The Victoria & Albert Museum says it will drop fees for publishing images in scholarly books and magazines. “Reproduction costs now often make it difficult to publish specialist art historical material. The V&A is believed to be the first museum anywhere in the world which is to offer images free of copyright and administrative charges.”
Tag: 11.30.06
Scream Thief Believed Dead
“A 27-year-old man who died this month is believed to be one of three masked gunmen who snatched the Edvard Munch paintings The Scream and Madonna from an Oslo museum in August 2004. The same man is reported to have led police to believe the daring daylight heist was linked to an earlier robbery in which a police officer was shot… The man is reported to have confessed his role in the Munch heist on tape while in conversation with an undercover officer.”
Playgoers Eager For Homework: Must Be Stoppard Fans
“The audience, as much as the play, is worth the price of admission as it wrestles at Lincoln Center with ‘The Coast of Utopia,’ Tom Stoppard’s beguilingly complex resurrection of Russia’s 19th-century intelligentsia. … Between the acts, overheard snatches of audience dialogue burnished the evening as characters were plumbed or at least kept straight. ‘Who was Alexander Herzen, precisely?’ (Ah, the playwright’s tease: Come back for the next two parts to see Herzen dramatically intuit the terror of a revolutionary future.) ‘I guess I’ll have to read Isaiah Berlin’s essays on these guys.’ (Homework, gladly self-assigned, the ultimate compliment to Stoppard.)”
Glimmerglass Finds It Already Had Its Man
Glimmerglass Opera, the summer opera festival based in upstate New York, has removed the “interim” tag and officially named Don Marrazo as its new artistic director. Marrazo, who previously served as Glimmerglass’s PR chief, took over on a temporary basis last fall following the departure of Nicholas Russell.
Or Maybe He Just Wanted To Watch Everyone Go Nuts Over It
Exactly what was Lorin Maazel thinking when he, apparently out of the blue, publicly nominated Daniel Barenboim to be his successor at the helm of the New York Philharmonic? It’s unlikely that Maazel will have any influence over the search process, and Barenboim was apparently shocked to be mentioned. “He might simply have highlighted the difficulty of finding conductors of the highest stature to lead such U.S. orchestras as those in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit, all of which are looking for new music directors.”
Major Fundraising Effort Underway In Pittsburgh
The Pittsburgh Symphony has announced an $80 million capital campaign, with the bulk of the money to go to its endowment. “The operating reserve would save the Symphony the interest payments it currently makes for a revolving line of credit that is spent and repaid each year.”
There’s A Use For Your Twisted Sister Videos
“While the headlines lately have been about television networks pulling their content or cutting deals with sites such as YouTube, we seem to be missing a bigger phenomenon. Millions of people hoarding vast, arcane and previously useless boxes of VHS (and in some cases, I suspect, Beta) tapes are discovering the Internet and are quietly posting their collections of bizarre minutiae.”
Ferlinghetti Gets French Honor
“Lawrence Ferlinghetti will have to bust out his old beret next week as the San Francisco poet is being awarded one of France’s top cultural honors: Commandeur des Arts et Lettres.”
Making Movies With Diana And RFK
From “The Queen” to “Bobby,” from “Good Night, and Good Luck” to “Flags of Our Fathers,” more and more movies are integrating documentary footage with dramatic footage. The use of old footage is nothing new. “But what’s significant about these movies of late is the way they use archival material. Rather than as gimmickry, or shorthand, filmmakers are choreographing full-on tangos with the past. They’re — almost literally — dancing cheek to cheek with history.”
Expanding Corcoran Buys D.C. School
The Corcoran Gallery of Art has agreed to pay $6.2 million to buy the Randall School from the District of Columbia. “But gaining the site wasn’t easy. A holdover from the early 20th century, the building was last used as a school in 1978. The city installed a men’s shelter in part of the building, and artists leased other parts for studios. When the Corcoran’s plans were announced two years ago, advocates for the homeless protested, as did the artists, who complained about the lack of affordable studio space in Washington.”