“The folks at [Germany’s] Pirmasens Museum had long given up hope that a cache of paintings by that city’s most famous 19th-century painter, Heinrich Burkel, would ever be found… Then this fall Heike Wittmer, the museum’s director and archivist, saw what looked like three of the missing Burkels on a Web site advertising an art auction in Concordville, Pa., outside Philadelphia. Wittmer contacted cultural officers in the German government, who in turn contacted the FBI’s new Art Crime Team… The paintings, valued at about $125,000, found their way in the 1960s to a New Jersey man who bequeathed them to his daughter about 20 years later.”
Blog
Pinter Blasts US In Nobel Speech
In a speech peppered with the potent silences that are often called “Pinteresque”, he accused the U.S. and its ally Britain of trading in death and employing “language to keep thought at bay.”
On Further Reflection, The New MoMA Does Not Suck
New York’s Museum of Modern Art may have gotten an unprecedented wave of publicity when it opened its new home last year, but that doesn’t mean that the critics spared MoMA their sharpest critiques. It seemed that nearly everyone had some quibble or other with the new building, but after a year to get used to the new setting, no one seems to be complaining any more.
ENO Staff Votes To Strike
Staff at the English National Opera have voted unanimously to go on strike. “Union demands for a 5% pay increase and raised pension contributions were met with a pay offer by ENO of 2.77%. Staff at the opera company, based in central London, are unhappy about perceived low pay and unsatisfactory working conditions.”
And No, He Didn’t Have Syphilis
It’s official: Beethoven died of lead poisoning, according to scientists studying hair and tissue samples from the famous composer, and the deadly metal probably also caused his deafness. Still unknown is just exactly how old Ludwig came into contact with so much lead, but one theory involves his heavy drinking, for which lead goblets would have been a likely accessory.
Ukraine’s New Wave of Political Art
The so-called “Orange Revolution” that gripped Ukraine in 2004 and carried opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to the presidency had a profound impact on every facet of existence in the former Soviet republic. One side effect of the month of protests and confrontations was the emergence of a newly energized political art movement. “[The revolution] announced a new wave of Ukrainian artists, several of whom pulled off the neat postmodern trick of simultaneously appropriating, satirizing and extending the conventions of Soviet-style poster art from Stalin to Gorbachev.”
Making A Point As Well As A Movie
“Message” movies, once thought to be box office poison, are all the rage in Hollywood at the moment, thanks to the emergence of a few specific companies that specialize in making films that engage the public in a specific cause. Of course, crusading filmmakers are nothing new, but the establishment billionaires backing them are quite a novel twist…
The Ivy League Music Buster
The recording industry, obsessed as it is with putting an end to illegal trading of its product, has spent the last several years coming up with scheme after technological scheme to make such piracy impossible. And yet, somehow, no matter how complex and ambitious the industry’s copy-protection tactics become, they keep getting beaten. So who’s beating them? Well, a 24-year-old grad student from Princeton, mainly.
Cleveland Arts Prize Eyes A Comeback
“The Cleveland Arts Prize took a powder and is coming back strong. Or so the organization hopes: After a year’s hiatus in which leaders rethought the award’s mission and approach, the 45-year-old prize will return in 2006 with an emphasis on emerging artists and public input… Created in 1960 as a project of the Women’s Club of Cleveland and now an independent nonprofit organization, the prize has for decades recognized the achievements of established, often renowned, Northeast Ohio artists and arts leaders… Established artists will continue to be saluted with two prizes of $2,500 each. But the organization’s largest award now will be a $5,000 prize for an emerging Northeast Ohio artist.”
New Atlanta Hall Waiting On Public Funding
The Atlanta Symphony is continuing to rack up private contributions towards its planned new concert hall in the city’s downtown district. But the space-age hall, designed by Santiago Calatrava, still faces an uphill battle, because the ASO’s request for $100 million in city and state funding has yet to result in any action. Both Atlanta’s mayor and Georgia’s governor have paid lip service to the project, but the governor won’t reveal whether he is including any funding for the project in his 2006 budget proposal, and the mayor says that the city doesn’t have “even a fraction” of the $50 million the orchestra wants.