“A new art gallery is shunning the usual launch party etiquette by banning guests from air-kissing and calling each other ‘darling’.”
Blog
The Australian Orchestral Crisis
Australian orchestras are mounting a major push for increased government support in the face of overwhelming deficits and draconian budget cuts, but so far, their efforts are finding few sympathetic ears. A new report commissioned by the government may help in the long run, but the situation for many orchestras is growing worse by the day.
Better To Write It Than Live It
A 34-year-old creative writing teacher has captured Australia’s $20,000 Vogel Prize for a “gritty tale of drugs, despair and teenage runaways is set in a truck stop in the Central West of [the Australian state of New South Wales] where the teenage protagonist fries chips, fills the Coke fridge and pie-warmer and hides from the law.” Julienne van Loon lives in Perth these days, but grew up in the bush town where her story, which took nearly a decade to write, is set.
Abu Ghraib Photo Show Polarizes Patrons
The photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib riveted the world, but are they worthy of a museum exhibition? The Andy Warhol Museum, where the show opened Friday, is getting vociferous responses from both sides.
Slightly Bonkers?
London’s Serpentine Gallery has garnered some attention in recent years with a series of pavilions constructed and deconstructed in less than a year’s time. But this year, the gallery is upping the ante, hiring a Dutch firm to encase the entire building in a grassy mountain which will tower over Kensington Gardens. “It is a wild, thrilling, slightly bonkers idea that promises to make the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion one of the most exciting architectural events of 2005.”
A New Character In Romantic Fiction: Jesus
Novels that mix Christianity and romance are no longer a niche to be ignored. “The Christian Booksellers Association estimates that total sales of Christian fiction have topped $2 billion a year, and the market share of Christian romance has grown 25 percent a year since 2001, the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association reports. As a result editors have begun targeting younger people who enjoy both Christian and romantic fiction.”
Woodfine Wins The Jerwood
The £5,000 Jerwood Prize, which in recent years has come under attack for stretching the definition of the word “drawing” in passing out its awards, was handed out this week to Sarah Woodfine. Ms. Woodfine’s winning entry is likely to please the Jerwood’s critics – it’s a pencil and paper drawing – but the judges insist that they intend to continue accepting entries in multiple mediums.
Collecting Great Art With Blood Money
“A spectacular exhibition of contemporary art opened in Berlin yesterday, amid a picket by Jewish protesters, with its billionaire owner accused of exploiting art to redeem his family’s Nazi past.” The quality of the works in the collection is not in question, but the motivations of their owner, Christian Friedrich Flick, are being picked over by press and public alike. The Flick family fortune, which made the art collection possible, was built on slave labor in the explosives factories of the Third Reich.
Indian Museum Architect Boycotts Its Opening
Canadian architect and Blackfoot Indian Douglas Cardinal, the original designer of the Smithsonian Institution’s much-hyped National Museum of the American Indian, will not attend today’s opening “because he is still angry after being taken off the project in 1998 and not paid what he says he is owed.”
Beaverbrook Suspends NB Grants
“The Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation is suspending hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to New Brunswick institutions and using the money saved to help fund its controversial legal action to gain clear ownership of 200 art works at Fredericton’s Beaverbrook Art Gallery.”