“While the loss and anguish of Nazi art looting is well known, a second series of German art seizures, decades after World War II, has largely gone unnoticed. Between 1973 and 1989 the East German police, known as the Stasi, seized more than 200,000 objects in hundreds of raids, according to experts and official archives.”
Month: November 2014
Jian Ghomeshi Arrested And Charged With Sexual Assault
“Former CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi will plead not guilty to charges of sexual assault and choking, his lawyer says. Ghomeshi was released on $100,000 bail after he was arrested and appeared in a downtown courtroom Wednesday. The 47-year-old has been charged with four counts of sexual assault and one count of overcome resistance – choking.”
Rare Shakespeare Folio Discovered In France
“The book was discovered this fall by librarians at a public library in St.-Omer, near Calais, who were sifting through its collections for an exhibition on English-language literature. The title page and other introductory material were torn off.”
David Hockney On What Artists Do
“When I’m actually painting, I feel like I’m 30 again. It’s only when I stop painting that I realize I’m not anymore.”
Giant Public Art Commission Collapses In Charges, Resignation
“An irregularity in the awarding of one of the most significant local art commissions in years has resulted in the resignation of a Houston Arts Alliance executive and stunned a sculptor who was preparing to create the biggest project of his career.”
NY Subway Performers Being Arrested By Police
“Although performing on the platform and mezzanine is legal (there is no permit or permission needed), subway performers have experienced an unprecedented amount of harassment from NYPD officers this year.”
What Data Sets Can Tell Us About The Arts
“Data may be big and getting bigger, but it’s not exactly thick on the ground in the performing arts. There is no IMDB for string quartets, composers, ballets, or even plays (though in theater there are some who are trying to make one). Where clear data sets exist, there’s a lot we can learn from them, and we should definitely encourage our big institutions to make more of their data transparently available to the public.”
So Why Did Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Archives Go To Texas?
“The Ransom Center already has extensive archives on writers Jorge Luis Borges, William Faulkner and James Joyce. Other Nobel laureates included in its collection are Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck. Monday’s announcement had raised eyebrows in Colombia.”
Janice Price Named CEO Of The Banff Center
“Luminato has an annual budget of $11 million. The Banff Centre, one of Canada’s largest arts organizations, has an annual budget of over $50 million. That includes major funding from the Alberta government. And Banff is hungry for expansion to enhance its profile way beyond the Rocky Mountains.”
Inside The Secret Culture Of Our Passwords
“In our authorship of them, in the fact that we construct them so that we (and only we) will remember them, they take on secret lives. Many of our passwords are suffused with pathos, mischief, sometimes even poetry. Often they have rich back stories.”