“Smoking and art — or at least artists — of all varieties have long made steamy bedfellows. That’s why, despite the widespread acceptance in this country that cigarettes are the devil’s own nostrils, the Motion Picture Assn. of America’s recent announcement that it would now ‘consider smoking as a factor’ when making its ratings decisions feels like yet another nail in the coffin of grown-up entertainment.”
Tag: 05.19.07
Gulbenkian Prize Finds New Funding
“The biggest cash prize in [UK] arts, the £100,000 Gulbenkian prize for museums and galleries, is to be taken over next year by the Art Fund charity. The announcement, which will be made formally next week, will come as a great relief to the museums sector, which had been anxious for news that the prize would continue. It was established to emulate the glamour and the buzz of the Turner and Booker prizes for the beleaguered museums, but its funding was guaranteed for only five years.”
The Daniel Libeskind Story
“Until he builds his first building at the age of 52, he has spent no more than three weeks working as a professional architect. A theorist, he conceives of beautiful but commercially improbable, ostensibly unviable buildings – ostensibly, because some of the same mad designs he once scrawled in his basement office are now the toast of the architecture world. Indeed, from nowhere, Libeskind vaults into the rarefied world of celebrity. People accost him in restaurants, take his picture on subway platforms. He is lavished with prizes, commissions, money. He designs furniture, grand pianos, opera, becomes a media darling and a household name.”
Challenging The Smithsonian Over Selling Pictures
“A nonprofit group is challenging the copyrights and restrictions on images being sold by the Smithsonian. But instead of going to court, the group downloaded all 6,288 photos online and posted them Wednesday night on the free Internet site.”
Africa’s University Crisis
“Africa’s best universities, the grand institutions that educated a revolutionary generation of nation builders and statesmen, doctors and engineers, writers and intellectuals, are collapsing… The decrepitude is forcing the best and brightest from countries across Africa to seek their education and fortunes abroad and depriving dozens of nations of the homegrown expertise that could lift millions out of poverty.”
Vengerov Slips In Bathroom, Concertgoers Lose
Violinist Maxim Vengerov puts down his violin at a concert in London last week and conducts the orchestra onstage. What happened? “It’s just a temporary injury, and my hand is recovering now. I slipped in the bathroom! Very silly, very silly. Unexpected.”
Stalin The Poet
Before he was leader of the old USSR Stalin was known as a poet. And a good one. “Stalin was no Georgian Pushkin. The poems’ romantic imagery is derivative, but their beauty lies in the rhythm and language… Stalin never publicly acknowledged his own poems. Why did he stop writing them? One answer is that, gifted as he was at poetry, he was superbly qualified for revolutionary politics in every way: Marxism was to be his religion and his poetry.”
Orchestra For The Future
“Plans call for New World Symphony to move from its converted movie theatre premises to a new 700-seat concert hall designed by Frank Gehry. It would be hard to imagine an orchestra more deserving.”
Merce Cunningham: Twiddling My Feet
Though now largely confined to a wheelchair, Cunningham still teaches the advanced technique class at his studio twice a week, in addition to constantly working on new choreography. He also draws every day, mostly sketches of animals, “as a way of putting my mind on something else. I can’t move much, but I can still twiddle my feet. To my dancers, I will attempt to show whatever I can and explain the rest. I don’t enjoy talking, but I do it.”