“Christie’s International and Sotheby’s are offering $1 billion in price guarantees to sellers of Warhols and de Koonings before their fall sales. The two largest auction houses are betting that Russians or Asians will support art prices as a credit squeeze threatens to limit Wall Street bonuses.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
It’s Commuter Vs. Conservatory Students At Colburn
“The Colburn School, where thousands of Southern California children have learned to master a musical instrument,” has a big, new building, a new president, 100 live-in students at its Colburn Conservatory of Music, and a fight on its hands. “Parents of the 1,500-plus kids attending the Colburn’s popular community-based School of Performing Arts division say they’re being shortchanged as attention is shifting to professional training for the conservatory students.”
In Tight Market, Museums Lose To Private Collectors
“Public collecting is endangered by a shortfall of resources, a decline in political support and even a loss of nerve that could cut off the flow of masterworks for the people. It has always been hard for museums to compete with private collectors, but driven by the scarcity of great old works and an expanding class of wealthy buyers, the recent stratospheric rise of art prices has utterly outstripped most acquisitions budgets.”
Italy Moves To Protect Treasures From Earthquakes
In Italy, where earthquakes are common, the “Culture Ministry has implemented guidelines that it hopes will mitigate the threat that earthquakes pose to the country’s artistic heritage. … Under the new guidelines unveiled this summer, officials at the local and national levels are to evaluate the seismic risk to individual structures in their jurisdictions and take steps to reduce the vulnerability.”
Who Owns The New Dance Group’s Choreography?
“Choreographers associated with the New Dance Group, an activist-minded crucible of modern dance that flourished in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, based works on Woody Guthrie’s songs, the struggles of the Depression and the Spanish Civil War. Now one of those choreographers and the children of two others are embroiled in a very modern court battle over who has the right to perform their dances.”
What If Bosch And Bacon Were In Your Video Games?
“Echochrome is a videogame adaptation of the drawings of MC Escher. When it’s released for the PlayStation Portable later this year, you’ll be taking care of a tireless little marionette as he trudges through a series of paradoxical staircases and impossible corridors. … Even better would be to fly through Salvador Dalà landscapes, dodging monsters from Francis Bacon paintings.”
Low Numbers, Yes, But Arts TV Can Be High-Impact
“British television is not sure what to do about culture and its bosses seem to agree on only one thing: not many people watch it. … But viewing figures that can seem small when set against programmes that reach millions are still worth having. An audience of a few hundred thousand may be off the radar of ratings-chasing producers but it is far more than can ever see a performance at, say, the Royal Opera House….”
Disneyland Paris: No Longer A Shameful Acting Credit
The cast of the stage version of “High School Musical” rehearses through the night at Disneyland Paris. “This kind of show might once have been seen as the kind of embarrassing first step that singers and dancers go quiet about when they make it to the West End. While most of these young performers, living in student-dorm style accommodation with the rest of the 12,200 staff, are keen to move on to bigger stages and full-length shows, many are increasingly proud of working at the resort….”
Three Decades On, Raphael Frescoes Nearly Restored
“Now, nearly 30 years after work began, the restoration of Raphael’s frescoes in the rooms named after him in the Vatican Museums is approaching completion. Restorers said in recent interviews that their work in the Raphael Stanzas has brought insights into how the artist worked, from mistakes he made in mixing plaster to how he transferred his exquisite designs from small pieces of paper to the sprawling walls of papal apartments.”
With Soap Spoof, Philly Fringe Leaps Into Podcasting
“Philadelphia’s Fringe Festival has long been an event spanning many venues – theaters, studios, churches, streets, and even audience members’ living rooms (check out this year’s Kamerdans). Its latest frontier? The iPod. That’s right – the Fringe … is branching out into a new aural medium by offering its first-ever podcast, The Many Men of Martha Manning. The first of its six episodes is already available online.”