In Brief: Advent 2 Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• How much would it cost for a Christmas trip to Rome? The Farnese palace will soon be reunited with the famous art collection it once housed -- and will be opened to the public, beginning on December 17 and continuing through April 27, for a rare exhibit since the building became the French embassy. [Le Figaro]


• Ionarts Central was relocated to upstate New York over the Thanksgiving vacation. Now Alex Ross informs me of a new performing arts space I need to visit on our next trip up there. [The Rest Is Noise]


• Countertenor Philippe Jaroussky has sold out a series of three solo recitals this month at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées (December 1, 11, and 17). Marie-Aude Roux reviewed the first one, devoted almost exclusively to the music of Antonio Caldara. They will all apparently be broadcast -- and thus available online for at least some time -- on Arte and/or France Musique. [Le Monde]


• With hat tip to Jessa Crispin, what it means to be the failed brother of a great writer. [Open Letters Monthly]


• Alan Gilbert did something rather interesting things with Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. [Musical America]


• Watch the online video of the above concert. [Arte]


• A singer friend has helped start another small choral ensemble in Washington: catch them today as they offer free performances of carols and other holiday music, in the lobby of the Willard Hotel (starting at 5:30 and 6:45 pm). [The Capital Hearings]


• Nothing like a good old argument about decency and art to get people exercised. [CNS News]


• Critics and other media commentators have fallen all over themselves to condemn the Smithsonian's decision to pull one of the artworks in the exhibit, David Wojnarowicz's video A Fire in My Belly (1987), from public view. However, if they link to a version of the video, most hasten to add that the content of the video may get one in trouble if watching at work, which is a pretty good indicator that we could at least agree that the work is controversial and susceptible to this sort of public outcry. [Los Angeles Times]


• An online excerpt of the video has been flagged as possibly "inappropriate for some users," for example. [YouTube]


• Art blogger Tyler Green has been out in front of this story from the start. [Modern Art Notes]


• A Swiss contemporary art collector, who was also a former Swiss ambassador to China, paid 300,000 yuans to acquire an original reproduction of the famous Hellenistic sculpture known as the Venus de Milo -- made of panda turds. Children in the Sichuan province made the sculpture under the direction of sculptor Zhu Cheng. [Libération]


• You don't see that every day: the Washington Times actually published an editorial calling for the assassination of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. [DCist]