The San Antonio Symphony still hopes to perform this season. “We were a little surprised by that. I’m not sure we’d support taking it totally down. I’d like to work at keeping a few concerts. It is important to keep some music out there, keep some musicians at least partly compensated.”
Month: August 2003
Munch Treasure Disintegrating
“One of Norwegian art history’s most important treasures, Edvard Munch’s Puberty, is being slowly destroyed. The paint has become so loose on the canvas that it cannot be hung and must be laid flat and covered with a protective cloth.”
Sydney Symphony – Going For The Personal Connection
The Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s new music director is rethinking how the orchestra operates. “Gianluigi Gelmetti is determined to strengthen the orchestra’s links with its community by taking a personal interest in relationships with sponsors, governments and funding bodies, actively helping the careers of young conductors and instrumentalists, and electing to lead SSO touring in his first year to Lismore, Armidale and Newcastle.”
Chinese Dance – Going Out Into Its Own?
“Can China develop its own indigenous ballet? After decades of imitative versions of Swan Lake and Giselle, interspersed with heavy-handed Maoist ideological productions, can China finally modernize its ballet with innovative contemporary works that reflect its own culture?”
Art To Represent All We Do As A Government Agency
The US Interior Department is creating art on a grand scale. “Employing artistic symbolism, the mural is intended to present their missions and activities in terms of Norton’s oft-expressed philosophy of arriving at environmental and conservation decisions through “collaboration and cooperation” (i.e., with the help of mining, oil drilling and logging companies). Not even Robert Rauschenberg, with all his glued-together-trash collages, attempted anything so ambitious.”
German Observatory Predates Stonehenge
The oldest observatory in Europe has been discovered in Germany. It predates Stonehenge. “The site, which is estimated to be around 7,000 years old and measures 75 meters in diameter, provides the first insights into the spiritual and religious worlds of Europe’s earliest farmers.”
The Chick Lit Put-Down
Why do critics disparage “chick lit”? “A whole generation of writing about young women’s lives is being trashed by commentators who took one look at a ‘fluffy pink cover’ and got out their knives. Chick-lit is a deliberately condescending term they use to rubbish us all. If they called it slut-lit it couldn’t be any more insulting.”
Do We Really Miss Katharine, Bob and Gregory That Much?
“America seems to be rather ghoulishly prolonging, and even luxuriating in, the grief attendant upon the recent spate of top-table Hollywood demises. This is a measure of the affection that these old warhorses inspired in many people. But I wonder if this enduring nostalgia doesn’t also arise from a widespread wish not to have to gaze upon the present, on the haemorrhaging economy and rising unemployment, on what’s been so disastrously wrought in the Middle East through lies and manipulation, or the ghastly triumphs of NeoCon-corporate feudalism.”
When The Beirut Museum Was Looted
The Baghdad National Museum is not the first to be looted during war. “During Lebanon’s tumultuous 15-year civil war, the Beirut National Museum lay in ruins. The museum was hit by artillery shells. Snipers fired from its upper floors, even boring a rifle hole into one of the ancient pieces of art. The fate of its priceless collections was unknown…”
Ancient Roman Vase Might Be Renaissance Product
One of the British Museum’s most important ancient Roman treasures may have been made in the Renaissance. “The vase is described by the museum as ‘the most famous cameo-glass vessel from antiquity’ and was a widely accepted to have been made circa 30-20 BC. “