Sydney artist Craig Ruddy has won the $35,000 Archibald Prize with his portrait of Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil. “Ruddy, who said he had wanted to paint Gulpilil for several years, is hoping the prize doesn’t affect his work.”
Tag: 03.26.04
In Praise Of London – Cultural Capital of the World
Today’s London is the most cosmopolitan city in the world. “Perhaps the secret of London’s success as a home to so many different nationalities is that is almost impossible to feel foreign in a city where you are likely to hear Cantonese at one street corner and Italian at the next, where your corner shop is run by Sri Lankans and where your minicab late at night is driven by a Nigerian.”
Leipzig Is For Booklovers
The Leipzig Book Fair opens with 1,200 readings. “Readings are what differentiate this booklover’s book fair from its big brother held in Frankfurt each year. Almost 2,000 publishers and editors from 28 countries are presenting their latest spring program. Because the fair’s literary readings are closely followed by literature fans and scouts from publishing houses on the lookout for new talent, authors will be seeking contact with publishers and the reading public.”
The New Museum Paradigm
Museums need to find new strategies for operating, writes Adrian Ellis. “Just as public collections will be reshaped over the next quarter century by the converging demands for restitution from an ever growing and more sophisticated set of parties, so the tensions between the enormous financial value of collections and the lack of liquidity of the institutions that own them are likely to manifest themselves in increasingly strange ways. The sector’s response to restitution shows every sign of being piecemeal, defensive and ultimately damaging to its long term standing in the eyes of the wider community in which museums operate.”
Mr. Culture – Making It In Jackson, Miss.
“Jack Kyle has almost single-handedly put the city of Jackson, Mississippi on the cultural map. Neither an art historian nor a museum curator, he is instead a marketing man blessed with Southern charm and remarkable powers of persuasion who has coaxed the directors of some of Europe’s grandest museums and State collections into sending outstanding works of art to a city best known for jazz and fried catfish.”
Ellerbee: Breaking NPR’s Morning Edition
Linda Ellerbee writes that NPR has succumbed to ageism. “This week, National Public Radio, apparently acting on the theory that if it’s not broke, break it, announced that Bob Edwards was no longer its choice to host “Morning Edition,” the program he began, shaped and — for the last 25 years — informed with his intelligence, wit and grace. Although nobody came right out and said so, it’s clear that the new honchos at NPR believe the man whose voice has soothed millions of us into day after day of too much reality is, at 56, too old for the task. Were the ratings sinking, perhaps? They were not. “Morning Edition’s” audience grew by 41% in the last five years; Edwards’ is the most-listened-to morning radio program in the U.S.”
Escape To Reality (On The Screen)
Movie documentaries are hot these days. “At a time when mainstream Hollywood movies have never been more defensively fortified against any leaks from the outside world, when everything seems spawned by computers, designed by corporate merchandisers and inspired by comic book fantasy, even the editorial manipulations of documentary come as a bracing, flesh-affirming alternative.”
Philadelphia May Cut Museum Funding
The city of Philadelphia has a $227 million deficit it needs to cover. So the city’s mayor proposes cuts, including eliminating the city’s annual $2.25 million appropriation to the Philadelphia Museum of Art – “just as it and other stakeholders along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway are ramping up efforts to promote the Parkway as a major destination.”
The Meaning Of Games… Awww, Why’d You Have To Ruin It?
Interactive computer games have taken over; they’re a huge hit, and academics have begun studying them for what they mean for the larger culture. “They’re a form of interactive storytelling. There’s performance involved when you play the game. And they obviously have powerful visual elements. I think some games are, frankly, very beautiful.” Some gamers, though, find the attention absurd. “It is a sensibility that strikes some in the game world as off the wall. Trying to strap meaning onto entertainment sometimes can be ridiculous.”
No, No, We’re Really Trying To Help While We Sell Off Your Biggest Assets
Foundations want to sell a Lucien Freud and a Turner painting in a New Brunswick gallery – together the paintings could sell for $30 million. The foundations say they’re helping the gallery. “When asked then, why virtually the entire board of the Fredericton gallery resigned, he replied: “Clearly they don’t agree on the strategy.” The strategy, he explained, would be for the foundations to sell art that has been on long-term loan to the gallery — art they believe they own and that needs to be removed from a city of 48,000 and, in the words of one Canadian foundation member, made “more visible to the world.” From these proceeds “[we] would give [the Beaverbrook gallery] a substantial donation” to help offset what Lord Beaverbrook calls its “substantial deficit.” “We’re trying to be helpful to them,” observed Lord Beaverbrook, “but it’s not always easy to do that, it seems.”