Friday May 31 FRAUGHT WITH FREUD: Lucien Freud is widely considered Britain’s best living painter. Next month he’ll get a major retrospective of his work in London. “As many of his sitters have found, having Lucian Freud recreate you in paint is not an unrelieved joy. Jerry Hall’s portrait turned her into an amorphous lump … Continue reading “People: May 2002”
Friday March 29 BRITISH MUSEUM ADMITS SALES – AN EMBARRASSMENT: The British Museum has admitted selling off valuable Benin bronzes during the 1950s and 60s. “The museum insisted that its claim to inalienable ownership of the bronzes and other artefacts such as the Parthenon (Elgin) marbles was not affected. Until now its standard response to … Continue reading “Visual: March 2002”
JANUARY 2002 Thursday January 31 STAYING THE NEW MUSIC COURSE: Nearly every American orchestra pays regular lip service to the concept of contemporary music, and occasionally even performs some in public. Very few orchestras, however, ever really make a lasting commitment to advancing the music of living composers. But in Los Angeles, the L.A. Philharmonic’s … Continue reading “Music: January 2002”
Friday November 30 SOTHEBY’S CHAIRMAN WAS ABOVE CRITICISM: “A leading law firm, retained by Sotheby’s in 1997 to investigate possible collusion in the auction industry, repeatedly questioned the company’s chief executive, Diana D. Brooks, but not its chairman, A. Alfred Taubman, the lawyer who headed the inquiry acknowledged yesterday in the price- fixing trial of Mr. … Continue reading “Visual: November 2001”
With rising rents and artists being evicted from their work spaces, “San Francisco is in danger of becoming a place where art is presented but no longer created. Everybody knows what the problem is: lots of money and new development increasingly putting cutting-edge culture out on the streets. Can the city prevent further erosion of … Continue reading “ARTISTS ARE THE FIRST TO GO”
