“Do you understand a piece of music better if you know its secrets, or does illumination destroy mystery just as explaining a joke defuses its humor? Might audiences at classical music concerts be more receptive, not less, if they didn’t read program notes? Is there a reason why so many people who profess to believe in the Bible haven’t actually read it?”
Blog
Chomsky: “Plodding Unsexy Application To The Facts”
Noam Chomsky, 76, has been voted the world’s top public intellectual by Prospect magazine, but he has no interest in that. “He believes that there is a misconception about what it means to be smart. It is not a question of wit, as with no 5 on the list (Christopher Hitchens) or poetic dash like no 4 (Vaclav Havel), or the sort of articulacy that lends itself to television appearances, like no 37, the thinking girl’s pin-up Michael Ignatieff, whom Chomsky calls an apologist for the establishment and dispenser of ‘garbage’. Chomsky, by contrast, speaks in a barely audible croak and of his own, largely unsuccessful, television appearances has written dismissively: ‘The beauty of concision is that you can only repeat conventional thoughts.’ Being smart, he believes, is a function of a plodding, unsexy, application to the facts and ‘using your intelligence to decide what’s right’.”
Art Cologne Racks Up Sales
“Art Cologne closes tomorrow after a six-day run on the tail of London’s Frieze, which sold 26,000 tickets. The German fair’s sales may reach 70 million euros ($84 million) this year, up from 60 million euros in 2004, preserving its status as Europe’s No.2 modern and contemporary fair after Art Basel.”
LA County Museum Unloads Some Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is selling off $10 million worth of art. “Exactly why the museum has decided to sell them now is not known, although income from the auction will be restricted to future acquisitions. (Rumors have circulated that a war chest is being assembled for a major purchase, but they remain unsubstantiated.) LACMA’s plan to construct a new building — the Broad Contemporary Art Museum — is no doubt one force driving the idea, as construction of the Anderson Building for Modern and Contemporary Art was at the time of the museum’s last big de-accession, in 1982. Bizarrely, one LACMA official said the museum was merely pruning redundancies, as if unique works of art were not — well, unique.”
Dorment: Tate Was Lucky To Get Ofili
Richard Dorment is shocked that the Tate is being attacked for its recent purchase of Chris Ofili’s “The Open Door.” “With MoMA breathing down their necks, the Tate trustees either had to act at once or lose one of the most important works of British art painted in the last 25 years. Had the gallery let the work go, I’d now be writing an article castigating the director and trustees for their obtuseness. And what if Ofili had stepped down from the board? It would still have been possible to point to his recent association with the gallery and accuse Tate of cronyism. By asking the artist to step aside during the negotiations, the trustees secured a masterpiece while adhering to the highest ethical standards.”
Cleveland Orchestra Tries Out Budapest’s New Hall
Budapest’s new concert hall is part of a $153 million Palace of Fine Arts, and the Cleveland Orchestra took it for a test drive. “It is a state-of-the-art building, splashily modern without being ostentatious, with all sorts of pastel colors to catch the eye. The lobbies are sweeping spaces made airy by tall windows that provide stunning views of the Danube and the new National Theatre – itself an architectural dazzler – just across the plaza.”
Italians Get Serious ABout Recovering Their Antiquities From American Museums
Italian police are heating up their cases against museums that may have stolen art. “The Getty case is just a slice of an illicit global trade in antiquities that stretches from the Egyptian desert to Chinese tombs to Peruvian monuments, and pulls in some of the most- respected names in art and academia. At least 52 items the Getty has acquired or handled were looted or came from smugglers, according to charges against Hecht, Medici and True that were contained in Italian court documents obtained by Bloomberg News. Eight such pieces are in the Metropolitan, 22 are in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and one each are in the Princeton University Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art, the documents say.”
Boston’s MFA Has Stolen Italian Artifacts?
That’s the charge of Italian authorities, who are said to have proof. “The claim, contained in court documents connected with the cases against a pair of art dealers and a former Getty curator with links to Boston, could put pressure on the MFA and a host of other museums to consider returning objects to Italy, according to antiquities experts who have been critical of the way museums acquire artifacts. Prosecutors list 22 MFA objects, including a 2,500-year-old Greek vase currently on display in a museum gallery.”
New Homes For Troubled Orchestras
If classical music in general and symphony orchestras in particular are in such dire financial trouble, wonders Frank Oteri, why are expensive new concert halls being built for them?
The Economics Of Textbooks
“College students now spend more than five billion dollars a year on textbooks, while states spend another four billion on books for elementary and high-school students. And the revenue is not being spread around: five publishers account for eighty per cent of new college-textbook sales in North America. But dominance has its discontents, and textbook publishers are routinely denounced as price gougers. The average price of a book is around fifty dollars, and many, particularly in the sciences, will run you well over a hundred.”