The Metropolitan Museum is returning a 2,500-year-old krater to Italy. The Getty is negotiating on artifacts in its possesion. And Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts may be next. So are America’s museums, one by one, going to have to make deals to cleanse their collections of items of dubious provenance? What is really needed is a plan to deal with the whole mess in an orderly way…
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Duchamp – Fountain Of Grace
The fuss over a bad performance artist who damaged Marcel Duchamp’s iconic “Fountain” last month may have for some obscured Duchamp’s importance. “Duchamp is invariably referred to as an “anti-artist” and an “iconoclast.” This is entirely false. Duchamp was a great art adviser to collectors. He wasn’t against art at all; he was against the hypocritical aura surrounding it.”
What’s In A Name? Loads Of Government Cash, Apparently
Much has been made of the troubles, both financial and artistic, plaguing Dublin’s historic Abbey Theatre. “The Abbey’s fortunes, sputtering for some time, went into a nose-dive during its centenary year in 2004. What should have been a triumphant celebration, marking the theatre’s role in forging the Irish nation and shaping a world-class dramatic canon, proved a shambles fit to make its hallowed founders, WB Yeats and Lady Isabella Gregory, spin in their graves.” Meanwhile, the Abbey’s closest rival, the Gate Theatre, is thriving, pulling in big stars and record crowds. Yet somehow, the Abbey continues to receive ten times the amount of federal funding that the far more responsibly managed Gate takes in.
NY Workshop Cancels Plans For Controversial Mideast Play
“A New York theatre company has put off plans to stage a play about an American activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza because of the current “political climate” – a decision the play’s British director, Alan Rickman, denounced yesterday as ‘censorship’. James Nicola, the artistic director of the New York Theatre Workshop, said it had never formally announced it would be staging the play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, but it had been considering staging it in March.”
The Cartoon New Orleans Is Back. But Where’s The City?
Mardi Gras, such as it is, is in full swing in the small section of New Orleans that still looks like it did last year at this time. Civic leaders are hoping the weeklong party will demonstrate the city’s resilience to the nation, but the truth is that no one ever really doubted that the bead-throwing floats and drunken revelers would return. “After Katrina, the lingering question is whether the New Orleans cultural traditions that had sprung up spontaneously in African-American neighborhoods would survive.”
Big Plans Come To Fruition All Across Scotland
“The launch night for the National Theatre of Scotland on Saturday could hardly have sent out a stronger signal that ‘National’ will mean ‘national’. A total of 10 happenings across Scotland, from remotest Shetland and Stornoway to Dumfries, put together by artists working under the thematic banner of ‘Home’, spelt out the intention that this theatre, possessing no big building, ensemble or bureaucracy, will be daringly, inclusively nomadic. Whether Scotland was picking up on the collaborative spirit of the occasion is another matter.”
Aussie Tapped To Shake Up Edinburgh
Australian composer Jonathan Mills has been named the next head of the Edinburgh Festival, beginning with the summer event’s 2007 season. Mills replaces Sir Brian McMaster, who has been criticised in recent years for his refusal to add a visual arts component to the event, and for what some perceived as the festival’s focus on classical music to the exclusion of other performing arts. It is hoped that Mills will also be able to reverse the festival’s slide into fiscal deficits, which have run as high as £1m on a £7.5m budget.
You Give Us 15 Hours, We’ll Give You Wagner’s World
The BBC has announced that it will do what no live opera company could ever dream of accomplishing: present Wagner’s entire epic Ring cycle in a single day. BBC Radio 3 will air all four of Wagner’s famous operas over a 15-hour period on the Monday after Easter, using recordings made by conductor Daniel Barenboim at the Bayreuth festival in the early 1990s.
Munch Theft Linked To Another Armed Robbery
“Police [in Norway] believe they have discovered a new link between the brutal raid on the Norwegian Cash Service (NOKAS) office in Stavanger, which resulted in the shooting death of a police officer, and the armed theft of two paintings by Edvard Munch… One of the weapons used during the commando-style NOKAS robbery on April 5, 2004 and the pistol used in the Munch robbery, likely stem from the same break-in… in January 2004.”
DaVinci In The Dock
As opening arguments were heard Monday in the DaVinci Code copyright infringement case in London, the web of plots and subplots had become so tangled as to nearly approximate the book at the center of the storm. But while the details may be confusing, what is at stake in the case is abundantly clear. DaVinci is the greatest money-making machine the publishing world has at the moment, and if it is found to have been illegally cribbed from the work of others, the whole synergistic apparatus could come crashing down.