Ever since the Freedom Center was announced as one of the cultural tenants of Ground Zero, observers have been asking exactly what the center is. So far, we’ve been told mainly what it isn’t: “It will not be a palace of pro-American propaganda… or a place for sentimentally commemorating victims of the Sept. 11 terrorists.” But the center’s organizing principal – “looking at different parts of the world transitioning from tyranny to freedom” – sounds an awful lot like American flag-waving, and the center’s developer is a longtime friend of President Bush.
Tag: 06.24.04
Let’s Play ‘Race The Censors’!
Movie theaters in Melbourne and Sydney are “[rushing] to release the latest film by the French director of the controversial movie Romance before its possible banning by the Office of Film and Literature Classification review board. Anatomy of Hell (Anatomie de L’enfe), by director Catherine Breillat, is described as “an investigation into the nature of misogyny” and features several explicit scenes involving a woman and a gay man who uses various objects to penetrate the woman at her request.” The film was originally set to receive an adult rating, but the Australian Family Association is appealing the rating in an effort to have the film banned outright.
Art Dealer Confesses To Import Fraud
Hicham Aboutaam, the co-owner of Phoenix Ancient Art, has pleaded guilty to falsifying documents concerning the origins of a silver drinking vessel that he later resold for nearly a million dollars. Phoenix Ancient Art is the same company which just sold an ancient bronze sculpture thought to be the work of Praxiteles to the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Afghanistan’s Bactrian Gold Found
“The Bactrian gold — 20,600 pieces of gold jewelry, funeral ornaments and personal belongings from 2,000-year-old burial mounds — has emerged from hiding intact, a shimmering example of the heights scaled by ancient Afghan culture. For years the gold was feared stolen, lost or melted down by the different forces that seized power over more than 20 years of war.”
Because What Opera Really Needs Is A Few Revolutionary Nuns
English National Opera has commissioned a new work from the Asian Dub Foundation, an experimental group “best known for their blend of breakbeats, rap and politics.” No one seems quite sure what the opera, which will premiere in 2006, will consist of, but just in case anyone was worried that the ADF would take its usual act down a notch for the sake of high art, they have announced that the protagonists will be Libyan dictator Colonel Moammar Gadafi and his “revolutionary nuns.”
Assessing the Holdings of a Nation
A UK charity is attempting to catalog every work of publically owned art in the Great Britain. “The nation’s collection is one of the richest and broadest in the world. But many works hang unregarded in public buildings from hospitals to council offices to fire stations. More still, in some counties up to 90% of public pictures, are in storage in regional museums, often in terrible conditions. Not only are they unavailable to the public which owns them, but they can also be inaccessible to academics, with individual museums lacking the means to put out catalogues.”
Reconsidering Goosens
A new film examining the tragic life and career of British conductor Sir Eugene Goossens is screening at the Sydney Film Festival, “impelling Australians to reflect on a shameful episode in their past.” Goossens was brought to Australia to lead the Sydney Symphony in the 1950s, but his promising career was cut short when he was fired and deported after airport authorities discovered pornographic photos in his luggage. Goossens died in disgrace in London, but the film portrays him as “a victim of the tabloid press and a morally zealous vice squad detective.”