Today’s aggressive art market is “operating as a passive but powerful vacuum, literally tearing important paintings and sculptures from public walls and civic galleries. Current levels of public protection are not strong enough, and we risk the loss of irreplaceable treasures. Standards need to change.”
Tag: 01.14.07
Can Museums Play In Today’s Art Market?
“As the art market has heated up and ultra-rich individuals have plunged into collecting, it might appear that museums can’t buy anything — least of all at auction, where prices can unexpectedly skyrocket.” But with the right friends…
PBS Signs Ken Burns For Life
Ken Burns, “essentially the nation’s highest-profile documentarian since his series “The Civil War” created a sensation, has agreed to air his work exclusively on PBS until 2022, the network said. Burns is 53 now.”
Jazz’s Pulitzer
“The NEA Awards have become jazz’s lifetime achievement awards, its equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize, and fill a muchneeded niche between posthumous honors — like the immortalizing of legend on a postage stamp — and the Grammies, which reward what’s hot right now rather than a long-term achievement.”
Ideas For The NEA: How To Read
The NEA has been creating programs to promote reading and writing. More ideas?
PBS’s Odd Sense Of Scheduling
PBS has a new primo Ken Burns documentary to broadcast. The network says it will bow in “premiere week” next fall, when all the commercial networks introduce their new shows. TV critics beg the network to change the timing so the show could get more attention in the press. Beg? Is PBS nuts?
This Year’s Oscar Actresses – Experience Over Youth
The Oscars have been on a youth kick with Best Actresses in the past decade. But this year several older actresses are in serious contention. Susan Sarandon was the last actress over 40 to win a Best Actress Oscar for Dead Man Walking back in 1996 and in the intervening years the winners have been a parade of young cover stars.”
Kissing Literary Cousins (Not Hardly!)
“Reviewing the exchange of literary hostilities across the ocean between 1776 and the present, Paul Giles concludes that Britain and America, far from being kissing cousins, are inimical.”
Liverpool’s Amazing Makeover
The city’s European Capital of Culture plans have transformed te landscape. “Never before has so much effort, money and intelligence been committed to urban regeneration. Yes, you can mention Barcelona and Berlin, but they were nothing like so far gone as Liverpool circa 1980, when all hope had been abandoned in an inferno of official neglect and wilful self- destruction. The turnaround amazes: the city centre population has risen by 21 per cent since 2000.”
Sundance Anywhere
The Sundance Festival takes place in a remote mountain location. But “a push to make the influential event accessible to the masses is under way, with a series of initiatives designed to spread the gospel of Sundance-branded independent film around the world.”