Science museums are generally kid-oriented institutions, featuring the type of whiz-bang exhibits a 10-year-old is guaranteed to prefer to sitting in math class. But a new science museum in London is aiming its marketing strategy squarely at the city’s adult population, with exhibits and panel discussions on some of the most controversial scientific issues of the era. “Be it the implications of genetically modified foods, face transplants, sex over 60, male pregnancy, death or AIDS, the Dana Centre plans to tackle topical, and sometimes taboo, subjects.”
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Lost Van Gogh Apparently Found
“A Dutch museum says it has found a painting by Vincent Van Gogh which had been unrecognised for years after being given away by his mother. The Breda Museum said the painting was found during research on an exhibition about the artist. The piece, dubbed Houses In The Hague, was found in a collection owned by a ‘trustworthy collector’, it added. The Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam said it was yet to confirm whether or not the painting was genuine.”
No End In Sight For CD Slump
A research group is predicting that the worldwide slump in music sales will continue for at least the next two years, with total sales falling by as much as $500 million in the next year. But the report also predicts that sales will begin to nose upwards in 2006, largely as a result of the anti-piracy efforts of the industry.
Indies Slumping, Too
In Boston, two major music stores owned by national chains have closed, amid much gnashing of media teeth over the state of the industry. But independent record stores, which depend on a small cadre of loyal customers to survive, are dropping like flies in the city, and no one seems to notice or care. “To counter falling sales, managers are cutting their staffs, strengthening their services, pricing their CDs competitively, and expanding stock to include videos, DVDs, and clothing.”
WTC Memorial Finalists Chosen
Eight finalists are announced for a memorial at the World Trade Center. “It’s a very moving moment. The memorial is at the heart of the site. It defines everything around it.”
Muschamp: Simplicity Is What’s Required For WTC Memorial
“For better or worse, we are living in baroque if not byzantine times. Some of our most impressive contemporary architecture reflects this. All eight designs chosen as finalists for a memorial of the World Trade Center disaster bear strong traces of it, to a greater or lesser degree. Each of them suffers as a result.
Youth Figures In WTC Memorial
“As far as visuals go, the coolest design is, without much doubt, the project by Gisela Baurmann, Sawad Brooks, and Jonas Coersmeier, all three of whom live in New York. The center of their design is something called the Memorial Cloud, a field of tubes that is flat and see-through on the top, at street level, and has an undulating ceiling, one whose shapes recall church architecture, when seen from underneath. The tubes are lit dramatically from below: one beam for each victim.”
WTC Memorial Judges
A list of the 13 judges for the World Trade Center memorial.
The Art Of Cinematic Theatre
Film has more and more of an impact on theatre. “But film is not just part of the visual texture of theatre. It has also had a huge influence on the structure of modern drama. Brecht, in defining epic theatre, uses the cinematic term ‘montage.’ And modern writers are far more likely to be influenced by the filmic juxtaposition of images and ideas than the old Aristotelian principles of unity.”
Let’s Have More Art Without Explanation
Why do museums/orchestras/theatres feel like they have to try so hard to explain their art, asks Rupert Christiansen. “In an era when television, radio and recorded music function as a constant hum in the hinterland of our daily activities, we have become increasingly unable to concentrate on only one of our senses. This restlessness takes several forms. Popular culture relies on masturbatory stimulation of a combination of eye and ear: action movies are accompanied by deafening soundtracks, the rock song has been transcended by the rock video – and the more weirdly extreme the imagery, the more headbangingly hard the beat, the better. Higher culture, on the other hand, is always anxiously explaining itself, with the help of another medium.”