Attorney-businessman-collector Harald Falckenberg has opened a “stunning” new museum in Hamburg to showcase his collection of contemporary art. “A fascination with the grotesque runs throughout the collection, lending it a no-holds-barred irreverence that might be difficult to represent at public expense. ‘I’m not interested in reaching a broad public,’ he said, ‘and I have no official mandate. Instead, I can offer alternatives.'”
Tag: 10.18.08
Operatic Splendor Returns As Productions Go Traditional
“Not so long ago, making a fanfare about big frocks and fancy sets in opera was the preserve of that crowd-pleasing impresario Raymond Gubbay. Heaven forbid that you uttered the words ‘authentic’ or ‘spectacular’ inside a ‘serious’ opera house.” But times have changed. “Ironically, going traditional has become the new radical – a shortcut to standing out from the concept crowd.”
Small Film Fests Already Hurt By Financial Crisis
“Film festivals have traditionally been an oasis, a heady escape for artists and dealmakers removed from real-world concerns. No longer. The financial crisis is hitting some U.S. film festivals — and hard. Local cash and in-kind sponsorship are drying up quickly. “
Stratford Fest Going International
“A town in El Salvador, once known as much for the killing and upheaval of the country’s civil war as for its architectural beauty, is being helped by Ontario’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival to become a major new centre for theatre and the arts in Central America.”
Southern Illinois To Get Major Art Gift
“New Yorkers Herbert and Dorothy Vogel… working with the National Gallery of Art in Washington and federal arts agencies, chose the University Museum at Southern Illinois University to receive 50 pieces [of the Vogel collection.] The gift is part of a plan announced in April to donate 50 works from the Vogels to one art institution in each state. Ten recipients were named then, and announcements about the remaining 40 are expected this week.”
Kundera Accused Of Helping Communists
“Life appears to be imitating art in a drama convulsing the Czech Republic: an accusation that Milan Kundera, one of Eastern Europe’s most celebrated writers, denounced a Western intelligence agent to Czechoslovakia’s Communist police when he was a 21-year-old student. The agent, Miroslav Dvoracek, served 14 years in jail, including hard labor in a uranium mine.”
Trove of Ancient Manuscripts To Go Digital
“For centuries scholars from around the world have flocked to the Stiftsbibliothek — literally, the abbey library — in [St. Gallen, Switzerland,] to pore over its vast collection of manuscripts, many written and illustrated before the year 1000.” Now, a grant from the Mellon Foundation will allow the library’s holdings to be scanned and made available online.
Foreign Titles Need Not Apply
“It is a commonly held assumption that Americans don’t like to read authors who write in languages they don’t understand. It is left mostly to small publishers… to scavenge for hidden treasures outside the United States.”
Frozen Frieze
“Art is selling at this week’s Frieze Art Fair, but nothing like before. After several weeks of financial havoc in stock exchanges across the globe, the feeding frenzy is over… More pervasive was a grim sense that a shake-out of world markets was just beginning, and in the end art would probably be the least of anyone’s worries.”
Look To The Children
Want to know where classical music is headed in the future? Just check out the projects being pursued by some of the offspring of today’s classical luminaries, many of which seem to be elegantly straddling the worlds of high culture and pop.