-
NOT
A PRIORITY THIS TIME: New Canadian government budget cuts
taxes but fails to deliver on expected increases for arts and
culture. CBC
02/29/00
-
POST-MODERN
IN AN "AFTER-MODERN" WORLD:
"We're living in a postmodern world. We don't know what
that means yet. All we know is that what we have now is not
the same thing we had had before. We're 'after-modern.' We've
deconstructed all the foundations of the modern world to see
how they were put together in the first place. It's been a fascinating
task, and we've been very successful. Problem is we don't know
anything about building foundations. We just know how to take
them apart."
*spark-online
03/00
-
HOLOCAUST
TRIAL: British libel trial rehashes details of the Holocaust.
Sometimes the trial is a jousting match, with historical
documents and incidents as the lances. Other times, the debate
is more disturbing. Salon
03/01/00
-
OWNERSHIP
QUESTIONS: British report says some 300 works of art in
UK museums have questionable WWII provenance and could have
been stolen by Nazis from their rightful owners. The
Guardian 02/29/00
-
NAZI
LOOT: British museums and galleries announce a list
of art they hold that was looted by the Nazis and never
returned to rightful owners. So will the art be returned?
Not necessarily. "Arts Minister Alan Howarth told the
BBC's 'Newsnight' program: 'Just as it was wrong to take
paintings off Jewish people in the circumstances of the
Nazi era, so it would be wrong without a proper basis of
evidence to take paintings off the national collections
which are held for the public benefit.'"
BBC 02/29/00
-
WHAT'S
FAIR? "It is entirely proper that stolen pictures,
especially those taken in the appalling circumstances of
Europe under Nazi domination, should be returned to the
families of their pre-war owners, but publishing lists of
this kind invites false claims made, not with mischievous
intentions, but through errors of recollection after 60
years or more - one Picasso looks much like another after
so long a time. It is possible, even probable, that the
list will provoke false memories, and once a false claim
is made it may well be difficult for the gallery in question
to prove or disprove the claim, leaving ownership in limbo."
Evening
Standard 02/29/00
-
E-BAY
DENIES REPORT that it will buy troubled auction house Sotheby's
for $1.6 billion. Wired
02/29/00
-
Previously:
E-BAY
TO BUY SOTHEBY'S? Five-year-old
eBay is reported to be interested in buying the troubled
256-year-old auction house. Valued by the stock market,
eBay is worth nearly $20 billion, 16 times Friday's closing
price for Sotheby's. The
Independent 02/27/00
-
AND
THEN THEY CAME FOR ME: "Should intellectuals push for
a cultural embargo of Austria and try to starve the xenophobic
rightists out? Or should they go to Austria and feed the vigorous
internal opposition, which made itself apparent in a march of
250,000 protesters in Vienna this month? But such tactics could
do a great deal of harm. "I can agree on a boycott on the
highly official level," says one critic and curator. But,
referring to the Austrian Freedom Party's crusade against contemporary
art, he says, "it makes no sense to boycott us. We are
already under attack inside Austria." Chronicle
of Higher Education 02/29/00
-
CORPORATE
SUPPORT: Sydney's Olympic Arts Festival is doing well attracting
corporate sponsors. But Australia's Minister for the Arts says
continued corporate support after the Olympics end is crucial
to a healthy Australian arts scene. Currently corporations fund
only about 10 percent of the country's arts expenditures. Sydney
Morning Herald 02/29/00
-
WHAT
FALLS TO EARTH... The American Museum of Natural History
in New York goes to court to refuse to give back a 10,000-year-old,
15-ton meteorite to Oregon Indian tribes who say their ancestors
once treated the rock as a sacred object. The rock is not the
kind of sacred object intended to be covered by the Native American
Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, a law covering
the "repatriation" or important Native-American cultural
objects, claims the museum. New
York Post 02/29/00
-
NO
PAIN, NO GAIN: "Pessimists are worried that Christie's
and Sotheby's may not even survive the crisis. Derek Johns,
a London dealer who was once a director of Sotheby's, says,
'It would be devastating if they became bankrupt.' The optimists,
on the other hand, say that Christie's and Sotheby's have survived
drama and scandal in the past, and that a better, more competitive
and less arrogant art market may eventually come out of all
this." London
Telegraph 02/28/00
-
Previously:
E-BAY
TO BUY SOTHEBY'S? Five-year-old
eBay is reported to be interested in buying the troubled
256-year-old auction house. Valued by the stock market,
eBay is worth nearly $20 billion, 16 times Friday's closing
price for Sotheby's. The
Independent 02/27/00
-
OF
SINS AND SCANDALS: So what's a little collusion? Other
auction house practices may be legal, but they're far from
fair.
Artnewsroom.com 02/28/00
-
SELLERS'
MARKET: "This sends a bolt of lightning through
the marketplace," said Scott Black, president of Delphi
Management, a Boston money-management firm, and a serious
collector who has spent tens of millions of dollars on fine
paintings. "When you step into that auction room and
raise your hand, you assume it's a fair market. . . . I
think a lot of people are going to think twice about the
spring auctions."
Washington Post 02/27/00
-
WHO
OWNS MUSIC? A Harvard panel debates intellectual property
protection in the digital age. Wired
02/27/00
-
ART
FROM AN URBAN UNDERWORLD: In a nation with an almost oppressive
sense of conformity, the shocking new artists in China's southern-most
province rebel against not only official orthodoxy but even
the mainstream avant-garde. It has also become symbolic of a
new southern avant-garde that has, in recent years, taken root
in the fast-moving Shenzhen region. ARTNews
03/00
-
CRACKDOWN:
Three robbers were recently executed in China for stripping
a tomb of murals with the intention of selling them. Is China
cracking down on the plundering of cultural artifacts? The
Art Newspaper 02/025/00
-
BLOOD
IN THE WATER:
With Sotheby's and Christie's busy with investigators, the auction-house
competition behind them consolidates. After buying Phillips,
the world's third largest auction house, less than four months
ago, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton buys Tajan, France's largest
auction house. The deal will allow Phillips to enter the French
auction market, which remains closed to foreign auctioneers.
It will also give Tajan's customers access to the London and
New York markets, where Phillips has sales and where taxes are
lower than in France.
New York Times 02/25/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
-
ON
SECOND THOUGHT: Salzburg Festival
director Gerard Mortier changes his mind about quitting the
festival to protest Austrian politics, according to the Vienna
daily Der Standard. Times
of India (AP) 02/24/00
-
TALKING
GRAPEFRUITS AND ARTISTIC USES FOR USED CHEWING GUM: The
Canada Council has come under fire in Parliament for some of
the offbeat artistic projects it has funded. "Artists are
often pushing the envelope. They are like scientists - they
are experimenting, taking risks." Chicago
Tribune 02/24/00
-
DOUBLE
TROUBLE: The Iranian Council of Music,
a "unique creation of the 21-year-old Islamic Revolution,"
requires written approval before any bar of music is played
in public anywhere in Iran. "Along with the Council of
Poetry, which vets every word of every lyric written, it is
housed within the Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Culture,
charged with keeping Iran a pure Islamic country by enforcing
a mass of rules about which books people can read, what music
they can hear, which foreigners they can talk to." All
of which has predictably led to an official culture and an underground
one. Salon 02/24/00
-
YOU
DESERVE A BREAK TODAY: Billboards advertising McDonald's
have gone up around Berlin showing a picture of a hamburger
next to words like 'Plima!' or 'Liesig!' Written in a caricaturist
'bamboo script,' the misspelled words play on a popular misconception
that Asians, and particularly the Chinese, cannot pronounce
the letter R. "These ads are jolly and funny," says
a McDonald's spokesman. "We haven't heard any complaints."
He sure has now. Die
Welt 02/23/00
-
SYDNEY
FESTIVAL records a surplus. Bodes well for upcoming Olympic
Arts Festival.
Sydney Morning Herald 02/23/00
-
CULTURAL
INVESTMENT: Korea plans major investments in its cultural
infrastructure to reshape the country's cultural profile over
the next ten years. Plans include a massive new cultural center
for Seoul. Korea
Herald 02/23/00
-
AMAZON
TO BUY SOTHEBY'S? The auction house's share price surges
Wednesday on speculation that the company is ripe for a takeover.
Financial
Times 02/24/00
-
And:
SELLING
SCRAMBLE: With the spring art
auction season approaching, Christie's and Sotheby's scramble
to get works to sell. Sellers are eager to take advantage
of the high markets, but many are wondering what effect
the collusion scandal will have.
New York Times 02/24/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
-
"EXPENSIVE
BUT NOT LIFE-THREATENING": New chairman of Sotheby's,
on the job just one day, brushes aside his company's plunging
stock price and predicts the auction company will come out
intact from the US Government's investigation of collusion.
New
York Times 02/23/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
-
And:
Europeans
to join in lawsuits against auction houses.
London
Times 02/23/00
-
So
what's the case for collusion, why's it so wrong and
can the auction houses talk their way out of trouble?
Slate
02/23/00
-
Related: DON'T
GET MAD, GET EVEN: Australian art dealer Chris Deutscher
believed giant auction houses Sotheby's and Christie's nearly
ran him out of business. So he closed up his gallery and
opened upstart Australian auction house Deutscher Menzies.
The firm is finding its niche, prospering, even, as the
Sotheby/Christie's scandal widens - DM racked up a 50 per
cent increase in sales this past year. Sydney Morning Herald 02/23/00
-
THAT
HAPPENED UNDER THE OLD GUYS: As US investigation into
collusion between the top auction houses widens, chief executives
at Sotheby's suddenly resign yesterday. New
York Times 02/22/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
-
BOLD
BUT BLOWN OUT: The budget and box office, that is, for this
year's Perth Festival, which reached for some ambitious international
projects, but seems headed to a record deficit. Sydney
Morning Herald 02/22/00
-
GROWING
CHORUS of artists protests inclusion of Joerg Haider's far-right
Freedom party in the Austrian government. CBC
(AP) 02/22/00
-
HARVARD
UNDER ATTACK: Native Americans charge the university is
trying to get around a law requiring the return of American
Indian artifacts. "(Harvard) is very unpopular with natives
from coast to coast right now,'' said Ramona Peters of the Wampanoag
tribe in Gay Head. ``It appears they view our ancestors as their
property.'' Boston
Herald 02/22/00
-
RESPONSIBLE
RETURN: Some American museums are struggling with complying
with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation
Act, which mandates the return of native artifacts to Indian
tribes. Boston
Herald 02/22/00
-
NATIVE
AMERICAN FRUSTRATION: "So you go into the museum
as the authority figure. And guess who the authorities are
on Indians? White people. That's the hypocrisy. You go in
possessing all these qualities and the non-Indian doesn't
recognize you because you don't have a paper on the wall
that says Ph.D. on it." Boston
Herald 02/22/00
-
REACHING
OUT: An Australia Council report has some dismal warnings
for traditional arts: "A staggering 47 per cent of 18-
to 39-year-olds had not attended a performance of theatre, dance
or music in the past two years. Ballet rated the worst, capturing
only 8 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds who frequented arts events.
While young people generally have the time and money to attend
the arts, they intensely dislike its "older, stuffy image"
and prefer to spend time drinking, clubbing, socializing, watching
movies and sport." Sydney
Morning Herald 02/21/00
-
NOT US: Revelations
that some US museums have asked for commissions on sales of
work they exhibit leave other museums scrambling to deny they
engage in the ethically-questionable practice. New
York Times 02/21/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
-
SEE
THE ART, WRITE ABOUT THE ART: It's quite a simple rule,
really. If you pronounce about the quality of art before you've
even seen it - as some Canadian politicians did last week -
you'll almost always get yourself in trouble.
Toronto Globe and Mail 02/21/00
-
ARTIST
RESALE RIGHTS: British opponents of an EU plan to give artists
a cut on the resale of their work say the plan will gut the
English market and drive art-sellers to Switzerland or New York
where the tax won't be collected. Is that any reason not to
let artists share in profits on their work? London
Telegraph 02/21/00
-
FRENCH
IN ENGLISH: Much French culture never travels beyond French
borders. Now a high-budget film and an ambitious musical take
a new approach to exporting French culture to the rest of the
world. Sunday
Times 02/20/00
-
AIN'T
NOHOW, NOWHERE: American linguistics professor says that
heavily dialectical speech ain't no sign of lack of intelligence.
His critics say he should be fired. Baltimore
Sun 02/20/00
-
NEA
WARS: National Endowment for the Arts chairman Bill Ivey
and four of his predecessors gather on a stage in Boston to
talk about the agency's past and future. Is it a matter of high
and low art? Washington
Post 02/19/00
-
AUSTRIAN
APARTHEID? "For perhaps the first time since the liberal
revolutions of 1848, a political opposition is growing out of
Austria's intellectual salons. Can a man like Herr Haider be
toppled by the roar of literary lions? Common sense dictates
otherwise, but the vocabulary of Austria's rebel artists is
strikingly similar to that used by white South Africans who
opposed apartheid or the dissidents of Eastern Europe."
London
Times 02/19/00
-
KKK
AWAY: Court rules that a St. Louis public radio station
doesn't have to accept underwriting funding by the Ku Klux Klan
of "All Things Considered" broadcast. St.
Louis Post-Dispatch 02/18/00
-
ARTS
WRITERS UNITE! In Zimbabwe, writing about the arts - like
anywhere - is a fight for space in the newspaper. Last week,
Zimbabwean arts writers formed their own association to try
to win some respect. "What is so special with sports that
it is accorded full desks within the newsrooms?" Zimbabwe
Mirror 02/11/00
-
PANEL
ON NAZI ART: The British government is setting up a panel
to resolve disputes about artwork looted by the Nazis and now
housed in British museums.
Washington Post 02/17/00
-
REVERSING
FIELD: Britain agrees to go along with EU plan to grant
artists resale rights on their work. Under the plan, artists
would get a maximum of four per cent on the resale of their
work on art worth up to £30,000, and smaller percentages for
higher-valued work. British Art Federation chairman Anthony
Browne says the damage to London's galleries would be "colossal".
London
Evening Standard 02/16/00
-
LITERALISM
isn't just for religious fundamentalists. The doctrine of literalism
flourishes in a variety of American endeavors. Chronicle
of Higher Education 02/00
-
MUSING
ON THE MUSE: A Valentine's ode to art's inspirations. "Idyllic
as it may sound, the relationship between artist and muse is
not all sonnets and elegantly reclining nudes. A muse is as
likely to be seduced, harangued and assaulted as courted, praised
and revered. One moment she is an all-powerful goddess, the
next a put-upon working girl." London
Times 02/14/00
-
NAZI
PLUNDER: The Nazis stole 600,000 pieces of art in Germany
and the countries they occupied during Hitler's 12 years in
power, says the U.S. government's top expert in stolen art from
that era. The
Oregonian (AP) 02/14/00
-
VIOLENT
REACTION: Two weeks ago, San Francisco Chronicle film reviewer
Mike LaSalle wrote that it was time to do something about violence
in movies. He suggested that any time a film showed a gun being
fired, it should receive an NC-17 rating. Letters to the newspaper
came flooding in, so the Chronicle is changing its reviewing
policy.
San Francisco Chronicle 02/13/00
-
UNIVERSITY
EDUCATION in Australia is broken.
The system defies all that rewards success and punishes failure.
Here's how to fix it. The
Age (Melbourne) 02/11/00
-
OF
BOYCOTTS AND RESIGNATIONS: A number of artists - led by
Salzburg Festival director Gerard Mortier - have resigned cultural
positions in Austria or say they will boycott in protest over
Haider's rise. Should artists boycott or quit to protest politics?
Norman Lebrecht thinks not. London
Telegraph 02/10/00
-
THE
VELVET HAMMER: "From the earliest days after
the revolution of 1910, Mexican governments have showered intellectuals
and artists with privileges, including grants, prizes, artistic
commissions, jobs in government, publishing contracts, fellowships
for study abroad, and diplomatic postings. Intellectuals have
wielded disproportionate influence in politics and society by
becoming in-house ideologues to various Mexican presidents,
or by speaking for groups that lacked a voice in politics, such
as indigenous people. In return, they have been expected to
act as cheerleaders for the regime, lending their prestige and
legitimacy to it, and collaborating in the 'building of the
nation.' " Chronicle
of Higher Education 02/04/00
-
BOOST FOR THE ARTS?
President Clinton proposes a hefty budget increase for the National
Endowment for the Arts - from $97.6 million to $150 million
next year. He also proposes increasing the budget for the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting and suggests a new $200 million annual
“lease fee” for analog frequencies that broadcasters have been
using free for the past 50 years. The money would be used for
the arts. Variety
02/08/00
- "A
SCANDAL TO SHAKE THE ART MARKET TO ITS FOUNDATIONS":
Christie's auction house has turned state's evidence and told
anti-trust investigators from the United States Justice Department
about an alleged deal with Sotheby's to limit competition on sellers'
commissions. Watch for the lawsuits to start flying. London
Telegraph 02/07/00
- THE
PETITION THAT WOULDN'T DIE: It's that "save the NEA"
e-mail that has been endlessly circulated around the internet.
Doesn't matter that it was written in 1995 and that threats to
PBS and the National Endowment have receded. San
Francisco Chronicle 02/07/00
- INVESTMENT
NOUVEAU: Back in the 1970s, the arts' biggest funding buddies
were the tobacco companies. Now tobacco is out and the big American
investment banks are funding British arts institutions. The benefits
both ways are many. Financial
Times 02/07/00
- CBS
AND FOX TV NETWORKS make deals with
NAACP to increase minority hiring on their programming. Boston
Globe 02/04/00
- CULTURAL
REBUILD: Under Apartheid, artists were suppressed and mistreated
and their art quashed. Now the enormous task of rebuilding a culture.
Nobel Prize-winning author Nadine Gordimer was part of the cultural
resistance, and tells of her vision for a cultural rebirth.
Media Channel 02/03/00
- SCIENCE
OF ART: The scientific community has discovered the arts world,
investing in arts projects. The artists bring outside-the-box
thinking with their projects.
New York Times 02/03/00
(One-time
registration required for entry)
- HIGH
RENT DISTRICT: Seattle rents are forcing out many of the city's
artists. A new set of evictions points up a much more complicated
problem than the traditional greedy-old-developer-against-helpless-artists
scenario. Seattle
Post-Intelligencer 02/03/00
- THE
CODE: US
Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.)
took their plea for an entertainment industry "code of conduct"
to New York Monday before a group of about 200 members of
the entertainment industry. Los
Angeles Times 02/03/00
-
