The Seattle Art Museum is fined by the court for causing unnecessary litigation expenses for New York’s Knoedler Gallery, whom the museum is suing over a Matisse that the gallery sold to a SAM donor. The painting later turned out to have been stolen by the Nazis, and after deliberation, the Seattle museum returned the painting to the original owners’ heirs. – The Art Newspaper
Tag: 09.05.00
NAKED FEAR
A painting of a small nude figure was removed from an exhibition in Delhi by the government over fears it might offend. In protest, all 25 artists in the show withdrew from the exhibition. – BBC
THE TOWERS OF LONDON
Suddenly the rush to fill London’s skyline with tall towers has turned into a flood, with new proposals announced almost every week. What’s behind the plans to transform the city’s views? – The Times (UK)
LICENSE TO PLAY
After extensive negotiations with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), the U.S. Justice Department agreed Tuesday to revise a 1941 court order regarding the licensing of music for performance and broadcast (including over the internet). ASCAP currently licenses 50% of all musical performances in the U.S. – Nando Times
PERIOD INSTRUMENT CHIC
“With such high-profile modern instrumentalists and institutions dabbling in – one can’t quite say embracing – the period instrument movement, it’s clear that the once daunting walls between period and modern performers have tumbled down (though there are holdouts like violinist Pinchas Zukerman, who describes period performance as “s—“).” – National Post (Canada)
COMMON TONGUE
English is becoming the common language of education worldwide. “The development is unprecedented. Not even Latin, the European scholarly language for almost two millennia, or Greek in the ancient world before it, had the same reach. For the first time, one language, English – a bastard mixture of old French dialects and the tongues of several Germanic tribes living in what is now England – is becoming the lingua franca of business, popular culture, and higher education across the globe.” – Chronicle of Higher Education 09/05/00
ATTACKING ONE OF OUR OWN
- The New York Times Book Review ran a scathing review of Canadian writer Margaret Atwood’s new book over the weekend. Canadians are taking it personally. “[The Times Book Review is] fairly erratic and tends to be very much tied into the New York publishing scene. There’s sort of a decision that somebody’s going to be praised and important at one point and a decision that somebody’s going to be taken down a peg at another. Generally, they don’t exert pressure on their reviewers, but they may have said, ‘Great it’s time somebody did this.’ It’s hard to know exactly what the politics are.” – National Post (Canada)