show’ he had seen.” Turns out, the critic actually had never seen the show… The Independent (UK) 12/12/01

Monday December 10

WHEN DIRECTORS STEP ON PLAYWRIGHTS: Playwright David Grimm was looking forward to seeing his play produced at Washington’s Studio Theatre’s Secondstage three weeks ago. But he walked out at intermission, angry at the wholesale changes the director had made in his script. Soon rights for producing the play were withdrawn, and the production has closed down. “The reason it is copyrighted is that it is the property of that author. You can’t make changes to the play without the author’s permission. It’s as simple as that. And theaters violate that all the time.” Washington Post 12/09/01

Sunday December 9

THEATRE AS A LIFESTYLE CHOICE: Los Angeles has a thriving theatre scene, but it’s an ongoing struggle for companies to survive. One small theatre is trying to Position itself as a creative community that both artists and audiences want to be a part of. “The Evidence Room’s rising profile is due not only to its programming, but also to its status as a hangout, with a high-ceilinged space and a large lobby, where the social interaction belies notions that theater is of interest only to the over-50 crowd.” Los Angeles Times 12/09/01

SUN SETTING ON LLOYD-WEBBER? “For the first time in many years, there is not a single Lloyd Webber musical touring. His latest musical, “The Beautiful Game,” never made it to the United States, while its predecessor, “Whistle Down the Wind,” had its world premiere in Washington, D.C., but folded before getting to Broadway. Are we approaching the final curtain of the Lloyd Webber saga? Don’t bet on it just yet.” The New York Post 12/09/01

Friday December 7

THEATRE CRASH: Losses to New York theatres since September 11 have been substantial, says a new study. And with an economic slowdown, things aren’t likely to get better soon. “Using the information supplied by the 101 companies who participated in the survey, the report estimates that the direct loss of income for these groups was nearly $4.8 million through Oct. 31.” Backstage 12/05/01

YOU CAN GO BACK: Three years ago the Twin Cities comedy troupe Brave New Workshop managed to scrape together $500,000 to move into a new home. But the larger theatre never really worked out, and the company has struggled ever since. So it’s moving back to its old digs. “I’d much rather have a smaller, profitable theater than a larger, money-losing theater.” St. Paul Pioneer Press 12/05/01

Thursday December 6

CRITICAL DIRECTIONS: Eight Toronto theatre critics changed roles last weekend, leaving the audience to direct short scenes from Canadian plays. “The theatre provided the venue and technical support. The would-be directors had final say over casting. In the interest of justice for all the poor, victimized theatre folk whose livelihoods and careers have been tragically affected by unfeeling pundits, it would be fun to report that the critics failed miserably at their new tasks. But the evening was both fun and enlightening.” National Post 12/06/01

Wednesday December 5

OUT OF WORK AGAIN: You’re an actor and your show has come to an end. When are you officially unemployed? “Is it when your final curtain falls? The next morning? Or the start of the following week? If you finish on a Saturday night, as I’ve just done, you should at least be able to afford yourself a Sunday without anxiety, but some actors I know are making frantic phone calls to friends and contacts even before the Sunday omnibus of The Archers has started.” The Guardian (UK) 12/05/01

Tuesday December 4

THE STATE OF CANADIAN THEATRE: Canada has always struggled to create and sustain a thriving national theatre scene. Two new books highlight the quest: one an anecdotal history of Canadian theatre in general, and the other a history of the Stratford Festival, arguably the nation’s most celebrated theatrical institution. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 12/04/01

Monday December 3

BROADWAY DOWN – BUT JUST A BIT: Broadway’s woes after September 11 have been well-reported. But halfway through the current season box office grosses aren’t catastrophic. They’re “just about five percent below the figure for the comparable period from last year. Attendance is slightly more downbeat: The figure through half the season — 5,372,640 — is down 6.9 percent from last year.” MSNBC 11/30/01

STARMAKER: Jenny Topper is leaving as head of the West End’s Hampstead Theatre. “After organising Europe’s first women’s arts festival and hanging out with the likes of the Beach Boys back in the multimedia fusion years of the early 1970s, Topper has always followed her hunches and evolved into one of British theatre’s most successful starmakers.” The Times (UK) 12/03/01

Sunday December 2

THEATRE AFTER THE USSR: How has theatre changed in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union? As the system and patronage changed, so did the way of making theatre. And as the needs of the audience and the aesthetic of the time evolved, so too did the impetus behind making theatre. A group of Russian theatre artists discusses how their world has changed. The New York Times 12/02/01 (one-time registration required for access)

WHY CHICAGO THEATRE IS SO GOOD: Chicago is known as a great theatre town. But it’s not just quantity or quality that make it great. “As varied as its theater scene is, there is something distinctive about it, too. Directors working here call Chicago’s decisive acting style variously muscular, aggressive, no-nonsense, and substantial.” Christian Science Monitor 11/30/01

Music: December 2001

Monday December 31

DOWN YEAR FOR CONCERTS: On the American concert circuit, “the top 100 concert tours sold 34.4 million tickets in 2001, down about 7 percent from 37.1 million the year before, according to an analysis by Pollstar magazine.” U2 earned $109.7 million, the second highest gross ever for a tour (The Rolling Stones 1994 tour earned $121.2 million). Contra Costa Times (AP) 12/31/01

SVETLANOV EMERGES: Two years ago, the Russian Culture Minister dumped legendary conductor Yevgeny Svetlanov as head of the State Symphony Orchestra. Svetlanov had led the orchestra for 35 years. Earlier this month Svetlanov conducted in St. Petersburg. “Inevitably, therefore, Svetlanov’s appearance in the Bolshoi Hall of the Philharmonia with this distinguished orchestra took on something of the air of revenge against official Moscow. Petersburg, as the guardian of tradition and conservative orchestral tastes, was obliged to show that it maintained its own attitude toward Svetlanov.” St. Petersburg Times 12/7/01

EDWARD DOWNES, 90: Edward Downes, famous to millions of opera lovers as the host of weekly Texaco Opera Quiz heard during intermissions of Saturday broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera, has died at the age of 90. Nando Times (AP) 12/30/01

Sunday December 30

A DOWN YEAR: “After a banner 2000, sales of recorded music are down for the first time in years. A souring economy caused fans to think carefully before plunking down $125 to see Janet Jackson, and tour interruptions following Sept. 11 dealt the live-music industry another setback. To make matters worse, as record labels struggled unsuccessfully to combat online file-sharing of individual songs, sales of blank discs soared, thanks to the growing popularity of home-computer CD burners able to copy entire albums.” St. Paul Pioneer Press (KR) 12/30/01

BAD BUT POPULAR? Promoter Raymond Gubbay’s Christmas Festival is the best-attended classical music event in Scotland. So why do musicians and “serious” music fans disdain them? “Executives and administrators of full-time classical orchestras are usually contemptuous in their dismissal of the whole Gubbay empire, whose populist musical extravaganzas range across the calendar and throughout the UK. Many professional classical musicians will have nothing to do with Gubbay concerts – the phrase ‘it’s only a Gubbay gig’ is usually delivered with a snort of derision and the equivalent of a spit.” Glasgow Herald 12/28/01

KILLING A COMMODITY: World Music is booming. But it’s also been turned into a commodity “as a party-adjunct, a feelgood frippery. Sometimes, as with Thomas Mapfumo, it comes garlanded with political respect, but mostly it’s a case of shove it in a corner, and add a smiling face in a funny hat: hey folks, it’s world music time.” The Independent (UK) 12/30/01

MOVING BACK THE RING: Los Angeles Opera has been on a massive ramp-up in its artistic activities, including a new Ring production projected to cost as much as $60 million. “It was scheduled to begin in spring 2003, with the presentation of one or two operas each year at the Shrine Auditorium, leading up to the presentation of the complete cycle at the same venue in 2006.” But after a downturn in the company’s business after September 11, funding the production will take more time. The new plan is to wait until 2006 and present the cycle all at once. Los Angeles Times 12/30/01

HANDEL HOUSE: George Handel lived at 25 Brook Street “for 36 years: an eternity for someone active in the 18th- century music world. Baroque composers, not unlike their latter-day rock counterparts, were famous for unstable lives. They traveled across mountains, seas and battlefields in search of work or patronage.” Now part of the house has been turned into a museum, the only museum in London devoted to a composer. The New York Times 12/30/01 (one-time registration required for access)

Friday December 28

SO WHO NEEDS COMPOSERS? At a conference in Germany, an inventor shows off his robotic/computer composer. “On six strings tuned to one chord, and with connected equipment producing a rock-like effect without human involvement, the contraption really did play something that sounded like the blues. With distortions and overdrives, the resulting sound was somewhat weird, gruff and expressive, resembling Jimi Hendrix’s live version of Voodoo Child. The artist claimed that the digital computer taught itself to play, in the best tradition of a basement band, as it were. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 12/27/01

FANFARE FOR THE COMMON FOLK: “[U.K.] junior culture minister Kim Howells has written of his “regret” over remarks he made about folk music. During a parliamentary debate in early December the minister described listening to folk singers as his idea of hell.” BBC 12/28/01

WHAT’S HAPPENED TO AUSSIE MUSIC? “I’ve come to conclude that in an important sense orchestras are museums and that it’s right and proper they fulfil this function. But just as they seem to be doing a better job of new music than at any time since the 1960s, there is room for improvement on the museum front. In particular, in the wing of the museum marked ‘Australia’, someone appears to have removed all the pieces for cleaning and then forgotten to put them back again. A foreigner could attend symphony concerts all around this country in 2002 and conclude that Australian music began in about 1998.” Sydney Morning Herald 12/28/01

WRAPPING UP 2001 DOWN UNDER: Sydney’s classical music scene has been dominated this year by the personalities of two very different music directors. Edo deWaart, the outgoing MD of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, is on his way out, with equal amounts of grumbling and grudging respect emanating from his musicians. Meanwhile, Simone Young is just settling into the head job at Opera Australia, and her enthusiasm is apparently catching. Sydney Morning Herald (courtesy Andante) 12/28/01

YOU MEAN THEY BEAT BRITNEY? 31 years after the breakup of The Beatles, the band has scored its first #1 album in the U.S. A collection of old hits by the Fab Four took the top spot on the Billboard charts for 2001, proving either that Americans are beginning to return to good music, or that we buy way too many ‘best of’ albums. BBC 12/28/01

UNDERSTANDING RICHTER: Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter was not a man easily defined. A brilliant technician and musical master, he nonetheless refused to accept that any of his skills made him worthy of the praise he received, both at home and abroad. “He wanted the focus to be entirely on the music, and not on himself; a tremendous musical personality, he detested the cult of personality.” Boston Globe 12/28/01

BORING ME SILLY: More and more musicians are keeping online journals. But why are they so banal? “The common denominator of these notebooks is their superficiality. They have none of the serenity of Janet Baker’s late journal, nor the energy of the young Kenneth Branagh’s. They serve, ostensibly, as a token of the artist’s urge to communicate. But since the artist has, in most cases, nothing to say, they reduce art to mundanity and deflate our eagerness to hear it.” The Telegraph (UK) 12/26/01

Thursday December 27

NAGANO STAYS WITH GERMAN ORCHESTRA: “After months of threats and legal squabbles, Deutsches Sinfonie-Orchester chief conductor Kent Nagano has agreed in principle to renew his contract beyond 2003, and the mud-slinging over organizational boss Bettina Pesch seems to have stopped. Nagano’s squabbles with Pesch were not worthy of the press attention accorded them; the injustices committed against him were largely in his own imagination.” Andante 12/26/01

PAVAROTTI MAKES SHANGHAI DEBUT: Pavarotti makes his debut in Shanghai (reportedly for a fee as high as $1 million). “Ticket prices soared as high as $720, not that far below what an average Shanghai resident earns in a year. In the program, Mr. Pavarotti was referred to as Pavartti, as well as Pavanotti.” The New York Times 12/27/01 (one-time registration required for access)

BRING ON 2002: It would be overstating the case somewhat to say that 2001 was a dismal year for America’s classical music industry. But with multiple orchestras in a financial bind (with some actually shutting down,) and some high-profile groups using September 11 as an excuse to cancel performances of controversial and difficult music, it’s hard not to wonder whether the nation really values its cultural heritage as much as it says is does. San Jose Mercury News 12/27/01

Wednesday December 26

UPBEAT TIMES FOR ORCHESTRAS: With all the bad news about the health of symphony orchestras, it’s easy to think the orchestra world is on the ropes. But a closer look gives plenty of reason for optimism. Plenty of new talented musicians, interesting young conductors, and “the graying of the classical orchestra audience is a myth.” Los Angeles Times 12/25/01

“STAMP OUT SCROOGE”: Calling Winnipeg Symphony management “Scrooges” for locking out its musicians in a contract dispute, Bramwell Tovey, the orchestra’s former music director, returned to Winnipeg to conduct a free concert by the players. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/26/01

Monday December 24

MIAMI’S ENDANGERED CLASSICAL MUSIC STATION: The new owners of South Florida’s classical music radio station says they’re going to abandon the format in favor of talk radio. So the previous owner is launching a campaign to get the station back and save the music. “But he probably won’t know the results of his efforts for 60 days or more, and should he prove unsuccessful, the future of classical on our local airwaves looks bleak.” Miami Herald 12/23/01

SAVING ST. LOUIS: The financially-endangered St. Louis Symphony has seen a swell of support since it announced a cash emergency. “The contributions ranged from a $5 check sent in by a school bus driver to $3,000 raised by a student string quartet, from $20,000 from a brand-new patron of the orchestra to $25,000 from the mostly volunteer, 130-member St. Louis Symphony Chorus.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch 12/23/01

  • Previously: ST. LOUIS REPRIEVE: In September the St. Louis Symphony said it had to raise “$29 million in stopgap funding – $20 million to be raised in the form of pledges by Dec. 31, 2001, and the entire $29 million in hand by next spring” or the orchestra would have to be shut down. With December 31 only a little more than a week away, the orchestra has raised $25 million in pledges. Riverfront Times 12/19/01

Sunday December 23

ST. LOUIS REPRIEVE: In September the St. Louis Symphony said it had to raise “$29 million in stopgap funding – $20 million to be raised in the form of pledges by Dec. 31, 2001, and the entire $29 million in hand by next spring” or the orchestra would have to be shut down. With December 31 only a little more than a week away, the orchestra has raised $25 million in pledges. Riverfront Times 12/19/01

SIZE MATTERS: “Are physical attributes in opera really irrelevant? If one regards the art merely as a concert in costume, looks cannot matter. If one regards opera as a fusion of music and drama, suspension of disbelief does.” Financial Times 12/22/01

CAMPAIGNING AGAINST MESSIAH: One critic made a heartfelt request last Christmas. “The plea I had back then was simple: that these good souls might move past the yellow dog-eared, much-scrawled scores of what George Bernard Shaw referred to over a century ago, as Messiah’s annual ‘regulation performance’, and move from there to the bright places lit by the sunny music of other equally cheerful songsmiths. But it was not to be, and the plea fell into the chilly waters of public indifference, bubbled briefly, but helplessly, and sank without trace. In fact, if anything, things are worse this year.” Irish Times 12/20/01

Friday December 21

MERRY CHRISTMAS MUSIC: Sure there are classic Christmas carols. But there are many more pop Christmas songs, and most of them are an acquired taste of one sort or another. Here’s a pretty comprehensive list that includes the sentimental to the simpering to the downright taseless. National Post 12/21/01

DIGESTING KIMMEL’S BAD REVIEWS: Most of the out-of-town critics didn’t like the acoustics of Philadelphia’s new Kimmel Performing Arts Center, which debuted last weekend. Philadelphians, however, generally declared themselves pleased. “Are their ears wrong? In digesting the out-of-town reviews, acoustical context must be considered. Philadelphia’s is the Academy of Music. Few major cities have had so much of their cultural life centralized for so long in a single acoustical environment…” Philadelphia Inquirer 12/20/01

DOESN’T PLAY NICE WITH OTHERS: Despite the PR, there’s very little “classical” about violinist Vanessa-Mae. “It seems she prefers to use her instrument to engage in mock fights with the others on stage – guitar, bass, keyboards and drums – just like a child attacking its playmates with a wooden sword in the sandbox. In the sandbox, there is always one child who must have its way; otherwise it starts to scream. Here, that child is the sometimes almost unbearable Vanessa-Mae.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 12/21/01

IMPERIAL SALE: The Bosendorfer piano company has been sold to an Austrian bank. “Boesendorfer and Steinway are considered the Rolls-Royces of pianos. Among the hundreds of virtuosi and composers associated with Boesendorfer since the first handmade instrument was assembled in the early 19th century have been Anton Rubinstein, Johannes Brahms and Bela Bartok.” Nando Times (AP) 12/21/01

Thursday December 20

BEETHOVEN’S VIOLA PLAYS AGAIN: After more than 100 years of silence, Beethoven’s viola, “the viola the composer played while still an adolescent, probably between 1787 and 1792, in the court orchestra of Elector Maximilian Franz of Bonn,” has been played in concert again. “After Beethoven’s departure from the orchestra, the viola became the property of Franz Anton Ries, who was also a member of the orchestra as well as Beethoven’s violin teacher. It later turned up in America and finally found its way back to Bonn after World War I as part of Ries’ estate.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 12/19/01

HAS THE NEW YORK PHIL LOST ITS NEW YORKNESS? As critics consider the New York Philharmonic’s post-Masur era, a summing up of his influence on the orchestra is called for. How convenient then that a new collection of Philharmonic performances has been recently released. While there are many things to like, “despite his lengthy list of world premieres and successful forays into the canon, New York’s orchestra has lost its New York flavor. It has become woefully generic.” The New Republic 12/18/01

A BELATED VERDI PREMIER: Verdi’s La Forza del Destino was commissioned by the Russian Directorate of Theaters, and premiered in St. Petersburg. Remarkably, however, it has never been staged by the Bolshoi Theater. Never, until now. Forza, a staple in most other houses, will open at the Bolshoi on December 26. The Moscow Times 12/20/01

THE MUSIC BUSINESS IS, WELL, A BUSINESS: That means it is, first of all, about making money. Consequently, people in the music business are not always nice to each other. Latest example: “Saying he is fed up, television host Dick Clark filed a $10 million lawsuit Wednesday accusing Grammy chief Michael Greene of illegally preventing pop icons such as Michael Jackson and Britney Spears from appearing on Clark’s “American Music Awards” program.” Detroit News (AP) 12/19/01

THE BBC PHIL’S NEW MAN: Gianandrea Noseda, a “37-year-old Italian who cut his teeth as a conductor with Valery Gergiev in St Petersburg, has just been appointed principal conductor of the Manchester-based BBC Philharmonic, succeeding Yan Pascal Tortelier.” He likes fast cars – and collecting orchestras. BBC 12/20/01

Wednesday December 19

INDUSTRY ON THE ROPES: “The music industry is powered by four crucial engines: record labels, radio, the touring industry and retail record stores. And they are all sputtering with a grim array of problems. Napster is hobbled, but music swapping online remains a gleeful pleasure for millions of computer users who have lost interest in actually paying for CDs. Venerable record chains like Tower Records have been on the verge of going out of business. The alternative-rock/country/rap explosion of the 1990s is over, and few new acts are selling – even as consumers are turning up their noses at superstar perennials, too. Major labels have been battered by losses and layoffs, radio station owners are wallowing in an advertising recession, and the concert business lost millions of ticket buyers in just the last year.” Salon 12/19/01

DUMB AND DUMBER: “For all the political homilies we hear about raising educational standards, the role of culture in education is under attack from a murderous anti-elitist virus and a secondary infection of multi-cultural confusions. Anything that cannot instantly be grasped by the innocent ear is banned as exclusive. Music in school is modelled on McDonald’s: it is cheap, mass-produced and sensorily unchallenging.” The Telegraph (UK) 12/19/01

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS… New York City Opera wants a new home out of the Lincoln Center redevelopment plan. But building a new theatre on the campus isn’t likely to happen, what with the objections of others (and you know who you are…). If the company stays in its current home and renovates, it stands to lose the support of its biggest backer. But if it moves elsewhere in the city, costs go up and… The New York Times 12/19/01 (one-time registration required for access)

IT’S REAL, BUT YOU STILL CAN’T PLAY IT: ‘The Messiah’ is the name that the violin has been given, and fights have raged over its authenticity for years. Is it the work of the great Antonio Stradivari, or a copy made after his death? A professor at the University of Tennessee claims to have dated the instrument to Stradivari’s time, further exciting the sort of people who shell out tens of millions of dollars for a musical instrument that has never been, and never will be, played, for fear that actual use might devalue it. Chicago Tribune (AP) 12/19/01

BENEFIT CDs NOT SELLING: “The millions of people who watched two benefit concerts for victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks haven’t exactly rushed to buy the compact disc highlights of the shows. ‘The Concert for New York City,’ a two-disc set compiled from the Madison Square Garden show starring Paul McCartney and the Who, has sold about 148,000 copies in two weeks, according to Billboard. Baltimore Sun (AP) 12/19/01

THE SINGING COP: “If Verdi were to write a new opera, it might run like this: A young man loves to sing, but at first he doesn’t succeed. Then he joins the police, where he sings the national anthem. Thanks to his great voice and the mayor’s patronage, – he cuts a CD and gets to study with Placido Domingo. But Verdi can put his pen down – it’s true.” The Christian Science Monitor 12/19/01

Tuesday December 18

ASSESSING THE KIMMEL: With opening weekend behind them, the folks behind Philadelphia’s imposing new Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts are reading the initial reviews, and beginning the years-long process of accommodating a new hall to its tenants. But reviews were wildly mixed, and the local perception seemed often at odds with that of out-of-town critics. The overall report card seems to indicate a promising future for Verizon Hall, but much acoustical tweaking will be needed. Philadelphia Inquirer 12/18/01

  • INCOMPLETE GRADE FOR KIMMEL’S ‘OTHER’ HALL: “In a valiant but ultimately futile effort, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts’ Perelman Theater opened Sunday in such an unfinished state as to misrepresent what it will ultimately look and sound like.” Philadelphia Inquirer 12/18/01

THE HOUSE THAT WYNTON BUILT: Jazz at Lincoln Center has a new $115 million home rising at Columbus Circle. Wynton Marsalis is its driving force, its inspiration and its fundraiser. “Yet you wonder how long Wynton can stay in the window of the jazz temple he’s building over on Columbus Circle, and what might happen without him. ‘They’ve painted themselves into a corner at Lincoln Center, pushing Wynton so far out front,’ says one prominent jazz critic. ‘He’s very good, but he’s not Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington rolled up into one, as they’d have you believe’.” New York Magazine 12/17/01

PATRIOTIC ROYALTIES: The Florida Orchestra has sued Arista Records to collect royalty payments from Whitney Houston’s SuperBowl performance of the Star Spangled Banner. The orchestra accompanied Houston and “since Sept. 11, the royalties could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars for the nonprofit orchestra, which cut its budget by $600,000 this year to $7.6 million and forced musicians to take a pay cut.” Nando Times (AP) 12/17/01

STREAMING MELODIES: “Musicians in the United States have reached a tentative agreement with radio stations over how much should be paid in royalties when a broadcast is streamed over the internet… The deal covers internet streams of shows that are already broadcast over the airwaves by radio stations… It does not cover web-only broadcasters, who are still in arbitration talks expected to last until February.” BBC 12/18/01

GREEDY BASTARDS: Universal Music Group this week will become the first company to release new copy-protected CDs that cannot be played on computers, game consoles, or any other non-standard CD player. Anyone wanting the ability to play the music digitally, or “rip” it to an MP3 file, would have to subscribe to one of the industry’s online services. Critics have charged that the new protected CDs are nothing more than a naked attempt by the recording industry to force consumers to pay twice for the same music. Wired 12/18/01

QUIT THAT SNIGGERING IN THE HIGHBROW BALCONY, PLEASE: In the wake of 9/11, as with nearly all tragedies, many people turned to music to sooth their battered souls and regain their confidence in the world around them. And with the nation on something of a patriotic jag, there is no question what genre of music is leading the way for regular folks looking to grieve, recover, and rebuild: country is king. Chicago Tribune 12/18/01

BRITISH INVASION: British pop music has enjoyed one of its best years on the American pop charts since the days of Duran Duran and Culture Club. “According to Billboard magazine, sales of albums by British artists soared during 2001 accounting for almost 9% of the top 100.” The Guardian (UK) 12/17/01

NO VOICE BEFORE ITS TIME: Young singers are often tempted to take on desirable operatic roles before their voices are ready. Those who push ahead can ruin their voices. Those who hold out until their voices have settled can sing well into later life. But how to judge when the time is right? The Times (UK) 12/18/01

MÖDL DIES: “Renowned German mezzo-soprano Martha Mödl has died at the age of 89, the National Theater in Mannheim announced on Monday. Mödl, one of the most respected Wagner singers of her time, died Sunday after a long illness in a Stuttgart hospital.” Andante (courtesy Agence France-Presse) 12/17/01

Monday December 17

HOW’S IT SOUND? Philadelphia’s new Kimmel Performing Arts Center opened this weekend. So how were the acoustics? It’s too soon to tell it’s too soon to tell it’s too soon to tell…. “For now the musicians say they are happy. And happy musicians play better. When music is played well, it makes a concert hall’s sound seem better. Such is the nature of psycho- acoustics.” The New York Times 12/17/01 (one-time registration required for access)

  • THE MAKING OF… “Great concert halls are not born that way. They are designed, built and opened, and then coaxed, polished and aged before settling into a state of greatness. But Verizon Hall is off to a promising start.” Philadelphia Inquirer 12/17/01
  • SOME PROBLEMS… The hall “would seem to have some serious acoustical problems, for all of its plush, burnished mahogany and elegant, cello-shaped frame. On the evidence of the two opening concerts the sound is dim, diffuse and unsupported, somehow managing to be both muddy and bone-dry.” Washington Post 12/17/01
  • THE SOUND? From my seat, in what should be a prime location, I had trouble hearing the orchestra.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution 12/17/01
  • IT WILL EVOLVE: “In the end, though, the acoustics left something to be desired. More definition and presence would be nice, and it will be interesting to hear how the sound evolves.” Baltimore Sun 12/17/01
  • UNDERSIZED: “But the sound was distant and small and lacked presence. The audience should be swimming in the lushness of Ravel’s Suite No. 2 from Daphnis et Chloe, but we were parched.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12/17/01
  • FROM THE ORCHESTRA: “In terms of acoustics, ‘it’s a Stradivarius,’ raved the orchestra’s principal cellist, William Stokking.” Baltimore Sun 12/17/01

LONG TIME BETWEEN ACTS: Paolo Lorenzani’s opera Nicandro e Fileno had its debut with “great success” before King Louis XIV and his court at Fontainebleau in September, 1681. This week – 320 years later – it’s getting its second performance thanks to the efforts of a University of Alberta music professor. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/17/01

PREDISPOSAL: Should a critic review music he/she doesn’t like? One LATimes reader goes digging into the paper’s archives for evidence that critic Daniel Cariaga has a thing against Elgar… Los Angeles Times 12/17/01

Sunday December 16

KIMMEL CENTER OPENS: A night after Elton John opened Philadelphia’s new concert hall (in return for a fee said to be $2 million), the Kimmel Center’s real tenants moved in. “Rough edges in the still-to-be-finished performing arts center were well-hidden; the Philadelphia Orchestra’s next music director, Christoph Eschenbach, was helicoptered into Philadelphia after his 5:19 p.m. curtain at New York’s Metropolitan Opera; and guest cellist Yo-Yo Ma courted disaster when his chair slipped off a raised platform while performing (he was caught by orchestra violinist Nancy Bean).” Philadelphia Inquirer 12/16/01

  • FIRST REVIEWS – NOT A RAVE: “On Saturday the Philadelphia Orchestra played its first concert in its long-awaited home, the 2,500-seat Verizon Hall in the new $265 million, two-hall Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. Alas, the first report can’t be called wildly enthusiastic. Finished in almost unrelieved red mahogany, Verizon is a bit oppressive visually. And, at least in its initial incarnation, it’s seriously short of sonic warmth.” Dallas Morning News 12/16/01
  • LOOKS GOOD: “Philadelphia’s new center distinguishes itself in a big way from the conventional models U.S. cities have been using for a century or more to carve out places for culture in the midst of chaotic urban circumstances. The Kimmel Center is a savvy mix of megastructure, modern architecture, shopping mall and civic plaza.” Washington Post 12/16/01

LAMENTS FROM A BORED CRITIC: It looks like the Toronto Symphony has been bailed out of its life-threatening financial woes. But does it deserve its heroic rescue? “in recent months I’ve walked out of two TSO concerts because I was so bored and because I was enraged at the apathy radiating from most of the orchestra. The TSO as a whole has what I call bad morale genes – too many whiners who have an outrageous sense of entitlement and seem to bear undying grudges against the administration. Unless there is an outstanding conductor on the podium – and how often does that happen? – the TSO’s ‘house sauce’ is note-perfect but soulless playing, redeemed by expressive solos from that consistent but relatively small group of players.” National Post (Canada) 12/14/01

SPANO TAKES ATLANTA: Why conductor Robert Spano decided to take on the Atlanta Symphony: “What I could tell from the search committee was: `Here’s this great orchestra, here’s this very vital, thriving, growing, exciting city, and the two have absolutely nothing to do with each other. There’s a total disconnect. We’re not getting audiences.’ That’s a challenge that fascinates me. How do you get this credible, viable artistic institution to mean something to the community in which it lives? Because if it doesn’t it’s going to die.” The New York Times 12/16/01 (one-time registration required for access)

TRUE TO ITS VALUES: Chicago’s one remaining classical music station is 50 years old. “WFMT has [built] one of the most loyal audiences in the U.S. by sticking to its initial mission of [offering] quality and excellence and not mucking it up with gimmicks. Outsiders have called the station elitist. But others say it respects the intelligence of its listeners at a time when a growing number of classical radio outlets have dumbed down their programming.” Chicago Tribune 12/16/01

PATRIOTIC FOG: “Because of the events of September 11, John Adams finds himself accused of being an ‘anti-American’ composer, a label with uncomfortable echoes of the McCarthy era of the 1950s.” In the New York Times, musicologist Richard Taruskin charged Adams with “romanticising terrorists” in his 1991 opera The Death of Klinghoffer – and, by implication, with romanticising the perpetrators of the attacks on the World Trade Centre, too. Taruskin’s article provides some flavour of the atmosphere in the US today. “If terrorism is to be defeated,” he wrote, “world public opinion has to be turned decisively against it.” That means “no longer romanticising terrorists as Robin Hoods and no longer idealising their deeds as rough poetic justice”. The creators of The Death of Klinghoffer – Adams, librettist Alice Goodman and director Peter Sellers – have done just that, he argued. The opera was “anti-American, anti-semitic and anti-bourgeois. Why should we want to hear this music now?” The Guardian (UK) 12/15/01

Friday December 14

ANOTHER ORCHESTRA LOCKOUT: “The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra has locked out its musicians for the first time in its 54-year history. The move followed a unanimous vote by the players yesterday afternoon to reject binding arbitration with conditions that would recoup a projected $400,000 loss at the musicians’ expense.” Winnipeg Free Press 12/14/01

A WINNER AT BAYREUTH? The battles in Bayreuth over who will control the Wagner Festival may be settled. And it looks like Wolfgang Wagner, the composer’s grandson, has won his way after a long, bitter and very public fight. Wagner, 82, “announced that he had appointed Klaus Schultz, one of his steadfast supporters and longtime confidants, as his artistic adviser, starting in January.” The New York Times (AFP) 12/14/01 (one-time registration required for access)

DOMINGO’S BREAKDOWN: Tenor Placido Domingo was singing Othello at La Scala this week when he suddenly stopped: ” ‘Sorry, I can’t go on,’ croaked the Spanish superstar after his voice broke down in the second act. He then turned and walked off the stage, leaving the audience on tenterhooks.” After a short pause he returned and managed to finish the performance, one of the last performances before the opera house shuts down for renovations for three years. Sydney Morning Herald 12/14/01

CONDUCTING A BID: A 25-year-old from Arizona was browsing on eBay when he spotted an offer to conduct the Sydney Philharmonia Choir in a performance of Handel’s Messiah. So he anted up his life savings of $7,500 and won the bidding, which was part of a fund-raiser for the chorus. “The funny thing was, no-one had bid on it when I saw it. So I thought, ‘OK, I’m game’. And I won. It was as simple as that.” Sydney Morning Herald 12/14/01

MR CHRISTMAS CAROL: “In the world of music, John Rutter is Mr Christmas: the most celebrated and commercially successful carol-composer alive. Given the state of world affairs it’s hard to predict the supply of peace and goodwill among the nations in the next few weeks, but one thing you can guarantee is that Rutter’s choral packaging of those sentiments will be on the lips of countless millions in cathedrals, churches, chapels and mud-hut missions, from Nebraska to Nairobi.” The Telegraph (UK) 12/14/01

WHY RUSSIAN POP SUCKS: “If you listen to Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley, neither the material nor the arrangements are dated. Michael Jackson’s ‘Billy Jean,’ which was recorded in 1982, sounds as if it was recorded a year ago, because it’s superb. [Russian artists] don’t challenge themselves like that – that’s why none of the songs being played now will survive even a year. Artists are not motivated to produce good music [in Russia] – and the main thing is that they don’t even try.” The Moscow Times 12/14/01

Thursday December 13

IS THIS GOOD OR BAD NEWS? Warner Music UK has announced that, contrary to previous reports which had it scrapping the classical recording business altogether, it will debut a slimmed-down Warner Classics division in January 2002. A Warner official also denied reports that specialty labels Teldec and Erato will cease issuing new releases. Andante 12/13/01

  • CLASSICS ON A BUDGET: “The American arm of the Naxos label, known for its budget classical catalogue of around 2400 titles, has signed a deal with Liquid Audio to distribute selected recordings via Liquid’s network of retail and music web sites.” Gramophone 12/13/01

PHILLY’S NEW CONCERT HALL: “Achieving good acoustics in a concert hall is an extremely complex balancing act. The sound of music inside an enclosed space is affected by an enormous number of variables — everything from the shape of the room to the thickness of the walls to the number of seats determines the acoustic environment. Acousticians attempt to collect and measure the quality of sound in a specific space. It all gets very technical, but there are several key elements involved.” Andante 12/13/01

  • CONCERT HALL OR CIVIC REVITALIZATION? Philadelphia’s new Kimmel Center was built with the help of nearly $100 million of public money, leading some to ask whether the expense of creating such cultural monuments is balanced by the benefits it returns to the community. “Officials say the Kimmel will create 3,000 jobs and generate $153 million in annual spending on tickets, parking, restaurants, hotels and the like. The building itself isn’t expected to be profitable for several years.” San Jose Mercury News 12/13/01
  • A NEW KIND OF CONCERT HALL: “Philadelphia now breaks ranks with cities that have regressed toward infinite infantilism in the quest to revitalize their downtowns. Rafael Viñoly’s architecture is not nostalgic for ye olde city life. It’s not ironic about it, and it’s not cute. Apart from spatial amplitude, it makes few concessions to luxury or glamour. The exterior, particularly, may strike some concertgoers as harsh. It is only inside the building that the Kimmel Center reveals the elegance of its concept. Mr. Viñoly has designed an urban ensemble, composed primarily of city views. Classical music is the architecture here, the building an instrument in which to perform and hear it.” The New York Times 12/13/01 (one-time registration required for access)
  • L.A.’S NEW LANDMARK: In Los Angeles, Frank Gehry’s new Disney Concert Hall is taking shape. It’s sure to alter the cultural architecture of the city. “The crazily curved building – which evokes the hallucinatory shapes of Disney’s more fantastic cartoons – will surely be another milestone in the architect’s long career. Now 71, for much of his life he was underappreciated in his adopted city.” The Age (Melbourne) 12/13/01

CALL IT THE ANI DIFRANCO BUSINESS MODEL: “Finally, the Internet is starting to pay real dividends to musicians who haven’t signed deals with major labels. Big subscriptions are here, but out-of-the-way bands have made it, too.” Wired 12/13/01

Wednesday December 12

NOT MUCH TO SING ABOUT: Chorus members rarely – if ever – make money for their work; they get their rewards in other ways. But “a deep gloom has settled over the volunteer sector of the singing world – not the pros who bury Aida nightly at the opera or tweet exquisite Messiaenisms for the 32-strong BBC Singers, but the lawyers, plumbers and home-makers who, from time immemorial, have given up three nights a week for rehearsal, no expenses paid. The choral tradition is in trouble. Money is tight, the music is monotonous and ensembles are turning sloppy.” The Telegraph (UK) 12/12/01

A NEW WRINKLE IN DIGITAL RIGHTS: A web company signs up bands performing in clubs to record their performances. The company pays nothing and the bands get the promotion of having their gigs webcast. But “this means that if a band the company recorded signs with a major label and suddenly becomes successful, the Digital Club Network can quickly have a live album by the band in stores. And there won’t be any marketing or promotional costs, since the label will have done that work already.” The New York Times 12/12/01 (one-time registration required for access)

NEW FORM BEGGING: The Royal Opera House at Covent Garden is trying out a new way to raise money, saying it urgently needs new funds. The company is asking donors to “sponsor” props for performances – “£150 to pay for Macbeth’s gold crown, £250 for Othello’s sword, £500 for a wig in the production of Queen of Spades, £750 for a rifle in Il Trovatore, £1,500 for a sedan chair in Don Giovanni and £4,500 for a Madonna in the same opera.” The Telegraph (UK) 12/12/01

GLASSWERKS: In the last couple of decades the glass harmonica has made something of a comeback, “as some musicians took a liking to its ethereal sound. It is used infrequently in concert performances by the Metropolitan Opera, primarily in Lucia, but its use in smaller regional and chamber music events seems to be increasing.” But the only American glass harmonica maker disappeared three years ago. “When he disappeared, it was like an earthquake. More than to say that his loss meant something for the instrument, I prefer to say that his life meant something for the instrument.” The New York Times 12/12/01 (one-time registration required for access)

Tuesday December 11

REACHING OUT: Since 1991, Czech nationalism has been such that allowing outsiders to have artistic influence on the country’s cultural institutions has been difficult. The Czech Philharmonic, once considered on par with the Vienna Philharmonic, has seen its reputation dwindle in the past decade. But recent developments give hope the Czech Republic is shedding some of its nationalism and opening up. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 12/11/01

BRINGING ART AND TECH TO THE TABLE: “With a glitzy splash, two Montreal universities yesterday launched Hexagram, a research institute that aims to do for song and dance what Silicon Valley did for the computer industry… Hexagram is an attempt to pull together research in the widely expanding field of digital arts with the needs of Quebec’s cultural industry.” Montreal Gazette 12/11/01

THE LAWSUIT THAT WOULDN’T DIE: Yet another installment of digital music’s longest-running soap opera is underway in a California courtroom, with the proprietors of the now-deceased Napster facing off against the corporate giants of the recording industry. But such continued whine-fests seem inherently pointless – not only is the song-swapper dead, but the technology of online music has long since surpassed Napster’s crude service. Wired 12/10/01

MASUR GETS TRANSPLANT: New York Philharmonic music director Kurt Masur is recovering from a kidney transplant operation. “The 74-year-old conductor suffered no complications during the operation, which was done Nov. 29 in Liepzig.” Andante (AP) 12/10/01

Monday December 10

SOMETHING NEW IN CONCERT HALLS? Philadelphia’s new Kimmel Center concert hall is not your traditional shoe-box design. “The Philadelphia Orchestra’s new cello-shaped home, part of the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, is a uniquely curvaceous, wood-lined concert room that may change the way future generations think about concert halls, the role of the arts in this city, and Philadelphia in general.” Philadelphia Inquirer 12/09/01

THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN: Is the sun finally setting on the aging gods of rock music? Elton John announced last week he’d made his last album. And “new releases from rock’s other fifty-somethings, such as Rod Stewart (56), Mick Jagger (58) or Sir Paul McCartney (59), have bombed with younger audiences. Jagger limped into the British top 75 last week with his new album Goddess in the Doorway. It sold sold an unimpressive 954 copies on its first day, and just about managed to sell 12,000-odd to reach No 44.” New Zealand Herald 12/10/01

MORTIER TO TAKE PARIS OPERA: Outgoing Salzburg Festival director Gerard Mortier has been named director of the Paris National Opera beginning in 2004. “Mortier, 58, earned a reputation at Salzburg both for sponsoring offbeat productions and for clashing noisily with conservative Austrian politicians. The New York Times 12/08/01 (one-time registration required for access)

Sunday December 9

LA SCALA’S SHORTEST SEASON: Milan’s La Scala opened its new season Friday night. “The first night marked the opening of the shortest opera season ever at La Scala, which is closing down at the end of the month for at least three years of rebuilding and improvement. Placido Domingo, singing in Verdi’s Otello, got a 15-minute standing ovation. The short season has been sold out for weeks, with scalpers getting $2000 for prime tickets. BBC 12/08/01

BIG FIVE BEHIND NEW TWO: America’s Big Five orchestras haven’t been so big for a long time. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of good performances or that these orchestras aren’t relevant anymore. But as they enter a new era – most of them with new leadership – they will neeed to reinvent. And for a model – why not look to the New Two – the Los Angeles Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony? Los Angeles Times 12/09/01

THE POTENT FORCE OF MUSIC: So the Taliban banned music in Afghanistan. “Musicians caught in the act were beaten with their instruments and imprisoned for as many as 40 days.” But throughout history, those in power have often sought to control music.” Why? Because of “the all but irresistible kinesthetic response that music evokes that makes it such a potent influence on behavior, thence on morals and belief.” The New York Times 12/09/01 (one-time registration required for access)

LISTENING TO THE PHILLY’S NEW CONCERT HALL: The Philadelphia Orchestra has being trying to build a new home since about 1908. Next week it moves into the new $263 million Kimmel Center. This week the orchestra got its first chance to try out the acoustics: “The first impression is an overwhelming one, a wonderful one,” says music director Wolfgang Sawallisch. “The musicians can hear each other. I can hear each section – individually and in ensemble. Of course, this will take time. You cannot do it in 15 minutes.” Philadelphia Inquirer 12/07/01

  • HOW PHILLY GOT ITS NEW HALL: Decades in the dreaming, it took some adjustment in attitude to get it done: “We originally tried to go without support from the public sector. We arrogantly made the statement that we could do it all on our own. The original project was led by a small group of corporate leaders who were not successful at building consensus.” The New York Times 12/09/01 (one-time registration required for access)

I’LL BE SAD FOR CHRISTMAS: Some of the best Christmas songs are sad, even mournful. And a great many of them are written by Jewish composers. “Why are there so many Jewish Christmas songs and so few for Chanukah? Chanukah is a minor holiday that has been artificially inflated to keep up with Christmas. Accordingly, the music trails in its wake.” The Observer 12/09/01

NOT THE WRITE STUFF: What’s wrong with music these days? Try what’s wrong with music writers. A new book takes a hard look at the history of pop music critics, and finds…a lot of bores and backstabbing. The Guardian (UK) 12/08/01

SILVERSTEIN STEPS IN TO LEAD FLORIDA PHIL: Violinist/conductor Joseph Silverstein has stepped in to be the South Florida Philharmonic’s interim music director while the search for a replacement for recently-ousted James Judd goes on. Judd was forced from the job after 15 years. Miami Herald 11/29/01

Friday December 7

EXPERIMENTING WITH THE FUTURE: The Atlanta Symphony has seen its box office sales erode in recent seasons; the orchestra was particularly hurt by a musicians’ strike. This season, under new music director Robert Spano, the orchestra has aggressively experimented with its format, introducing light shows and installations to accompany music, and performing more contemporary fare. Some patrons object, complaining that the additions are distracting from the music. And yet, attendance is beginning to climb… Atlanta Journal-Constitution 12/07/01

GUITAR DISPUTE: An agreement that would have determined who gets to keep the late Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia’s custom-made guitars has fallen apart. Garcia’s will says the instruments were to be returned to their maker. The band says members of the group signed an agreement to leave the instruments to a museum. National Post (Canada) 12/07/01

WORDS OVER MUSIC: Supertitles at the opera have transformed the artform. Some believe it is the main reason why opera attendance has soared in recent years. But many stage directors and artists deplore them. “I have a terrible feeling that when you go to the opera now, reading the titles becomes the primary experience, followed by the music, followed by the visual [element], followed by the performance. Because words have an appearance of exact meaning, your mind gravitates to the specificity…. The opera becomes like text with background music.” OperaNews 12/01

HAS THE RECORDING INDUSTRY GONE TOO FAR? “Though the record industry used lawsuits to shutter Napster, Scour and others, it’s now facing a much hardier breed of challengers. As a result, the Big Five record labels and their trade group, the Recording Industry Association of America, have begun to employ an array of technological tricks to fight piracy – tricks that, in turn, have led some online, in the courts, in Congress and even in the Bush administration to say they’ve gone too far.” NewTimes LA 12/05/01

Thursday December 6

CONCERT BUSINESS DOWN: Fewer people have gone to concerts this year as the economy has slowed. “Attendance among the top 50 touring acts was down 15.5 percent through the first half of 2001. But not in Atlanta. Here music fans are still concertgoing in respectable numbers.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution 12/06/01

CONTINUING GOOD NEWS FOR DSO: Neeme Jarvi is back, and now management and musicians at the Detroit Symphony have agreed to a new four-year contract. To top it off, an anonymous gift will cover the orchestra’s million-dollar shortfall from last year. Detroit News 12/05/01

  • Previously: JARVI RETURNS: Conductor Neeme Jarvi returned to the podium over the weekend with his first concerts since he suffered a stroke last July. “The instant Jarvi appeared from the right stage entrance for the first time Friday night, the audience of 2,200 rose and cheered ‘Bravo, maestro!’ and ‘Bravo, Neeme!'” Detroit News 11/25/01

MUSIC AS KEY TO THE UNIVERSE: “The very idea of a ‘key to the universe’ today seems as quaint as the belief that the Earth is flat. We are more familiar with concepts such as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, or chaos theory, or irrational numbers that can be calculated to an infinite and patternless number of decimal places. Even if a key to the universe could be discovered, the lock that it fits long ago disappeared. But for thousands of years, from the ancient Greeks to the Church fathers to the Enlightenment, the existence of such a key was not a fantasy but a premise of intellectual life, and the key was situated at the intersection of music, science, and religion.” The New Republic 12/04/01

STAR SEARCH: Seven conductors in their 20s and 30s have gathered in Indiana to compete in the North American regional round of Alberto Vilar’s and Lorin Maazel’s worldwide conducting competition. “Following the North American regional round in Bloomington, there will be rounds at Krakow, Poland, in January; London in February; Sao Paulo, Brazil, in April; and Sydney, Australia, in August. One conductor from each round will advance to the finals in September in New York City’s Carnegie Hall.” Indianapolis Star 12/04/01

MUSIC IN DIFFICULT TIMES: “Do audiences need the continued comfort that familiar art provides, or do they need it to push them and force them confront and understand the world as it is?” This is the question facing programmers in the weeks since September 11. NewMusicBox 12/01

Wednesday December 5

HOW CROSSOVER KILLED CLASSICAL: “This week’s top-selling ‘classical’ album in the US is piano music composed by Billy Joel, a faded rock star. The top two albums in Britain are punched out by Russell Watson, an industrial-strength tenor who assaults football terraces with pop ballads and ice-cream arias in marshmallowy, Mantovani-like settings. These are the core of contemporary classics. Were the charts to be purged of such mongrelisms, there is little doubt that classical sales would fall below one per cent and the business would be shut down.” And yet, maybe the efforts gone into promoting such crossovers is killing the legit classical biz. The Telegraph (UK) 12/05/01

DEATH BY POPULARITY? The annual Glastonbury Festival is Europe’s largest music festival. But this year’s edition was canceled because of safety concerns. Authorities are threatening to kill next year’s edition for the same reason. “Last year’s festival was licensed for 105,000 spectators – but some estimates put the real attendance above 200,000.” Organizers were fined for allowing too many people in. BBC 12/05/01

THE URBAN COWGIRL RIDES OFF: Few North American orchestras can boast truly outstanding management these days – stunning incompetence is much more common. But the San Francisco Symphony has been flourishing over the last decade, thanks in large part to its dynamic president, Nancy Bechtle. Bechtle, who is stepping down after a 14-year reign, was feted this week at Davies Symphony Hall, even as more good news about the state of the SFS was released: “[T]he Symphony ended its fiscal year with a $48.7 million budget, retired its accumulated deficit of $597,000, [and] presented 237 concerts attended by nearly 600,000 people.” San Francisco Chronicle 12/05/01

AVANT GARDE – MISSING IN ACTION: What happened to the opera avant garde? Twenty-five years ago Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach promised to energize and change the world of contemporary opera. But that promise was never fulfilled and today’s operas act as if the avant garde never happened. Financial Times 12/05/01

YOUNGEST OPERA COMPOSER? Fifteen-year-old Sophie Serese “is believed to be the youngest person to have written both music and libretto for a full-length opera, although Mozart wrote the music to his first opera when he was 12.” Her third opera premieres this week in Melbourne. The Age (Melbourne) 12/05/01

BET THE NY PHIL THINKS THIS IS HILARIOUS: In what may be the strangest development to come out of the current world tensions, renowned French conductor/composer Pierre Boulez was detained by Swiss authorities, and informed that he was on their list of potential terrorists. Apparently, back in his impetuous youth in the 1960s, Boulez publicly declared that opera houses should be blown up. BBC 12/04/01

DEPRIEST GETS HIS KIDNEY: “After waiting six months for a transplant, Oregon Symphony conductor James DePreist has undergone surgery to receive a kidney from an anonymous donor… He suffers from kidney disease, which is incurable, but DePreist has said a new kidney ‘lasts indefinitely.'” Andante (AP) 12/05/01

Tuesday December 4

LA SCALA’S RISKY RENOVATION: “On Friday, Milan’s opera season will open in Teatro alla Scala, as it has done for 223 years, but will then move for two years to a newly-built auditorium in an industrial suburb. No one knows if audiences will follow. In the superstitious art world there are fears La Scala’s rebuilding may be as cursed as that of the Royal Opera House in London, La Fenice in Venice and Teatro Massimo in Palermo. If the bureaucratic bungling, mafia infiltration and bad luck of these other renovations afflicts La Scala, its reopening in June 2004 could be delayed by years.” The Guardian 12/02/01

WHO LEARNS MUSIC ANYMORE? What’s happened to arts education? “There simply isn’t time in our culture to take music seriously. Mothers who might once have encouraged their children to take piano lessons or study the violin in order to expand their minds and acquire the fundamentals of good discipline are now often forced to tackle two jobs just to make ends meet, leaving their kids in after-school or day-care programs. That luxury we used to call ‘spare time’ is so diminished that families don’t regularly get together at the kitchen table; they now consider a quick meal at McDonald’s a sit-down dinner.” Opera News 12/01

WHAT’S IN A PERFORMANCE? The hype surrounding the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 2000 premiere of Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara’s 8th Symphony was at a fever pitch by the time the first performances occurred. Sadly, conductor, musicians, and critics alike were disappointed with the results, and the premiere appeared to be an unusual failure for Rautavaara. But a new recording may be proving that it’s all in the interpretation. Philadelphia Inquirer 12/04/01

HOW TO RUN AN ORCHESTRA: St. Louis is teetering, Toronto just barely dodged a bullet, Chicago is vulnerable, and countless other North American orchestras are running deficits and running scared. So has anyone figured out how to run a profitable, yet artistically skilled orchestra? Well, Nashville has. Yeah, that Nashville. Nashville Tennessean 12/04/01

LOSS LIEDER: “For whatever reason, vocal programs have shot up in number and quality in the past few years. The phenomenon has stemmed in part from an influx of talent: so many compelling baritones, mezzos, and light-voiced tenors have popped up that the names have begun to blur.” The New Yorker 12/03/01

AFTER YOU BEAT ‘EM, JOIN ‘EM: “The first of the major record labels’ online music download services, MusicNet, is launching among a flurry of activity of paid-for sites hoping to win over post-Napster music fans. MusicNet, which is backed by Warner, EMI and Bertelsmann, will be available through RealNetworks’ new RealOne service from Tuesday.” BBC 12/04/01

  • AND THEN RESTRICT ‘EM: The music industry has high hopes for their new pay-for-download service, but MusicNet carries such heavy restrictions on where and how users can listen to the music they buy that many online music enthusiasts are barely taking notice of the launch. Wired 12/04/01

Monday December 3

WHY THERE’S HOPE FOR CLASSICAL MUSIC: “The ‘regression equation’ – one of the preferred tools for understanding economies – shows that for classical orchestras, the likelihood of money being spent on orchestral music is linked to consumers’ increasing age, education, and income. Graying of classical music audiences is most often viewed as a serious problem rather than a valuable asset. Economic demographer David Foote offers telling arguments as to why aging baby-boomers are likely to increase the classical music market.” La Scena Musicale 12/01/01

  • AND THAT INCLUDES OPERA: Opera devotees are fond of bemoaning the passing of what they view to have been opera’s Golden Age in the mid-20th centuiry. “But is the situation really so bad? It might be worthwhile to step back and take a brief survey of where opera — particularly among American composers — seems to be heading of late. While there’s no single emerging trend, several tendencies suggest a relatively healthy state, arguably more fertile than what has been seen in the recent past.” Andante 12/03/01

WHY HOW WE GET MUSIC HAS CHANGED: It’s popular to say that the internet really changed nothing after the dotcom crash. And recording companies would probably be happy with such a version of history. But the music-sharing phenomenon has transformed how we get music, and traditional music companies blew it every step of the way. Salon 12/03/01

WHEN ORCHESTRA GOES BUST: What happens to subscribers’ money when an orchestra goes out of business? The San Jose Symphony offers three options…San Jose Mercury News 12/02/01

THE MUSICAL PSYCHIC: Psychic Rosemary Isabel Brown has died at the age of 85. “She claimed to have been in touch with Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin and some 20 other composers who had employed her as their contact on earth to receive their latest compositions. How was it that a woman apparently of little musical ability had one day sat at a piano and had begun to play Chopin with ease, and Chopin music that no one had heard before?” The Economist 11/30/01

HSU DIES: “Fei-Ping Hsu, a Chinese-born American concert pianist who built an acclaimed career after spending part of the 1960s banished to a rural rice farm, was killed in a car accident in northeastern China. He was 51.” Nando Times (AP) 12/03/01

Sunday December 2

BUILDING A BETTER ORCHESTRA: Why do some orchestras flounder along – some even going out of business – while others always seem to thrive? Sure there’s something to quality and repertoire and having enough money. But “the most important factor is the one that most audience members are probably least aware of: the board and its leadership. San Francisco Chronicle 12/02/01

A NEW GEORGE: “A last album of George Harrison’s music was being finished in secrecy in the months before his death. He played tracks from the CD to his family and friends in his private room at a Los Angeles hospital last Sunday, four days before he died.” Sunday Times (UK) 12/02/01

HOW TO PLAN A CONCERT HALL: Before there’s a design, before there’s a budget, there’s a guy. A guy who takes all the hopes and aspirations for a new concert hall and starts funneling them into a new $200 million concert hall. In Atlanta the guy is Tom Tomilinson, and the Atlanta Symphony is counting on him. Atlanta Journal-Constitution 12/02/01

CRITIC’S CRITIC: By the end of his life (he died at age 85 last week) former Washington Post music critic Paul Hume had stopped listening to music, said his wife. It didn’t interest him anymore. But “the defining characteristic of Hume’s tenure was an intense love for everything about music and the making of it. That may seem like an awfully obvious thing for a music critic, but it can’t be taken for granted.” Baltimore Sun 12/02/01

SCOTTISH ROW OVER DANCE

Scottish Ballet wasnt to turn itself into a modern dance company. But this week a Scottish Parliament committee condemned Scottish Ballet’s financial plans as “hopes, wishes and false expectations,” and accused it of erecting a “necessary smokescreen” in announcing it would be moving away from traditional ballet. Now the wife of the Scottish First Minister says she supports the company’s plans. The Scotsman 12/01/01

Media: December 2001

Monday December 31

THE LOWLY WRITER: So TV writers’ pay is getting cut because the American networks are losing money? No one’s getting rich here, certainly not writers. “There are about 150 series per year with about an average of 10 staffers each, or about 1,500 staff writer/writer-producer, prime-time jobs per year. There are a required two freelance scripts given out per series for a maximum of about 300 freelance scripts per year. That’s 1,800 possible jobs being fought for by over 10,000 active WGA West members (not including East Coast WGA members) and the additional how-many-more tens of thousands more non-guild members attempting to break in.” Los Angeles Times 12/31/01

  • Previously: LOWLY SCREENWRITERS REGAIN THEIR LOWLY PLACE: For a brief time in the mid-90s, screenwriters were pulling in multi-million-dollar contracts for scripts they hadn’t even written yet. But after some high-profile flops, “screenwriters are back to being the bastard children of Hollywood. There was a bit of a backlash to all the big screenplay deals in the late 80’s and early 90’s. We’re paying for it now.” The New York Times 12/09/01 (one-time registration required for access)

NOT INTERESTED IN DIGITAL TV: One year after digital TV became available in Australia, fewer than 10,000 Australian households have bought digital converters. That’s 80 percent below projections. “Advocates of the new digital technology – which allows for interactive viewing – hope for improved sales next year.” Sydney Morning Herald 12/31/01

THE STAR IS A MURDERER? The Iranian movie Kandahar has had rave reviews in the international press this year. “However, it is now being claimed that one of the film’s amateur actors is in fact the prime suspect in a political assassination that took place more than 20 years ago.” BBC 12/30/01

Sunday December 30

AT ODDS WITH THE CRITICS: The Top 10 Movie lists of critics and audiences are very different. “Comparing our Top 10 list with theirs is like scanning the menus at McDonald’s and Chez Panisse. Both have potatoes. We loved Rush Hour 2. The critics adored The Man Who Wasn’t There. We dug The Mummy Returns. They preferred Ghost World. Not a single foreign word appears on our list.” So what good are critics? Washington Post 12/27/01

ANOTHER SIGN OF MOVIES MOVING OUT OF AMERICA: Every American state has one – a state film office that markets locations and facilitates permits for the movie industry. Now Washington State, which attracted $50 million worth of movie business in 2000, is considering closing its film office because of huge state revenue shortfalls. One reason for the cut? Movie business has dried up in the state as productions shoot in Canada. Seattle Times 12/30/01

Friday December 28

THE EVIL THAT IS HOLLYWOOD: Is the Hollywood film industry “a sort of Frankenstein that has high-concepted itself into a weird, ugly blandness while stomping on fragile cinematic cultures worldwide even as it attempts to befriend, co-opt, and sometimes imitate them?” A new book charges corruption and coziness between Hollywood and the American government, which encourages a bland status quo. American Prospect 12/17/01

  • CONSPIRACY OR PLAIN INCOMPETENCE? So when exactly did Hollywood go bad? The whole culture of big-budget filmmaking is so generic and unadventurous that even as earth-shaking an event as 9/11 failed to change anything in the long term. And most films these days seem to be little more than “sense-stimulating bombardments designed for pacification and crude social programming.” The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 12/28/01

Thursday December 27

SUCCESS ABROAD DOESN’T TRANSLATE AT HOME: India is the biggest producer of movies in the world. But India’s film industry is trying to crack the world movie market outside India. Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Ghum (“Sometimes Joy Sometimes Sorrow”) is the most expensive Indian film ever made. “The 400 million rupee ($8.3 million) production made it to number three in Britain in its first week, the highest position an Indian movie has ever reached in the British top ten, and earned 450,000 pounds ($647,000) in the weekend ending Dec. 16.” But at home the movie is not faring well… Nando Times (AP) 12/24/01

TOTAL OVERREACTION 101: In the mid-90s, the satirist Christopher Buckley penned a novel in which Big Tobacco concocted a scheme to pay Hollywood to feature its top actors and actresses smoking onscreen. There’s no evidence that this ever actually happened, but an astounding number of movie characters seem to be leaning fairly heavily on the nicotine crutch these days, even as “real” people are cutting down. One California professor is agitating for an automatic ‘R’ rating for any film containing smoking. San Francisco Chronicle 12/27/01

DIETRICH AT 100: “Marlene Dietrich’s 100th birthday is being celebrated in Berlin, the home city of the late Hollywood star.” Among many events celebrating Germany’s dark diva, “the Berlin Film Museum is staging a special exhibition and showing never-before-seen private films of the late star.” BBC 12/27/01

Wednesday December 26

THE NEED FOR QUALITY TV: Many critics have been predicting the end of quality television drama. “Television’s perennial problem, which can only worsen during an economic downturn, is that ‘formulaic’ is far cheaper than ‘original’.” But “unless television produces big, event pieces that cannot be seen anywhere else, it’s just going to become an output box for movies — a worthless piece of machinery.” The Times (UK) 12/26/01

BOOKS ON SCREEN: “The process of turning novels into movies is an inexact science. When it happens, it happens. Getting there, novelists and filmmakers said, can be delicate and harrowing.” Los Angeles Times 12/26/01

Monday December 24

THE DIGITAL MARCH: Digital art flourished in 2001, even as the Dot-bust gained momentum. Perhaps they were motivated by the recognition that making digital art might yield greater, if less tangible, rewards. ‘We’re past the initial glow of excitement about a new medium. Now the challenge is to take this beyond a small group of intrepid explorers and the gee-whiz of a new technology and into an art form that can engage a larger audience and sustain itself in the long run’.” New York Times 12/24/01 (one-time registration required

Friday December 21

AWARDS SEASON GETS GOING: The Golden Globe nominations help clarify the Oscar field. “The competition for best dramatic film pits A Beautiful Mind, Ron Howard’s adaptation of the story of a brilliant but schizophrenic mathematician, which earned six nominations, against Peter Jackson’s epic adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring; Todd Field’s intense In the Bedroom, about a middle- aged couple torn apart by the murder of their son; David Lynch’s nightmarish and enigmatic Mulholland Drive; and Joel Coen’s black- and-white neo-noir The Man Who Wasn’t There.” The New York Times 12/21/01 (one-time registration required for access)

NOT TO MENTION THE PRICE OF REAL ACTORS: Animation used to take time: each frame was a separate work of art, and 7200 of them were needed for a five minute film. But with computer techniques, the task has been considerably quickened and simplified. Add to that an audience willing to accept a less-polished look, and suddenly there’s a rush of animated films showing up on line, at festivals, and in theaters. Wired 12/20/01

JOKE-WORTHY: How will we know when computers can really think? One criterion might be the ability to tell a joke. Off the evidence so far, computers still fall short. In a recent survey of humor – 100,000 people from 69 countries – the jokes generated by computers were far less funny than those made up by people. Then again, maybe we just don’t know what computers laugh at. The New Scientist 12/20/01

Thursday December 20RECORD YEAR FOR MOVIES: Hollywood has already surpassed its biggest grossing year – last year’s record $7.7 billion. “We’re definitely going to surpass $8 billion – it’s just a matter of by how much.” BBC 12/19/01

  • THE BILLION DOLLAR CLUB: Think it was a bad year for movies? Think again. Three Hollywood movie studies each made more than a billion dollars this year. “Buena Vista International, a unit of entertainment giant Walt Disney Co has joined fellow studios Warner Bros and Universal in hitting the coveted target, marking the first time since 1999 that three studios have hit the billion mark.” Sydney Morning Herald (AFP) 12/20/01

THE EMPEROR’S NEW MOVIE: The movie Mulholland Drive was put together with left-over bits of a rejected network TV series. Critics across the country love it, but “their endorsement reflects the ultimate example of intellectual hubris – the assumption if you don’t understand it, it must be brilliant. Because the film was stitched together with less of a blueprint than Frankenstein’s monster. Not to sound like an old fuddy-duddy, but the only real problem with Mulholland Dr. the movie, is that due to the way Lynch patched it together, it makes absolutely no sense.” Los Angeles Times 12/19/01

  • Previously: NY CRITICS IGNORE HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTERS: “In a snub to Hollywood, the New York Film Critics Circle yesterday named David Lynch’s cryptic, arty thriller Mulholland Drive the best movie of 2001. At the same time, In the Bedroom, the directorial debut by actor Todd Field, snagged three prizes, best actor (Tom Wilkinson), best actress (Sissy Spacek) and best first film.” New York Post 12/14/01

THE NEW NEMESIS OF FRENCH FILM: “When French media mogul Jean- Marie Messier announced he had bought the entertainment arm of USA Networks in a multibillion-dollar deal, stock markets cheered but the French cinema world went into mourning. Film producers fear the deal, which gives Messier’s Vivendi Universal conglomerate a U.S. outlet for its blockbuster movies like Jurassic Park and The Mummy, will sound the death knell for the financing system that is the lifeblood of French film.” MSNBC 12/20/01

Wednesday December 19

NAVEL-GAZING OF THE BEST KIND: The story couldn’t be any more perfect for Hollywood. A bitter, divisive politician gains an inordinate amount of power in a difficult time for the nation, and draws up a list of people who are anti-American, parading them and their supposed wrongs in public view, ruining careers, families, and lives before he is finally stopped by the prevailing of common sense. So why has it taken so long for a decent movie to be made about Joe McCarthy’s blacklist? The Christian Science Monitor 12/19/01

Tuesday December 18

VALENTI’S (NOT-SO-VEILED) THREAT: Motion picture industry lobbyist Jack Valenti took his campaign for new forms of digital copyright protection to a government-organized technodweeb seminar this week, warning that if new forms of encryption are not voluntarily developed for the predicted influx of broadband video content, he and his pals in Congress will not hesitate to force the issue. Wired 12/18/01

DISNEY BUYS HIGH-PLACED HELP: The Disney Company is competing with the BBC as commercial broadcasters go head to head on new services with the government-owned broadcaster. Now Disney has hired former culture minister Chris Smith as a “senior consultant” “Mr Smith’s appointment comes in the run-up to the planned launch by the BBC of two new children’s digital channels, which will be competing with Disney for an audience.” BBC 12/18/01

Monday December 17

CULTURE WIRE: All over Europe, new cultural centers devoted to digital art are coming into being. “We want to bring digital art and its creation to a wider audience, as well as provide a suitable base for artists-in-residence to use the Cube as a type of personal studio. We also want to function as a sort of creative launching-pad for artists to explore new forms of artistic expression using digital technologies.” Wired 12/17/01

REAL MONEY: The thing about TV reality shows is – they’re cheap to make. You have to pay actors a lot of money, while reality TV participants get peanuts. Participants on MTV’s The Real World have been paid as little as $5000 in one-time payments for their participation, even as the shows have found a lucrative afterlife in reruns. Now, some of the Real Worlders are demanding more of the pie. The New York Times 12/16/01 (one-time registration required for access)

Sunday December 16

NOT OKAY TO BE SMART: “In Hollywood, you can never be too rich or too thin, but you can be too smart. It’s OK to have a beautiful face. It’s not OK to have a beautiful mind. Smart people are socially inept, inward-looking and compulsive, bedeviled by their obsession with whatever it is that they do, be it mathematics, piano, painting, lexicography, chess, cryptography or just general “Jeopardy!”-like knowledgeableness. Lurking in the background is the computer nerd. There has been a frenzy of projects featuring such characters recently, and there’s more to come.” Los Angeles Times 12/16/01

THE PROBLEM WITH DIGITAL ART: “Galleries don’t really show a lot of new media – it’s hard for them to present it. It’s not like a painting that they know how to hang. Another problem is commercial: Many pieces aren’t meant to be sold, and in any case, the market for such works is small. Part of that is due to newness; part is due to ‘problems of the future’ – like, is there tech support for the art when things break down?” Los Angeles Times 12/16/01

ALL ABOUT DREAMING: The movies encourage dreaming. But “a trio of films that ask us to dream about dreaming. Like other recent movies – including the virtual reality universe of The Matrix and the disorienting backward narrative of Memento – the new dream movies look to shake up our thinking and get us to question our perceptions of reality. They don’t just feature dream sequences; they want us to think about the process of dreaming itself. But they also go a step further by making the connection between dream and death.” Dallas Morning News 12/16/01

ALL ABOUT THE SCREENWRITING… How is it that a country that could produce Shakespeare has so few decent screenwriters? “There’s a dearth of film dramatists in this country. When you try to think of writers to attach to projects it’s very hard. You could recite a rosary of [accomplished] British screenwriters and it wouldn’t go beyond a few… ” The Guardian (UK) 12/15/01

Friday December 14

FINALLY – PEACE AT PACIFICA: The board of Pacifica Radio Network has been at war with some of its long-time fans and supporters for two years as the board tried to professionalize the operation while listeners (and many staff) tried to preserve the network’s alternative community base. Now the factions have come to a settlement that will return control of Pacifica’s stations back to local interests. San Francisco Chronicle 12/13/01

NY CRITICS IGNORE HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTERS: “In a snub to Hollywood, the New York Film Critics Circle yesterday named David Lynch’s cryptic, arty thriller Mulholland Drive the best movie of 2001. At the same time, In the Bedroom, the directorial debut by actor Todd Field, snagged three prizes, best actor (Tom Wilkinson), best actress (Sissy Spacek) and best first film.” New York Post 12/14/01

Thursday December 13

ARTS ON AUSSIE TV – M.I.A.: For the first time in a decade, the Australian Broadcasting Company doesn’t have an arts magazine to broadcast in prime time. “The ABC is now asking whether the arts-magazine format has had its day and whether a more cost-effective and successful way to cover the arts is through documentaries and specials.” The question is whether ABC is living up to its charter obligation to provide arts programming. The Age (Melbourne) 12/13/01

WHO KNEW THEY HAD A UNION? “On Wednesday, the Hollywood directors union reached a tentative deal on a new contract, almost seven months before the current agreement expires.” Nando Times (AP) 12/12/01

Wednesday December 12

PAYING FOR WEBCASTING: The Canadian government is acting to stop free re-broadcasting of TV programs over the web. “For the first time, we’re introducing creative recognition of artistic production on the Net. ‘If you want to take someone else’s signal, you’ll have to pay for the creative rights. Producers and broadcasters have to pay the actors, pay the producers, pay the news people. This creates a level playing field between traditional forms of transmission, satellite and cable, and the Internet.” Toronto Star 12/12/01

Monday December 10

PENALTIES FOR FILM SUBSIDIES? US filmworkers have filed a petition with the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Trade Commission “asking the government to examine the legality of Canada’s subsidies to U.S. filmmakers. It proposes tariffs be levelled against U.S. filmmakers in the exact amount of the Canadian subsidy they receive.” Predictably, Hollywood studios oppose the idea. Toronto Star 12/09/01

TECH PERFORMANCE: Some internet art is evolving into performance art. One project at the Brooklyn Academy of Music monitors “the live activity in thousands of Internet chat rooms and message boards, then converting these public conversations into a computer-generated opera. The New York Times 12/08/01 (one-time registration required for access)

Sunday December 9

THE POWER BEHIND THE AWARDS: We’re getting into movie critic awards season. Though they’re not as widely recognized by the general public, critics associations have enormous influence. “Film reviewers’ organizations abound, but only three really rate in Hollywood: New York, L.A. and the overall National Society of Film Critics. These media prizes may be widely esteemed, insomnia-inducing and even copied by the Oscars, but they also have a scandalous history. The voting conclaves are so mysterious – and regarded by many as being so sacred – that it may seem as if the critics are powwowing to pick a pope, but in fact their secret antics can be quite devilish.” Los Angeles Times 12/09/01

LOWLY SCREENWRITERS REGAIN THEIR LOWLY PLACE: For a brief time in the mid-90s, screenwriters were pulling in multi-million-dollar contracts for scripts they hadn’t even written yet. But after some high-profile flops, “screenwriters are back to being the bastard children of Hollywood. There was a bit of a backlash to all the big screenplay deals in the late 80’s and early 90’s. We’re paying for it now.” The New York Times 12/09/01 (one-time registration required for access)

Friday December 7

ONE BILLION SERVED: “It is estimated that by the end of its cinema release more than one billion children will have seen Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. This is on top of the those who have read the books, which thus far have sold more than 160 million copies throughout the world.” The Age (Melbourne) 12/08/01

Thursday December 6

TARGETING KIDS: Last year, the Federal Trade Commission reported that adult-rated movies, records, and electronic games were being marketed to children. This year, the FTC reports some improvement. “The movie and video game industries have largely stopped the direct targeting of adult-rated materials to children. The bad news is that the music industry has done little if anything to curb the marketing of inappropriate records to kids, or to provide parents with better information about lyrical content.” Boston Globe 12/06/01

TRAILER TRASH: Is there a growing backlash against the pile-up of movie trailers theatres are forcing audiences to watch before the main attraction this holiday season? “Now, most moviegoers enjoy a trailer or two. But the half-dozen or more they get during the holiday season, when the studios trumpet new pictures, strikes some as too much of a good thing. Traffic in movie trailers has reached gridlock proportions.” Philadelphia Inquirer 12/06/01

OR MAYBE THE SHOWS THEMSELVES ARE DUMBWeakest Link and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire are still on the air – barely. “Viewers who once tuned in to watch ordinary people compete for big bucks are tuning out at the first glimpse of another tiresome group of pseudo-celebs – who have included everyone from grown-up Brady Bunch kids to Playboy Playmates. What ordinary people learn most often when celebrities take over a quiz show is that some celebrities are as dumb as fence posts.” New York Post 12/06/01

Wednesday December 5

WALT’S CENTENARY: “Hollywood is celebrating the life and career of one of entertainment’s most influential figures. Walt Disney, who would have been 100 years old on Wednesday, played a pivotal role in developing family entertainment – most significantly as a pioneering animator. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organisation which stages the Oscars, is presenting a special tribute at its Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills.” BBC 12/05/01

  • HATING DISNEY: What could be more American than the love of that creator of Snow White, that father of The Mouse, that delighter of children worldwise, Walter E. Disney? Um, despising him, actually. Washington Post 12/05/01

Monday December 3

TOLKIEN FAMILY DISPUTE: A dispute over the soon-to-be-released Lord of the Rings movie has split members of the Tolkien family. “J. R. R. Tolkien signed away the film rights to The Lord of the Rings for just £10,000 in 1968, five years before his death at the age of 81.” New Zealand Herald 12/03/01

Sunday December 2

THE PROBLEM WITH COMMUNITY STANDARDS: The movie Fat Girl has been banned in Ontario because it violates “community standards.” Of all the reasons to ban something, this kis the most idiotic. “Quite simply, there is no community. There are thousands of communities. And there is no reason for the most conservative and least sophisticated of those communities to impose their standards – to impose what amounts, at root, to taste – on my community. Just as my community doesn’t force other communities to watch French art films.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/01/01

THE NEW FACE OF ART FILMS: “A new kind of art house movie has come to town, a distinctive type of picture with its own audience that exists alongside traditional (and still very much admired) fare, but is as different from it as chalk proverbially is from cheese. Several qualities, at times together, at times standing alone, typify these new kinds of films. But it’s what they lack that defines them: Let’s call these features, for shorthand’s sake, heartless art films. It’s the new face of alternative cinema, so we’d better get used to it.” Los Angeles Times 12/02/01

THE NEXT DISNEY? John Lasseter, the animation wiz behind Toy Story is being called the Walt Disney of the 21st Century. “He gives the impression of being a sane man who has, until recently, been considered crazy. ‘In order to work in animation, part of you has to be a child that’s never grown up.” The Telegraph (UK) 12/01/01