Category: today’s top story

UK Culture Minister Tessa Jowell defends her government’s arts funding policy, which has been attacked lately. “The last thing we want to do is set arts and sport at each other’s throats. But for five years, the lottery will be the catalyst for the kind of renewal in east London that culture has brought to Gateshead, Manchester, the South Bank and right across the country.”

“Is there the merest hint of movement in the world’s most intractable restitution drama? That is, the issue of the Elgin — or, if you prefer, Parthenon — Marbles, which has flared up at intervals since Lord Elgin removed them from the Acropolis at Athens in the 19th century. Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, appeared to open the door to compromise in an interview with Bloomberg News, but only by a fraction of an inch.”

“OScar is taking shape using a single principle as its guiding light: it’s an open source car. The open source idea is borrowed from the software industry that makes its code freely available under licence; the Firefox web browser and the Linux operating system being the most famous examples. In the hard, metallic world of car design this means that instead of protecting OScar designs by use of restrictive patents, as is the norm, the design is effectively open to anyone willing to contribute.”

Steven Bach, biographer of Leni Riefenstahl, says strict “objectivity and detachment” were not his guidelines in writing about the filmmaker’s life. “To deny that my subject aroused intellectual or emotional responses that were considerably less (or more) than neutral would have been as false as the avalanche of denials she herself trotted out to justify her life of great achievements and appalling transgressions of humanity in the name of Art.”

“When I was 12 years old I played chess with Kurt Vonnegut on a Thanksgiving Day in New York City. … On a whim, he suggested that we rearrange the board. Why did the pawns have to go in front, those sacrificial lambs about to be chewed up by the slaughterhouse of the front lines, those powerless vassals of the high and mighty? Let’s force the feudal lords out of their foxholes and into the hurly-burly!”

Ever since Roberto Alagna walked off the stage of La Scala mid-aria last December, he’s been trying to explain his side of things. His side does not include a great deal of contrition. “It was everyone else’s fault, apparently. He blames the conductor Riccardo Chailly for not holding the right tempo and the orchestra for playing ‘so-so’. The director, Franco Zeffirelli, he says, is ‘a great artist but not a great man… I left the stage because I was not well. I had hypoglycaemia. . When I have pressure I lose my sugar. I have a problem with my metabolism.”

“A Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with an all-black cast headed by Oscar winner Forest Whitaker as Big Daddy has imploded – the result, theater sources say, of ‘inexperienced, inept and insane’ producing… Two weeks ago, [director Kenny] Leon and Whitaker pulled out of the project after repeatedly clashing with the producers, a group of extremely wealthy hedge-fund managers with no previous theatrical experience.”

The LA Philharmonic apparently hired its new music director, Gustavo Dudamel, right out from under the nose of the Chicago Symphony, where the young Venezuelan appeared last week as a guest conductor. “[Chicago’s] backstage was jumping with well-wishers, agents, heads of other orchestras and the CSO’s own musicians as it hadn’t since Daniel Barenboim’s farewell concerts or Georg Solti’s retirement as music director. The Internet was abuzz and speculation was rife that the CSO might be able to work out some arrangement with Dudamel.”

“You can feast on Sol LeWitt. The drawings he produced are mentally delicious. What makes them so delicious, so pleasing to the mind, is that he didn’t have to draw them. That’s because the artist, who died at age 78 on Sunday, employed what one might call the conceptual cookbook method. Each of LeWitt’s drawings came with its own recipe. The rest was up to you. If you followed the directions, you could cook it up yourself.”

“The Denver Art Museum on Monday announced belt-tightening measures as part of a midyear evaluation following the debut of the Frederic C. Hamilton building. The museum eliminated eight positions and accepted the resignations of 30 employees who accepted a voluntary buyout program offered nearly two weeks ago. The cuts represent 14 percent of the museum’s full-time employees, bringing the total to 230.”