Jacques Barzun’s new 900-page history of the last 500 years looks formidable on the bookshelf. But it’s a kind of history seldom seen: a “technicolor, wide-screen, multi-media epic in print of what you missed while suffering through Western Civ. 101. Here is an intellectual Dr. Seuss: ‘Oh, the Places You’ll See! The People You’ll Meet!’ – The Idler
Tag: 07.07.00
THE NEXT BIG THING
“Why should anyone be surprised to learn that a Western nation of 18-odd million people has among it some novelists, poets and playwrights whose work is wondrous and breathtaking and reaches into all the dark corners where only art can go?” Commemorating Australia’s 100th anniversary of nationhood, London hosts a weekend-long Australian writing festival with many of the country’s literary lights in attendance. – The Telegraph (UK)
A NEW “NEW TESTAMENT”
The first version of the Bible to be reproduced in English – a 1526 “New Testament” translated from the Greek – has been fully reprinted for the very first time by the British Library. – Times of India (AP)
TELL ME MORE
Tate Modern has been harshly criticized by the director of another London museum for relying on insider jargon, failing to coherently contextualize its work, and explaining very little in fact about modern art. “I went to Tate Modern as someone who knows very little about modern art but is keen to learn. I left in exactly the same state. Why doesn’t Tate Modern try to help its visitors learn techniques for assessing a piece of modern art instead of plonking the art in a gallery and hoping for the best?” – The Independent (UK)
EVERYONE LOVES A WINNER
The Art Gallery of Windsor in southern Ontario made a deal with the provincial casino. In return for renting the museum’s old space, the casino paid $8 million in rent and built the museum a new $20 million home. Now the city council, eyeing the museum’s good fortune, wants to discontinue the museum’s annual $500,000 city support. – CBC
A BIG NIGHT AT AUCTION
A rare collection of old master paintings, French furniture, silver, and sculptures from the collection of diamond merchant Julius Wernher (former governor of the South African conglomerate De Beers) sold at Christie’s in London Wednesday night for $30.4 million, twice its $15 million estimate. – New York Times
AND THE JOKE IS ON…
A lecturer who dislikes modern art decided to make his own. “He found a piece of scrap wood with grooves in from a cutting machine, painted it white and called it Millennium Dawn” and entered it in an art competition. Judges at Nottingham University awarded it a prize. – Ananova
NEW LIFE FOR DOOMED DOME
What to do with London’s boondoggled Millennium Dome now that the government has decided to sell it? As of now there are three contenders to take over the billion-dollar bust: a Japanese-backed company that would continue the current programming, the BBC, which, in partnership with Tussaud’s, would turn it into a theme park based on BBC TV characters, and a business group that wants to “strip out the current content and turn the site into London’s silicon valley.” – BBC
MORE THAN MARCHING MUSIC
Well known as the composer of “Stars and Stripes Forever” and dozens of other first-rate American marches, John Philip Sousa has not received much acclaim to date for the composing he did for the theater. Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, new York, opens its 25th-anniversary season this weekend with “The Glass Blowers,” Sousa’s last completed and most elaborate operetta. – New York Times
NOT EVERYONE CAN WRITE AN OPERA
Even with Franz Schubert’s great successes writing for the voice, his 11 attempts at opera never got him very far. One is being staged in Garsington now. What’s it like? “Schubert was one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived, yet there are only two arias in two-and-a-half hours of music. The whole opera has been conceived in terms of vast blocks of end-to-end ensemble: which are incredibly rich in their musical development, but at the same time make the opera a total nightmare to stage.” – The Guardian