“Everyone is at least familiar with the horror story surrounding Robert Hughes, the renowned Australian art critic and TV talking head: the accident that left him crippled, the threat of extortion that came from some of the travellers in the other car, the dangerous driving charges that were laid, then dismissed, then reinstated, and his subsequent sentencing in a court this year.” Hughes, who has written a new book on Goya, seems decidedly embittered by his experiences, and is furious with elements of the Australian press who sought to tar him as irresponsible and bigoted. He also believes that he was a victim of a judiciary run amok in provincial Western Australia. And just for the record, he believes that George W. Bush is “[leaching] any sense of democracy out” of America. In short, Hughes is not a happy man.
Month: December 2003
Desperate Times Call For Desperate PR Missteps
When the Art Gallery of Ontario announced, at the end of November, that it would be temporarily shuttering its Canadian wing, it took some time for the significance to reverberate with the public. But now that it has sunk in that the public will no longer have access to one of Canada’s most important collections, negative reaction is building. Sarah Milroy writes that the AGO has some legitimate business motives behind its decision, but that it is making all the wrong moves for all the right reasons. What could AGO have done differently? “The contrast to Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum is instructive,” says Milroy.
Canada Enacts Tax On MP3 Players
Canada is imposing a new tax on MP3 players. “A price increase of between $2 and $25 will come into effect after the Copyright Board of Canada gave the go-ahead Friday on a new levy for digital audio recorders, including Apple’s hot-selling IPod. The move is part of several efforts underway to combat music downloading and copying.”
Why Has Berlioz Been So Ill-Treated?
The Berlioz bicentennial has hardly made a dent in the standing of France’s greatest composer. “The diplomatic contagion of French ambivalence has encouraged the rest of the musical world to treat Berlioz as an objet trouve, an acquired taste instead of an established one. Two centuries after his birth, Berlioz is not espoused by concertgoers with the confidence they attach to Brahms, whose revelations were minor by comparison. The bicentennial year is ending without a perceptible improvement in Berlioz appreciation. The innate pettiness of France has condemned its greatest composer to perpetual disavowal, his bones to a peripheral tomb.”
Critic’s Lament: Santa – How About Fewer Self-Published Books?
Book critic Patti Thorn makes her Chrsitmas list. And what does she long for? “A good, juicy scandal. Jonathan Franzen’s tiff with Oprah was so much fun, but that was two long years ago. In 2003, the best you brought us was a few disgruntled literati upset that Stephen King was feted at the National Book Awards ceremony despite his – gasp – commercial success.”
Italy On Sale
A bill likely to pass in the Italian parliament would allow the state to sell off state assests – including buildings and possibly artworks. “Although the Colosseum and the Uffizi, for example, are both State property, no one believes that these will be carrying For Sale signs. Most people agree that the State owns vast numbers of former barracks, redundant post offices and stations, holiday homes for civil servants, and other unimportant buildings that can usefully pass into private hands. There might, however, be unrecognised treasures among these.”
Fenice Rises In Glittering Gala
A glittering assortment of international luminaries attended this weekend’s reopening of Vencie’s La Fenice opera house, eight years after it burned down. “To Venetians and opera lovers throughout the world, the 18th century theater represents the soul of this unique lagoon city, and its resurrection from the ashes – Fenice means phoenix – was cause for celebration across Italy. Fans lined up throughout the day to admire the newly polished marble facade, with the Fenice symbol, a gilded phoenix, hanging in the entranceway.”
St. Petersburg – City Of Writers
St. Petersburg is a great writer’s city, with its sophisticated culture and cramped bustling streets. You can visit the homes of some of Russia’s great writers: Dostoyevsky, Akhmatova, Nabokov, Pushkin… an what do these places tell us of their former occupants?
Rijksmuseum Under The Knife
Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum packed away its most famous Rembrandt this week as the museum begins four years of renovation. “The museum was built for 250,000 visitors a year, has been getting more than a million, and is being remodelled to accommodate twice that number.”
Frayling – The Man For The Job
Christopher Frayling is the new head of Arts Council England, and he seems well suited for it. “To those who regard themselves as on the inside, Frayling is known not as a popular historian but someone who has sat on every cultural committee going and has connections stretching from, where? – South Kensington to, presumably, 10 Downing Street. He is a trustee of the V&A, chairman of the Design Council, and has previously been a member of the Arts Council, as well as, less respectably, helping to choose the contents of the Millennium Dome’s faith zone. Frayling is even better connected than his predecessor in the job…”