The Beaverbrook Art Gallery’s (New Brunswick, Canada) biggest patron is “suing the institution for fraud, claiming it lied or misrepresented the ownership of $200-million worth of disputed paintings. The Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation and a grandson of Lord Beaverbrook filed suit this week. The suit seeks $15-million in returned donations and punitive damages from the gallery.”
Blog
Underground Railway Center Rises
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center opens in Cincinnati this week. Blair Kamin reports that the building is a mixed success. “The architecture of the Freedom Center rises and falls to the extent it exploits and expresses this tension. The museum is, in some respects, powerful and poetic, its undulating travertine walls symbolizing the indirect, often-torturous routes — through mountains and forests, and over rivers — that slaves took to freedom. The trouble is, this sort of poetry doesn’t occur with enough consistency, especially inside, to make the museum the powerhouse combination of intellect and emotion, the visual and the visceral, it might have been.”
Trane’s Modern Classic (40 Years Later)
John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” is 40 years old. “Revered wherever jazz is spoken, recorded (at least in part) by no less than Wynton Marsalis and Carlos Santana with John McLaughlin, praised by critics, dissected by scholars, rehearsed by young tenor saxophonists who dream of greatness, the indelible recording long since has earned a sacred place in American culture. So much, in fact, that musicians often hesitate when asked to perform this music publicly, for fear of presuming to step into the shadow of a jazz deity who addressed life and afterlife, man and God, in an oft-shattering recording.”
The Chicago Symphony’s Difficult Contract
The Chicago Symphony and its musicians have taken a little time off from their contract talks. “Contract negotiations between CSO musicians and management are rarely easy, and they typically go down to the wire, but these talks could be among the toughest in recent memory. Like many American orchestras, the CSO has been running deficits and watching the size of its audiences stagnate if not shrink. CSO management is pushing to save money; CSO musicians are pushing to avoid losing too much ground.”
The Persistent Journal (As A Form)
Small literary journals are a precarious enterprise. “Circulating only in the low thousands (most of them), subsisting more on donations and patronage than subscription income, kept viable largely through low-paid or even unremunerated labor by devoted staffers, these quarterly or biannual compendia of fiction, poetry, essays, and art are showcases of idealism begotten upon unlikelihood. Yet for all this, in spite of the myriad ills that under-funded ventures are heir to, in spite of the fact that our info-environment is now so paced to the fleeting quick fix, the double-barreled snort of gloss, these journals do survive. Better, they persist.”
What The Well-Tuned Colonel Should Read
The US military has lists of books it recommends to troops. In 2000 Army Chief of Staff Shinseki detailed his list. These are the books that the chief of staff thinks his colonels and generals should be reading. Now an update by the current Chief, and the changes are interesting. “The Army’s reading list is actually a collection of four sublists, each designed for personnel at different stages in their career.”
Dino-Theft – Concern For Fossil-Poaching
There is big demand for dinosaur fossils, and poachers have been taking advantage of their remote location to “chip the prints out of rock illegally and sell them to unscrupulous — or unaware — collectors. Worried that online sales are making it easier for poachers to sell their goods, lawmakers, geologists, and police are searching for ways to find these looters and stop them.”
Remaking Boston Ballet (A Progress Report)
Mikko Nissinen has spent his first three years at Boston Ballet completely remaking it. “He didn’t waste time making changes at the Ballet. Of its 47 current dancers, he’s hired 32. He’s made a fellow Finn, Jorma Elo, the company’s resident choreographer. Elo is a highly sought-after talent at the moment, ‘and when he goes around the world to work with other companies, he’ll go as resident choreographer of Boston Ballet’.”
Where The Art Is…
Today’s Big Time Art World travels in a pack – jetting around the world to where the perceived action is. “At the center of this pack are wealthy patrons who enjoy traveling together, often in their own planes, to far-flung art destinations. Some take chances on untried artists; others embrace challenging work by well-established names. But all keep abreast of one another’s choices. A purchase by one can inspire further interest from others, directly affecting the artist’s market and stirring up greater critical discussion. Wherever they go, they are always shopping, even at ostensibly noncommercial venues like Site Santa Fe.”
Fear In the Theatre
Between politicians and Hollywood, there are a lot of people trying to scare us. “Is this the scariest summer ever? Cinematically, I mean. As the long movie season winds down, it’s hard to say. This year there do seem to be more movies than usual that, whether or not they intend to provoke fear, take fear as their subject.”