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Cover Story

The War Against the Albright-Knox

by Bruce Jackson

On November 10, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery announced that it planned to sell a number of objects the directors decided were peripheral to the collection and could serve the gallery better by being auctioned off, with the proceeds going to an endowment fund restricted for acquisitions.

News of the Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

■ Steaks from Waygu cattle in western Australia were already revered by gourmets worldwide (noted for their marbling), but recently an exporter went a step further: The choice grains fed the cattle are now being soaked in a 2004 cabernet merlot, according to a January dispatch from Sydney in London’s Sunday Telegraph. “Our biggest problem is going to be meeting demand,” said the managing director of Margaret River Premium Meat Exports, even though the best cuts of steak might run the equivalent of about US$90. Plans are to feed each cow a liter’s worth of wine daily during its last 60 days.

Free Will Astrology

by Rob Brezsny

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): “Think dangerously!” read the headline on today’s bright yellow piece of junk mail. That sounded inviting. I’m always eager for help in overthrowing my certainties. But the product being promoted inside the envelope was just a piece of propaganda: a magazine touting Libertarian dogma. I threw it in my recycling bin along with all the other doctrinaire crap I constantly get from fundamentalists of every stripe, including rightwing religious nuts and leftwing atheists, New Age pollyannas and intellectual cynics, science-haters and science shills. Now here’s the climax of this horoscope, Pisces: Really think dangerously. Question every belief, your own as much as everyone else’s. French author André Gide said it best: “Trust those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.”

Five Questions For...

Rosa Gibson

In the summertime, a garden grows in a vacant lot on Wohlers Avenue, across the street from Rosa Gibson and the Community Action Information Center. It’s been growing for seven years, tended by Gibson and a cadre of volunteers from the neighborhood, as well as by young men and women in trouble with the law, who are sent to Gibson by the courts. In addition to beauty and social therapy, the gardens provide fresh vegetables in the summer, which Gibson distributes to people in need throughout the neighborhood, supplementing the bags of donated groceries she collects for distribution from the Food Bank of Western New York.

The News, Briefly

Common Council Report

by Geoff Kelly

The agenda was loaded—a breathtaking 73 items to consider, including 17 resolutions, ranging from the Albright-Knox’s pending deaccession to genocide in Darfur, from the price of cable TV to the price of emergency demolitions. Our city government hard at work:

Letters to Artvoice

For those who would like to take action to stop the upcoming sale of the older work at the Albright-Knox, we, the undersigned members of the gallery, would like to propose the following: the calling of a special meeting of the members of the gallery to discuss and vote on a resolution to withdraw from the sale. This method will take some doing. Special meetings are usually called by the President or by the majority of the Board, but after some of us spoke to a few members of the board and asked for a special meeting, we were informed, after a few days of discussion among board members, that the board was not interested in calling one. That leaves the third method allowed for by the bylaws of the gallery, the request of five per cent of the members, which means that we will need at least 300 requests for the meeting in order to make it happen (five percent of the total membership of about 6,000). If you are not a member, and care about this issue, this is the time to join. We must act now. The items have all been shipped to Sotheby’s in New York, and the first lot is scheduled to be auctioned on March 15.

Design Matters

Unseen Architecture

by Albert Chao

SEEN, at first glance, is plain and unmarked. A visually deceptive installation by architect Omar Khan, this art piece seems nothing but a four-foot-by-eight-foot blank slate. Nevertheless, crowds, with digital cameras and cell phones in hand, still form around the piece.

Theaterweek

Of Mice and Men Roars

by Anthony Chase

John Steinbeck is the beloved Great Depression era novelist whose vivid depictions of struggling Americans in the 1930s lent nobility to their economic plight. Such sweeping stories as The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, heavy with symbolism and melodramatic situations, earned him a Nobel Prize and guaranteed him a spot on high school reading lists in perpetuity. Even his obituaries, however, had to concede that Steinbeck was no Faulkner.

Theater

Stop the Clock

by Tom Dooney

Rent’s bohemian characters sing Jonathan Larson’s anthem “Seasons of Love” and tally 525,600 joyful minutes in every year.

Flash Fiction

Resilience of Bamboo

Abdication

Film Clips

The Number 23

by M. Faust

Old Joy

by M. Faust

Amazing Grace

by George Sax

Film Reviews

Inconvenient Truth: An Unreasonable Man

by M. Faust

Staking Out a Molehill: Breach

by George Sax

Music

Kick Out the Jac!

by Donny Kutzbach

Starting a record company at any time is a damned fool notion and in 1950 it couldn’t have seemed crazier. Columbia, Decca, RCA and Capitol totally dominated the American recorded music scene. They owned pressing plants, distribution systems and provided almost all the music heard on AM radio and the newly allocated FM band. How would an independent get heard over this din of commonplace music backed by the big money of the major labels?”

See You There

Suite 440: New Echoes from Old Chambers

by Craig Reynolds

BX3 Tour

by Buck Quigley

Detained @ the Border CD Release Party

by Shaun Smith

Jean-Michel Cousteau

by Geoff Kelly

Calendar Spotlight

Lymbyc System

The Big Sleep

Scott Celani

The Town Pants

Chimaira

by Caitlin Derose

Rob Crow

by Shaun Smith

JP Soul

by Caitlin Derose