Stolen religious art is big business in Mexico and all over Latin America. “Churches, convents and shrines all over Latin America are under siege. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency in Washington and the FBI, which will soon unveil a “rapid response” task force to fight trafficking in smuggled art, say they are beefing up enforcement efforts. A key tactic is monitoring the Internet, where much of the loot is sold.”
Tag: 01.02.05
Music In Time And Place
“Today, the environments that music occupies have gotten either very small or very large: the isolation chamber of headphones or the anonymity of the stadium. Live, unamplified music still exists in the cloistered precincts of the concert hall; local bars soldier on and dance clubs still find new ways of embroidering a heavy beat. But for much of the world, music has become either a solitary experience or a form of mass ritual. Yet the history of music is inseparable from the history of places where people gathered.”
Art Of The Moment (After The Moment Has Passed)
“Art made from obviously impermanent materials that is being painstakingly preserved; art made to stay shiny and new that is being treasured for its age; art challenging the notion of originality that is being scrutinized for that quality; once-standard, off-the-shelf materials that are now hard to find; collectors who cling to a piece of paper that proves their dated light fixture is worthy of a museum, not a recycling bin; and caretakers of a reputation who make decisions that they readily admit run counter to the artist’s original intentions. Such is the strange afterlife of work that produces beauty from the banal, an object lesson in how the legacy of a strong-willed radical can be brought to heel by an even stronger force, the market.”