Even in a market that may be tougher than ever for independent bookstores, there are niches — like, say, the paranormal — that the big chains just can’t fill as well as a single passionate shop owner. At Germ, in Philadelphia, the “new and used books all fit under the umbrella of what might be called Apocalypse Culture: UFOs, Bigfoot, Kennedy assassination, ghosts, time travel, conspiracy, ESP, the unexplained, unknown and just plain peculiar.”
Tag: 09.29.04
When The Kids’ Pictures Stay In The Camera
Digital cameras promised to make photography easier, and maybe they have. But with only 13 percent of digital photos being printed, the images aren’t as permanently accessible as the old-fashioned kind that made their way into albums and picture frames. Without that tangible record of their past, are families losing an important part of their history?
Owning Martha Graham
The fight between the Martha Graham Dance Company and the choreographer’s heir over the ownership of her dances has been going on for three years now, and shows no signs of abating anytime soon. No matter which side of the issue you come down on, the question of ownership is a complicated one, and it has driven home to the dance world that explicitly defined contracts between choreographers and their companies are simply a necessity in the modern world.
The New Voice of Saturday Afternoons
Opera is a tradition-bound enterprise, and there may be no more traditional radio audience than the 10 million fans who tune in each Saturday for live broadcasts of New York’s Metropolitan Opera. So the retirement of Peter Allen, the Voice of The Met for the last 29 years, has caused no small amount of hand-wringing. This week, the Met introduced its new voice: Margaret Juntwait, a classical music host at WNYC radio.
Emory To Become Home To Danowski Collection
The largest English-language poetry collection ever amassed by an individual collector has been donated to Atlanta’s Emory University. The collection of Raymond Danowski comprises “some 60,000 volumes and tens of thousands more of periodicals, posters, recordings and other items devoted to 20th-century poetry in the English language.”
The Worst-Reviewed Opera Ever (Take Two)
It isn’t often that a production of a Mozart opera can inspire critics to foam at the mouth, and yet, the English National Opera managed it three years ago with Claixto Bieito’s mounting of Don Giovanni. “A crude, anti-musical farrago”, a “coke-fuelled fellatio fest”, and a “new nadir in the vulgar abuse of a masterpiece” were but a few of the barbs hurled ENO’s way. So what does a company do after such a spectacular critical failure? Bring it back for an encore, apparently, and the reviews (“I should sooner poke my eyes out and sell my children into slavery than sit though it again”) aren’t looking any better the second time around.
Sometimes, The World Just Gets Too Close
Back in 2000, artist Tom Muller set out to bring the world closer together by creating World Passports which could be ordered from any of several “world embassies” around the world. While completely useless in traditional border-crossing situations, Muller describes the passports as sending “a holistic kind of message, but using bureaucratic attitudes and ways to get there.” Unfortunately for the artist, purchasing passport-making equipment turned out to be a great way to attract the attention of the world’s law enforcement agencies in the months after the 9/11 attacks.
When Is A Munch Only Partly A Munch?
A major work by Edward Munch (no, not that one,) is being offered for sale in an online auction based in Denmark. But Munch authorities in Norway are questioning the auction house’s claims that the lithograph in question was actually hand-colored by the artist himself. The piece has been appraised at over $100,000, and as a whole is unquestionably authentic, but much of its value is dependant on whether Munch can be verified as the individual who filled in the color.
Who Can Save Israel’s Orchestras? (The Russians Couldn’t.)
In the early 1990s, following the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian immigrants descended upon Israel in droves, and no industry was more affected than that of classical music. Initially greeted with skepticism, Russian musicians quickly became the backbone of the Israeli orchestral scene, and swelled the ranks of the nation’s music schools as well. “The assimilation of the Russian musicians is now complete, but not for the better. Now the problem of classical music in Israel is their problem too, because the society turns its back on all musicians, and pushes them to the bottom rung of the ladder when it comes to priorities.”