Blog

Looking For Leadership In Pittsburgh

The search for a new managing director of the Pittsburgh Symphony is attracting the kind of attention usually reserved for the hiring of a music director. That’s what happens when an orchestra’s major challenges seem to be managerial rather than artistic. “Looming large over the search is the PSO’s $800,000 cash shortfall this year and the effort to stave off a $2.5 million structural deficit next year, not to mention the hiring of a replacement for outgoing music director Mariss Jansons.”

The Meaning Of Beauty

For a long while beauty was a quality that lost favor in art. But slowly, beauty has begun to reassert itself, and a new book makes a case for its importance. “One submerged argument is that what we say about beauty can affect what we see of it, perhaps even its capacity to manifest itself. “

Magnetic Attraction

A new Canadian theatre festival called Magnetic North hopes to be a showcase for the best new Canadian plays from across the country. The festival will switch cities each year. “Magnetic North never stays put. The concept is that every other year we will be in a different Canadian city and then return to Ottawa. So 2004 will find us in Edmonton, and 2005 back in the capital again.”

Why Spanish-Language Movies Have A Tough Time In The US

“Although Latinos make up the fastest growing segment of the U.S. moviegoing population, recent attempts at luring them to Latin-themed movies have met with mixed results. ‘We are just getting to know the market and how it works. We are trying to develop the market in those communities where the movies will have the most success…. There is a lot of risk. But there are a lot of people who see the opportunity and want to try’.”

Missing Turner Surfaces

A long-lost Turner watercolor has turned up after more than a century. “It was owned by the eminent art critic and Turner fanatic John Ruskin, who displayed it with other gems from his private collection in public shows in 1878 and in 1900, the year he died. The painting was then sold to an unknown private collector and disappeared for more than a century.”

Damien Finds God?

Damien Hirst is taking a religious turn. His next series of pieces are religion-themed. “In a series of sculptures inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, which will be seen in London this autumn, Hirst will depict Jesus and the apostles as 13 pingpong balls bobbing on spurting fountains of red wine. A washing bowl to bathe Christ’s feet will sit beneath their Formica table.”

To Catch A Thief

Plagiarism seems to be all around us. “Why do they do it? With the Internet making it easy to disseminate and read virtually anything anyone writes, it has become that much easier to catch plagiarists. So why do writers continue to steal the works of others? There are many explanations: gnawing self-doubt, narcissistic self-confidence, haste, pressure from publishers and editors, unrestrained ambition, a self-destructive need to court disaster, and, sometimes, ignorance of what plagiarism is.”