FIRST RETURNS

A painting has been returned by a British museum after a list published by the government last week. “The Three Stages of Life” (1898) a triptych by Count Leopold von Kalckreuth, part of a traveling show at the Royal Academy of Arts called “1900: Art at the Crossroads,” is the first restitution of a painting on view in a British institution. – New York Times

PRESERVATIVE ENCROACHMENT

When Korea abandoned centuries of isolationism and opened its doors to the West in the 1880s, a floodgate of Western culture arrived. Westerners built towering buildings that dwarfed traditional wooden structures and thatched huts in Seoul, major port cities and other major evangelistic posts. The buildings are now a symbol of the beginning of Western encroachment, and the government has decided to protect them as part of the country’s heritage. – Korea Herald

A RELATIONSHIP WITH STUFF

“My music collection, in principle, remains on my shelves, but increasingly it lives in my computer.” Part of the pleasure of collecting something is establishing a physical relationship with objects. What happens when the object of a collecting mania disappears into the ether? – Feed

SONIC SOUVENIR

Like that concert you just heard? Want to take it home with you? Now London’s South Bank Center will make it happen. If you want a CD of that performance, South Bank will deliver it to you within an hour of the end of the concert. Appreciating music, after all, is about being able to hear repeat performances. – London Times

OF INSTRUMENTALISTS AND MUSICIANS

Franz Welser-Most, director designate of the venerable Cleveland Orchestra, on the difference between American and European orchestras: “American orchestras come prepared, which European orchestras mostly don’t. You must be a really great instrumentalist to play in an American orchestra. In Europe, there is a different angle: good musicianship first, and then the technical side hopefully will be there as well. This is one reason why a lot of marriages between American orchestras and European music directors have been very happy and successful.” – Los Angeles Times

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS AWARD WINNERS —

— are announced. The 650-member organization honors “works that are more scholarly, literary and often just more maverick than those recognized by the mainstream Pulitzer Prizes.” – Dallas Morning News 03/14/00

  • ALL CACHET/NO CASH: “It’s not about us as book critics. We want to deliver the books that are best to our audience and that’s what we did.” The winners: “Jonathan Lethem for “Motherless Brooklyn,” Henry Wiencek for “The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White,” Jonathan Weiner for “Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior,” Jorge Luis Borges for “Selected Non-Fictions,” and Ruth Stone for “Ordinary Words.” – Washington Post

  • Awards like a North Beach coffee house, circa 1962. – San Francisco Chronicle