A 1929 agreement between Italy and the Vatican that says an insult to the Pope shall carry the same penalty as an insult to the Italian president. For Sabina Guzzanti, that could mean five years in jail.
Tag: 09.12.08
Architecture Is Boring. Why? We Need Different Architects
“The built environment is at risk of becoming a very boring place where one design is much like another because one architect is much like another. We need to change: involve people in the design process through community consultation; encourage young people from across the spectrum to take an interest in architecture and possibly make a career of it; educate qualified architects about the world they live in and broaden their horizons at every opportunity.”
Canadian PM Defends Arts Cuts
“In his first detailed defence of $45-million in controversial cuts to arts and culture funding, [Canadian Prime Minister] Stephen Harper called his party’s decisions good governance and said the government must walk ‘a fine line’ between providing financial stability and ‘funding things that people actually don’t want.'”
Getty Curator Jumping To Huntington
“Catherine Hess, the curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum who organized its current, critically acclaimed exhibition ‘Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture,’ has been appointed curator of European art at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens.”
Philly Museum Begins Search For New Leadership
“The Philadelphia Museum of Art has assembled a search committee to… find a successor to Anne d’Harnoncourt, the longtime director who died unexpectedly June 1.” There is no timetable for the search, and the museum’s board chair says that the interim arrangement of splitting the artistic and business sides of the leadership is likely to remain in place after a new director is hired.
Warhol Director Tapped To Head Troubled Arts Fest
“Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and the advisory board of the Three Rivers Arts Festival have appointed Colleen Russell Criste acting director of the arts organization, four days after the Carnegie took over the festival, citing a concern over its ‘financial health,’ and eliminated its executive director and associate director.”
TIFF’s New Home Taking Shape
Five years into its campaign for a new home, the Toronto International Film Festival still needs to raise CAN$49m to hit its CAN$196m goal. But the new venue is already rising: “What’s intoxicating is the way the innovative architect Bruce Kuwabara has designed the cinemas as cubic sculptures suspended transparently within the five-storey Lightbox podium, almost… like apples hanging from a tree.”
Toronto FilmFest Having A Stomach-Churning Year
“What gives with all the gross-outs? I know festival films are supposed to stretch boundaries and challenge audiences, but I can’t remember a year when so many TIFF titles should have included barf bags with the ticket purchase.”
Novelist Gregory McDonald, 71
Crime novelist Gregory McDonald, creator of the snarky reporter/detective Fletch, has died of cancer at his Tennessee home. “A former reporter and editor for The Boston Globe, Mr. Mcdonald was considered a master of the comic-mystery genre.”
Campbell’s Challenge
Thomas Campbell may not have been the chattering classes’ idea of an exciting choice to head the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but he says he’s up to the task, and has a clear idea of where he wants to take the institution. “In this age of communication and the Internet our local and international audiences are actually very sophisticated. So the big challenge is how to deliver different levels of information to different audiences.”