The Forbes family has amassed a major collection of Victorian art. But “next month, the bulk of that collection, which rivals the Tate’s and the Victoria and Albert’s collections—not to mention composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s—will become the latest chunk of the Forbes’ art and antiquities holdings to be sold off as the publishers of Forbes magazine struggle against a brutal economic downturn.”
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Help Give California The Quarter It Deserves!
No kidding. The state of California is trying to choose a design for the quarter that will represent it in the American money supply. The Chair of the California Quarter Committee (again no kidding) has summoned help in choosing. The field of quarter designs has been narrowed to 20, and you can vote for the quarter of your dreams on the quarter website. Maybe it’ll be one of the eight – count ’em, eight – that depict the Golden Gate Bridge…
Report Criticizes Smithsonian Research Efforts
A special commission has issued a report complaining that the Smithsonian has let its research efforts become “unfocused and underfunded,” and calling on the organization to “concentrate its scientific work in specific areas and make a major effort to raise more money.”
EMI Legitimizing Old Bootleg Callas Recordings
“EMI considers itself the protector of Maria Callas’ official recorded heritage. Yet, in November, the company added four complete opera recordings and five recital discs to its Callas Collection, all pirated or quasi-legal releases from smaller labels. Why has EMI put out recordings that, not so long ago, it was trying to suppress? To remain the major player in the Callas market as recordings from the 1950s enter the public domain in Europe, where copyright protection for sound recordings lasts only 50 years. EMI has, in effect, legitimised these recordings, securing the tapes from a furtive independent label that had held them…”
HipHop At 30
“As hip-hop approaches its 30th birthday, pop culture is coming down with a serious case of nostalgia for the genre’s early days. ‘People are realising what a monumental and phenomenal force hip-hop has been, and for the first time you’re starting to really get people outside of the culture to realise it’.”
Why Tolkien Would Have Hated This Movie
The smashing success of the first two installments of the filmed version of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy points up a fundamental irony in the story: the movies could not pack the emotional and visceral punch they do without the use of state-of-the-art digital technology, but Tolkien, a vehement Luddite, would undoubtedly have despised the computer-generated effects. “Tolkien’s hatred of technology was central to his conception of Middle Earth. The good hobbits are classic old English villagers, content to cultivate small plots of land and smoke their pipes… The evil wizard Saruman, by contrast, is a kind of demented Henry Ford, with a ‘mind of metal and wheels’.”
It’s All Been Done
“In a post-postmodernist culture swamped in sequels, self-reference, adaptation, irony, parody, reality TV, digital sampling and the thud-beat of rap, newness has become a novelty item, a dated curio from another age.” But does the reliance on old ideas necessarily mean artists aren’t creating original work? According to Steven Winn, that’s exactly what it means, and the art world is the worse for the lack of creative originality.
Never Saw It Coming
“People who make, teach and exhibit film in Pittsburgh were stunned yesterday by the Carnegie Museum of Art’s announcement that it was eliminating its venerated film and video department as a way to save money.” Even an organization which some viewed as a competitor to the Carnegie series was shocked by the move, insisting that the two series had the same mission – to bring top-quality international film to the Steel City.
Demolish Or Restore? Philly Looks To L.A.
In Los Angeles, a number of decaying old movie palaces are being restored, thanks in large part to a private investor with a passion for old films. And the redevelopment has another big city 3,000 miles away paying attention. In Philadelphia, where downtown is bustling and decrepit old buildings are being torn down at a record rate to make way for new structures, time is running out on the one remaining classic movie palace in town. But will the city consider a one-screen throwback worth saving?
Jazz Police, I Hear You Calling
Jazz aficionados bow to no one in their ability to turn rapidly snobbish when confronted with a corner of the jazz world which does not square with their own vision of the genre. The infighting has reared its head in Toronto this month, with the International Association for Jazz Education holding its annual conference there. Upset at being shut out of the conference, a consortium of some of the city’s more innovative (read: non-mainstream) jazz musicians have organized their own gathering. That’s all well and good, says Carl Wilson, but the rhetoric coming out of the alternative gathering is a bit over the line. “We’re against music teachers now?”