Officials in a Belgian town have banned an artwork depicting Saddam Hussein. “The piece, called Saddam Hussein Shark, shows the handcuffed ex-Iraqi ruler suspended in liquid and wearing nothing more than underpants. The mayor of Middlekerke, Michel Landuyt, said the work could ‘shock people’, including Muslims.”
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Ottawa Orchestra Says Missing Zukerman Will Return
Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra announced its next season Monday, saying that wayward music director Pinchas Zukerman will return to lead the orchestra. Zukerman mysteriously bolted from the orchestra part way through this season, claiming need for a break. Orchestra manager Christopher Deacon said the NAC is working on a suggestion by Zukerman to bring in a facilitator to ‘improve communication and better the working atmosphere’.”
Canadian Artists Worry About Promised Funding Increases
The Canadian arts community is pleased by the selection of Bev Oda as the new culture minister. But “some suggest that the concern isn’t about Oda, but the new drive to make the path of money through federal agencies more transparent and accountable. The worry is that this could slow down promised funding increases, particularly the past Liberal government’s pre-election promise in November to double the budget of the Canada Council for the Arts, the umbrella arts funding agency, in three years to $301-million.”
Zadie Smith Wins Commonwealth
Zadie Smith beats Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro and Nick Hornby to win the Eurasian regional heat of the Commonwealth Writers’ prize with her latest novel, On Beauty.
Discovered – 27,000-Year-Old Cave Paintings
“An amateur caver has discovered prehistoric human remains and cave art in western France believed to date back 27,000 years, several thousand years older than the world-famous paintings at Lascaux.”
Can 5 Million Austrians Buy Back A Klimt?
An Austrian publisher, Hubertus Czermin, is tryin to mount a public campaign to save a Gustav Klimt painting that was recently awarded to the family of a victim of the Nazis. He’s urging “5 million Austrians – 60% of the population – to each donate €20 (about £14) to raise the estimated €100m needed to buy back the work.”
The Man Buying Up London’s Art
A low-key collector is making waves in London, buying up entire shows of work before they even hit galleries. “A genial Rory Bremner look-alike with a facility for imitating accents, David Roberts doesn’t flaunt his wealth. But he is rapidly becoming one of the most sought-after clients by contemporary-art galleries in the UK.”
Let’s Stop Making Books That Don’t Need To Be Books
Where do books fit in to the modern culture? “Nobody, not even academics, who are hardier than most, want books in any other form than books. At the same time, we acknowledge that books have become as throwaway as everything else in our culture, so what do we do? First, we stop publishing books that needn’t be books. People who don’t really read don’t really need books — so let them have Jordan and Becks in lots of other ways. Audio, animated-audio, that is, audio with pictures — is just about right for most celebrity publications.”
A Grand Unifying Theory Of Music History
Historian Richard Taruskin has grand ambitions for his 4000+ page history of music. “He maintains that this is the first history of music which not only relates what was done but how and why. He aims, he writes, to present a social history of music; that is, he attempts to place the development of music in the general culture of the place and time it was created, to describe it in its social setting, to explain its genesis and its significance for the composers’ contemporaries and at times for their posterity.”
The Man Who Saved The Audubon’s Instruments
The donor who stepped in to save two members of the Audubon String Quartet from having to surrender their instruments in a legal dispute has come forward. “Those instruments are part of their musical personality, their musical identity. I thought this was an opportunity to address this one aspect of the situation.”