“As you enter the Louvre, big, clear signs in several languages inform you of the museum’s rules. There is to be no running, no use of mobile phones – and no flash photography. This ban could not be more clearly announced. No one can miss it. Yet in front of the Mona Lisa, one camera flash after another blasts its ugly reflection on the glass protecting the painting. I just don’t understand how the Louvre can allow this destructive camera abuse. “
Tag: 03.09.09
Poe To Publishers: So Sorry About All Those Mint Juleps
“It was the bourbon that did it, or so a newly available excuse note claims. A 1842 letter from Edgar Allan Poe to his publishers apologises for his drunken behaviour while in New York, blaming his friend, the poet and lawyer William Ross Wallace, for pouring too many juleps down his throat, and begs them to buy an article he has written as he is ‘desperately pushed for money’.”
The Oliviers Need A Revamp
Michael Billington: “I’m delighted that Black Watch won four awards. But this is a show that opened in Edinburgh in the summer of 2006, has been seen all over the UK and the world, and is only now eligible for an Olivier because it did a season at the Barbican. … If we are to have London-only awards (which is debatable), they should at least be wide-ranging enough to include West End, off-West End and fringe theatres in acknowledgement of the capital’s diversity.”
Dubai Executive Held In Theft From Noortman Gallery
“A business executive who had been based in Dubai was being held in a Dutch jail last night after being accused of taking part in the theft of works by some of the art world’s biggest names. … The paintings include works by Pissarro and Renoir, and had apparently been stolen from one of the world’s top art dealers, Robert Noortman.”
Art As Collateral: Modern, Yes; Contemporary, Not So Much
“News that the renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz has pawned the copyright to her life’s work to help pay her mortgage debts comes at a time when people from every stratum of society are looking to see what cash value their assets may have. With traditional forms of investment income from property and stock markets in the doldrums, is art becoming an increasingly viable option to use as collateral for loans? Recent cases might suggest that it is.”
With $2.6M Deficit, Stratford Fest Asks For Govt. Help
“Facing dwindling ticket sales from U.S. theatregoers and its first deficit since the early 1990s, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival is appealing to government for financial support to help it through the recession. The Stratford, Ont., festival revealed in a press release sent out on Saturday that it had suffered a $2.6-million deficit in 2008 despite a program featuring Christopher Plummer in a critically acclaimed production of George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra.”
Only Hollywood Can Save The LAT’s Hollywood Coverage?
As the financially troubled Los Angeles Times significantly reconfigures its Hollywood coverage, Matt Holzman explains what the paper is up against and suggests one key way people in the business can pitch in: “Instead of bitching and moaning about the Times, why not call them with your breaking story or your anonymous tip? If they do something great with it, the [T]imes will become known as the go-to place for the Hollywood low-down and you’ll have helped save our newspaper.”
The New Alice Tully Hall: Out Of Limbo
“Perhaps in forty years the latest incarnation of Tully will no longer give much pleasure, but, for the moment, this handsomely tailored, sharp-toned venue is exactly what Lincoln Center needs. You no longer walk into the hall with the clammy sensation of having arrived in classical-music limbo.”
GM Ends 22 Years Of Funding Ken Burns Documentaries
“Mr. Burns has made a string of high-profile public TV documentaries, including The Civil War, Jazz and Baseball. His last GM-backed project is The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, a six-part series airing this fall.”
Real Shakespeare Portrait Discovered?
“The evidence is circumstantial but Professor [Stanley] Wells, the editor for 30 years of the Oxford Shakespeare series and Emeritus Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Birmingham University, believes it is overwhelming. The portrait is more handsome and animated than the well-known images that have been held to be likenesses of Shakespeare, which were created after his death in 1616.”