After 40 years on stage, Miriam Makeba is packing it in at the end of her current tour. “Makeba, aka Mama Africa, grew up in a Johannesburg township, was jailed as a baby along with her mother, was a servant for white families and graduated to jazz singing and immortality with numbers such as Malaika, Pata Pata and Africa is Where My Heart Lies.”
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Your Name Here
Nineteen bidders raised $90,000 “by paying for the right to be named a character — or a place or thing — in works by such authors as John Grisham, Stephen King, Amy Tan and Lemony Snicket.” The money goes to charity.
Italian Police Recover Stolen Art
Italian police have “recovered works of art worth €1.5m that had been stolen from churches, castles and private homes throughout northern Italy since 1990. The 19 paintings and one 18th-century kneeling-stool were discovered at the home of a farmer near the city of Cremona, about 62 miles south-west of Milan.”
Instant Concert CDs A Big Success
“Instant Live recordings made with Universal labels will be sold at shows, and also made available on the Instant Live Web site, individual band sites, and also via online retailers. The concept of selling recordings of live concert echoes what happened in the 1960s, when the underground bootleg industry, operating outside the auspices of the record labels, started to fulfill fan needs by, for example, offering recordings of concerts they could not afford to attend. In the last couple of years, technology has made it profitable for artists and companies to record and sell instant live recordings to the audience–all through legal means.
Getty: Memos On Artifacts Were Stolen
The Getty Museum says that memos cited in a Los Angeles Times story last weekend about questionable provenance of many Getty artifacts were stolen from the museum. “As much as it would like to be able to do so, the Getty cannot respond to many of the Times’ assertions because they rely on privileged and confidential information stolen from the Getty’s files,’ the museum said in a statement. The statement did not specify who allegedly stole the information.”
Saatchi To Move Gallery
Charles Saatchi is moving his successful gallery out of London’s South Bank. “The gallery, which opened its doors at County Hall near Waterloo in 2003, is to move into the Duke of York’s HQ building near Sloane Square in 2007. The 62-year-old collector has blamed the behaviour of his current landlord, Makota Okamoto, for his decision to move premises.”
Hoving: How I’d Reform The Getty
By its own admission, the Getty Museum has a potentially big problem with stolen Italian artifacts. Former Metropolitan Museum director Thomas Hoving has some suggestions for resolving the issue…
Saatchi On Why He’s Relocating His London Gallery
“The behaviour of the landlord has made our long-term tenancy untenable. He has made the gallery staff despondent with an endless campaign of petty unpleasantness and we didn’t feel the gallery could develop in this malevolent atmosphere.”
U Of Wisconsin Chancellor Bans Artwork
The piece – an anti-Bush statement – was to have been part of a show at the university’s art gallery. “In the eyes of UW-Green Bay’s chancellor, ‘Patriot Act’ is an endorsement of assassination. He has banned it from the university’s gallery, where it was scheduled to be shown as part of a traveling exhibit, saying in a letter to faculty and staff that ‘in a society all too violence prone, using these or other venues to appear to advocate or suggest assassination is not something the UW-Green Bay may do.’ To the artist, the work expresses nothing more than a desire to see Bush voted out of office.”
Movie Gamers Also Had A Difficult Summer
Every major movie release is now accompanied by a video game, and this summer’s movie woes bled in to the game world. “A major summer trend was the emergence of cell phone games as companions to any film launch. Even movies that did not have console games attached to their bows, such as “War of the Worlds” and “XXX: State of the Union,” had mobile titles released within the movie’s launch window.”