“This is a Turner Prize shortlist without an even moderately big name on it. In recent years we had Mark Wallinger, Jim Lambie, Grayson Perry and the Chapman Brothers. This latest list also lacks clear distinctions of style, media or subject matter.”
Tag: 05.13.08
A Competition To Find The World’s Best New Building
“Zoos, police stations and dentists’ surgeries will have as much chance of winning the inaugural World Architecture Festival (WAF) Awards as cutting-edge football stadiums and airports, the organisers promised yesterday.”
Are “Best Of” Albums A Thing Of The Past?
“In an age when we can create our own album in a few rapid mouseclicks – we’ll decide what the best of Radiohead is, thanks very much Mr Hands – the contract-filling compilation seems increasingly obsolete. Few will mourn its passing. It has always been the runt of the album litter; they’re not ‘proper’ albums, after all. Just cheap, cynical exercises in making money from old rope.”
Lessons From Las Vegas’ Failed Foray Into Museums
“What to make of this starter marriage between starchitecture and the Strip? Is it a cautionary tale about museum satellites or something closer to a worthy experiment, a bit of transitory culture for a transitory city? What does it say about the legacy of Thomas Krens, the swashbuckling Guggenheim director who stepped down in February?”
Scholar/Museum Director Arrested In Southern Cal Museum Investigation
In January, the FBI raided several Southern California museums, looking for smuggled antiquities. Now “an internationally recognized expert on Asian antiquities has been arrested and indicted on a federal wire fraud charge stemming from an ongoing investigation into the importation of stolen or looted antiquities from Southeast Asia.”
Florida Theatre Closes In Dispute
“Seaside Music Theater, a professional-theater mainstay in Daytona Beach for 30 years, has canceled its five-show summer season — a victim of the ongoing battle between the Daytona Beach News-Journal, its biggest patron, and Cox Enterprises of Atlanta, the News-Journal’s Atlanta-based corporate partner.”
Robert Rauschenberg, 82
“A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.”
NYTimes Cuts Five From Arts Staff; Holland, Dunning, Van Gelder Take Buyouts
“Among those taking the recently offered buyouts are Bernard Holland, music critic; Jennifer Dunning, dance critic; Diane Nottle, deputy editor for classical music and dance; Gwen Smith, assignments coordinator for dance and art; and Lawrence Van Gelder, senior editor. That leaves Alastair Macaulay as the only full-time dance critic at the Times.”
Publishers Dropping Paper Catalogs
“HarperCollins announced Monday that it was planning to make their listings of upcoming releases available only online, calling the current system both economically and environmentally indefensible.”
Network TV Losing Audience Faster Than Newspapers Are…
“ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC had nearly 9 percent fewer viewers in April and May so far than during the same period a year ago.”