The Independent newspaper takes violinist Tasmin Little under a bridge and has her perform. “The saddest part was watching children being forcibly removed from the suddenly discovered thrill of international-quality classical violin-playing by parents who just didn’t have the time for it. Even if our own lives are too driven to let in great artistry, spiritual excitement and the revelation of the sound of a Strad, shouldn’t our kids have the chance to experience them? Because they do want to; and that fact made the saddest revelation also the happiest.”
Tag: 04.20.07
Audience Walks Out On Daisey
Mike Daisey was performing a monologue at American Repertory Theatre when a large part of the audience walked out: “I am performing the show to a packed house, when suddenly the lights start coming up in the house as a flood of people start walking down the aisles-they looked like a flock of birds who’d been startled, the way they all moved so quickly, and at the same moment…it was shocking, to see them surging down the aisles. The show halted as they fled, and at this moment a member of their group strode up to the table, stood looking down on me and poured water all over the outline, drenching everything in a kind of anti-baptism.”
China’s Classical Appetite
“The taste for classical music in the big cities is genuine and intense, but the enthusiasts and activists that I met were wary of western exploitation and the gifts of foreign governments, chiefly the French and the Russians. There is a grass-roots musical revolution afoot and the Chinese are cautiously inviting foreign aid and advice.”
The Drama Of Work
“The ‘work-play’ was an acknowledged genre that had its heyday from the late 1950s to the mid-70s. All these plays had something important in common. They realised that work itself is dramatic: that it has its own natural rhythm, and that people often reveal themselves through the jobs they do. But why has the work-play all but disappeared from our stages? There are several reasons. One is that, in the age of the graduate-playwright, there are fewer dramatists who have done real manual toil.”
Italians Fail To Buy Back Fra Angelico Masterpiece
“Yesterday, having been identified as the missing pieces of the San Marco altarpiece by the Renaissance master Fra Angelico, the pieces were sold for £1.7m, a record for a sale outside London. In a former egg-sorting shed at Dorchester cattle market, telephone bidders pushed the price up. The Italian ministry of art and culture led the charge, attempting to get back paintings that probably vanished from Florence during Napoleon’s occupation of Italy.”
Fort Worth Museum Buys Back Painting It Surrendered
“For $5.7 million, the Kimbell Art Museum of Fort Worth has reacquired a J.M.W. Turner painting it surrendered last summer to the heirs of the John and Anna Jaffé family of France, after it was proved that the painting had been unlawfully seized by the pro-Nazi Vichy regime in 1943.”
Met Museum’s New Home For Greek, Roman Art
After years or work, the Metropolitan Museum reopens its Greek and Roman galleries. “Fulfilling a plan initiated by his predecessor, Thomas Hoving, Mr. de Montebello has done the Met and the city — and everybody — incalculable good by pushing through this project, which in so many ways goes against the grain. It’s not about celebrity architecture. It’s not politically correct. The timing is awful, since so much attention is focused on looting. But it is about reiterating an ideal for art and for the museum, about extolling the collection, which is the public’s heritage, seen by millions, and about doing the hard thing because it is right.”
Ontario Artists Protest Government
Ontario artists are protesting the provincial government’s failure to keep a promise on arts support. “Buried deep inside the phonebook-sized budget bill tabled last month was a 3-page Status of the Artist Act that does little to help performers other than a weekend celebration in June. ‘They said they would produce meaningful legislation on status of the artist and they have not done that’.”
New Aussie Museum: Sorry, But Our Building Doesn’t Work
Australia’s controversial award-winning postmodern national museum was “opened only six years ago, at a cost of $155 million. But now Craddock Morton, the director of the National Museum of Australia, has admitted what many visitors have already concluded: it may be a striking piece of contemporary architecture, but it doesn’t really work as a museum.”
Museum Pest Jailed For Theft
“A former Australian Museum pest controller – whose obsessive collection of fauna specimens led to the theft of more than 2000 skulls, skins and skeletons, including a Tasmanian Tiger skull – has been jailed for seven years.”