Author: sbergman

UK Gets Another Art Repatriation Claim

“The president of Tajikistan has demanded that the British Museum give back a unique collection of ancient gold and silver artefacts discovered 130 years ago near the Oxus river… According to Tajik scholars, the treasure was found in 1877. It arrived in Britain after bandits ambushed a group of merchants crossing from Kabul to Peshawar.”

Good Is Always Better Than Trendy, Anyway

The Netherlands isn’t really interested in what you think of its eye-popping but decidedly non-trendy architecture. It’s too busy making more. “This idea of unmodern architecture has been fiercely debated in the Netherlands in recent years. Since the mid-1990s, an increasing number of Dutch architects and other Europeans with commissions in the country have been struggling, with occasional success, to find a new voice for Dutch buildings – an antidote to the safe, flat neo-modernism that steals all those pages in the magazines.”

Civilizing The Blogosphere (best of luck)

“When two leading internet pioneers came together this week to propose a set of guidelines that would filter out offensive and abusive comments from blogs, they were met by a torrent of offensive and abusive comments.” The creators of the so-called ‘bloggers’ code of conduct’ “have posted a seven-point programme that would attempt, they say, to address the plethora of abusive comments on the web, while preserving the free spirit of the medium.”

So, Boys Are Just Generally Bad For Education?

It is a widely held belief in the UK that, while girls will frequently thrive in single-sex schools, boys will usually not. This belief leads to a noticeable imbalance between the sexes at many “mixed” schools, and some educators are left wondering what the effect is. “A study carried out last year in Israel offers some perspective. It suggests that a large proportion of boys in a class worsens the outcome for both the girls and boys.”

The Collaboration’s The Thing

“The writer-director partnership can be crucial to the success of a new play. A tried-and-tested classic will survive the attentions of an inept director, but a virgin text, mishandled, might never see the light of day again. A good writer-director mix can, on the other hand, produce a magical result that is somehow more than the sum of its components.” A new theatre festival in Suffolk, England, aims to match writers and directors at the earliest possible stage of a new play’s development.

The Forgotten Modernist

The name of Maurice Denis (and that of the Nabis, the 19th-century art movement in which he was a key player) may not quicken the pulse of many art lovers these days, but Sarah Milroy says that the largely overlooked Denis is more than deserving of a slice of the attention lavished on others of his era.

Denver Museum Announces Layoffs

“The Denver Art Museum on Monday announced belt-tightening measures as part of a midyear evaluation following the debut of the Frederic C. Hamilton building. The museum eliminated eight positions and accepted the resignations of 30 employees who accepted a voluntary buyout program offered nearly two weeks ago. The cuts represent 14 percent of the museum’s full-time employees, bringing the total to 230.”