The cleaning of Michelangelo’s David is turning into quite the public event, and a fierce argument has developed over the proper way to free David from his layers of grime. “The row centres on whether the statue should be cleaned using water to restore it to its original state or by a dry cleaning method which would be less radical and only remove the worst grime, according to UK press reports on Wednesday. A petition has been signed by more than 39 international art experts to stop Florence’s Galleria dell’Accademia using their planned wet technique and demanding that an independent commission should decide on the best method.”
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The Orchestra Healer
To suggest that classical musicians are physical workers, like athletes, is to invite a wave of snickers and snide jokes about the fat guy in the back of the second violins. But the repetitive motion of playing a string instrument, for example, is tremendously stressful to the muscles involved, and increasingly, orchestra musicians have been sustaining career-threatening injuries from the simple act of pulling a bow back and forth. Enter Janet Horvath, who is on a one-woman crusade to teach orchestral musicians how to avoid such injuries. Horvath’s credentials: she’s a cellist who, back in college, was hurting so badly that she couldn’t turn a doorknob, but who has now served as associate principal cello of a major American orchestra for 20 years.
O’Neill Conference Looks Increasingly Female
At Connecticut’s O’Neill Playwrights Conference, women playwrights are taking an increasingly major role. “The League of American Theaters and Producers reports that the audience for Broadway shows in the 2001-02 season was 63 percent female — the same percentage of plays by women (63.6 percent) that get script-in-hand public performances at this year’s playwrights conference. But nationwide, according to American Theatre magazine, only 17 to 18 percent of plays produced in professional theaters in 2001-02 were written by women. In the same season, 16 percent of productions were directed by women.”
Will California Wipe Out Its Arts Funding?
California – known as a center of creativity – could soon become the first American state to eliminate its arts funding. “Cultural groups and artists say the death of the 28-year-old agency would have a ripple effect throughout the state. They predict as many as 14 regional arts councils receiving Arts Council funding could be eliminated, and the National Endowment of the Arts would divert $1 million earmarked for Arts Council distribution to other states. The state ranks 40th in the nation in per capita arts funding.”
The Summer Of The Documentary?
While big blockbuster movie fatigue seems to be setting in this summer, a handfull of documentaries are finding traction. A few can even be called big successes – by documentary standards…”Even the most costly docs rarely exceed a $1 million budget. Whereas a blockbuster like ‘Terminator 3’ might play on 3,500 screens, documentaries are lucky to make it onto 100. In the world of blockbusters, the (box office) mark to hit is $100 million, but in the world of documentaries, it’s $1 million.”
PBS And CNN Need To Update Their Resumes
PBS is in a world of denial. “For the most part, it creates fine programming, the kind that TV critics would love to champion. But PBS hasn’t learned that it’s in a competitive environment. No longer is the business so starkly simple that one can say, ‘We make quality programming, and everyone else airs garbage.’ The fact is, cable channels do much of what PBS does, equally well, and market it better. The disadvantage for PBS is that the system it operates under is a gigantic mess – the local stations wag the dog and always have.”
Is The Art Or Applause Dying?
Rupert Christiansen observes that audiences seem less enthusiastic with their applause these days. “Why should this be? As a culture, we are much less repressed than we used to be. Nobody any longer fights back the tears manfully – in fact, you can hardly switch the radio on without hearing some disaster victim collapsing into gut-churning sobs. We are repeatedly exposed to the sounds and images of extreme drama, both actual and fictional. This may mean that the excitement that live music stimulates is less intense and surprising – we hear it, after all, every day, reproduced with a fidelity that wasn’t possible in the pre-FM, pre-digital era. The passivity of television and a certain fed-on-a-plate laziness about our consumption of art also contribute to the fall in the clapometer.”
Alternatives To State Arts Funding?
“The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies has reported that total funding for state arts councils will be $354.9 million in 2003, down more than 13% from the $408.6 million recorded for 2002. And with budgets in California and a few other states in limbo, that figure could still take a tumble.” So are there alternative public arts funding plans that could work?
Unveiling The New Guggenheim Taiwan
The Guggenheim has unveiled plans for a new Taiwan outpost. “The proposed museum, designed by noted architect Zaha Hadid, includes several sections of the museum that can change position on demand. The entire West Wing, a two-story structure with a 3,583 square meter base is designed to move either through a rail or air cushion system into three different positions, while the East gallery includes a 440 square meter platform which can move between the first and second floor galleries like a gigantic elevator.”
Did Bob Dylan Steal His Word? (Couldn’t Be)
“The discovery last week (first reported on the front page of The Wall Street Journal) that Mr. Dylan may have lifted as many as a dozen lines for his remarkable 2001 album, ‘Love & Theft,’ from Japanese writer Junichi Saga, and his 1989 book ‘Confessions of a Yakuza,’ is a nonstory. The singer, as anyone with even a passing interest in pop music and American culture of the last 40 years knows, is both playful musical archaeologist and sly trickster – a man of many masks.”