Tag: 03.20.07

This Side Up: Getty Packs Wreath For Journey Home

“Fourteen years after the J. Paul Getty Museum purchased a 4th century BC Greek funerary wreath for $1.15 million from a Swiss art dealer, 17 months after the Greek government formally demanded its return and eight months after the museum agreed to do so, the delicate gold headpiece is about to go home.” Packing the fragile treasure for the voyage has been an adventure in itself….

In Shift, Broadway Producers Oppose Scalping Laws

“A trade association representing Broadway theaters and producers is doing an about-face and now wants state officials to dismantle the laws that limit the resale of tickets to musicals, plays, concerts and other events. … Gerald Schoenfeld, chairman of the League of American Theaters and Producers, said that ticket prices ‘would probably not skyrocket’ if the limits were lifted and that Internet sales had helped make it almost impossible to enforce the current law.”

Want To Learn Chinese? How’s Your Pitch?

“Anyone who has tried to learn Chinese can attest to how hard it is to master the tones required to speak and understand it. And anyone who has tried to learn to play the violin or other instruments can report similar challenges. Now researchers have found that people with musical training have an easier time learning Chinese” because “both skills draw on parts of the brain that help people detect changes in pitch.”

Britain Reexamines Its Slave-Trade Past

Two centuries after it abolished slavery, Britain is putting the spotlight on its “deep engagement in the slave trade in earlier centuries and the fundamental role this played in forging the nation’s wealth and power. With the support of the government and a $20 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, national museums and community groups across Britain have begun re-examining what a new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London calls these ‘Uncomfortable Truths.'”

Breathing Life, And Fire, Into Organ Music

Paul Jacobs, chairman of the organ department at the Juilliard School, says he wants “to draw attention to an instrument that is sorely misunderstood and neglected by the mainstream of classical music.” He scoffs at organists who demand historically correct playing at the expense of artistic interpretation. “‘Part of me thinks: “Who ordained you?'” he says. “We need musicians who can promote their work with fire and conviction.”

Communist Cache Goes To NYU

“The songwriter, labor organizer and folk hero Joe Hill has been the subject of poems, songs, an opera, books and movies. His will, written in verse the night before a Utah firing squad executed him in 1915 and later put to music, became part of the labor movement’s soundtrack. Now the original copy of that penciled will is among the unexpected historical gems unearthed from a vast collection of papers and photographs never before seen publicly that the Communist Party USA has donated to New York University.”

Alternate Universe (Movie, At Least)

Julie Taymor delivered her new movie to her studio. They didn’t like it. “After Ms. Taymor delivered the movie to Joe Roth, the film executive whose production company, Revolution Studios, based at Sony, is making the Beatles musical, he created his own version without her agreement. And last week Mr. Roth tested his cut of the film, which is about a half-hour shorter than Ms. Taymor’s 2-hour-8-minute version.”