– to argue that an arbitrator didn’t have the right to order the company to reinstate a dancer the company fired. – CBC
Tag: 05.10.00
HANOVER BAILS
NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s wife, actress Donna Hanover, who was supposed to perform in the sexually suggestive “The Vagina Monologues” Off-Broadway has postponed her appearance in the show, citing family circumstances. – Chicago Sun-Times (AP)
DEPICTIONS OF THE PAST
For decades, a statue of explorer Samuel de Champlain stood on a cliff in Ottawa, with a much smaller sculpture of a native scout kneeling beneath him. Last year, Native Canadians complained, saying the scout was depicted in a subservient position to Champlain, so the statue was moved. Now an artist complains that “discussion about how public landmarks depict the place of aboriginal people in Canadian society has stopped. Are we adjusting history to be politically correct? Now we don’t have that dialogue going on.” – CBC
DREAM MAYOR?
London mayor-elect Ken Livingstone’s recent promises have already thrilled the city’s art world. He plans to support the film industry, strengthen independent cinemas, and help make London a user-friendly environment for filming. He also “intends to maintain free entry to museums, and to introduce a “capital arts card” in partnership with business to give students, senior citizens and the unemployed the chance to attend theatres, cinemas and concerts for £3. And he wants to support cultural diversity in the arts.” – The Times (UK)
NEW TAXES FOR ARTS
A Cleveland area task force recommends creating a public entity to raise between $25 million and $35 million for the arts annually through a combination of new taxes and redirected spending of existing tax revenue. “The idea of taxes for the arts is viewed with both enthusiasm and skepticism by local leaders. Public funding is ‘more than just a stamp of approval. It shows that the community supports this as an integral part of the important activities of the community. It’s what makes life good and worth living.'” – The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
CON ARTIST
The man who put the purported Diebenkorn painting for sale on eBay Monday (and received a final bid of $135,805) “acknowledged yesterday that he concocted part of the story he used to describe the work and said he would be willing to let the buyer out of the sale. Far from being a married homeowner who cleaned the painting out of his garage to please his wife, he is single and has sold a raft of paintings on eBay.” – New York Times
$14 MILLION AN HOUR
Christie’s 20th-century art auction Tuesday night had one blockbuster: a 1932 Picasso portrait of his mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, that sold for $28.6 million. It took Picasso just two and a half hours to paint it. – New York Times
AUCTIONS AWAY FROM NEW YORK
Tonight one of Emily Carr’s best paintings goes up for auction in Vancouver. It’s expected to bring the highest price for a painting ever paid in Western Canada. How much? Between $300,000 and $500,000. “The current record for an Emily Carr painting sold at auction was “In the Circle,” which sold in Toronto in 1987 for $297,000. The current record in Western Canada for a painting sold at auction is $231,000. And the current national auction record is Lawren Harris’s “Lake Superior III,” which sold for $1.56-million.” – National Post (Canada)
ART CATHEDRAL
In the time of Frank Gehry, one may begin to think an innovative new museum requires an innovative new structure to house it. But the new Tate Modern has found its home in a reused power station that has been transformed into a work of art unto its own. “With one neat sidestep Sir Nicholas Serota avoided all the controversy that would inevitably have raged had he commissioned a new building. He picked a site which makes the most of that much-underused London asset, the Thames, and has a stunningly powerful relationship with St Paul’s Cathedral.” – The Telegraph (UK)
DANGER – 650,000 VOLTS: That pretty much describes the impact the new Tate Modern has. “We are trying both to create a museum of modern art and rethink what a museum of modern art is.” – San Francisco Chronicle
OR THE LATEST BEHEMOTH? “What are people going to say in 100 years about all these new museums for modern art that we’re building, which seem to be getting almost as big as the Met?” – New York Times
DEATH KNELL FOR CELLULOID FILM?
George Lucas says he’ll shoot most of the next installment of the “Star Wars” franchise with digital equipment, foregoing celluloid. “Lucas’s move this month reverberated like the first loud shot in a digital revolution that a growing number of people, both in and outside of Hollywood, believe is now unstoppable. Some insurrectionists are even convinced the cheaper digital cameras will unshackle them from some studio control. Before it’s all over, it could even bring the studio walls tumbling down.” – Boston Globe 05/10/00