“The group that traditionally presents the first big awards of the Oscar season said Wednesday it had delayed announcing its winners after questions were raised about its voting process. A spokesman for the National Board of Review downplayed the flap, explaining that voters had mistakenly been sent a memo that was mislabeled as an ‘eligibility list’ and did not include all the 2005 films that qualified… The delay lends new clout to the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Assn., which will be the first out of the gate this awards season with their picks for 2005 when they announce their choices on Saturday.”
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Turner Prizewinner Mussels His Way Into Canada
Artist Simon Sterling, fresh off his Turner win, has announced plans for a new project in Toronto, and the he’ll be employing the services of a much-hated invasive species to help him symbolize the original invasive species of North America- European colonizers. “The core proposal involves casting a replica of Henry Moore’s Warrior with Shield, a 1954 bronze in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and sinking it into Lake Ontario for six months, where it will become encrusted with zebra mussels before being displayed as the centrepiece of an exhibition of Starling’s work.”
C.S. Lewis: Floor Wax or Dessert Topping?
The debate over C.S. Lewis and his children’s books is nothing new, of course, and some of the combatants in the seemingly endless debate go well beyond mere literary argument. Is the Narnia series “a timeless fantasy about talking beavers, friendly fauns and a mystical lion named Aslan? Or insidious militaristic propaganda cunningly used to inoculate innocents with rigid Christian dogma penned by a pervy pipe-puffing Oxford prig who actually didn’t very much like little children and might have slept with a woman old enough to be his mother? When he wasn’t drinking. In pubs. With J.R.R. Tolkien.” And in an age in which children’s fantasy is a major literary sub-genre, scholars are just warming up their Lewis screeds.
Digitally Detected – A Computer That Can Spot Fakes?
Dan Rockmore, a professor of computer science at Dartmouth College, wants to “bring digital technology to the art of authentication. Using hi-res digital cameras and software that he wrote himself, Rockmore aims to examine the brushstrokes from Flora and 24 other works to reveal Rembrandt’s unique mathematical fingerprint.”
Is Narnia Really A Land Of Evangelicals?
There is no question that the Narnia books contain strong Christian imagery, but even religious scholars have never agreed on what point of view Lewis intended to endorse. “In one camp are evangelicals, whose churches regularly use Lewis’s book Mere Christianity to introduce newcomers to orthodox understandings of Jesus Christ… Others, however, insist that Lewis cared chiefly about bringing the worldwide Christian family together. Since he helped advance a vibrant ecumenical movement in his day, he must not be reduced to a sectarian champion posthumously.”
Whitman’s Signature Work Turns 150
“Devotees and scholars of the writer Walt Whitman are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the original edition of his seminal work, Leaves of Grass, the concise volume of 12 poems that pushed the boundaries of social decency and of poetry itself. By rejecting the rigid structures of British metre, Whitman offered readers free-spirited bursts of consciousness that forever changed American poetry… Experts suspect only a few hundred copies of the original edition exist and are using the anniversary to try to count them.”
Harding’s La Scala Debut “A Triumph”
Daniel Harding had a lot on his shoulders last night at La Scala, as seemingly the entire opera world waited to see whether the boyish conductor and his vision of Mozart’s Idomeneo could make Milan forget all about Riccardo Muti and his dramatic exit last spring. Apparently, he did. “After two curtain calls, Harding joined the cast on stage for 12-minute ovation. Members of the audience praised him for his ‘energy and verve’. The president of Italy, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who was present, said: ‘I saw it with new eyes’.” However, some Muti loyalists remain quite upset with what they see as La Scala’s move away from serious, cutting-edge opera, and with the treatment accorded Muti, whom La Scala managers painted as a dictator.
Orchestra Teams Up With Evangelical Mega-Church
The Houston Symphony has an unusual new partner for its holiday concerts: Lakewood Church, arguably the world’s most famous mega-church, seating 16,000, its services seen across the U.S. on television each week. “To Lakewood, the symphony offers cachet and a high-quality orchestra. To the symphony, Lakewood offers a large untapped audience and an extraordinary marketing machine… The church and the symphony readily admit that their usual audiences don’t overlap much, [but] Lakewood has far more to offer the symphony than just an audience. Symphony management can also learn something from Lakewood about branding… And it’s possible that further collaboration could provide a huge new outlet for the symphony’s work. The two organizations are eyeing a long-term relationship.”
Seattle’s Stealth Entry Into Basel Miami
Seattle galleries were shut out of official selection for the Basel Miami art fair. So a group of Seattle galleries got together and “booked an entire motel in Ocean Beach, a short walk from Basel/Miami. Then they crossed their fingers and asked 35 galleries to join them.” The idea was a hit…
SPAC Starts To Dig Itself Out
Upstate New York’s Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC), attempting to dig out from years of questionable management and a wave of awful publicity, has announced that it will eliminate its $3 million debt using funds from its endowment. The organization, which plays host to a popular summer festival featuring the Philadelphia Orchestra and New York City Ballet, also says that it will have a balanced budget for 2005, its first black ink in 15 years. SPAC came under heavy fire for its management practices earlier this year in an independent report that led to the resignation of the center’s chief executive and much of its board.