Producer Cameron Mackintosh’s home has been destroyed in a fire. – BBC
Tag: 11.06.00
A COPYCAT SHOW
A gallery called the Outrageous Art Gallery in Edinburgh claims “to have used a worldwide network of forgers to produce exact copies of works displayed in the Scottish Colourists exhibition” currently on display at Scotland’s National Gallery of Modern Art. Curators at the museum are not at all happy. – The Guardian
GIOTTO OR NOT GIOTTO
Two months ago a team of scientists in Italy announced they had reconstructed a skeleton found 30 years ago under the Florence Cathedral. It was Giotto, they said. Now an an American art historian who led excavations under the cathedral in the ’70s has written to the church’s cardinal to debunk the claim. “For heaven’s sake, your eminence, do not treat it as Giotto. You risk blessing and honouring the bones of a fat butcher.” – The Guardian
DAMAGING THROUGH RESTORATION
India’s Ajanta paintings, which easily rank among the world’s most precious heritage sites, are being restored. But a leading expert warns that “the cleaning methods employed at the caves and the level of skills of the workers engaged in the cleaning have seriously damaged the Ajanta paintings and led to a demonstrable loss of pigment.” – The Art Newspaper
RETHINKING THE CUTTING EDGE
“Artists who think they are up-to-date, just because they use digital technologies, are making a “critical error. Many new areas of research are bubbling that cry out for artistic attention, such as ‘biosensors’ that can alter the senses of touch and taste.” – Wired
A PRIZE NEEDS A POINT
The British Stirling Prize for architecture has been awarded, and good luck to them all. “I don’t want to sound curmudgeonly, but I don’t get the Stirling prize and I’m not sure what good it does architecture. True, everyone likes a prize. Remember Alice in Wonderland, when the Dodo organised a caucus race for the animals? After they had run around in circles for a bit, the Dodo decided that ‘everybody has won and all must have prizes’.” – The Guardian
GERMAN ART AFTER THE WALL
“The world has spread the rumor that post-communist culture only uses its newly-won freedom to ape western strategies, that it is no longer fundamentally distinguishable from what we know as western art. The exhibition from Stockholm’s Moderna Museet now on display in Berlin succeeds in proving the contrary. Eastern Europe is still a separate continent.” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
A NEW CLASS OF TEACHER
“Affluence, once the preserve of the entrepreneurial class and the corporate sector, has now come to academe. Six-figure salaries, which used to be restricted to college presidents and a few senior faculty members in business and engineering, are no longer uncommon. The stock-market boom of the past two decades, rising home values, two-earner households, and external sources of income from royalties, lecture fees, and other sources have all given the academic world a new taste of prosperity.” – Chronicle of Higher Education 11/06/00
ARTS INCUBATOR
San Jose has copied an idea used in the high-tech start-up world for arts funding. The plan goes like this: “Bring representatives of arts, neighborhood and social services groups together for a day; feed them good food and good ideas; let them listen, schmooze and think. At the end of the day, ask them for their ideas. Then pick the best and fund them – quickly.” – San Jose Mercury News 11/06/00
SO WHAT’S THE POINT?
“What is the charter of the multi-artform Melbourne Festival? To offer choice and take the odd gamble? Or to project the ideas and tastes of the artistic director charged with pulling the event together?” – Sydney Morning Herald 11/06/00