“After decades of functioning as something like a planetarium – an attraction designed to spice up museums by showing documentaries aimed at families and nature enthusiasts – IMAX is suddenly in the spotlight,” with movies like The Avengers, The Amazing Spider-Man, Men in Black 3 and The Hunger Games being shown on the supersize screens.
Month: April 2012
An Ought-To-Be Legendary Violinist And Her Truly Legendary Missing Strad
A new two-hander play in New York recounts the story of the gifted, revered (by those in the know) and maddeningly prickly Erica Morini – and the fabled Stradivarius stolen from her apartment while she was in a hospital, dying.
Ai Weiwei’s Tax Lawsuit Hits Catch-22
“Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is learning a frustrating lesson about challenging Chinese authorities – he is welcome to sue the government over a festering tax case, but must first produce a company seal confiscated by police that he has no way of recovering.”
More Nazi Loot – This Time, A 16th-Century Italian Painting – Returned To Owners’ Heirs
“U.S. officials this week turned over a nearly 500-year-old Italian painting that had been stolen during World War II to the descendants of its Jewish owner. The painting, titled Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged By A Rascal, was created by Italian artist Girolamo Romani around 1538.”
What Do You Get When You Cross The AIDS Quilt With The Arab Spring And A Turkish Performance Artist?
“The artist Kutlug Ataman’s themes of identity, freedom and oppression are being literally stitched together into a performance for an Istanbul theater festival next month, inspired by a road trip that unraveled because of the Arab Spring. With the help of his audience, he is creating his version of a Bayeux Tapestry, in the hopes that one day it will help to decipher today’s Turkey.”
London Book Fair’s Special Guests This Year: Censors
“The special guest of this year’s fair was the Chinese Communist Party’s censorship bureau. Assisted by the government-funded, but independent, British Council, the fair’s organizers invited the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP)–the Communist Party’s designated body for ensuring that all publications, from poems to textbooks, are certified fit for the public at home and abroad to read.”
Canada’s National Gallery Attendance Up (Just Not Enough)
“The gallery, which received a parliamentary appropriation of more than $45-million last year, recorded 346,890 visitors for the 2011-12 fiscal year ending March 31. While representing a 10 per cent increase in attendance from the last fiscal year, it’s known the NGC was anticipating a higher total, in the expectation that its summer show, Caravaggio and His Followers in Rome, would do well during its exclusive-to-Canada three-month run.”
Why Don’t People Watch BBC Arts Programming? Lack Of Marketing
The commissioning editor for music and events said there are 350 hours of arts programming on the BBC each year, but audiences “don’t know it’s there” because the Corporation does “not spend a lot of money on marketing”.
Are Museums Trying To Overwhelm Visitors?
Julián Zugazagoitia describes visiting museums “where you walk into a room and there’s one little painting surround by all these cards in different languages. And the video. And X-rays of the painting. And the only thing you can’t see is the work of art itself.”
Did Humans “Invent” Music?
“Of course, music is universal now, but so are mobile phones, and we know that mobile phones aren’t evolved adaptations. When we think about music, it’s important to remember that an awful lot of features that we take for granted in Western music–like harmony and 12-bar blues structure, to say nothing of pianos or synthesizers, simply didn’t exist 1,000 years ago.”