Christie’s says auction sales were up 13 percent. “Worldwide sales totaled 1.4 billion pounds ($2.5 billion), up from 1.2 billion pounds in 2003, London-based Christie’s said in a statement. Public auctions raised 1.3 billion pounds, and private transactions totaled 83 million pounds, Christie’s said.”
Tag: 03.24.05
An African “Carmen” From The Townships
An film opera of “Carmen” had its birth in the townships of South Africa. “It is the first operatic film to be made in South Africa’s Xhosa language, it is the first African film to win the coveted Golden Bear for best picture at the Berlin Film festival and it is the first mainstream film to use actors almost exclusively from the townships. They were brought together almost five years ago after extensive auditions held in the townships across South Africa.”
Yo-Yo Ma Of The Bass?
“The double bass is one of the few remaining instruments that have never produced a bankable star in classical music. There has been no Itzhak Perlman, no Yo-Yo Ma, no James Galway of the double bass,” largely because the damn things are so wildly awkward and difficult to play. “Playing a simple melody may demand that a player negotiate leaps of two or three feet, from over the head to down near the belly and back again. Moreover, even under the best of circumstances, it is hard to make the unadorned tone of the instrument sound anything but gray and burly.” Enter DaXun Zhang, winner of competitions previously untouched by bass players, and possessor of a tone so beautiful and varied that the listener might forget what instrument is being played.
Ingenuity = Big Bucks In Cleveland
A new arts-and-technology festival in Cleveland is attracting serious donors, despite an overall malaise in the local cultural scene. Ingenuity, as the fest will be called, has in recent weeks picked up $100,000 from the George Gund Foundation, as well as $60,000 from governmental sources (with another $150,000 in county funds still on the table) and a $20,000 challenge grant from Case Western Reserve University. The festival, which kicks off in September 2005, is expected to cost $1.4 million.
You Can’t Be Sirius!
Hyundai has announced that it will become the first automaker to equip all its U.S.-distributed cars with satellite radios, beginning with 2006 models. The Korean auto company will install XM-ready receivers in 500,000 cars in the first year alone, a significant potential audience for the XM folks, who currently boast 3.2 million subscribers. Hyundai owners would still be responsible for XM’s $12.95 monthly subscription fee.
Philly Dali A Certified Hit
“The Salvador Dalí exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is off to a flying start. During the show’s first 34 days ending Sunday, the museum sold 195,624 tickets.” The exhibit is scheduled to run through mid-May, with Philadelphia being the only North American stop.
The Quietest Place On Earth
“The quietest place on Earth makes its claim less than a block from a bustling liquor store, adjacent to a city bus stop, under the flight path of jumbo jets, and not far from a playground that hosts a daily scream fest worthy of earplugs. And yet, there it is: the anechoic chamber at [Minneapolis-based] Orfield Labs, an office-size studio used for testing sound equipment. Engineers tested the chamber not too long ago and found, or rather didn’t find, sound. What they didn’t find measured below the threshold for human ears, 0 decibels, and was as quiet as negative 9.4 decibels, an absence so profound that a person standing in the room for more than a few minutes would begin to hear his or her own ear making noise as their brain struggled to understand what was happening.”
The Pain-Free Ballet Company
The New York-based American Contemporary Ballet company could be seen as just one more start-up troupe in an already-crowded dance scene. But ACB is about more than just traditional dance; it’s about reinventing the way in which dancers dance, and protecting them from injury. The idea that dancers should be able to do their job without hurting themselves may sound basic to outsiders, but inside the ballet world, choreographer Lincoln Jones’s quest for pain-free dance is almost revolutionary.
Nielsen To Respond To Minority Concerns
Nielsen Media Research, the company responsible for measuring the all-important ratings by which television networks set their advertising rates, is making some subtle but significant changes to its viewer-monitoring system. The changes are designed to combat the problem of minority underrepresentation.
Ugly But Important?
Choosing one’s battles is always a difficult proposition for a preservationist, and by and large, most advocates for old buildings have not bothered to be too terribly vocal in their support for the Modernist structures of the mid-20th century. For one thing, Modernist architecture doesn’t tend to be terribly eye-catching, which means that any attempt to preserve it inevitably embroils one in a debate of aesthetics vs. historical significance, an argument which can be seen as a lose-lose proposition for preservationists. But two ongoing battles in New York suggest that a movement may be afoot to start protecting important examples of Modernist architecture before they are all replaced by newer, more attractive buildings.