“Art and parties are a familiar twosome, particularly in these times of a faltering economy and deep cuts in arts funding. More and more galleries and museums are renting out their spaces to help pay the bills and to draw new audiences to their exhibitions. But they wind up telling real horror stories about damaged and stolen art, broken electronic equipment and messes left for gallery directors to clean up the morning after.”
Blog
Performing Music Remotely Over Internet2
Classical music organizations are finding ways to use Internet2, the next generation of internet, “with enough broadband capacity to transmit huge quantities of data, including CD-quality sound and DVD-quality images, at as much as 250 megabytes per second (more than 4,000 times the rate of a standard dial-up modem; more than 800 times that of a cable modem). The New World Symphony is using it a lot, setting up coaching sessions, lessons and other interactions with top-flight professionals around the country.”
Dealer Charged With Trying To Sell Fake Picassos, Chagalls
An art dealer was “charged Friday with fraud in Milwaukee, accused of trying to sell fake artwork as originals by Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Henri Matisse.Some were of such poor quality that an art expert described them as ‘a joke’ and ‘an insult,’ according to a complaint filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court.”
DNA Action On Acton Estate
Sir Harold Acton was one of the great art collectors of the 20th Century. When he died he left his collection to New York University. “Acton left 40,000 rare books, 5,000 art works, including one attributed to Donatello, and a 57-acre estate with four villas. The biggest is Villa La Pietra, a 60-room Medici family palace, whose former guests include Prince Charles, Winston Churchill, DH Lawrence and Picasso.” Now new DNA evidence has bolstered claims of those contesting the bequest.
Where Are The Great New French Books And Films
“Where, it has been wondered — even before the coming together of the Coalition of the Willing — are the great French film directors and novelists of today? Where, in particular, given France’s reputation as the world headquarters of sexy romance, not to say plain old sex, are the great French erotic novels and films? Such questions have been reawakened recently by two events.”
SF Jewish, Mexican Museums Endangered
In San Francisco, “the proposed Jewish and Mexican museums, once seen as ideal ways to embody San Francisco’s racial and ethnic mosaic, are in such financial trouble that City Hall and museum backers worry they may never get built.”
One Ringy Dingy
Hate the sound of cell phones ringing? Music producers don’t. For them, ring tones are a huge and growing business. “In 2004, your average record company executive is more likely to stifle a cheer every time he hears a tinny version of a chart hit bleeping from a nearby Nokia. According to some sources, the mobile phone ringtone has come to save the music industry. Last year, mobile phone users spent $3 billion on them. They account for 10% of the world’s music market.”
Mamet: Movie Development Is Nonsense
David Mamet hits out at the development process in Hollywood, where supposedly movie projects are whipped into shape. “The young, warped by an educational system selling them perpetual adolescence, mistake the battleground for the struggle: they believe that make-work in that one-time area of strife and creation, Hollywood, somehow conveys to them the status of actually working in the Movie Business. It is as if a picnicker at the Gettysburg Memorial Park considered himself a soldier. Just as the Scholastic Aptitude Test measures the ability of the applicant to take that test, the bureaucratic rigours of the ‘development’ process probe the neophytes’ threshold for boredom, repetition, and nonsense.”
Raphael Drawing Discovered
A Raphael previously unknown drawing by Raphael has been discovered amidst a bundle of other drawings brought to Sotheby’s in London for valuation. “It had apparently spent most of the 20th century tucked in a cardboard folder with the other drawings in a drawer in a private house in London. The sketch is now believed to date from 1505, and to be Raphael’s first known drawing in red chalk, made soon after he arrived in Florence and fell under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci.”
Milwaukee Symphony Cuts Budget And Staff
The Milwuakee Symphony is cutting “more than $2 million off its $17 million operating budget” and laying off 17 employees in an attempt to balance its budget. Additional cost reductions will come from other areas of the organization over three years. The layoffs come as the MSO stops the practice of dipping into its unrestricted endowment fund for operating cash.”