The Boston Symphony has hurriedly withdrawn this season’s covers of its program books after discovering that part of the cover image “presents an indistinct image that creates a visual double-entendre of a distinctly anatomical nature.” – Boston Globe
Tag: 10.05.00
HOW SYDNEY GOT HER OPERA HOUSE
“Some think of the Opera House as a superb example of Goethe’s frozen music; others imagine a beached white whale, a galleon sailing off to Elfland, nine ears cocked to hear some heavenly aria, nine nuns playing football. ‘A bunch of toenails clipped from a large albino dog’, the Sydney journalist Ron Saw once wrote.” – London Review of Books
CROSSING OVER
Playwright Harold Pinter will make his acting debut in one of his own plays as part of a ten-play Pinter-fest coming to Broadway. – Theatre.com
OUT DAMN DOT
Artists in San Francisco march on city hall to protest high rents and evictions due to the Dot-com boom. – Los Angeles Times (Reuters) 10/05/00
BUILDING A BETTER CONGRESS
Think of all the lawyers and business-people who populate Congress. But in the 20th Century there was only one architect served in Congress. Why not more? Hard to say – “The creative process of architects is a constructive, inclusive process – therefore more diplomatic than the aggressive and adversarial methods of engagement in politics … Yet they have always seemed to be supporting actors at best or bit players at worst, in the various dramas unfolding on society’s main stage…” – Boston Globe 10/05/00
CHRISTIE’S/SOTHEBY’S DEAL PUT ON HOLD
A judge puts a hold on the $512 million settlement reached late last month by the boards of both Christie’s and Sotheby’s, saying that not all the plaintiffs have had a chance to sign off on the agreement. – CNN
PRECIOUS SALES
Just what can explain the popularity of Jeff Koons? “Koons has had an impressive run at auction. Starting in November 1999, records for Koons weren’t just set, they were obliterated. Several of his exquisitely crafted porcelain sculptures came up and easily cruised through the million-dollar barrier. Suddenly, Jeff Koons prices were in Andy Warhol territory.” Who’s buying this stuff? – Artnet
FOR HER EYES ONLY
Britain’s Royal Collection of artwork, housed among the country’s various royal palaces, will go on view to the public in new galleries in Edinburgh and at Buckingham Palace over the next two years. But why isn’t the impressive collection (including the world’s most significant archive of drawings by Leonardo) on permanent, accessible display? “The only way the Queen can do justice to the Royal Collection is to give it to us.” – The Guardian
ANDY AND THE AYATOLLAH
“Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, a priceless collection of modern art, bought by the Shah of Iran’s wife and ranging from Picasso and Van Gogh to Bacon and Pollock, has been lost to the viewing world, buried in the vaults of a museum in Teheran. But as the Iranian government has cautiously begun the process of liberalisation during the past two years, some of the paintings have gone on display. The response has been extraordinary, and some of the images produced by the crowds even more extraordinary: women in chadors gazing intently at Andy Warhol’s Marilyn and brown-robed mullahs appraising a Roy Lichtenstein.” – The Telegraph (UK)
ARTIST ON THE ATTACK
The Melbourne Art Fair got underway this week amid well-publicized criticism by Chilean painter Juan Davila that the Australian art world is “ruthlessly mercantile” and expresses a “bankrupt cultural scenario.” “His comments were intended to highlight the ‘serfdom’ to which artists were reduced in the art market because their dealers took 40 to 50 percent of the sale of a painting.” – The Age (Melbourne)