“Russia’s deputy culture minister Grigory Pirumov has been detained on embezzlement charges, Russian state media reported on 15 March. Earlier in the day, the Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that several high-ranking culture ministry officials and businessmen were under investigation for allegedly ’embezzling state funds allocated for restoration work on cultural heritage sites’.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
There’s Finally An Artist At The Helm Of L.A. Music Center
“In an hour’s conversation, she” – Rachel Moore, a retired ABT corps member – “tirelessly emphasized that the business of the Music Center was art. Budgets were barely mentioned, and when they were it was with a skilled performer’s roll of her eyes and an engaging laugh. Instead, Moore avidly presented her broad artistic vision for a performing arts center that desperately needs one.”
New York City Allocates $2 Million To Promote Diversity Backstage
“Guidelines are being sent out to more than 1,000 arts groups and individuals in the five boroughs of New York, seeking applicants for the funds … Specifically, the grants are being offered to provide training for production and technical personnel.”
How They Found The Music Circuit In Our Brains
“[Researchers] played a total of 165 commonly heard natural sounds to ten subjects willing to be rolled into an fMRI machine to listen to the piped-in sounds. The sounds included a man speaking, a songbird, a car horn, a flushing toilet, and a dog barking. None sparked the same population of neurons as music.” (includes video)
Building Next Door To Bosch’s Original Studio Collapses, Shortly Before Bosch 500 Show Begins
“A medieval building that was supposed to serve as the canvas for Bosch by Night, a lightshow commissioned as part of the year-long celebrations to mark the quincentenary of Hieronymus Bosch’s death, collapsed on 27 February – days before the project’s launch in the artist’s hometown of Den Bosch in The Netherlands.”
Sergei Filin Isn’t Leaving The Bolshoi Ballet After All
“Sergei Filin has finally confirmed that he will be staying at the Bolshoi Ballet, after his contract as artistic director expires in two weeks’ time, heading a new choreographers workshop, as proposed by the theatre’s chief Vladimir Urin last July.”
Critics’ Poll Names Top 30 LGBT Films Of All Time
Perhaps predictably, only two of the top ten come from before 1990 (and one of those was 1985); the top two were released in the last five years. Yet the oldest movie on the list goes all the way back to Weimar-era Germany.
The Vatican Tried To Keep This Gay Romance Out Of Italian Cinemas – And Of Course It Backfired
The Italian Conference of Bishops’ Film Evaluation Commission ruled that the film is “not advised, unusable and scabrous (indecent or salacious)” – and since the Church owns most of Italy’s art-house theaters, that was a problem. Yet the movie – which is no. 2 on the list of greatest LGBT films, by the way – was the country’s top earner per screen last weekend, taking 50% more than the runner-up.
Porters And Auctioneers From Paris’s Best-Known Auction House On Trial For Stealing 250 Tons Of Artworks
Forty of the famous “red collar” porters at the Hotel Drouot, along with four auctioneers, are accused of a mafia-style operation in which more than 6,000 items – from works by Courbet, Chagall and Matisse to Ming porcelain to Marcel Marceau’s costumes – were “lost” while in transit.
Another Day, Another Ancient Sculpture Seized By The Feds From Asia Week New York
“Federal agents seized an ancient Afghan statue from a Manhattan gallery Wednesday morning, part of a string of seizures that began Friday and have coincided with Asia Week festivities in New York.”