“Barbara Fleischman, the New York art collector who with her husband donated and sold more than 300 prized antiquities to the Getty Museum in 1996 and then quietly made a personal loan to the curator who arranged the deal, resigned from the Getty board Wednesday.”
Blog
Model Sues Spamalot For Ad
A model is suing the producers of the hit Broadway musical Spamalot for using her image in a promotional poster without permission.
Discovered: Two Caravaggios
Two paintings in a French church have been declared Caravaggios. “It is thought the paintings were probably bought by a French ambassador to Rome, and friend of Caravaggio. The works were kept under the organ loft in the church of Saint Anthony in Loches, until in 1999 a curator expressed an interest in a coat of arms on the works. It turned out to belong to Philippe de Bethune, a minister of France’s King Henry IV, an enthusiastic art collector who befriended Caravaggio in Rome.”
Theatre That Never Gets Done
Is Shunt the most innovative theatre in Britain?
Is “Anti-Religious” Speech On The Rise?
“First there was the controversy provoked by Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ in 2004, and now there is this censorious dismissal of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Both are testaments to a potent mood of intolerance towards expressions of religious faith in popular culture today. The artistic representation of religious conviction is frequently stigmatised with terms such as ‘fundamentalist’, ‘intolerant’, ‘dogmatic’, ‘exclusive’, ‘irrational’ or ‘right-wing’. As a secular humanist who is instinctively uncomfortable with zealot-like moralism, I am suspicious of the motives behind these doctrinaire denunciations of films with a religious message.”
Will Jobs Be Disney’s Stealth CEO?
“Let’s say Disney continues to muddle along under [Disney CEO Robert] Iger as it did in the late Eisner years. Shareholders and observers will begin to note that having Iger run the company while Steve Jobs sits on the board is like having Michael Jordan (the basketball player) on the bench while Will Perdue is tossing up bricks. One of the biggest issues Disney faces is how to cope with the digitalization of the media. No one has done a better job than Jobs in helping established companies and industries cash in digitalization. So, there is little doubt Jobs will be a goad to Iger.”
Can Meditation Change Our Brain Structure?
“In the traditional view, the brain becomes frozen with the onset of adulthood, after which few new connections form. In the past 20 years, though, scientists have discovered that intensive training can make a difference. For instance, the portion of the brain that corresponds to a string musician’s fingering hand grows larger than the part that governs the bow hand – even in musicians who start playing as adults.”
Painting Goes Missing At Sotheby’s
A painting worth an estimated £500,000 has disappeared from Sotheby’s auction rooms in New Bond Street, London. The company won’t say what the work is or who it belongs to.
The Renee Fleming Mozart Mystery
Why was Renee Fleming suddenly replaced for Mozart celebrations in Austria this week? The circumstances raise questions. “Why was the Mozarteum so inflexible, refusing either to substitute another aria for the one scheduled or to hire someone else for the aria but let Ms. Fleming perform the rest of the program?”
Art Thief – Snared By Cellphone
How did Robert Mang get caught for stealing Cellini’s priceless saltcellar? “After holding the Cellini masterpiece, valued at roughly $60 million, for nearly three years and making two attempts to collect about $12 million in ransom, Mr. Mang was identified as the culprit late last week. On Friday, the police had circulated security camera images of him buying a cellphone that he used to send a text message.”