Texas composer Laura Greenday-Ness has apologized for allowing misleading information about her career to be used in her music school’s promotional materials, and blamed her publicist for what appear to be flatly made-up accomplishments in her bio. The publicist claims that he wrote what Greenday-Ness told him to write, and nothing more. The composer also attacked the Dallas Morning News for its reporting on her misleading resume, claiming that the paper didn’t give her enough time to respond to the charges.
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Sell Three, Buy One, Everybody’s Happy
Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts took a major step yesterday towards fulfilling its goal of purchasing an 1876 Degas masterpiece entitled Duchessa di Montejasi With Her Daughters Elena and Camilla. The painting is expected to cost between $20 million and $40 million. To raise the money for the purchase, MFA auctioned off three valuable paintings from its permanent collection. “It took just five minutes for the works – two Degas pastels and a Renoir painting – to go, with the pieces approaching Sotheby’s top estimate of $17 million.”
Iraq Museum Director Says Staff Saved Much Of Museum’s Artifacts
The director of Iraq’s National Museum sits down with The Art Newspaper to talk about what happened to his museum. Donny George says the museum’s staff managed to hide away most of the museum’s collection for safekeeping before the war. “Presumably the vast majority of the 170,000 items in the collection were therefore in the vaults. How much was lost from the vaults?” George: “We have only looked through a hole and shone a torchlight into the vaults. We don’t yet know what is missing, but a lot of the objects are still there.”
Who Cares If It’s True? It’s Fascinating!
“‘On March 2, 2003, at 4:12 p.m., I disappeared,’ the journal begins. ‘My name is Isabella V. I’m twenty-something, and I am an international fugitive.'” Sound scintillating? It’s the first entry in a fascinating weblog purportedly written by a European heiress fleeing her wealthy and (apparently) powerful family. At this point, the blog is looking an awful lot like a hoax, but that’s really not the point. In an era when news, fiction, entertainment, ‘reality TV,’ and advertising all blur together in disturbing fashion, Isabella’s story is a sign of the synergistic times.
Looters Going After iraq’s Archaeological Sites
The Iraq war has been over for a month, but looters are targeting archaeological sites and carrying off whatever they can find. “This isn’t about museums anymore. This is about the last resource of our history: what’s underneath our soil.”
Next Stop On The Orchestral Crisis Train: Louisville
The latest hot spot in the increasingly shaky world of American orchestras is Louisville, Kentucky, where musicians of the Louisville Orchestra are filing for unemployment (in tux and tails, no less) and refusing to attend rehearsals after the orchestra’s management missed payroll and demanded that a permanent pay cut be adopted immediately. The musicians insist that they were willing to play regardless of whether payroll was met, but balked when management refused to allow them leave to seek other employment while the crisis continues. The orchestra is looking at an estimated $800,000 deficit on a budget of $6.1 million for the current season.
Unfair Practices or Critical Lack of Cash?
“The Louisville Orchestra’s musicians have asked the National Labor Relations Board to cite the orchestra’s board for unfair labor practices. They allege that — by not paying them or giving them immediate permission to seek other jobs — orchestra management is illegally locking them out… Meanwhile, the orchestra’s cash position is becoming ever more desperate. As of yesterday afternoon, only $3,240 remained in its bank account.”
Crooked Manhattan Dealer Held in Brazil
“An art dealer has been arrested in Brazil on suspicion of selling a stolen Picasso painting for $4.5 million and trying to sell a Monet painting that belonged to a Holocaust victim. French-born Michel Cohen, 49, who owned a gallery on Manhattan’s Madison Avenue before fleeing the US in 2001, was held while the US began extradition proceedings.” The Picasso in question had been loaned to Cohen by a Manhattan gallery in order for him to show it to a prospective buyer, but before the gallery knew what had happened, Cohen had sold the painting in a secret transaction at a Newark airport. He fled the country shortly thereafter.
Remembering Mr. Laff Box
Is anyone mourning the death of Charles Douglass, inventor of the TV “Laff Box?” “The question of where the first laughs in Charlie’s Laff Box came from is still subject to debate in TV geek circles. Some say they were sampled from a Marcel Marceau concert; others claim they came from a classic Red Skelton performance; still others say he recorded live audiences from early ‘I Love Lucy’ shows. All of these shows relied heavily on sight gags, which would have simplified the recording process.”
Elton John To Write Vampire Musical
Elton John has been hired by Warner Bros to write a Broadway musical based on “three of Anne Rice’s best-selling novels about a sauve vampire named Lestat.” John’s longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin will write lyrics.