“New Labour’s political outlook, reflected in its arts agenda, is rooted in a chronic insecurity about the public’s alienation from the political process and a nervousness of what we might get up to, unsupervised. The role of artists, according to this mindset, is to help government ‘connect’ and ‘engage’ with (or in other words, infiltrate) the lives of ordinary people.”
Tag: 10.19.07
Now The Museum: Have It Your Way
“In the era of movies with elaborate special effects and video games with graphics that cause players to marvel at the feeling of being inside the game, its no wonder museums are scrambling to keep up. For many, the answer to a more sophisticated audience and one with, perhaps, a shorter attention span is interactivity and immersion. Science and childrens museums have long trafficked in hands-on, sensory experiences. Now, with improved technology, the experiential exhibit is reaching new heights and turning up in a variety of venues.”
Richard Meier At 73
“Meier is a media-shy overachiever in an age of underachieving publicity hounds. The youngest-ever winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize — in 1984 — Meier speaks willingly of little beside his trade.”
The Bilbao Effect (Okay, Guggenheim) At 10
“Buffed for its birthday, the building looks better than ever. Its bulging fronds — metallic flowers in bud — remain irresistible. The shingled titanium surface blushes as it refracts the setting sun off the Nervion River. Inside the great atrium, curving white walls and shards of glass zoom thrillingly skyward. Along the looping pathways, shifting planes of stone and glass kaleidoscopically dapple light and shadow. I wondered how many artists have asked themselves, ‘Can my work stand up to this’?”
The Hard-Working Nureyev
“Nureyev embodied the heroic perfectionism of mid-century Soviet training, which was more insistently magnificent than anything in the West. Younger male dancers quickly copied him, strode the stage like tigers, after he’d shown the way. What we did not know, until the airing in August on PBS of a new BBC documentary and the publication this month of a massive new biography, was how hard-won that technique was, how iconoclastic he’d already been in Russia.”
Orlando Alt Weekly Hit For Prostitution Ads
Three Orlando Weekly managers have been arrested for running ads for the adult entertainment industry. Police say the ads offer prostitution. “The Weekly’s downtown offices also were served notice on racketeering charges for contributing to the prostitution industry. Officials said that the newspaper’s advertising executives also helped escort services design ads that would cloak them from the eyes of law-enforcement officers.”
Early Oscar Chatter (Let’s Have None Of That)
Hollywood studios are backing off from pushing their releases as Oscar contenders this year. “There’s never an upside to positioning a big film as an Oscar contender. The media does that for them anyway.”
Baryshnikov’s 37 Arts In Deep Trouble
37 Arts, Mikhail Baryshnikov’s off-Broadway theater, dance studio and foundation headquarters, is being foreclosed on. The company that built the studio claims that 37 Arts is $4m in debt, and still owes $10m to the builders. The theater, which was intended to be the moneymaking part of the building, has struggled to attract audiences, due in part to its remote location.
Museum Planning Begins In The OC
“A very preliminary and completely unofficial model depicting a new high-rise home for the Orange County Museum of Art made an appearance Thursday… This year, city officials approved five high-rise residential developments in the district — among them an 80-unit, 300-foot-tall condo tower rising above a museum that would occupy the lower three or four floors.” Still, the building’s deisgn and the museum’s role in the process are not yet fleshed out, nor is the matter of who will pay for it all.
Judge: Simon Museum Can Keep Cranach Paintings
“A Los Angeles federal judge has dismissed a case that jeopardized the Norton Simon Museum’s ownership of a nearly 500-year-old pair of paintings of Adam and Eve by German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder. The action halts dueling lawsuits filed by the museum and Marei von Saher of Connecticut, the heir of a Jewish art dealer who lost the artworks to the Nazis in World War II.”