Author: Douglas McLennan

THE AMATEUR CLIBURN COMPETITION

Inspiring as the competition was, it was also profoundly depressing. It represented a celebration of the piano and the discipline of playing the instrument; it was a celebration of music, and of the people who have to make music, no matter what. But it was also an indictment of a society that has so little place for people with musical gifts to exercise them, especially if they want to live the American Dream.” – Boston Globe

BETTER LIVING THROUGH BOWLING

“Bob Putnam, a government professor at Harvard University, writes about bowling in the way Rachel Carson wrote about spring in “Silent Spring” or Ralph Nader wrote about cars in “Unsafe at Any Speed.” For Putnam, the dwindling percentage of Americans who bowl in a league is the perfect metaphor for the sharp decline of civic involvement. – Washington Post

FOLLOW THE LEADER

As North and South Korean relations continue to thaw, will artists in the two countries actually begin to enjoy artistic freedom for cross-cultural collaborations? The outlook is good, given that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is surprisingly committed to the performing arts and film. “The 58-year-old leader possesses particular interest and expertise in movies and stresses their importance in public more often than other fields. Film is recognized as one of the highest forms of art in North Korea as it is believed to encompass all other areas of arts following the leader’s conviction.” – Korea Herald (Part III of IV)

CLOSE, BUT NO…

After a preliminary victory for arts supporters, Republicans in Congress used an 11th-hour maneuver Thursday to block a spending bill that would have added $15 million to the National Endowment for the Arts budget – the first NEA increase approved by the House since 1992. GOP leaders defeated the bill by crafting an amendment that diverted the additional money to Indian health services. – New Jersey Online  

BETTER LEFT UNDONE?

Art historians have always puzzled over the large number of  paintings left “unfinished” by Paul Cezanne. Now a major exhibit of his “unfinished” works are on exhibit at Zurich’s Kunsthaus museum. As Cezanne wrote home to his mother in 1874: “I have to work constantly, (but) not in order to arrive at the finish, which attracts the admiration of imbeciles. I must strive to complete only for the satisfaction of becoming truer and wiser.” – MSNBC

THE ART LISTS

It’s been two months since American museums put up lists of artwork with questionable provenance during the Nazi era. “So far, no claimants have come forward to identify and seek restitution for objects on the Web sites put up by the Museum of Fine Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, or the Art Institute of Chicago. Nor have the sites yielded significant evidence that could lead to the recovery of stolen objects.” – Boston Globe

FRANCE COMES CLEAN

It’s been more than five decades since World War II, and France is just now beginning to look openly, in history books and art exhibits, at its collaborationist past. A new museum opens in Paris this week dedicated to shedding light on just what transpired during the Vichy regime. “The museum pulls no punches: it shows that collaboration with the Nazis was a major phenomenon in wartime France and that French police were as dangerous for resistance fighters and Jews as the Gestapo.” – Times of India (Reuters)

TRACES OF ROYALTY

“Researchers plan to test DNA from a mummy that sat in an oddity museum in Canada for decades to see if it is the body of an Egyptian pharaoh. The Niagara Falls Museum in Ontario displayed the mummy for 138 years as part of its collection, which included two-headed cows, a five-legged pig, Wild Bill Hickok’s saddle and a humpback whale skeleton.” – Chicago Sun-Times