San Francisco’s Public Library is beginning to allow readers to browse, search, borrow, read and return 1,500 electronic books from the library’s collection. The process of doing so is still arduous, but if the practice catches on, doesn’t that mean the end of the publishing industry? – Salon
Tag: 07.05.00
YOUR LIFE FOR $4,000
A new website allows visitors to commission biographies of themselves from well-known writers. It is expensive, however. – CBC
A LOGICAL APPROACH
The Art Loss Register, a private organization dedicated to recovering art looted during WWII, has located and returned art valued at $100 million. How? “The first is the moral argument, the second is the threat of embarrassing negative publicity, which affects both individuals and institutions, and the third is the claim that the work has become completely worthless from a financial standpoint because it can never be sold on the market as long as it remains on the list of looted Holocaust art.” – Haaretz (Israel)
RECREATING CONTEXT
How faithfully should a museum try to reproduce the historical context in which pictures were originally made and shown? Do you distort or diminish a work of art by showing it in a way that the artist never intended? A new exhibition of Turner at the Tate Gallery tries for recreation but betrays the painter. – The Telegraph (UK)
THE EVILS OF GLOBALIZATION
The globalization of culture is accelerating at an alarming rate. “Through globalisation, people lose their local cultural identity and political autonomy; but sometimes they rid themselves of local fascists and thugs, isolation, poverty and ignorance. With good and bad homogenised thus, globalisation seems to negate all moral conscience. Globalisation also puts a new twist on critical terms like cultural imperialism, orientalism and colonisation.” – The Age (Melbourne)
ARTS AT ANY COST
The price of going to an arts event went up 10 percent over the weekend throughout Australia as the country adopted a GST tax. But the sudden increase doesn’t seem to have affected ticket sales. – Sydney Morning Herald
MICHELANGELO DRAWING —
— which inspired his statue of the risen Christ sold at auction Tuesday for a record $12 million. – Times of India
MODEL ARTISTS
Young good-looking 20- and 30-something American artists have been turning up in the pages of glossy magazines in the past few months. “Some people want to take these images as signs of the non-art world media’s renewed interest in the art world, and therefore of the return of an 1980’s-style art boom. But the glossified ’80’s artists were overwhelmingly male. The mediagenic artists of the oughties, as the current decade is sometimes called, are often women.” – New York Times
UNDERWATER TRANSPORT
Singapore plans a new underwater subway station under the Singapore Art Museum. The roof of the station will allow sunlight to filter through into the 10-storey-deep Museum station. Those viewing the water from above can see the reflection of the museum in it. – The Straits Times (Singapore)
THE LIE OF THE BIG FIVE
Traditionally America’s Big Five orchestras – Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago – were thought to be the best. Maybe they’re best ion budget, writes Norman Lebrecht, but “money cannot buy artistic excellence. The Big Five, as a musical indicator, amounts to a big lie. Let’s hear no more of it.” – The Telegraph (UK)