A scientist has analyzed Iris Murdoch’s later work and suspects that she may have been suffering from Alzheimer’s. The analysis “found that her vocabulary had dwindled and her language become simpler. Alzheimer’s is difficult to establish with certainty until after death, but the evidence was there in her last work, diagnosed by computer-based analysis of word use, Dr Peter Garrard reports in the December issue of the journal Brain.”
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Proof That Readers Don’t Pay Attention To Critics
Take a look at lists of critics’ choices for top recordings of the year, then look at what music sold best. Guess what? They don’t match. “The only thing people who buy records and those who write about them agree on, then, is an album whose pastel wistfulness just begs for the spine-stiffening effect of a stint in the marines. This prompts the disheartening thought that the only listeners whose habits rock journalists have any influence over are in fact other rock journalists.”
Cambridge Considers Getting Out Of Architecture
Cambridge University is considering closing down its architecture school. “The prospect of our leading research university closing its only department that has a direct impact on the quality of our built environment is worrying and may indicate deeper attitudes and realities that are of equal concern.”
Duchamp Named Most Influential
“Marcel Duchamp’s iconic urinal has been named the most influential piece of modern art. “The Duchamp came out top in a survey of 500 artists, curators, critics and dealers commissioned by the sponsor of the Turner prize, Gordon’s. Different categories of respondents chose markedly different works, with artists in particular plumping overwhelmingly for Fountain. ‘It feels like there is a new generation out there saying, ‘Cut the crap – Duchamp opened up modern art’.”
Armstrong Quits Scottish Opera
Richard Armstrong has resigned as director of the Scottish Opera. “James MacMillan, the country’s leading composer, reacted angrily and accused the Scottish Executive and Arts Council of ‘making Scotland into a laughing stock the world over’. Mr MacMillan said the executive and SAC’s lack of support for the opera company, which is to have 88 jobs cut in a money saving move, was down to “a misguided anti-elitism. They see high arts as not really Scottish – which is an insult to the people who want the highest level of opera, theatre and music provision.”
Congress Rebuffs Bush Effort To Boost NEA Funding
A new appropriations bill is set to be approved by the U.S. Congress without an $18 million special allotment to the National Endowment for the Arts that President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush had specifically lobbied for. “‘American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius,’ was meant to be a chance to reacquaint people with the best of American dance, theater, jazz, classical music, literature and other arts, extending the NEA’s reach into communities all over the country, giving members of Congress bragging rights about how they were bringing home artistic pork and insulating the agency from political critics.” But Congress has allotted only $2 million for the project, which will have to be scaled back considerably.
Another Surplus In SF, But Red Ink In Sight
“The San Francisco Symphony finished its 2003-04 fiscal year with an unexpected $700,000 surplus on an operating budget of just over $50 million, according to a report presented at Monday’s annual board meeting. The black ink was the result of some timely cost-cutting combined with stronger-than- anticipated ticket sales… But management isn’t expecting the good times to last: The budget for the current year includes a planned deficit of more than $2 million.”
Intermissions Are Just Better In Pittsburgh
A New York Times critic recently penned an article extolling the virtues of the intermission-less one-act play, concluding that one-acts offer a “purer” theatrical experience. Christopher Rawson doesn’t dislike one-act plays, but doesn’t agree that they are necessarily superior to more traditional two- and three-act fare. “What’s pure about theater? That’s like insisting all churches be white. The proof is really in the individual pudding. And although I understand [the critic’s] irritation at New York intermissions, where theaters are crowded with strangers, a Pittsburgh intermission still has social pleasures that need not conflict with the play.”
The Hidden Cost of High Admission
With MoMA now charging $20 just for the privilege of getting in the door, other museums are sure to follow with higher admission charges of their own. But such hikes are not only inconvenient, says Jeff Weinstein, they threaten to undermine the very mission of art museums. “Without dependable government grants, museums think they must be run like Wal-Marts in order to survive,” but by setting their price scale according to what the high rollers will pay, museums run the risk that no penniless youth will ever set foot inside. And assuming that today’s penniless youths are tomorrow’s millionaire entrepreneurs, as some of them certainly are, MoMA is risking the interest of an entire generation for short-term profit.
Sotheby’s To Sell Off Camelot
More than 600 paintings and assorted trinkets from the home of President John F. Kennedy & Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis will be auctioned off by Sotheby’s this week, with the full sale expected to bring $1 million or more. “Among the most prominent items, Kennedy will offer the paintings done in 1968 by Aaron Shickler in the living room of her mother’s Manhattan apartment, Portrait Of Jacqueline Kennedy With Caroline And John Jr. and John And Caroline Reading, A Study, that likely will sell for $3,000 to $12,000.”