MONUMENT TO MUSIC

Frank Gehry’s swoopy, droopy Experience Music Project (please don’t call it a museum) is opening soon in Seattle. Says Gehry: “This building is supposed to be a lot of fun. That’s what Paul Allen wanted. Fun. It’s supposed to be unusual. The (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum) in Cleveland wanted a straight-forward corporate look. Paul didn’t want that. He wanted what he called a swoopy building. Nobody has seen this before or will see it again. Nobody will build another one.” – Seattle Post-Intelligencer

A BUILDING OR A METAPHOR? “Up close, the latest offering from architect Frank Gehry looks like a cross between a giant spaceship and globs of playdough.” – National Post (Canada)

TRACES OF GENIUS

Scientists plan to test DNA found in smudges and fingerprints in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks and sketches to better understand the master and distinguish his work from that of his apprentices. “Vezzosi believes that the best traces can be found in ink stains on the handwritten pages of Leonardo’s notebooks, as the master himself recommended using saliva to thicken black ink.” – Discovery.com

PICKING UP THE PIECES

At one time the top spot running Sotheby’s would have been considered a real dream job. But with scandals and investigations and uncertainties, William Ruprecht confesses that he “took a very deep breath and had a moment of hesitation” before accepting the assignment last February. After last week’s successful spring auctions, it appears some of the storm has passed. – Financial Times

PIANO PRESTO

Renzo Piano just might be the world’s busiest architect: For Hermès he is designing a Far East headquarters in Tokyo. In America, he is working on the Harvard Art Museum, the Chicago Art Institute, an art campus in Atlanta and a sculpture gallery in Dallas. There is a telecom HQ in Rotterdam, a Paul Klee museum in Switzerland, a trio of new concert halls in Rome, an elegant tower in Sydney nearing completion, and a pilgrimage church in southern Italy which looks set to be the religious masterpiece of millennium year. In Berlin his Potsdamer Platz, a vast development spanning a blighted area on either side of the Wall, is nearly complete. – The Times (UK)

ONE SICK PUPPY

Even his admirers call Gottfried Helnwein that. “He earned his first gallery show in the ’70s by driving around his native Vienna dressed in Nazi uniform, his head bandaged, fake blood trickling from his mouth. It caught the eye of an art dealer who signed him up and has remained faithful to Austria’s enfant terrible ever since.” – The Guardian

THE ARTS IN NEW ENGLAND

A new study of the economic impact of the arts in New England has been released. “The ‘creative industry’ makes up 3.5 percent of New England’s total job base – more than our software or medical technology industries. It is growing at a remarkable rate of 14 percent each year – nearly twice as fast as the average rate of job growth in New England.”-  Boston Globe

  • MANY BENEFITS: “An investment in the arts and culture generates remarkable returns in the form of successful enterprises, a superior work force, high quality of life and New England’s competitiveness.” – Boston Herald

GET THEE TO A NOVEL

“It’s said that art can heal, whether it’s fiction, poetry, music, painting, theatre or some other happy obsession. People for whom art matters tend to agree. However cynical we are, on some level we imagine that a Schubert quartet or a Chekhov story or an afternoon looking at Renaissance painting will improve us. We’ll be more serene, and with luck we’ll be intellectually broader. And in some way, art will elevate us morally. Art is made, after all, by superior creatures.” But is it true? – National Post (Canada)