Book collectors are book lovers. And book lovers love libraries, right? Uh uh. “Collectors abominate lending libraries. They are graveyards of good books. Everything a librarian does to prepare a book for lending disqualifies it as collectable. Stamps are slammed on the title page, label pockets gummed to the rear pastedown, dust wrappers discarded, covers vulcanised in plastic – or, in those days, a toffee-brown buckram tough enough to withstand acid. Restoring a library book to collectable condition is like trying to return a Kentucky Fried Chicken to the state of health where it can lay an egg.”
Blog
How Police Recovered Stolen Beatles Tapes
Five hundred tapes of the Beatles’ recording sessions from 1969 that were stolen in 1970 have been recovered in a warehouse near Amsterdam. “While the tapes, enough to fill 15 CDs, will be returned to their legal owner, record company EMI, they could prove to be a source of further tension between the two surviving band members and the estates of their former colleagues, Harrison and Lennon. The Get Back sessions were dark, tense days for the Beatles and the tapes display the most intimate, and potentially embarrassing, details of that tension.”
My Life As A Critic
Village Voice art critic Jerry Saltz seems a little overwhelmed by by his job as an art critic. “It is a thrilling, humbling, weird business. You go to shows, sometimes as many as 40 a week, looking, always looking, and thinking, ‘Is this the show I’ll write about? Is this the one?’ It’s like wondering who you’ll marry. You’re constantly dangling the line of your responses into the stream of exhibitions. For better or for worse, shows usually choose you.”
Material Breach – Moden Art Falling Apart
Modern art materials are falling apart in their cases and storage closets. “As the most adventurously made art ages, inherent vice has overtaken collectors and museums largely unprepared for its ravages. Fat is melting. Cellulose nitrate is powdering. Rubber is disintegrating. Nettles are crumbling. Dried mud is flaking and blowing away. The contemporary art conservator must be open to ingenious and humble solutions, not just technically sophisticated ones.”
Bail-Out For Winnipeg Symphony (WSO Sold Only 40 Tickets For Opener)
Three levels of government bailed out the Winnipeg Symphony on Friday, amid rumors of financial mismanagement and a $1 million deficit this season (added to a $1.8 million accumulated deficit). “For its gala season opener in September, the consultant reports, the WSO sold only 40 tickets at full price when the Centennial Concert Hall had a capacity of 2,223. The WSO claimed 1,456 tickets were sold, but 1,230 of these were freebies.”
MP3 – Learning To Listen In A Different Way
Sure, portable MP3 players are convenient, but they also change the way you listen to music. “Play with these portable gadgets enough, and you find yourself listening more actively, thinking like a DJ – seeking the mind-bending segue or the track that kicks things into another gear, savoring this surreal mix-and-match moment in which historical artifact rubs up against disposable remix. You start to imagine all sorts of new-frontier ideas – kiosks in airports offering custom mixes (by Moby, Nikka Costa, anybody) or an hour’s worth of music from unknown talents selected by some veteran coolhunter.”
Selling A Raphael To Save Art Heritage
After loaning his Raphael painting “The Madonna of the Pinks” for ten years to the National Gallery, the Duke of Northumberland decided to sell the painting to help pay for the upkeep of his estate. LA’s Getty Museum agreed to buy the painting, and the Duke has faced a barrage of criticism in Britain. Unfair, he says. He’s got to pay for his other obligations somehow. “I employ hundreds of people, maintain a historic landscape and look after one of the most important art collections in the country, enjoyed by more than 100,000 visitors each year. The cost is astronomic, but the entire business is vital to the economy of the region in tourism and related employment.”
Will UK Government Keep Raphael In Country?
The British government is expected this week to grant a temporary halt to export of Raphael’s “Madonna of the Pinks” to the US. “The new director of the National Gallery will then begin the fight of his life, to persuade the heritage lottery fund that saving Raphael’s exquisite Madonna of the Pinks is worth paying £20 million to one of the richest men in the country. The fund has the money: despite the sharp fall in lottery ticket sales it will have about £300 million to give away this year, as well as the interest on grants which have been allocated but not yet paid out.”
Down Days For Jazz
The jazz business is in a bad way right now. “The talent level has never been so high. But jazz economics are at a nadir not seen since the late 1960s, when Miles Davis, Weather Report, Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters and John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra went electric and brought fusion to rock-oriented baby boomers. In this attenuated climate, jazz sales accounted for about 2% of the total market, mostly from back catalogue and new product by singers like Diana Krall and Norah Jones, who helped their labels stay solvent by going platinum.”
A Hundred Years Of Buying Art
“A century after it began with 53 members paying one guinea a year each, the National Art Collections Fund, now often known as the Art Fund, is Britain’s leading independent arts charity with 90,000 members paying a minimum of £32 annually. During those 100 years, it has bought or helped to buy 477,384 objects for British museums and art galleries with grants totalling almost £38 million. If past funding is converted into today’s equivalent sums, the NACF has helped public collections to the tune of £84,173,626.”