The British Museum says that more than 2000 items are missing from its collection and that 28 items have been stolen in recent years. “While the thefts represent a tiny fraction of the 150 million items in the library’s possession, the stolen items are valued at £100,000, with a number of rare maps and illustrated plates ripped from antique books by international thieves. A single plate cut from a 1522 volume on Pompeii is worth £45,000.”
Month: March 2006
Will Digital Downloads Save Classical Music?
“Proportionately, classical sells better digitally than on CD. Whereas classical accounts for about 3%-4% of total sales of music in shops, on iTunes it accounts for 12% of sales…”
After The Eye (Then What?)
David Marks and Julia Barfield spent years getting the London Eye built. It’s become a modern landmark icon. So what do you do as a followup? There is that problem of being typecast…
British Museum’s New Global Role
“Until five or 10 years ago, almost all exhibitions took place in quite a small circuit of museums, in Europe and the US, and perhaps Japan and Korea. Now that has changed quite profoundly. We can take the collection to Africa, to China, and they can use it as they want, because in each case it has a different public to address, and a different story to tell.”
French Catch The Writing Bug
French publishers are drowning under a sea of unsolicited manuscripts. “With the short 35-hour working week in France and a fall in the average retirement, increasing numbers of French men and women are turning pen to paper to write ‘their book’. Most, some 75 percent, write novels loosely based on their own experiences, turning the editor into a kind of shrink, an often unwilling confidante party to the author’s deepest secrets, fears and desires.”
Aix – A Global Opera Hub?
The new director of France’s Aix-en-Provence opera festival says he’d like the festival to become an international hub for opera. “I would like the Aix festival to be a global opera hub. Festivals have helped the world of opera evolve, and they must reach beyond the place where they are held.”
The Future: Third World Cities?
“The third-world metropolis is becoming the symbol of the ‘new’. If, for the better part of the 20th century, it was New York and its glistening imitations that symbolised the future, it is now the stacked-up, sprawling, impromptu city-countries of the third world. The idea of the total, centralised, maximally efficient, planned city has long since lost its futuristic appeal: its confidence and ambition have turned to anxiety and besiegement; its homogenising obsession has induced counter-fantasies of insubordination, excess and life forms in chaotic variety. Such desires find in the third-world metropolis a scope, a speed, a more fecund ecology.”
Orchestras Get The Tech Bug
Orchestras are finally getting into technology in a big way, offering ringtones and MP3s. “What marks out classical downloading from pop-based genres is that classical music has so much more to gain. Digital technology is fast becoming the new vanguard in the fight for audiences.”
Louisiana Phil Back In New Orleans
The Louisiana Philharmonic has resumed playing in its homeown. “The orchestra has started a 12-week spring season that was planned long before Hurricane Katrina hit and scattered the players everywhere. Members have since played with 61 different orchestras. The musicians [have gone] to great lengths to maintain the programs planned before the hurricane.”
Hong Kong Gets Literary
Hong Kong is becoming a big literary center. “This month, Hong Kong becomes home to a new international literary prize and to the relaunched Asia Literary Review. Major overseas publishers and agents, meanwhile, have been making regular visits or setting up operations in this area. Hong Kong is working hard to position itself in the middle of this potentially booming book trade.”