The export of art – any art – out of St. Petersburg, Russia has stopped because customs officials at the airport there say the value of artwork leaving is too difficult to determine and therefore too tough to figure the taxes owed. – St. Petersburg Times (Russia)
Tag: 07.18.00
WRITERS FESTIVAL CANCELED
Next year’s Perth Writers’ Festival has been canceled after the festival’s artistic director quits in a dispute with the organization’s management. – Sydney Morning Herald
IN THIS CORNER, LEONARDO…
Experts believe they have discovered a long-lost Leonardo fresco on a wall in in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio. Problem is, there may be another wall in front of it with a Vasari fresco on it. Scientists are using thermographics to pinpoint the Leonardo, but if it’s really there and in good shape do you remove the Vasari in front of it? – The Age (Melbourne) (The Telegraph)
PLAYING WITH THE RULES
Britain has rebuilt its embassy in Berlin now that the capital has moved back there. But Hans Stimmann, Berlin’s chief architect laid down very conservative architectural rules (no wonder Norman Foster dropped out of considering the project). The structure that has emerged, however, ” pays formal lip-service to Stimmann’s concerns but then deliberately subverts them by cutting a great hole in the centre of the façade and projecting through it an angular glass box and purple drum.” – The Telegraph (UK)
LIVING A HIGH “C” LIFE
Placido Domingo miscalculated when he took on directing the Washington and Los Angeles opera companies. He thought he’d be about finished singing by now. But at age 60 the voice still works, and the conducting, directing and singing are easily three full time jobs. What next? – The Telegraph (UK)
VALENCIA’S MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR INVESTMENT IN CULTURE
The Spanish city of Valencia is building Europe’s most ambitious millennium project. “At an all-in cost of £2 billion the project eclipses the Dome in Greenwich and even the Getty in Los Angeles. The prodigious investment provides Valencia with a spectacular new Science Museum, an IMAX cinema, a music school, a magnificent new 1,800-seat opera house, seven kilometres of promenades and two streamlined road bridges.” – The Times (UK)
MORE OBJECTIONS TO WWII MEMORIAL
National Park Service studies show that the site of a proposed $100 million memorial to veterans of the Second World War on the Mall in Washington DC is part of the historic grounds of the Lincoln Memorial. – Washington Post (Los Angeles Times)
FEEL THE BEAT
Does anyone not respond to music in some basic way? “Some scientists have recently proposed that music may have been an evolutionary adaptation, like upright walking or spoken language, that arose early in human history and helped the species survive. The ‘music gene’ would have arisen tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago, and conferred an evolutionary advantage on those who possessed it.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)
LIVING A HIGH “C” LIFE
Placido Domingo miscalculated when he took on directing the Washington and Los Angeles opera companies. He thought he’d be about finished singing by now. But at age 60 the voice still works, and the conducting, directing and singing are easily three full time jobs. What next? – The Telegraph (UK)
VALENCIA’S MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR INVESTMENT IN CULTURE
The Spanish city of Valencia is building Europe’s most ambitious millennium project. “At an all-in cost of £2 billion the project eclipses the Dome in Greenwich and even the Getty in Los Angeles. The prodigious investment provides Valencia with a spectacular new Science Museum, an IMAX cinema, a music school, a magnificent new 1,800-seat opera house, seven kilometres of promenades and two streamlined road bridges.” – The Times (UK)