“The funeral stone, or stele, is one of a group of six obelisks erected at Axum when Ethiopia adopted Christianity in the 4th century A.D. It was stolen by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in 1937 and turned into a symbol of fascist power during his short-lived efforts to revive the grandeur of imperial Rome.”
Tag: 04.25.05
Rip van Winkel Wakes Up, Watches A Week Of TV
Mary Jacobs stopped watching TV 15 years ago. As Turn-Off-Your-TV Week began she spent a solid week watching again. “My conclusion? Bad TV is much worse. It’s uglier, meaner and more inane. But good TV has actually gotten better. Characters have real depth; there’s more ambiguity and nuance; plots take unpredictable and interesting turns. Maybe, when the baby boomers’ hair turned gray, television became more adept at dealing with gray areas. So, will I keep on watching? Probably not.”
Libeskind Takes His Tower West
It doesn’t look like Daniel Libeskind’s tower for the World Trade Center site will get built. So he’s traveled the plans across the country to California. “The architect’s plans for a 37-story condo tower named “Aura” in Sacramento, California, bear a remarkable resemblance to his original design for the second-tallest building at the ground-zero site. The 430-foot tower, to rise later this year, has the same geometric design at its pinnacle, with a sharply sloping downward angle on one corner. With the exception of its balconies, the tower is strikingly familiar.”
Where Are Iraqi Artifacts?
It’s been two years since the Iraq Museum was looted. “To date, 3,000 have been recovered in Baghdad, some returned by ordinary citizens, others by the police. In addition, more than 1,600 objects have been seized in neighbouring countries, some 300 in Italy and more than 600 in the United States. Most of the stolen items are unaccounted for, but some private collectors in the Middle East and Europe have admitted possessing objects bearing the initials IM (Iraq Museum inventory number).”
National Gallery of Canada Leaks
Canada’s National Gallery is in severe disrepair. “The imposing glass and steel structure, designed by architect Moshe Safdie, opened its doors in 1989. Sixteen years later, gallery director Pierre Théberge says he can’t keep up with the cost of repairs. Currently, the gallery’s annual $45-million budget allots $1 million for repair work. ‘We would need … between $4 [million] and $5 million a year … to keep up with repairs over the next five or 10 years’.”
A Rising Frustration With Music Downloading
UK legal music downloaders are “being turned off net music stores because of pricing and disappointing sound quality compared to CDs. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said legal music downloads rose by 900% in 2004.”
Liverpool Museum Takes On The World
The former Liverpool Museum has expanded to nearly twice its size and been renamed World Museum Liverpool. The city is gearing up for its year as the European Capital of Culture in 2008.
Mailer Sells Archive To U Texas
Norman Mailer has sold his personal archives to the University of Texas for $2.5 million. Stored in nearly 500 boxes weighing more than 20,000 pounds, the trove includes all manner of Mailerabilia dating back to his childhood and especially his early years at Harvard (class of ’43), where he majored in aeronautical engineering and wrote an unpublished novel, “No Percentage.”
Education Fails Classical Music
Peter Maxwell Davies says what ails classical music is the lack of good education. “Successive governments have cut back on music education in state schools to the extent that music specialists have become a rarity. Not only can few teachers read or write musical notation, but the music teachers themselves are unfamiliar with the world of classical music. Can we imagine the teaching of English in circumstances where the teacher not only does not know any poems, novels or plays, but cannot read?”
Where Does British Art Stack Up?
“British art, historically, has its charms. In addition to Gainsborough’s perfumed rococo world, we have Constable and Turner. All three, if you have grown up with the swagging, blustering variability of British weather, are acute barometers of the national soul. But do their works make it into the world’s top 10, or even top 100?”