“When Barney met Mabel, there was an instant – and fatal – chemical reaction. On Tuesday night the doberman pinscher guard dog, after six years’ blameless service, went berserk: within minutes Mabel, a 1909 German-made Steiff teddy bear once owned by Elvis Presley, more recently the pride and joy of an English aristocrat, lay mortally wounded. Barney went on to rampage through hundreds of rare teddies, all on loan to Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset, and so valuable that the insurers had insisted on a guard dog to protect the premises at night.”
Tag: 08.03.06
British Theatre, Decade By Decade
“Want to find out about British history? Look no further than its theatre. As the National Youth Theatre celebrates its 50th anniversary with six new plays marking every decade since the 1950s, Michael Billington examines the concerns – and the blindspots – of Britain’s postwar dramatists.”
A Cataloguing Embarrassment At Library And Archives Canada
“If anything shows how Library and Archives Canada needs to upgrade its cataloguing systems, it could be the fact that staff realized that they had not one but two originals of a valuable 16th-century map only when they read about it on July 27 in The Globe and Mail. … Outside archivists and researchers say these problems result from too little care being taken in translating, cross-referencing and proofreading entries when putting catalogues on-line.”
Philly Art Commission Knocks Rocky Back Down
It looked like Rocky was on his way back to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but that may have been a pipe dream. Recently, “the half-ton bronze Rocky Balboa – a prop made for Sylvester Stallone’s 1982 movie ‘Rocky III'” made it partway through the approval process. “A dedication of the new site was tentatively scheduled for Sept. 8. Stallone … was ecstatic. But the city Art Commission yesterday threw a bucket of cold water in the face of the whole giddy affair.”
Two L.A. Artworks Destroyed In Pompidou Show
“The world-renowned Pompidou Center of Paris, which set out in March to celebrate the work of Los Angeles artists, has accidentally destroyed two of their works — which fell from museum walls. A third piece was slightly damaged. The incidents, all of which occurred during the March-to-July run of ‘Los Angeles 1955-1985,’ have experts wondering whether a major museum has ever done so much damage in the course of a single show.”
Julian Schnabel Dips Into Decorating
Artist, filmmaker, hotel decorator? Julian Schnabel has just designed the interior of Ian Schrager’s Gramercy Park Hotel. “Ever the rebel, Mr. Schnabel rejects the obvious term for someone who does what he has just done at the Gramercy Park Hotel. ‘I’m not a designer, but I’ve always built things,’ he said. ‘Basically I’m a painter, and this is something that really isn’t that hard to do.'”
Spike Lee Documents Katrina Stories
After Hurricane Katrina hit, Spike Lee took his cameras to New Orleans to make a four-hour HBO documentary about the disaster. “Like him or not, Mr. Lee, 49, is an artist many people feel they know. People, black and white, approached him and the ‘Levees’ crew here, he said, imploring: ‘Tell the story. Tell the story.’ ‘It becomes like an obligation we have, he said. Mr. Lee’s reputation helped get his camera crew into the city’s water-soaked homes, he said. It allowed him to stretch out a complex story, with themes of race, class and politics that, he said, have too often been sensationalized or rendered in sound bites.”
HarperCollins Expands Web Presence
The publisher will give readers internet access to “the first three pages of most chapters in 135 titles by 10 authors, including well-known writers like Michael Crichton, Lisa Scottoline, Bernard Cornwell and Paulo Coelho.”
Turns Out The Internet Helps Live Music Thrive
“The Internet is seizing the spotlight in the live-music business — again. A dot-com-era bid by concert promoters to market live gigs online fizzled out. But now concert Webcasts and vintage performance clips are gaining new currency. An array of players — from independent record labels to major concert promoters — are drawing up plans to capitalize on fans’ appetites for everything from the latest club shows in Hollywood to decades-old film of the Grateful Dead in Copenhagen.”