Robert Hughes says that London’s Royal Academy could help save art from commercialism: “An institution like the Royal Academy, precisely because it is not commercial, can be a powerful counterweight to the degrading market hysteria we have seen too much of in recent years. I have never been against new art as such; some of it is good, much is crap, most is somewhere in between, and what else is news?”
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Scotland’s National Gallery May Have To Drop Free Admission
“The National Galleries of Scotland has been warned that it may have to scrap its free admissions policy, close a gallery, or cut its opening hours in an effort to combat a multi-million pound deficit. It has a projected annual deficit of more than £3m and by 2009 could have a cumulative shortfall of more than £8m”
Recreating Old Recordings
How to preserve old vinyl and wax cylinder recordings? “Researchers using optical-scanning equipment have made exquisitely detailed maps of the grooves of such recordings. By simulating how a stylus moves along those contours, the team has reproduced the encoded sounds with high fidelity.”
Rare Book Specialist To Take On Amazon
“A hugely popular Canadian Web site that links buyers looking for rare books to 12,000 antiquarian booksellers worldwide, will announce tomorrow at Book Expo in Chicago that it is opening its Internet platform to authors, publishers and bookstores selling new books. About 20,000 books sell daily through ABEbooks.com, which also has English, French and German sites… Customers can access over 50 million titles on ABEbooks.com and the company projects that a third of its business will be in new books within three years, offering strong competition to Chapters/Indigo and Amazon.ca.”
Crunch Time For Miami PAC
The overdue, over-budget Miami-Dade Performing Arts Center is at a flashpoint this week, as county officials are demanding a final cost estimate from the PAC’s designers and builders. “The builder’s contract with the county calls for the center to cost $254.6 million, but the builder has asked for $47 million more and estimates that its final extra costs could run as high as $61 million, the county said. The architect’s contract is for $25.35 million; it wants more, but won’t say how much. County Manager George Burgess vows to hold the line. The county has offered the builder an additional $8.9 million, rejected $26 million and is negotiating over the rest.”
Hockney: Drawing Is Fundamental Communication
David Hockney says drawing should be regarded as a major artform, says David Hockney. “Despite long being seen as almost irrelevant, drawing is a vital part of every creative process. Drawing has been neglected for the last 30 years in art education. That was based upon the idea that photography would suffice as a view of the world.”
American TV Getting Whiter
American television is notoriously devoid of racial diversity, and the small screen will reportedly be getting even whiter next season, as sitcoms, a recent haven for minority casts, continue to lose their place in prime time lineups to cheap-and-easy reality shows. The UPN network will continue to air multiple shows featuring all-minority casts, but among networks that viewers actually watch in anything approaching respectable numbers, blacks and Latinos might as well not exist.
Marketing Multiple Mormons
The Five Browns are one record label’s latest hope for a classical music marketing success. The five siblings, Juilliard-trained pianists all, are talented, unusual, and good-looking in a way that is sure to make their album covers attractive to consumers. Oh, and they’re Mormon, and see their music as a chance to bring the message of the Latter Day Saints to the world.
Controversial Painting Could Hang In SF City Hall
“An oil painting of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners may find sanctuary at San Francisco City Hall after provoking some irate viewers to threaten and assault the owner of the art gallery where it was originally shown.”
Crisis In Harlem
From an artistic standpoint, Dance Theatre of Harlem has never been stronger. But behind the scenes, the company “is in financial tatters. It is $2.5 million in debt. The staff was laid off in March. The board of directors has dwindled to two members aside from company co-founder and artistic director Arthur Mitchell.” Mitchell is preparing to step aside at the board’s request, and is reportedly close to hiring British socialite and arts patron Janet Boateng to run the company, a controversial move, since Boateng “appears to have no previous history of turning around a troubled arts entity.”