A new German commission has been set up to work on disputes on looted art. “Germany has paid around £3bn to survivors of Nazi slave camps, and £30bn to victims of the Holocaust, but the issue of stolen property has not been resolved. The eight-member panel was set up after an agreement between the federal, state and local governments on its powers, but it can intervene only if both sides agree to let it act as an arbitrator. “
Tag: 07.15.03
’60s Edinburgh Built Today
“Much of the cultural life of Edinburgh today was shaped in the 1960s. The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art was opened, the Traverse Theatre was launched and world-class contemporary art arrived in the city, perhaps for the first time. It was enough to make a Morningside lady drop her teacup. Now, a snapshot of this eventful decade is on show…”
The Little Opera Company That Could
Producing new operas is a mostly-miss proposition. But tiny Central City (Colorado) Opera “hasn’t fared too badly with its handful of commissioned, Colorado-oriented musical tales. Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe (1956) remains in the international repertory. Same thing, on a smaller scale, with Henry Mollicone’s Face on the Barroom Floor (1978). Robert Ward’s The Lady From Colorado (1964) bombed – but two out of three ain’t bad. So, with the premiere Saturday at the Opera House of Mollicone’s Gabriel’s Daughter, one question was unavoidable: Could Central City make it three out of four?”
Cleveland Museum Makes Cuts
The Cleveland Museum, trying to balance its budget, is laying off 37 full- and part-time employees, freezing salaries and reducing pay for senior administrators. In addition, “the museum is reducing loans of artworks to other museums, stretching the duration of special exhibitions, cutting its film program in half, closing its retail store at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and reducing other expenses, from staff travel to photocopying.”
ABC Stepping Away From “Reality”?
ABC says it will wean itself off reality TV (the genre was described by one ABCer as “crack cocaine” for its seductiveness to programmers). “They all just look the same. They’re all focused on interpersonal, petty relationships. They generally have some kind of vote-out mechanism. Many of them seem to get progressively more salacious.” Or could it be that ratings for “reality” TV are just way down this summer?
Tuned In…
The art of piano tuning is becoming more scientific. “The Kansas City, Mo.-based Piano Technicians Guild says computers are now used by at least half the 10,000 tuners who service America’s 18 million pianos.” The debate about the quality of tuning manually versus that using technology is about equally split…
File Trading Declines After Industry Threats
Recording industry get-tough threats to music downloaders seem to be having an impact on the number of people downloading music on the internet. “Kazaa and Morpheus — two popular file-swapping services — had 15 percent fewer users during the week ending July 6, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. The decline translates to about 1 million fewer users on Kazaa. About 41,000 fewer users signed on to Morpheus and the iMesh file-sharing service that week.”
Bush Administration Considers Offloading Archaeologists
The Bush administration is considering offloading National Park Service archaeologists who oversee and protect America’s historical and cultural heritage. “The administration says turning over the archaeology jobs to private contractors could save money, but critics charge that contractors are ill-equipped to cope with an array of endemic challenges, including influential outsiders trying to dictate Park policy, chronic congressional underfunding and serious personnel shortages that Park Service archaeologists mitigate by using thousands of volunteers – an option not open to a private company.”
Dance Of The Cliches
One dance critic comes away disappointed from an advance screening of Robert Altman’s new dance film. “It is a disappointing hybrid that too often plays on dance cliches (a snapped Achilles tendon just hours before opening night, an ego-crushing bit of recasting, an outdoor premiere nearly washed out by a rainstorm, an alcoholic mother and litigious mentor) and never comes close to capturing the hour upon hour of class, rehearsal, repetition and intense, unwavering discipline so crucial to the art.”
Talent Surfing
Ismene Brown goes looking at the UK’s leading ballet school performances to see what talent is on the way up. “I saw no stars this summer, nor did I emerge from the four shows with huge optimism about the next British generation, because there are so pitifully few native dancers-in-waiting in the first place. The heavy dominance of our dance schools by foreign youngsters is not just because they are willing to pay the fees but because they are better trained earlier on and often hungrier.”