“A Dutch museum opens an exhibition this weekend of what it claims is a previously unknown painting by Vincent van Gogh, and says there may be more among a collection of 250 works once regarded as worthless.”
Blog
How Iraq’s National Symphony Got Invited To Perform In The US
“The 55 members of the Iraqi group will be joined by about 45 musicians from the National Symphony and they will perform as a single, joint orchestra. Iraqi conductor Mohammed Amin Ezzat and NSO conductor Leonard Slatkin will take turns leading the mixed group. Their Dec. 9 concert will include works by Beethoven and Bizet as well as two pieces of contemporary Iraqi music for a full symphony orchestra, augmented by six Kurdish folk instruments.”
The End Of History? Hah!
“Francis Fukuyama proclaimed ‘the end of history’ in 1989. The triumph of the western idea of markets and democracy would bring about a boring kind of bliss for all. Somewhat in parallel grew the concept of globalisation. Economic interdependence and the internet were creating a single world community. Some looked forward to a new law – or rule-based international society. Common to all three was the thought that we had entered a historically unprecedented era in which peace, prosperity and justice might be sustained without the old power relations, which as often as not had brought war and impoverishment.” But it hasn’t quite worked out that way…
A Mechanical Performance That “Sings”
The assignment: write theatre for machines that interact with audiences in new ways. “The project is called the Technology Plays, a theater experiment that is trying to take the old man-versus-machine theme to new extremes. The writers, led by Mr. Dresser and Mr. Kennedy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Ironweed,” have fashioned an unsettling exhibition challenging conventional notions of what theater can be and how it can be delivered.”
How To Kill The Place Where Hip Lives (Get Popular)
In the 90s Hoston was the hot, hip area of London, the “playground” of the YBA artists. “But now there are whispers that Hoxton is on the way down. Popularity, they say, has killed personality. Overexposure has destroyed the sense of Hoxton as an exclusive club for the ultra- fashionable: on a Saturday night, the Hoxton-Shoreditch thoroughfare of Curtain Road has lost any sense of an alternative identity, and the Bacardi Breezer-drinking hordes are indistinguishable from those in the West End.”
Sellars: Artists Must Take The Long View
Director Peter Sellars is impressed with demonstrations against the war in Iraq, but under no illusions that American policy will soon change. “We have different timelines. I’m accepting that for the next few years the headlines belong to [US Defence Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld. Our job as artists is to work for the next twenty years. I’m under no illusion that anything happens overnight. The real work is long-term. I have just come from Glyndebourne, working on Idonomeo and Theodora. These are pieces by artists from two different generations, Mozart and Handel, who were putting forward ideas – the end of autocracy and so on – that became the American revolution. That’s what artists must do.”
New Leadership For Bolshoi Theatre?
There are rumors the Bolshoi Drama Theatre might get new leadership. It’s long overdue, as recent productions prove. “After Georgy Tovstonogov’s death in 1980, an adequate replacement was not found, and it was decided that the new artistic director would concentrate his efforts on preserving the legacy of the late legendary director. The most important thing was not to ruin the house that Tovstonogov built. Now, that house has become old, feeble and fragile. After being denied fresh blood and any new influence at all for so many years, the BDT troupe finds itself in an unappealing state of stagnation.”
The Trouble With Aussie Film
“The perception is that the standard of Australian feature films, and television drama is, in general, slipping. Where are the films with international appeal? Where’s the meaningful TV? The drama isn’t dramatic, some industry insiders point out, and the comedy isn’t funny. Feature film and TV drama production is falling, and local expenditure is down. The TV networks are obsessed with cheap and faddish reality and renovation TV.”
Is Aussie Film Industry In Trouble?
It’s been a tough year for Australian films. But is the movie industry in crisis? “Yes, at this stage, it’s been nearly 30 years since the so-called ‘film renaissance’ of the mid-’70s, and we should be producing many more audience-friendly films and far fewer box-office dog whistles, arthouse indulgences and turkeys. Australian film needs to break out of its boutique mentality; its invasion of the multiplex is long overdue. But arrested development does not qualify as a crisis. Not in our book. Not yet.”
Getting Beyond Harry – Developing A Taste For Reading
Rachel Billington thinks it’s great that children are excited about reading Harry Potter. But what comes after that? In orevious generations, “there was no aggressive marketing to switch us in the direction of a particular book. Finding a book was an adventure that involved real choice. The question for modern parents is how to build on the popularity of a smallish range of exceedingly popular contemporary children’s books and lead their goggle-eyed offspring to wider shores.”