Twenty years on, that timetable has proved much too optimistic. Nazi-looted art is still regularly restituted: high-profile cases in the past year include an Oskar Kokoschka portrait returned to the heirs of the German-Jewish dealer Alfred Flechtheim by Sweden’s Moderna Museet (and sold for a record $20.4m on 12 November at Sotheby’s in New York). Many families are still seeking pictures stolen from their forefathers in what has been called the greatest art heist of all time.
Author: Douglas McLennan
A New Wave Of TV Shows Explores The Inner Workings Of The Brain
There are broader cultural reasons for this renewed interest in the inner workings of the mind. This is an age of ego, self-examination and narcissism. “When we say narcissism, that’s really brought on by technology,” says Esmail. “Now everyone has a platform. Everyone can be a publisher. Whole lives are put up for people to react to, to like, to dislike, to comment on, and, yes, that has turned everyone to look inwards, and to curate a personality.”
Countries Want Their Cultural Heritage Back. What’s A Museum To Do?
The first response to demands for restitution is simple. Concede to them. We have tons of other stuff in basements and attics. To be fair, this is starting to happen. France’s President Emmanuel Macron is legislating to “return Africa’s heritage to Africa”. The British Museum itself returns objects under permanent loan. The Benin bronzes are going to Nigeria and it has indicated a readiness to talk with Easter Island. A deeper worry is what restitution will mean to the purpose of world museums.
Filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci, 77
In a film-making career that stretched back to the early 60s, Bertolucci became a key figure of the extraordinary Italian new wave (alongside, and the equal of, Antonioni, Fellini, and Pasolini) but – uniquely – made a successful transition to large-scale Hollywood film-making with 1987’s The Last Emperor, which won nine Oscars, including best picture and best director for Bertolucci.
So you want to see a show?
Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened.
Weekend Listening Tip: Maria Schneider & The SRJO
Jim Wilke tells us that his Jazz Northwest broadcast on Sunday will present Maria Schneider conducting the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra. The program comes from his recording of the second of Ms. Schneider’s concerts with the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra.
Half Of England’s Endangered Theatres Are On The Coast
Just under half of all UK theatres currently at risk are in coastal towns, the Theatres Trust has revealed, as it issues a plea for seaside venues to be “restored and repurposed”. By investing in the buildings, it claims that they could become cultural hubs to “serve their local communities and drive regeneration”.
Did Britpop Lead To Brexit?
What Britpop originally was – a way of reclaiming an identity for gaudy, magpieish British music from the grey blanket of grunge, then slapped on the cover of Select magazine in April 1993 – was not what it became. Of course it wasn’t: the essence of every pop movement is altered by exposure, when it becomes about its consumers’ interpretations rather than its creators’ intentions. Punk went from art school kids seeking to shock to blokes with mohicans drinking cider outside shopping centres. Britpop went from something arch and wry and awkward to beery singalongs with arms around shoulders. In that transformation, though, Britpop did give new vigour to a strand of conservatism that has long existed in pop music – the one that believes there is A Proper Way To Do Things.
How Music Choice Resets A Silent Movie
When it comes to silent film, accompanists have infinite choices. Even in the early days of cinema, accompanists could improvise, select pieces from their own libraries, follow suggestions from cue sheets, or use the scores that came with some big-budget pictures, or any combination of these. Today, some accompanists try to recreate the sound of early cinema in their own performances, while others revel in using music that has been created since then.
Why Silicon Valley Tech Giants Are Drawn To China’s Future
China’s rise as a tech powerhouse has dovetailed with Silicon Valley’s growing, and often vividly expressed, distrust toward democracy itself. Always steeped in libertarian pique—not long ago, technologists expressed hope for floating ad-hoc nation-states or, as Larry Page put it, referencing Burning Man, “some safe places where we can try out some new things”— Silicon Valley now toys with Californian secessionism and Singapore-style authoritarian technocracy. That new horizon, that place of raucous experimentation with a frontier-like possibility at striking it rich, they believe, is in China.