Hilton Kramer wishes museums would be more direct when the talk about “deaccessioning.” “As far as I have been able to discover, we have no reliable figures on the number of paintings and other types of cultural property that have been lost to the public as a result of “deaccessing” works. The practice is not illegal, but it is often suspect or even shady, especially when the transaction relies—as it often does—on a high degree of secrecy and speed in order to lower the risk of public intervention.”
Blog
Ready To Overdose On Mozart?
“Wherever you go in the coming year, you won’t escape Mozart. The 250th anniversary of his birth on January 27 1756 is being celebrated with joyless efficiency as a tourist magnet to the land of his birth and a universal sales pitch for his over-worked output. The complete 626 works are being marketed on record in two special-offer super coffers. All the world’s orchestras will be playing Mozart, wall to wall, starting with the Vienna Philharmonic on tour this weekend. Mozart is the superstore wallpaper of classical music, the composer who pleases most and offends least.”
Florida Orchestra Seeks A Home Of Its Own
The Florida Orchestra is raising money for a new administrative home in St. Petersburg. The orchestra has been leasing office space in Tampa.
Study: Wikipedia Rates High In Accuracy
“A study published Dec. 14 by the journal Nature found that in a random sample of 42 science entries, Wikipedia had an average of just one more inaccuracy per entry than the Encyclopedia Britannica. Nature also polled more than 1,000 scientists who have published papers in Nature’s prestigious pages and found that 17% consulted Wikipedia on a weekly basis.”
Giving A Damn About Dance
So what makes a lively dance “scene,” asks Lane Czaplinski. “I find it ironic that while we (people who care about dance) are always quick to site the problems in the field–a lack of resources, waning attendance, regurgitated aesthetics, etc.–that we are also quick to take offense at precisely the kind of provocative writing that can get people to give a damn. If there is any threat to the dance field, it is that not enough people care about it. Perhaps this is because people read too much puffy marketing rhetoric and too many namby-pamby reviews that do nothing to enliven one’s engagement with the form.”
Ground Zero And Culture? Maybe They’re Incompatible
Is there still a chance that some cultural vision will emerge for the site of the World Trade Center? “Given the intense emotions associated with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, some panelists suggested that the competing visions for the 16-acre site – memorial, business hub, neighborhood gathering place – were ultimately incompatible.”
New York’s Cultural Elite?
New York Magazine critics have made their lists…
Why Pinter Matters
“The winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, Harold Pinter, as a playwright, a screenwriter, a director, and a mentor, has had an enormous influence on the theatrical landscape of his time. He began his career as an actor, and, even at the outset, with comparatively crude command, he turned his actor’s understanding of subtext into a metaphysic.”
How Wars Destroy Physical History
“In times of conflict, civilian homes are invariably singled out for attack. In recent decades, whole villages have been eradicated in various parts of the world, from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to Rwanda and Darfur. But homes are not the only type of building that has been targeted. Countless libraries, museums, churches and monuments have also been destroyed, representing an incalculable loss to the world’s cultural patrimony.”
Study: Violent Video Games Affect Response To Real Violence
Researchers “have found that people who play violent video games show diminished brain responses to images of real-life violence, such as gun attacks, but not to other emotionally disturbing pictures, such as those of dead animals, or sick children. And the reduction in response is correlated with aggressive behaviour.”