A tiny band of West Coast Canadian indians wants a mask in the British Museum returned to them. “It would be good if getting back the mask would be precedent-setting so everybody who wants their pieces get them back. The people who live in this bucolic corner of Canada’s Pacific coast say retrieval of the mask — a beautifully carved and brightly painted crest that opens into a sullen, wide-eyed human face with what looks like sun rays protruding from around its circumference — is part of a broad effort to reverse a cultural theft by Christian missionaries and a series of Canadian governments.”
Blog
Recording Companies Who Cheer On File-Traders (And The Musicians Who Love Them)
The recording industry isn’t solidly against file-sharing. Indeed smaller labels benefit from file-trading. “File sharing, these owners say, helps their small companies compete against conglomerates with deeper pockets for advertising and greater access to radio programmers. ‘Our music, by and large, when kids listen to it, they share it with their friends. Then they go buy the record; they take ownership of it’.”
The Detroit Symphony’s Miraculous Turnaround
A dozen years ago the Detropit Symphony was destitute, a once-proud institution reduced to penury. But “the $60-million Max M. Fisher Music Center, which opens Oct. 11, puts an exclamation point on what experts say is one of the most improbable turnarounds in the history of U.S. orchestras. The DSO pulled itself up by its financial bootstraps, rebuilt its neighborhood, forged innovative civic partnerships and reinvented itself as a model 21st-Century arts institution. The DSO has woven itself deep enough into the fabric of the city that nearly everyone has a stake in its future.”
Construction Endangers Taj Mahal
“Conservation experts are warning that a massive mound of soil stretching across 72 acres of the banks of the Yamuna river opposite the Taj Mahal could turn into a mudslide and flood the foundations of the 17th-century mausoleum. This disaster waiting to happen is the latest chapter in the sorry story of the mismanagement of the great Islamic building.”
Louvre: Sponsor This
The Louvre is looking for sponsors, as one of a series of reforms that requires museums to raise more of their own budgets. “The three main principles of the reforms are to give museums the freedom to manage money from entry tickets; full responsibility for their exhibition and display policies; and freedom to manage their acquisitions policy.”
Time For Movies To Pay For R&D
The powerful lucrative movie business gets a lot of its talent from the theatre. “Is there something inherently wrong about one of the world’s most powerful industries’ being so disconnected from the source of some of its greatest talent? A good part of the entertainment industry’s research and development have been in the nonprofit sector, but the bills have not been paid by entertainment conglomerates but through the box office, foundations, local businesses and the taxpayer.”
Another Leeds, Another Pianist…So…
Hmnnnnn. There’s a new winner of the Leeds International Piano Competition. And he plays well enough. But where is the next Murray Perahia? “Cool competence” doesn’t exactly get us running for our credit cards…
London’s Stab At A Contemporary Fair
A new art fair dedicated to contemporary art is opening in London. “It is a momentous occasion because London has never hosted a truly international contemporary art fair before. The fairs that did take place were considered either too provincial or too traditional in content. And there were not, it was argued, enough collectors in the UK to make the journey worthwhile.”
Scots Ballet’s Movement Problem
The Scottish Ballet wants to move. But it “has attracted widespread condemnation from the visual arts world after revealing it is applying for lottery cash to convert Tramway 2 – an internationally respected exhibition space which launched the careers of artists such as Roderick Buchanan and Christine Borland – into rehearsal space.”
What’s Wrong With The Booker
The Booker prize has, for much of its history, been anthrax for the average reader. One thing you could be guaranteed of: you might come out of the experience feeling cleverer, or more high-toned, but you’re unlikely to have had much of an enjoyable time. Furthermore, you are unlikely to have read anything contemporary, or that has anything to say about Britain today. Rather as British art abandoned painting, for decades British writing abandoned story. Plot, good characters and, God forbid, humour, have not only been largely absent from the list of Booker triumphs – they are positively reasons for exclusion, it seems sometimes.”