Archaeologists are upset over a TV documentary that claims the Shroud of Turin might be authentic. “Experts have widely considered the 14-foot-long linen sheet, which has been kept since 1578 in a cathedral in Turin, Italy, a forgery since carbon-dating tests were performed in 1988. Those tests placed its origin at A.D.1300.”
Tag: 04.07.04
Library of Congress To Receive 4,000 Artifacts
The Library of Congress will announce today that it is to be the beneficiary of a major gift from Florida real estate mogul Jay Kislak, which includes a $4 million map of the New World dating from the 16th century, as well as 4,000 other early American artifacts. The map, known as the Carta Marina, is a matching piece to another similar map purchased by the library last year. “Items in the collection date back as far as 1200 B.C. and primarily involve what is now the southeastern United States, the Caribbean and Mesoamerica.” No official monetary estimate of the value of the donation has been released, but Kislak’s complete personal collection has been assessed at over $100 million.
Philly Summer Season Looking Awfully Pops-Heavy
The Philadelphia Orchestra’s summer series at the city’s Mann Music Center is taking a decided turn towards light pops programming, reports David Patrick Stearns. While orchestral summers are frequently lighter than winter programming, there’s no mistaking the direction the orchestra is taking, with fully 40% of the concerts scheduled for the Mann categorized as more pop than classical. Attendance figures from the last several summers seem to suggest that the orchestra, which is coping with a nearly $6 million deficit, will benefit financially from the increase in lighter fare.
So That’s $450,000 Per Centimeter, Right?
“One of the art world’s most significant — and expensive — trials… concluded yesterday at the High Court in London with the judge reserving decision until later this month. The trial, which began March 10, pitted Taylor Thomson, 45, (née Lynne Lesley Thomson), the only daughter of Toronto businessman Kenneth Thomson, who is one of the world’s 15 wealthiest men, against venerable Christie’s auction house and the 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley, 43. The British media estimates legal costs of the trial exceeded $4.5-million. The dispute has revolved around a pair of allegedly 18th-century urns, each about 5 centimetres tall.”
‘Blue Metropolis’ Comes Of Age
“Montreal’s Blue Metropolis writers’ festival, which ended on Sunday, has ballooned into a major Canadian literary event in just six years. With a million-dollar budget, and headliners including Paul Auster, Yann Martel and Pico Iyer, the Blue Met is now an event on the scale of the International Festival of Authors in Toronto or the Vancouver International Writers’ Festival.” The festival still has a hard time drawing the superstar authors who roam the Toronto and Vancouver fests, but the lack of star power is made up for with the distinctively ‘Montreal sensibility’ of the whole event.
BC Film Shut Down
The provincial government of British Columbia has dealt a crippling blow to the province’s once-thriving film industry, declining to fund BC Film, a non-profit agency providing CAN$4 million a year in equity financing for Canadian films, in this year’s budget. The demise of BC Film will likely have a profound effect on the entire country’s film scene, since filmmakers typically assemble funding from a variety of sources, creating a money tree which, “like a delicate house of cards,” can collapse if one of the key components is missing.
Nielsen Delays New Ratings Technique
Responding to concerns that its new “people meter” ratings technology would significantly undercount minority viewers, Nielsen Media Research, which tracks TV viewership in the U.S., has announced that it will delay the new product’s national rollout, even as it insists that the numbers generated by the meters are accurate. “In tests of the new system, almost all of the most popular shows in black households dropped in the ratings, some by as much as 60 percent.” TV stations don’t like the system either, largely because the meters do a more accurate job of recording how often viewers flip between channels than the traditional handwritten viewer diaries ever did.
Boyle Reups With Scottish Arts Council
“The chairman of the Scottish Arts Council, James Boyle, is set to remain in the post for a second three-year term, the Scottish Executive said yesterday… The move caused surprise and interest across the Scottish arts scene yesterday. The arts council’s own future is said to be in doubt, with the Executive promising to reshape arts policy and funding in Scotland in its forthcoming cultural review. As recently as this January, it was thought that Mr Boyle might renew his contract for only a year. Many in the arts world had the impression he was ready to leave the council, but he signalled in a recent interview that he would be happy to stay on.”
How Great (Really) Was Wynton Marsalis?
Was Wynton Marsalis ever really all that good? He’s a legend, sure, write Fred Kaplan, but he disappoints. “Marsalis, who’s now 42, is a superb trumpeter and a brilliant educator. (His schoolhouse lectures on music, which aired on PBS a few years ago, are the best of their kind since Leonard Bernstein’s telecasts in the ’60s.) But he has never been a great bandleader or a composer. He’s written and recorded scores of compositions, but I defy anyone to hum a few.”
Would It Be Illegal To Just Beat Them With Sticks?
The Shanghai Grand Theater, which spent over $36,000 on an electronic jamming system to disable cell phones and wireless pagers in its performance space, is being forced to turn off the system after being told that using it is illegal. The theater says that it will begin politely asking patrons to turn off their mobile devices, which performers claim ring “from start to finish,” but some theatergoers insist that they should have the right to stay in touch with the outside world, even if it means disrupting the show.