When Michael Klein became the curator of Microsoft’s corporate art collection five years ago, the first thing he did was give the committee that had been picking art for the company the boot. “He’s not above rubbing it in. ‘I took their toy away’.” With a substantial budget and an eye for contemporary art, Klein has emerged as a player in the coporate art collecting world.
Blog
Court: Van Gogh Painting Is Authentic
“France’s highest court ruled today that an atypical Van Gogh landscape rumoured to be fake was, in fact, real – ending an eight-year-old squabble over the sale of the painting.”
Troy Movie Spurs Interest In Classics
Evidently, Brad Pitt makes Homer’s The Illiad sexy. University professors are expecting an upturn in enrollment for courses in the classics. And book sales of The Illiad are rocketing up. “In fact, the Iliad has already cracked the Amazon.com top 100 book list at No. 86.”
Doctorow Cheered, Booed For Anti-Bush Commencement Speech
Writer E.L. Doctorow gave a commencement speech at Hofstra University over the weekend, and was extremely critical of George Bush. “Apparently, some folks at the university ceremony liked what Doctorow had to say and cheered. But others said his comments were inappropriately political. The vocal outrage grew so vociferous that at one point Hofstra President Stuart Rabinowitz stepped in and asked the crowd to quiet down so Doctorow could continue.”
Afghanistan Sings Again
Music is starting to flow again in Afghanistan. “A revolutionary musical revival is under way here after six years during which all music, even humming on the streets, was forbidden. The lively scene on Kabul’s version of New Orleans’ Bourbon Street is one indicator. Another is the birth of Radio Arman, a new station unlike anything Afghanistan has ever seen. ‘When you deprive someone of water for five days and then you finally give them some, you will see what the taste will be. That’s what music is to us Afghans’.”
Penn Ballet Gets A Wheeldon Swan Lake
Pennsylvania Ballet has spent much of the past decade rebuilding its fortunes after getting into money problems. How successful the company has been is evidenced by the fact that the company has landed Christopher Wheeldon, one of the hottest young choreographers around, to produce a new “Swan Lake” for the company.
Albee: I’m In Fashion, I’m Out…
From a New York point of view, Edward Albee is solidly back. Yet, from his own perspective, he never went away. “You’re in fashion, you’re out of fashion. That comes and goes. I’ll be out of fashion again.’ He notes, however, that in the years the theater establishment regarded him as passe, he ‘was performed everywhere except in New York. I was still writing all the time. My output has always been pretty steady, a play every year and half’.”
RSC Might Change Stratford Plans
The Royal Shakespeare Company is rethinking the redevelopment of its Stratford-On-Avon home after architects working on the project quit. The RSC has been planning to replace its current home with a “theatre village”, but the plan has been controversial.
Music Sales Up Sharply
Sales of music in the US are up 9 percent this year, and some recording execs are predicting a recovery in the global music business: “If this is the result of a combined formula of anti-piracy lawsuits knocking people off file-sharing sites and the massive adoption of legal services and a spike in CD sales then it could be good news for everyone.”
“Rings” Soundtrack Scores In Phoenix
The Phoenix Symphony makes all sorts of new fans and sells a record number of tickts as it presents a “Lord of the Rings” symphony, taken from Howard Shore’s movie soundtrack.