BBC Three is betting that last year’s flash-mob trend is still alive, at least in the ranks of opera lovers, whom it plans to lure to a performance this fall. “Flashmob – The Opera will see opera singers and 65 musicians joined by an impromptu crowd of people who will be alerted to the event by text message.”
Tag: 08.24.04
Royal Academy: We Are Not In Crisis
“A director at the Royal Academy of Arts has denied the arts institution is in crisis over the discovery of an unauthorised £80,000 bank account set up by Professor Brendan Neiland, the keeper of the Royal Academy Schools who resigned three weeks ago.”
When The Storm Rages, Let The Stealing Begin
A sculpture based on Michelangelo’s “Pieta” was the target of the thieves, but it was the 100-mile-per-hour winds that triggered the alarm system. “Looters stole a Vatican-commissioned bronze bust of the Virgin Mary from a gallery in Florida during the height of Hurricane Charley.”
Bronze Hermes Stops Resting, Takes Flight
It’s been a busy month for art thieves. “The bronze statue ‘Resting Hermes,’ a remnant of the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition that was stolen in the 1970s and quickly returned, disappeared in the dead of night from its base outside the University Club on California Street in San Francisco.”
Artwork But No Archives For Denver’s Still Museum
The city of Denver is getting more than 2,100 artworks by the late abstract expressionist Clyfford Still, to go on display in a planned museum devoted to him. The artist’s archives, however, are not part of the deal. “While the absence of the archives would have little effect on the general public’s enjoyment of the museum, it would almost certainly prevent it from becoming a world-class research facility along the lines of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.”
In New York, Museum Security Won’t Change
“Although jolted by the daring daylight theft of Edvard Munch’s painting ‘The Scream’ from an Oslo museum, New York museum and gallery officials said they had no plans to increase security or change their procedures in response to the theft.”
Inside The Minds Of Art Thieves
“In the eyes of a typical art thief, the most dazzling of paintings is simply a multi-million dollar bill hanging on a poorly guarded wall.” How to spend it is often a detail that comes later.
Senior Discount? But Do You Really Need It?
Aiming to bring more lower-income senior citizens through its doors, London’s South Bank Centre has begun a pilot program that gives the over-60s discount only to those seniors who can prove they need it. Britain’s largest pensioners’ group, unsurprisingly, is not amused.
On Singapore Stages, Attack Of The Clones
As the number of Singapore’s arts organizations rises, so does competition for government funding. Many theater groups are opting for safe programming that poses little risk at the box office, but the shift toward proven titles and sexy plays is edging out new and experimental work. “Once-diverse groups are in danger of becoming market-driven clones.”
Please Look After These Paintings
“A day after the brazen daylight robbery of ‘The Scream’ and a second Expressionist masterpiece by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, museum officials begged the robbers on Monday to show greater care for the treasures than they did while wrenching them free from the wall and smashing their frames.”