JK Rowling has thrown her support behind the city of Edinburgh’s campaign to get UNESCO to name it the first World City of Literature. “It seems eminently sensible to me to recognise this, along with the contemporary literary life here, with a permanent title that can inspire and inform other places around the world.”
Tag: 08.25.04
Royal Academy Under The Microscope
London’s Royal Academy is in trouble, and the outside world is peering in. Many are wondering if “a management structure that was created in the 18th century seems ill-suited to meet the challenges of today’s fiercely competitive London art world. Is an academy of 80 artists up to the job of running a staff of 200 and an annual budget of £18 million?”
Athens Breaks The Stadium Mold
Athens’ Olympic stadium, designed by Santiago Calatrava, has been a big hit, breaking with a dismal Olympic tradition. “The Athens approach—making an architecturally bold, camera-ready stadium an Olympic focal point—is less an anomaly than a sign of things to come. In the past, many host cities simply added a few thousand new seats to the biggest stadium they had; others used the games as an excuse to build a new home for a local pro franchise, as Atlanta did for the Braves with the less-than-exciting Turner Field. But these days, every potential host city’s Olympic plan seems to include an attention-getting stadium designed by a well-known firm.”
London Symphony Cancels American Tour
The London Symphony Orchestra has canceled its fall American tour. Consisting of 15 stops in the United States and Canada, the “Music of Hollywood” tour apparently was canceled due to sluggish ticket sales.
Gigging The UK
Live music is thriving in the UK. In all, an estimated 1.7 million gigs were staged across England and Wales last year in pubs, clubs, restaurants, etc. The study was conducted in advance of a new law that will require venues to get licenses for presenting live music.
Birtwistle: We’re In A State Of Crisis
Harrison Birtwistle is turning 70. George Loomis asks him if it isn’t a good thing that “composers are now free to do their own thing without the pressure of writing in a certain style? ‘Actually, it shows we’re in a state of crisis,’ he says, arguing that if you look historically at the subject of creativity, something always appears for people to rally around, as they did with cubism and serialism. ‘Right now we need something to come how do they say it in baseball? out of left field’.”
Looking For The Legendary Lost Bamiyan Buddha
The famed Bamiyan cliff Buddhas may be rubble, but what about the legendary lost giant Bamiyan Buddha? “It’s hard to believe that the sculpture ever went missing. According to the writings of a Chinese pilgrim who reported seeing the reclining Buddha in AD 629, it stretched 1,000 feet. Today, the pilgrim’s brief, 1,375-year-old account remains the most detailed description of the sleeping Buddha. Probably constructed in the late 6th century, the statue hasn’t been seen in hundreds of years. And even experts who believe the sculpture exists doubt it is — or was — more than three football fields long.”
Pittsburgh Arts Center Owes Artists Money
The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts closed this week, owing a lot of money. “According to a federal tax return filed by the nonprofit, the center took in $1.9 million in revenue in 2002 but spent $2.8 million. Local artists, who founded the center in 1945, were dismayed to learn of its closing and frustrated because many of them have been trying for months to obtain payment for their work.”
Iraq’s Poetic Sensation
A poem by an Iraqi exile that was published with only 1000 copies has become famous in Iraq. “Brother Yasin and Brother Yasin Again became part of the body of work that has come to represent the secret, silent fight against Saddam Hussein’s regime. It is one of the most important poems exploring, in a revolutionary way, the link between man’s ethereal, spiritual nature and his everyday, habitual life. It expresses simple sentiments while yielding something new with each reading. The Iraqis, who love tragedy, find themselves drawn to this.”
Parthenon Marbles – An Essential Story
Why should the Parthenon Marbles stay in the British Museum? They’re an essential part of the story of art. “Here in these rooms is the fundamental vocabulary of Western sculpture, the beginnings of Giovanni Pisano, Donatello and Michelangelo, the visual and practical storehouse of the Italian Renaissance. To destroy such a treasury of beautiful solutions by removing its heart would to my mind represent as much an act of vandalism as any ever perpetrated upon art.”