Want to sell your house? It might sell better with some great art in it, and so you hire a “home stager.” “Home staging is a trend that’s been around at least 10 years in the hot real-estate markets of San Francisco and Los Angeles, and is now keeping up to 20 different enterprises in business here in Seattle. Using original art rather than inexpensive pastoral prints is the newest twist.”
Tag: 06.21.06
The Museum That Looks Like Its Benefactor
Paris’s new Musée du Quai Branly was supposed to be former French President Jacques Chirac’s lasting cultural legacy. But Tom Dyckhoff says that Chirac doesn’t have much to be proud of. “This is a building that never quite resolves itself: not fusion food, but a stew of rich, mismatched ingredients. A saviour for the city? No chance. But, eccentric, incoherent and full of unresolved doubts, it’s the perfect epitaph for Chirac.”
Vienna State Opera Opera Sacks Mezzo
Last week Olga Borodina was to have made her debut at the Vienna State Opera. “Instead, just as the performance was about to begin, a State Opera representative gave a statement from chief executive Ioan Holender that ‘an atmosphere has developed which required the Staatsoper to distance itself from this commitment [to Borodina],’ that Agnes Baltsa was replacing Borodina at short notice despite an injured leg, and that the company would not be working with Borodina in the future.”
Sex Sells. But What’s The Point?
“When you talk to people about raunch culture in terms of a specific company or corporation they just say: ‘Oh, well, sex sells.’ That’s our justification for everything. And Barbie-doll images of women – long legs, fake breasts, blonde hair – are a glossy advertising shorthand that simultaneously appeals to everyone and no one, shifting units in a way that more complex, varied and substantive sexual images never could. ‘My book is not an attack on the sex industry,’ says Ariel Levy. ‘It’s about how the sex industry has become every industry.”
Singing Praises Of Temporary Theatres
The Royal Shakespeare’s new temporary theatre, built to house the company while its new permanent home is being built, is a real stunner. And that poses the perhaps heretical notion that “the best theatres aren’t always those over which architects have laboured long and hard…”
On Broadway – Enough With The British, Already!
“When God created the middle class, He had only the British in mind. New York theatergoers’ Anglophilia is an incurable case of reverse snobbery, however, and the ghost of Noël Coward, for one, wishes to say from his chaise lounge in the sky, ‘Ta ever so’.”
FCC To Consider Media Ownership Rules
The Federal Communications Commission says it will reconsider media ownership consolidation rules. “The rules are of great concern to giant media companies in an era of mergers and convergence of print and broadcast media inside individual companies. But they also affect every American through their impact on the credibility of news outlets, on the quality of public debate and on ‘whether TV and radio offer entertainment that is creative, uplifting and local or degrading, banal and homogenized’.”
Moonves: CBS In The Movies?
CBS president Les Moonves says the network might get into the movie business. “He said the television and radio broadcaster would be interested in producing six to eight movies a year on smaller budgets of $20 million to $30 million. We could get in a small way, doing six to eight movies a year in a risk-free way’.”
PBS Is Getting Tough On On-Air Swearing
The new PBS policy includes blurring peoples’ mouths to prevent viewers from seeing the “obscenity”. “PBS officials and filmmakers say they’ve long taken care to ensure that their shows don’t use swear words gratuitously. But cursing is sometimes necessary, in service of the truth, said Ken Burns , the veteran documentarian.”
Competition Shuts Down Arizona Youth Orchestra
The Arizona Youth Symphony is shutting down after only six seasons. Its founder cites the establishment of the new Mesa Youth Symphony Orchestra as the cause. “Wal-Mart moved in next door to TrueValue; that’s basically what happened,” he said. “We’ve had such good seasons, the idea of not being able to be as good as I was, I thought I’d better not. That’s why I didn’t.”