“With a proposed settlement from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in hand, Italian authorities are escalating their demands for the return of allegedly looted antiquities from other American museums… Italian investigators say they have identified hundreds more allegedly looted objects at U.S. museums. An additional 10,000 objects mentioned in the records have not yet been located.” Italy is very serious about recovering as many of the objects as possible, and is willing to go to court if negotiations with the museums involved do not result in a satisfactory resolution.
Blog
Opening Torino With Art & Absurdity
The visually captivating and decidedly over-the-top opening ceremonies of the twentieth Winter Olympiad proved once and for all that “other nations can be as cheesy as the United States. That people the world over seem to share a common urge to stage bizarre interpretive dance… The Olympics are ordained to be completely self-important — no smirking allowed! — which perhaps is why the opening festivities always seem so campy. Still, as a general spectacle, last night’s show wasn’t bad.”
American Idol Beats Grammys In The Ratings
“For the first time in 12 years, the Grammys did not win its night in the ratings. From 8 to 9 p.m. nearly 29 million people decided they’d rather watch the lousy performances and histrionics of wannabe pop stars in Hollywood than be entertained by Madonna, Coldplay, John Legend and U2 at the [Office Supply Retailer] Center in downtown Los Angeles.”
Trump Breaks Sky In Chicago
Donald Trump’s new 92-story skyscraper is under construction in Chicago. “The heart beats faster at the prospect of Chicago reaching into the sky. Busting into the clouds is in the city’s blood. Nothing like this has happened since the boxy, black mass of the 1,450-foot Sears Tower, once the world’s tallest building and still the nation’s tallest, soared above the gritty Loop in 1974.”
FCC: TV Consumers Should Have Choice
The Federal Communications Commission has reversed itself and come out in favor of allowing cable TV consumers to choose the channels they want to receive. “The latest report also said in most cases subscribers would save 3 percent to 13 percent on their bills under a la carte. It noted that earlier assumptions that a la carte would lead consumers to watch two hours less of TV — and thus decrease revenue for cable TV companies and increase costs — lacked factual support.”
Pittsburgh Ballet Retrenches For Next Season
Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre is reducing its operations a bit next season in an attempt to stay alive. Having looked at PBT’s financial records, George Clewer, president of the musicians’ union, said, “They’re not handing us a line. They’re fighting for survival and we’re here to support them. We want to get the orchestra in front of the public.”
Women MIA In Family Movies
A new study reports that “male characters outnumbered females 3-to-1 overall in top-grossing G-rated films from 1990 to 2004.”
The Sad Strange Story Of A Writer Calling Himself Nasdijj
Nasdijj claimed to be a native American and wrote a memoir that drew raves. But in tracking down the author, it appears Nasdijj might not be who he says he is. Is Nasdijj the reinvention of a struggling white writer of gay erotica?
Lauder – Where’s The Provenance?
Ronald Lauder is chairman emeritus of the Museum of Modern Art, former treasurer of the World Jewish Congress and, most important, a major advocate of Holocaust-era art restitution. But “despite his high-profile advocacy for openness — including testimony before Congress in 1998 — Lauder has never publicly listed the works in his own collection, many of which are by painters who were popular with Jewish collectors before the Holocaust. And a museum that he founded has failed to fulfill its pledge to post provenance information for its collection.”
Fallout From A Previous Lauder Story
Jan Herman points out that the last reporter who tangled with Lauder was David D’Arcy. “D’Arcy’s contract with National Public Radio “was terminated after a piece he did on Holocaust art theft and the Museum of Modern Art sent MoMA board chairman Ron Lauder so far around the bend that museum officials accused D’Arcy of ‘shabby reporting’ and pressured NPR to repudiate it.”