The Greek government is demanding that the Getty return four artifacts it says were illegally exported. “The Greeks have presented archeological evidence that they say proves the Greek origin of three objects the Getty purchased in 1993: a gold funerary wreath, an inscribed tombstone and a marble torso of a young woman. The three artifacts, which date from about 400 BC, are ranked among the masterpieces of the Getty’s antiquities collection. The fourth object that Greek officials are seeking to recover is an archaic votive relief bought in 1955 by J. Paul Getty himself.”
Blog
Canada Plays The Film Tax-Credit Game (And Plays It Well, We Might Add)
“In the borderless world of movie making, the scramble over Hollywood’s production dollars is a financial arms race of government subsidies. Eager to get the best deals, Hollywood skillfully pushes the ante up by playing off one another the myriad countries and states hungry for the dollars and glitz a film production generates. It used to be Canada and America. Now, everybody is competing for the film business.”
Did You Know You’ve Been 20 Percent Patented?
“A new study shows that 20 percent of human genes have been patented in the United States, primarily by private firms and universities. Researchers can patent genes because they are potentially valuable research tools, useful in diagnostic tests or to discover and produce new drugs. ‘It might come as a surprise to many people that in the U.S. patent system human DNA is treated like other natural chemical products’.”
Goodbye Mass Marketing, Hello Buzzzzz
Greg Stielstra, senior marketing director for the Book Group at Zondervan, one of the world’s leading publishers of Christian books, “argues passionately that traditional mass marketing, which seeks to sell products and services to everyone, is no longer effective at selling anything to anyone. The societal influences that allowed mass marketing to prosper have disappeared, rendering mass marketing ineffective. New circumstances have created an opportunity for a different marketing approach.”
DVD Battle May Be Irrelevant?
Hollywood is battling over the next format of DVDs to be adopted. But does it really matter? More and more, consumers are moving away from physical disks as a way to get their media. Online seems to be the future…
Appreciating Art – Righteous Rebellion
“Over the past hundred years or so a very particular revolutionary sensibility has influenced the value system used in making and appreciating visual art. It feels to me that the art world today has its own visual dialect, a kind of educated mischievous slang that is learnt from making, looking at and talking about art for a long time and a love of being challenged or surprised. From outside, the art world must seem like a self-regarding mafia, but it relishes an assault on its values.”
Life After Hunter
Although Hunter S. Thompson is gone, his widow “is still surrounded by him, weighed down not only by his papers, which entirely fill the basement, and by his fans, who still turn up from time to time, but also by his stuff, which covers every surface, and which she will never be able to throw away.”
Blurring Lines Between Fact And Fiction Lead To: Censorship!
The commodification of all forms of culture breeds “a growing concern that the victims of crime and their relatives be protected from distress, the emergent movement against criticism of religion and attempts to proscribe the ‘glorification’ of certain acts. The famous proscription against falsely shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre is no longer just a matter of preventing a stampede: now, shouting ‘fire’ can be censured for infringing the rights of the firemen, distressing the relatives of people killed in other fires, offending religions for whom fire is a sacred object, and glorifying or celebrating arson.”
The Man Steering The British Museum
Neil MacGregor’s story is “of the rise of the public man at a time when that character’s obituary had been prematurely written. As a public servant, he has revivified the British Museum, making it appreciated anew as what he calls, in Ben Okri’s words, the “memory of mankind”. He has made a museum stuffed with artifacts plundered from less rapacious cultures (Benin, in particular, would like its bronzes back) feel good in our post-imperial age, which is no mean feat. Like the fictional occupant of another west wing, he has given the British Museum a renewed sense of principled mission.”
Putting The Frieze On Art
London’s Frieze Art Fair is only three years old, but it’s leaving traditional museum shows behind. “The Frieze Art Fair feels as if the flying circus of dealers from Basel, curators from Barcelona, museum owners from Istanbul, collectors from Los Angeles, and even the occasional artist from Hoxton or Berlin who constitute the perpetual shifting landscape of art, have given up perpetually circumnavigating the globe, and decided to turn themselves collectively into an airport.”