Valuable historic Hawaiian artifacts have shown up for sale in an antiques store. The question is: how did they get there?
Blog
Jordan Seizes Iraqi Artifacts Said To Be Bound For France
Customs officials in Jordan seized “two boxes of suspected Iraqi relics at Al Karama border crossing last week, following a routine search on a private car. The boxes, hidden in the boot of the vehicle, contained 18 statues, which the driver claimed were to be mailed to an exhibition in France.”
Policeman Damages Royal Painting
A police officer at St. James’s Palace has damaged a painting. “The work, by a minor 19th century artist, was worth £1m before the incident. The officer was standing on a chair closing a window when he fell and damaged the painting. A Scotland Yard spokesman confirmed the incident but said no action would be taken as it was an accident”.
Keeping City Ballet In Saratoga
Saratoga, New York is struggling to keep the New York City Ballet in summer residence. Ticket sales were up this summer, but not nearly enough. “What are we going to say when we kick them out of our town – ‘Come to Saratoga Springs, population 28,000, we used to be the summer home of City Ballet? We are concerned until we have in writing that City Ballet will be welcomed back at SPAC for many years to come. Anything less than a long-term residency here is unacceptable.”
Omnivore In The Flesh
Lawrence Weschler is working on starting a new serious thoughtful non-fiction magazine – Omnivore. In the meantime, he talks about his ideals. “What he longs for is a return to the “non-Pavlovian” reading and writing experiences he enjoyed when he would come across a two-part, 40,000-word piece on surfing, say, and be swept away by the dynamic drive of the narrative, an experience that he could relive around the dinner table the following weekend because his friends would have exulted in the same article. As a writer, he mourns the cherished experiences under the halcyon days, for him anyway, when William Shawn edited The New Yorker.”
Aesthetic And Secure
Why do security barriers have to be so ugly? All that brutal concrete… So four architects take a stab at designing barriers that are aesthetically pleasing. “One can create them so that they camouflage the brutality of what we have to deal with daily.”
Newport Jazz Turns 50
“The symbolic battle, all those years ago, was to make the world outside its own cabal take jazz seriously. This could more easily happen, it was decided, in a wealthy place that forced a certain kind of attention from social elites and the media. ‘We have no particular love for Newport. Yet in one sense of the word we have brought democracy to Newport, which was the last place in the world where it could have been expected to be found in America’.”
Misunderstanding Spike Lee
“Now 47 and the father of two, Lee has noticeable traces of gray in his hair, and his eyes look weary behind his glasses. He seems less angry than just hugely frustrated. With the state of his country. With how hard it is for him to get films made, despite being perhaps the most famous black director of all time. With how hard it is for him to find an audience, even within the black community.”
Dowling: What’s Next After The Guthrie?
In 10 years, Joe Dowling has reinvented Minnesota’s Guthrie Theatre. Coming off the theatre’s most successful season yet, and still two seasons from moving into the theatre’s new home, Dowling has begun to think about what’s next.
Cleveland Orchestra In Europe
The Cleveland Orchestra departs on a European tour – it’s the only American band in Europe this August. “It’s a costly tour, but an important one. Despite the orchestra’s accumulated deficit of $7.4 million, the tour is unaffected. The trip’s $2.3 million tab is being picked up by the European presenters ($1.2 million) and sponsorships, including gifts from Jan and Daniel Lewis and the Frances Elizabeth Wilkinson International Touring Fund. The tour is especially significant for its prevalence of firsts.”