“It’s widely accepted, of course, that Glasgow’s arts scene is one of the freshest and most exciting in the UK. Almost all Scotland’s major arts organisations are based here, from the National Theatre of Scotland and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to Scottish Opera and Scottish Ballet. … But can the city really compete during festival month, when Edinburgh hosts the largest and most diverse series of arts festivals in the world?”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Scientists: Strep Throat, Not Salieri, Killed Mozart
“A minor streptococcus epidemic, which probably originated in a military hospital, had erupted when Mozart died in 18th century Vienna, according to research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The scientists ascertained that strep probably caused his death by analyzing the local death records for the winter of 1791 and the years before and after.”
Why Can’t Scots Win The Bagpipe Band Championship?
“The dust and the din raised by 210 pipe bands from across the world – more than 8,000 pipers and drummers from 16 countries – have subsided on Glasgow Green, following Saturday’s World Pipe Band Championships, leaving Scottish bands and piping aficionados to ponder why it is that, for the fourth year running and for the eighth time over the past decade, the coveted grade one world championship has been piped off by an overseas band.”
Lost $600K Violin + Taxi + GPS = Happy Reunion
The latest version of the evergreen string-instrument-lost-in-a-cab story: Korean violinist Hanh-Bin “took a cab from Lincoln Center to his apartment in Chinatown, arriving at 12:40 a.m. Monday. Exhausted from the trip, he did not realize that his credit card and his violin, an 18th-century instrument built by Giovanni Francesco Pressenda, were still in the cab….”
Why Yale Press Shouldn’t Self-Censor Mohammed Images
“The capitulation of Yale University Press to threats that hadn’t even been made yet is the latest and perhaps the worst episode in the steady surrender to religious extremism … that is spreading across our culture. … Now we have to say that the mayhem we fear is also our fault, if not indeed our direct responsibility. This is the worst sort of masochism, and it involves inverting the honest meaning of our language as well as what might hitherto have been thought of as our concept of moral responsibility.”
Toledo Museum Director To Head Walton’s Crystal Bridges
“The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., today announced that it has hired Don Bacigalpi, current director of the Toledo Museum of Art, to be its new director. The announcement means that the Toledo Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art will be looking for new directors simultaneously this fall.”
Rocco’s Road Trip: NEA Chief To Visit Peoria
“Rocco Landesman, who was confirmed this month as the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, has accepted an invitation to visit Peoria, Ill., an offer proffered in response to public comments he made about the city.” His main inflammatory remark: “I don’t know if there’s a theater in Peoria, but I would bet that it’s not as good as Steppenwolf or the Goodman.” Unsurprisingly, that didn’t go over well with the locals.
Charles To National Trust: Change HQ Design Or I Quit
“A senior royal aide told the trust and its architects that [Prince Charles] could not accept the design of a proposed £14.5m building in Swindon and said it should be changed or they would face the prospect of his stepping down as its president, according to a source involved in the project at the time. … Clarence House has no minutes of the meeting but said any argument was about the sustainability of the building.”
Charge: Capa’s Iconic Falling Soldier Was Staged
“After nearly three-quarters of a century Robert Capa’s ‘Falling Soldier’ picture from the Spanish Civil War remains one of the most famous images of combat ever. It is also one of the most debated, with a long string of critics claiming that the photo, of a soldier seemingly at the moment of death, was faked. Now, a new book by a Spanish researcher asserts that the picture could not have been made where, when or how Capa’s admirers and heirs have claimed.”
When A Perfectionist’s Life Spins Out Of Control
“Friends say [Annie] Leibovitz has begun to think of herself less as a celebrity artist leading a charmed life and more as a single mother of three fighting to keep a roof over her head and food on her family’s table.” But she is still the photographer “responsible for some of the world’s most iconic magazine covers,” and so the question remains: “How on earth could something like this have happened to Annie Leibovitz?”