The hypothetical question of where the Elgin Marbles would go if they were returned to Greece has incited a debate over the proper context for items of beauty. Do we have a responsibility to make sure works of art remain in the place that gives them artistic life? “It’s our loss if we find reasons not to worship beauty and condemn ourselves to a life of aesthetic squalor.” – The Guardian
Author: Douglas McLennan
FAKING IT
You probably didn’t know you could find one of Michelangelo’s frescoes from the Sistine Chapel or Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” in a museum in Naruto, Japan. The priceless pieces are among 1,074 artworks from 190 museums that have been reproduced for the new Otsuka Museum of Art, the world’s first “ceramic archive.” Why would you want to spend your time looking at a fake? For one thing, the works can be displayed under bright lights, revealing details that could never be seen in a traditional museum. – Daily Yomiuri (Japan)
EXPLOSIVE ART
A Bosnian artist is digging up dirt from minefields and selling it in what she calls a “special artistic performance.” “I’ve already sold one minefield for 500 marks. Mom and I sew bags that contain 10, 20, 30 and 50 kilograms. I sold quite a few bags the first day.” – New Jersey Online
A MUSEUM FOR POMERANIAN HISTORY
The last and newest of Germany’s Federal State museums has just opened in the town of Greifswald on the Baltic Coast. The Pommersches Landesmuseum will focus on its historic links with neighbors Sweden and Denmark. It’s Picture Gallery, housed in a converted Franciscan monastery, will also feature the works of Frans Hals, Caspar David Friedrich, Phillip Otto Runge, Max Liebermann and Vincent van Gogh. – The Art Newspaper
FIVE-STAR HOTEL, FIVE-STAR ART
It’s so hard to find a hotel with really good art in it anymore…if only the inn at Murecina, a little south of Pompeii, were an operating hotel/spa – as it was in A.D. 79 – instead of of an archaeological dig site, it would surely be booked year-round. Archaeologists first discovered the inn in 1959, and found several delicate frescoes that had been preserved when the explosion from Mount Vesuvius buried the building in ash. Since then the scientists have unearthed a reclining river god holding a cornucopia, a winged Minerva, and an image in miniature of an elegant maritime villa. – Archaeology
WANNA WRITE LIKE A SPICE GIRL?
Choosing from country music generators that know the long road from “flirt” to “hurt” or Goth-inspired generators that will search for that perfect rhyme for “pierced skin” (“fierce kin”?), phonetically challenged songsmiths and Web surfers looking for distraction can now pick up the mouse and sit back as the poetry springs forth from the computer screen. – New York Times
LEAVING SANTA FE
After 43 years John Crosby is stepping down from running the Santa Fe Opera. “A first-rate visionary and a second-rate conductor, Crosby has run his festival like a reasonably benign dictator, amassing an extraordinary record of significant premieres to counterbalance the tourist-attraction repertory. He has done much to cultivate domestic exposure to the neglected operas of his favourite composer, Richard Strauss, and has also helped discover several generations of important American singers. Glyndebourne was never like this.” – Financial Times
THE HOCKEY OPERA
- “I’ve lived with opera for a long time,” composer Leslie Uyeda told Canada’s National Post. “And one thing that a Canadian does not have when she watches opera is an intimate knowledge of the rolling hills of Italy — the landscape where [a typical Italian opera] takes place. I wanted to write something that North Americans would have no trouble relating to.” – Sonicnet
SEIJI TO THE RESCUE
After conducting “Falstaff” this weekend, Boston Symphony conductor Seiki Ozawa was driving home when he came across a car wreck. The car was on the edge of a cliff and Ozawa held onto it and stayed with the driver for 30 minutes until police arrived. – CBC
THE WRITE STUFF
Some writers insist if you want to be a writer, you must write everyday. Nice theory, says playwright Zinnie Morris, but it’s not the way it always works: writing is a creative force with a will of its own. “My own experience of writing plays has taught me that it will come in its own time, but unfortunately also on its own terms. No amount of pencil-sharpening, toe-tapping, or switching the computer on and off will quicken the process.” – The Guardian