Monster Mash: breaking arts news and headlines
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• Producers of the Tony-winning Broadway revival of ‘Boeing-Boeing’ are planning a national tour for fall 2009. The comedy about an American architect in Paris and his coterie of flight attendant mistresses has easily recouped its initial investment of $2.7 million, grossing $9.2 million so far. Directed by Matthew Warchus, the revival production was originally staged in London, where it ran for a year. (Pictured left: Mark Rylance, Mary McCormack and Bradley Whitford in ‘Boeing-Boeing.’)
• Apple’s iTunes service scored a legal victory Thursday when a judge ruled against a push by music publishers to raise royalties paid by the online music store. The Copyright Royalty Board ruled that publishers will continue to get nine of the 99 cents that iTunes charges per song. Publishers had petitioned the board to raise their cut to 15 cents per song.
• Christie’s in London inadvertently sold 14 stolen miniature portraits in June because the paintings’ theft from the Abbot Hall Art Gallery had not yet been reported. The theft apparently took place in August 2006 when robbers broke into Abbot Hall and took 69 English portrait miniatures.
• The New York art market is showing signs of weakness, as Asia Week auctions experienced year-over-year drops in revenue. Buying also declined this week at art fairs in France and South Korea.
• A pair of Roman-era statues have been uncovered in a submerged port on the western side of the Greek island of Kythnos. Greece’s government said the statues consist of a stone torso of a man in armor as well as the bearded head of another man. The statues are believed to date from around the 2nd century.
• The National Portrait Gallery in London is reportedly planning to buy a frozen head sculpture that is made out of the artist’s own blood. Marc Quinn is offering his sculpture ‘Self’ to the NPG for £350,000, or $620,987. The work is one in a series of head sculptures, each using 10 pints of the artist’s own blood.
• Art and the environment are the subjects of a conference at the Nevada Museum of Art, where attendees will discuss how nature and culture intersect in their chosen lines of work.
• Esa-Pekka Salonen (pictured right) officially began his final season as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Thursday, with a gala concert that featured music by Igor Stravinsky and John Adams. The orchestra also announced the creation of the Esa-Pekka Salonen Commissions Fund, which will support the commissioning and performance of new works.
— David Ng
