“A meteorite believed to have come from an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter has sold for $93,000 (U.S.) at an auction of rare space sculptures. The 355-pound chunk of iron, thousands of years old and discovered in the Campo del Cielo crater field in Argentina, was one of 10 meteorites that went for high prices at a Bonhams New York natural-history auction. Known by its place of discovery as the ‘Valley of the Sky’ meteorite, the pristine item was purchased Tuesday by a private collector in the United States who bid by phone and plans to display it as a work of art.”
Tag: 04.13.06
Spacey Strikes Back
Kevin Spacey isn’t taking the latest blasts from the London press lying down. Despite the early closure of his latest production at the Old Vic, Spacey insists that audiences love what he’s doing, and accuses the city’s notoriously sharp-tongued critics of having it in for him. “In the end, Spacey is confronted by two dilemmas. One is the celebrity trap of which he is both beneficiary and victim. The other is the anachronistic position of the Old Vic in the modern world.”
Need A Second Source? Try Orwell.
There are times when a regular observer of journalism wonders what authors ever did before George Orwell came along to provide them with enough platitudes and philosophies to support whatever they happened to be writing about on a given day. Catherine Bennett suggests that Orwell has perhaps surpassed Jesus as everyone’s favorite quote machine. “In fact, to look at the places where his wisdom has been invoked recently is to wonder if there is anyone, excepting Stalinists, who would not think better of an opinion knowing it to be one that Orwell endorsed, or would have done had he ever got the chance to hear about it.”
Lending All Well And Good, But Ownership Questions Not Going Away
“A circumcision mask from western Kenya and a headdress made from human hair from Uganda are among 140 artefacts from the British Museum that have gone on show in Nairobi – the first time the museum has lent objects to Africa. But the exhibition has sparked debate about whether such objects should be returned to their home countries for good.”
The Manhood Problem
There was a time when everyone pretty much knew what it meant to be a man, to the extent that anyone even asking the question would probably have earned a quizzical look. These days, manliness is as nebulous as concepts come, and Justin Davidson says that “masculinity is being constantly renegotiated, and men find themselves walking an invisible line, where self-assurance spills into arrogance, aggressiveness into bellicosity, stoic fortitude into cold indifference, sexual assertiveness into rapaciousness.”
Principle May Trump Need In Transatlantic Art Deal
A scandal may be brewing over a well-intentioned exchange program between the Louvre and two leading American museums, Chicago’s Terra and Atlanta’s High. Under the proposed plan, all three museums would loan some art across the pond, and American corporate sponsors would pay part of the cost of refurbishing some of the government-owned Louvre’s galleries. And therein lies the problem: “Many in France’s cultural establishment have what might be called an ideological distaste for linking public art and private money. And while in practice French museums routinely seek corporate sponsorship for exhibitions, anything approaching the American model of privately-financed culture sets off alarm bells.”
Da Vinci Excerpts To Go On Display – Good Luck Seeing ‘Em
A selection of drawings, sketches, and jottings from the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci will go on display for the first time this fall at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. “The display of these small, delicate, detailed works will present a challenge to the V&A, which expects up to 150,000 visitors in a year of unprecedented interest in Leonardo.”
Grading Museums On A Curve
The shortlist is out for the 2006 Gulbenkian Prize, which honors Britain’s best museum of the year, and one of the judges says that the experience has been eye-opening. “There are so many different museums that sometimes it’s like comparing oranges with apples. And yet, when you get the measure of a place, there are a few magic ingredients. Top of the list is the sort of enthusiasm that’s catching: an enthusiasm that means you turn up somewhere knowing little about a subject, and leave feeling inspired by it. Beyond that, there are things like how welcoming a place is; how easy it is to access information; how much sense the layout makes; in a nutshell, how user-friendly it is.”