Danny Boy – Why They Love Libeskind

What is the appeal of Daniel Libeskind? The architect chosen to build on the site of the World Trade Center has dazzled some. “It is clear enough why Libeskind?s work, exceptionally thin in range and character, should have endeared itself over the years to his various clients, all of whom inhabit the world of cultural institutions: museums, schools, and foundations. He himself is most at home in that world, and until recently has inhabited it exclusively. He speaks its language. If his designs struck any of his potential clients as dangerously unhinged, reassurance was always at hand in the form of his impeccable institutional credentials, his professorial demeanor, his high-flown patter.”

Museums – How Do You Cut Back Without Becoming “Living Dead?”

Museums squeezed by tough financial circumstances are trying to cope by shaving budgets. This is okay for the short term, But Adrian Ellis writes that “the risks creating a sort of ‘living dead’ institution, in which variable costs (programmes, exhibitions etc.) have been squeezed disproportionately because fixed costs are just that — fixed. Many museums in the sector are therefore going to need to take more radical steps if they are to thrive rather than simply survive in some semi-inert limbo, the usual non-profit alternative to actually closing the doors. The question is, of course, what sorts of steps?”

Iraq Museum Director Says Staff Saved Much Of Museum’s Artifacts

The director of Iraq’s National Museum sits down with The Art Newspaper to talk about what happened to his museum. Donny George says the museum’s staff managed to hide away most of the museum’s collection for safekeeping before the war. “Presumably the vast majority of the 170,000 items in the collection were therefore in the vaults. How much was lost from the vaults?” George: “We have only looked through a hole and shone a torchlight into the vaults. We don’t yet know what is missing, but a lot of the objects are still there.”

“Hairspray” Cleans Up With Drama Desk Nominations

“Hairspray” gets 14 nominations for the 48th Annual Drama Desk Awards, tying the number received in past years by “The Producers,” “Ragtime” and “The Secret Garden.” Other high scorers included the musicals “La Bohème,” “A Man of No Importance,” “Movin’ Out,” “Nine” and “Avenue A,” the new play “Take Me Out” and the revival of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”

Outsider Art – 100 Years Since Gauguin

“Exactly 100 years ago next Thursday, Paul Gauguin died alone and in agonising pain in his shack on the Marquesas Islands near Tahiti. He was 54, heavily in debt, his paintings were almost universally derided and he was addicted to morphine ? he may even have been killed by an overdose of the drug, which he took for the suppurating syphilis sores on his legs…”

Reimagining Orwell

George Orwell’s 1984 has longe been interpreted as an anti-communist tract. But that’s not entirely accurate, argues Thomas Pynchon. “Though 1984 has brought aid and comfort to generations of anticommunist ideologues with Pavlovian-response issues of their own, Orwell’s politics were not only of the left, but to the left of left.”

Underground Nation

During 2002, Eric Schlosser’s history-cum-polemic Fast Food Nation sold almost 200,000 copies in its UK paperback alone. His next target? America’s underground vices: “Today, revenues from porn match Hollywood receipts and exceed sales of rock. Some 20 years after Reagan’s ‘War on Drugs’ began, marijuana cultivation has probably overtaken corn ? worth $19 billion annually ? as the nation’s most lucrative cash crop. In Los Angeles County, 28 per cent of all workers are paid in untraceable cash: ‘a triumph of underground practices and values’. Everywhere you look, the underground has flooded the mainstream. Together, these essays build into a secret history of America’s favourite vices.”

Photographs Vs Painting – Hockney Makes His Case

David Hockney says photographs misrepresent war. “For a New York exhibition, Hockney has made a watercolour based on Picasso’s painting ‘Massacre in Korea’. He has called it ‘Problems of Depiction’ and added a note which suggests that both the Picasso and this new spin on it are ‘a painter’s response to the limitations of photography, limitations that are still with us, and need some debate today’.”