Week
of November 26-December 2, 2001
1.
Special Interest
2. Dance
3. Media
4. Music
5. People
6. Publishing
7. Theatre
8. Visual Arts
9. Arts Issues
10. For Fun
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1. SPECIAL INTEREST
http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#specialinterest
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IS
WAR GOOD FOR DANCE? Has September 11th saved American dance?
TNR's Jenifer Homans observes that post-modernist dance had become
ingrown and vacant. "September 11 certainly has focused our
minds, and some things, at least, are clearer than they were
before. It is now possible to say, with a new conviction, that
nostalgia, sentimentality, and postmodern narcissism make for
inadequate and spiritually vacant art." The
New Republic 11/26/01
ATTACK
ON COPYRIGHT HOARDERS: Lawrence Lessig wants to change US
copyright law. Why? "American copyright laws have gotten so
out of hand that they are causing the death of culture and the
loss of the world's intellectual history. Copyright has bloated
from providing 14 years of protection a century ago to 70 years
beyond the creator's death now, and has become a tool of large
corporations eager to indefinitely prolong their control of a
market. Irving Berlin's songs, for example, will not go off
copyright for 140 years." Wired
11/27/01
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2. DANCE
http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#dance
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SUMMING
UP STRETTON: Ross Stretton is barely into his first season as
director of London's Royal Ballet, but his influence is already
being keenly felt. "His line on the 'heritage' repertory
seems tough - ballets, he says, need to change over the
generations because dancers today are so different from 'the
chocolate box-sized ballerinas of 50 years ago'." The
Guardian (UK) 11/28/01
THE
ATHLETE BECOMES DANCE: Judith Jamison has created a dance
about Olympic athlete Florence Griffith Joyner for her Alvin Ailey
company. She writes about the process of choreographing an idea
into dance. The New York Times
12/02/01 (one-time registration
required for access)
A
HOME OF THEIR OWN: It's a tough time to be out raising
money, but the Alvin Ailey company has begun a $60 million
campaign to build a new home of its own.
The New York Times
11/27/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
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3. MEDIA
http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#media
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THE
PROBLEM WITH COMMUNITY STANDARDS: The movie Fat Girl has
been banned in Ontario because it violates "community
standards." Of all the reasons to ban something, this kis the
most idiotic. "Quite simply, there is no community. There are
thousands of communities. And there is no reason for the most
conservative and least sophisticated of those communities to impose
their standards - to impose what amounts, at root, to taste - on my
community. Just as my community doesn't force other communities to
watch French art films." The
Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/01/01
THE
NEW FACE OF ART FILMS: "A new kind of art house movie has
come to town, a distinctive type of picture with its own audience
that exists alongside traditional (and still very much admired)
fare, but is as different from it as chalk proverbially is from
cheese. Several qualities, at times together, at times standing
alone, typify these new kinds of films. But it's what they lack
that defines them: Let's call these features, for shorthand's
sake, heartless art films. It's the new face of alternative
cinema, so we'd better get used to it." Los
Angeles Times 12/02/01
THE
NEXT DISNEY? John Lasseter, the animation wiz behind Toy Story
is being called the Walt Disney of the 21st Century. "He
gives the impression of being a sane man who has, until recently,
been considered crazy. 'In order to work in animation, part of you
has to be a child that's never grown up."
The Telegraph (UK) 12/01/01
IT'S
TOUGH TO BE A KID, AT LEAST ON TV: "Forget about the
innocent challenges of flirtation and infatuation. Forget about
exfoliation, and the sting of the Stridex pad. Today's TV teens
wrestle with nothing less than alienation, isolation, spiritual
hunger and the emotional pitfalls of irony. When it comes to
coming-of-age TV, the teen-age wasteland is more T. S. Eliot than
Pete Townshend." Orange
County Register 11/28/01
BIG
BOX OFFICE: So Harry Potter opened big. Very big, racking up
record box office in its first week of business. But will it topple
Titanic's $600 million take at theatres? Titanic was more of a
marathon runner, as people returned again and again to see it. And
Harry? So far, it's in a head-on sprint. Will it have legs? The
New York Times 11/26/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
MOVIE
LOTTO: Ten thousand movie-producer wannabes submit their scripts
in competition for a $1 million prize to film their project and be
distributed by Miramax. Is this any way to make a movie?
New York Magazine 11/26/01
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4.
MUSIC
http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#music
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NOW
THAT'S CROSSOVER MUSIC: "What is perhaps the most
ambitious musical venture on the internet culminates in a live
48-hour interactive web broadcast this weekend... From midnight
GMT on Saturday December 1, the webcast consists of both acoustic
and computer music, live concerts and events from associated sites
in New York, Boston, Atlanta, San Diego, Oakland, Seattle, Tokyo,
Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Buenos Aires, Krakow, Amsterdam and
Rome, involving well over 200 performer-participants." Gramophone
11/28/01
BUILDING
A BETTER ORCHESTRA: Why do some orchestras flounder along -
some even going out of business - while others always seem to
thrive? Sure there's something to quality and repertoire and
having enough money. But "the most important factor is the
one that most audience members are probably least aware of: the
board and its leadership. San
Francisco Chronicle 12/02/01
TOUGH
TIMES FOR ORCHESTRAS: What's wrong with orchestras? "The
go-go years of the 1990s masked some structural problems in
certain orchestras. Budget woes are forcing a reexamination of
these cultural flagships and their relevance: What is the place of
a 19th-century institution playing largely classical European
masterworks in multicultural 21st-century North America? And what
does it mean to a city to lose its symphony? Toronto has come
perilously close to finding out. So has St. Louis."
Christian Science Monitor
11/29/01
HOW
TO PLAN A CONCERT HALL: Before there's a design, before
there's a budget, there's a guy. A guy who takes all the hopes and
aspirations for a new concert hall and starts funneling them into
a new $200 million concert hall. In Atlanta the guy is Tom
Tomilinson, and the Atlanta Symphony is counting on him. Atlanta
Journal-Constitution 12/02/01
A
NEW GEORGE: "A last album of George Harrison’s music
was being finished in secrecy in the months before his death. He
played tracks from the CD to his family and friends in his private
room at a Los Angeles hospital last Sunday, four days before he
died." Sunday
Times (UK) 12/02/01
AN
EXPENSIVE ART: "Running opera is a task of byzantine
complexity, involving vast sums of money. English National Opera
turns over £26.3 million a year; Covent Garden £51.2 million;
Welsh National Opera £13.6 million. The Arts Council of England
doled out £38.3 million to opera in 2000/1. And yet only about 6%
of the British population went to the opera in 1999/2000. More
than three times as many people saw a play in the same period and
nine times as many went to the movies. It's hardly surprising,
then, that opera makes people cross." Charging £155 for a
seat, how can it not make money? And yet it doesn't.
The Guardian (UK) 11/29/01
HOW
THE DEAF HEAR MUSIC: "Although music has been an
important part of deaf culture for centuries, no one has known how
the brains of deaf people experience sounds. Now a study of
magnetic resonance images shows how brains "rewire" so
they can use sound vibration to sense music using the same brain
region that is used for hearing." National
Post 11/28/01
$4
MILLION BAILOUT FOR TORONTO SYMPHONY: "The Toronto
Symphony Orchestra has struck a deal for a government-sponsored $4
million rescue plan. Under the deal, which involves the
co-operation of federal and provincial cultural ministries, the
money would be released to the TSO by its sister organization, the
Toronto Symphony Foundation, which controls the symphony's $23
million endowment fund." Toronto
Star 11/28/01
A
FLORIDA HATCHET JOB: The Florida Philharmonic has big money
problems. Are those to blame for the callous way conductor James
Judd was forced from his job last week? He was provoked into
resigning by musicians who thought his nods at programming new
music "turned off subscribers." The players "made
it a condition of their agreement last week to take pay cuts that
Judd, the music director, no longer control programs. Naturally,
he resigned." Miami Herald 11/25/01
YOUTH
ISN'T EVERYTHING: European orchestras have recently gone on a
binge of hiring young conductors, unproven conductors in their 20s
and 30s. "Youth can, however, flatter to deceive. Many a
bright new baton has been broken by orchestral intransigence or
premature promotion. The sudden rush of young bloods is no proof
of a podium renaissance. Europe's neophilia is but a reverse
symptom of America's sclerosis, indicating that musical
organisations on both sides of the Atlantic have simply forgotten
how to pick 'em." The Telegraph (UK)
11/28/01
CRITICAL
REVIEW: "Music criticism in a postmodern age has only two
options: to become more fractured, or more inclusive. Different
kinds of music have different purposes, and need to be attended to
in different ways. An attitude that works at a stadium rock show
may fail in a dance club. A newspaper critic who promotes rock or
classical against every other kind of music is missing most of the
picture. As Marshall McLuhan said, 'Point of view is failure to
achieve structural awareness'." The
Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/27/01
REACHING
OUT: Detroit's Michigan Opera Theatre mounts a new production
of Armen Tigranian's Anoush, the Armenian national opera,
in its original language. So what? So what because the company
used the opera as a way to reach out to a part of its community in
Detroit that now feels connected to the company.
Toronto Star 11/24/01
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5. PEOPLE
http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#people
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
REMEMBERING
GEORGE: George Harrison's demise removes the impressionable
enthusiast whose inquisitive nature guided the Beatles beyond the
frontiers which had hitherto constrained the attitudes and
behaviour of four-piece beat groups from the industrial cities of
the north. He may not have written the songs for which they will
be remembered, but without his gift for discovery the group might
have taken quite a different course and possibly a much less
interesting and productive one. The
Guardian (UK) 12/01/01
THE
NEXT DISNEY? John Lasseter, the animation wiz behind Toy Story
is being called the Walt Disney of the 21st Century. "He
gives the impression of being a sane man who has, until recently,
been considered crazy. 'In order to work in animation, part of you
has to be a child that's never grown up."
The Telegraph (UK) 12/01/01
CRITIC'S
CRITIC: By the end of his life (he died at age 85 last week)
former Washington Post music critic Paul Hume had stopped
listening to music, said his wife. It didn't interest him anymore.
But "the defining characteristic of Hume's tenure was an
intense love for everything about music and the making of it. That
may seem like an awfully obvious thing for a music critic, but it
can't be taken for granted." Baltimore
Sun 12/02/01
DOMB
RETURNS TO TSO: "Daniel Domb, the injured cellist
involved in a legal battle with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra,
returns to Roy Thomson Hall tonight to play his first TSO concert
in 18 months." The principal cellist is one of the most
respected in North America, but the TSO management tried to have
him fired after publicly doubting his claims of disability. Toronto
Star 11/29/01
A
JAZZ EMPIRE: Jazz impresario Norman Granz "believed in
jazz as the great American art form, and insisted that its artists
get the same respect as those performing classical music. A
non-musician, Granz became one of the most powerful and
influential figures in a genre defined by musical invention. In
the '50s, it sometimes seemed the jazz world was the Granz empire
because of his omnipresence as impresario, concert promoter, label
head and talent manager." Washington
Post 11/28/01
JARVI
RETURNS: Conductor Neeme Jarvi returned to the podium over the
weekend with his first concerts since he suffered a stroke last
July. "The instant Jarvi appeared from the right stage
entrance for the first time Friday night, the audience of 2,200
rose and cheered 'Bravo, maestro!' and Bravo, Neeme!' "
Detroit News 11/25/01
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6.
PUBLISHING
http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#publishing
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THE
LONELIEST CRITICS: Book critics are having a hard time these
days. Many papers are eliminating stand-alone book review
sections, more and more authors are striking back at reviewers who
displease them, and, let's face it, a lot of people simply don't
do a lot of reading these days. So are book reviews still
relevant, or even necessary? Gulp. The
Globe & Mail (Toronto) 11/30/01
BEST-SELLING
BOY POET: "Who could possibly have conjured the idea that
two of the biggest word-of-mouth best sellers of the year would be
written by a boy who is 11 years old? A boy suffering a chronic,
life-threatening disease? And both of them books of poetry? There
is something irresistibly appealing about how undaunted this boy
has been in creating his art, a particularly dreamy story for a
season that is supposed to be jolly but will be somewhat less so
this year for many people." The
New York Times 11/29/01 (one-time registration required for
access)
ECONOMICS
OF CANADIANISM: Canadian writers are hot these days. They're
also heavily subsidized. With the Canadian dollar at a deep
discount to the American, Canadian writing is cheap. It's now to
the point where it costs less to read Canadian than American. On
top of this, must we also have national chauvinism?
National Post (Canada) 11/26/01
THE
FIRST BILLIONAIRE AUTHOR: JK Rowling is on her way to becoming
the world's first billionaire author. She's sold 124 million
books, but the real money is coming from numerous merchandising
deals. "Rowling received an advance of around $3000 (US) for
the first story of her schoolboy wizard hero, ahead of publication
in 1997. Her negotiating position has strengthened immeasurably
since then." The
Age (Melbourne) 11/27/01
LINING
UP HEAVYWEIGHT NOVELISTS: "Phyllis Grann, former CEO of
Penguin Putnam, is heading to Random House Inc. as vice chairman.
Most observers believe the move sets the stage for a titanic
struggle for star authors such as Tom Clancy and Patricia Cornwell
with her old employer. Grann is also credited with helping shape
the careers of other strong-selling authors, including Robin Cook,
Dick Francis, Alice Hoffman, Nora Roberts and Amy Tan."
New York Post 11/27/01
THE
MEANING OF AWARDS: Everyone assumes that winning a big
literary award helps the sales of a book. But how much?
"After four years of effort, Bookscan has managed for the
first time to sign up enough bookstores to make a credible
measurement of the award's impact on a book's sales before and
after." The answer is - if the book is not well-known before
the award it can help enormously - this year's National Book Award
poetry winner sold 12 times as many books the week after winning.
But sales of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, already
the talk of the season, were unchanged from the previous week. The
New York Times 11/26/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
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7. THEATRE
http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#theatre
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THEATRE
AFTER THE USSR: How has theatre changed in Russia since the
fall of the Soviet Union? As the system and patronage changed, so
did the way of making theatre. And as the needs of the audience
and the aesthetic of the time evolved, so too did the impetus
behind making theatre. A group of Russian theatre artists
discusses how their world has changed. The
New York Times 12/02/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
A
PIECE OF THE LOOT: Everybody in the theatre world has been
talking about the Producers producers' nerve of charging
$480 a ticket for some seats to the show. Now they're also talking
about how all that extra revenue is getting split up. How does it
figure in percentages and cuts for various unions and other
interested parties? New
York Observer 11/28/01
NO
WONDER SAM MENDES WANTS A BREAK: He won three Tonys a couple
years ago with Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing; his first
movie, American Beauty, brought him the 1999 directing
Oscar; he's finishing up his second movie, The Road to
Perdition, with Tom Hanks and Paul Newman; his Broadway
revival of Cabaret is a hit, and this season he'll be
directing all-star casts in Twelfth Night and Uncle
Vanya. Then he plans to quit his day job. Newsday
11/27/01
LLOYD-WEBBER
FOREVER: Andrew Lloyd Webber is at the place in his career
where some are writing his professional obituary. But though his
last show flopped and some of his long-running vehicles have
closed, he's full of energy for the future. "I have got more
tunes sitting around at the moment than I have ever had in my
career. If anybody wanted a tune, I could write it. I have two or
three of the best things I have ever written in my little
locker." The
Telegraph (UK) 11/26/01
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8.
VISUAL ARTS
http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#visualarts
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SAVING
THE BMA: Neil MacGregor has finally been named the new head of
the British Museum. He's "often referred to as 'a national
treasure' for his inspired running of the Trafalgar Square gallery
for the past 15 years, was the obvious choice to succeed Robert
Anderson, who leaves next summer. But he will take over at one of
the most delicate moments in its history, when the boost provided
by its spectacular Great Court conversion is being wiped out by a
catastrophic drop in foreign visitors because of the foot and
mouth and September 11 crises. The
Guardian (UK) 11/29/01
FREE
AT LAST: The idea was tossed around British art circles for
years, debated for months, and this weekend, it all comes to
fruition. Beginning December 1, admission charges to England's
major museums will be scrapped, and the public will be welcomed
free of charge. The move follows similar plans in Wales and
Scotland, and is made possible through a tax restructuring by the
UK's government. BBC 11/30/01
SAATCHI
TAKES ON THE TATE: In a direct challenge to the London museum
establishment, Charles Saatchi has announced he is opening his own
"museum," located between the Tate Britain and Tate
Modern. Even "calling his new gallery a museum is seen as a
direct challenge to the subsidised art establishment. But sources
close to him last night revealed that he also intends to match
Tate Modern head-on by staging themed exhibitions from borrowed
works, and not just shows of his own contemporary artists."
The Guardian (UK) 11/29/01
SOTHEBY'S
CHAIRMAN WAS ABOVE CRITICISM: "A leading law firm,
retained by Sotheby's in 1997 to investigate possible collusion in
the auction industry, repeatedly questioned the company's chief
executive, Diana D. Brooks, but not its chairman, A. Alfred
Taubman, the lawyer who headed the inquiry acknowledged yesterday
in the price- fixing trial of Mr. Taubman." The
New York Times 11/30/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
IRISH
MUSEUM APPOINTMENT DISPUTE: The Irish Museum of Modern Art has
asked Brian Kennedy to be its new director. Kennedy is director of
Australia's National Gallery, and his term has been marked by
controversy. Two of the IMMA's board members have resigned in
protest over how the decision to appoint Kennedy was made. And now
the Irish minister of culture may get involved.
Irish Times 11/30/01
CUTTING
THROUGH THE ANIMOSITY: "Who knows what makes visual art
so hard for people to cope with? For whatever reason, it seems to
be pilloried more in the public domain than other art forms. As an
art critic, you are mindful of this. If people don't understand a
work of art, they will often not simply move on; they will dig in
and actively hate." The Globe
& Mail (Toronto) 11/29/01
TIME
TO PAINT THE TOWER: It's time to paint the Eiffel Tower again.
"The tower evolved from bright red when it was built in 1888
to dark brown by 1892, and to yellow 7 years later. After a
fleeting foray back to red in the 1950s and 60s, the society
plumped on its current brown in 1968." CNN.com
11/29/01
PHOTOGRAPHIC
RECORD IN PERIL: Some 50,000 glass-plate photographic
negatives made in the 19th and early 20 centuries sit in storage
deteriorating in storage in Beijing's Forbidden City. "We are
afraid to open the boxes because we don't have the conditions to
protect the negatives. But the longer we wait, the greater the
danger that the gelatin will not hold and the photos will be
destroyed forever." International
Herald Tribune 12/01/01
THE
UNDERGROUND MUSEUM: "Awarded the 2004 Summer Olympics,
Athens quickly bored two subway lines through the heart of the
city. With the ancient city sometimes no more than a paving slab
away, workers overturned 65,000 square metres of ground and
uncovered a wealth of glorious things. Thankfully, most artifacts
survived and have now taken their place in the most mobile of
museums - the subway." National
Post (Canada) 12/01/01
MINIMAL
FUSS: The problem with Minimalism is there's just too little
to it. "Prejudice puts minimalism close to the top of the
pretentiousness charts: a philosophy that passes off next to
nothing as if it was something, a creed that sells new clothes to
emperors. But like all art, minimalism should be seen in its
historical place - that it was a reaction to, and an advance on,
what had gone before." The
Guardian (UK) 12/02/01
QUITE
A RAU OVER SOME ART: His name is Dr. Gustave Rau, and he is
the owner of one of the world's greatest privately held
collections of European art. He is also quite elderly, and of
dubiously sound mind, a condition which has caused his own lawyers
to seek for control of the collection to be wrested from him. As
it turns out, Dr. Rau, who spent a couple of decades setting up
clinics in rural Africa, still has quite a bit of fight left in
him. The New York Times 11/29/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
STEALING
RUSSIA BLIND: Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991,
thieves have plundered art from the region's museums. "In the
1990's hundreds of millions of dollars in art, antiques, books and
manuscripts were stolen in Russia, mostly from cultural
institutions in St. Petersburg like the Library of the Russian
Academy of Sciences, the Russian National Library, the State
Russian Museum, the Academy of Fine Arts and the State Hermitage
Museum." The New York Times
11/28/01 (one-time registration required for access)
LEONARDO
DRAWING DESTROYED: Restorers in Florence have destroyed a
recently-discovered Leonardo drawing when they attempted to clean
it. "Restorers submerged the drawing in a solution of alcohol
and distilled water, a common restoration intervention," and
the ink dissolved. The
Art Newspaper 11/26/01
KICK
'EM WHEN THEY'RE DOWN: "The Guggenheim is no longer a
museum of art so much as it is a kind of market-driven experiment
in cultural anthropology. This once great institution has become a
dark pit of cynicism - a black hole at the center of the museum
world - where shows are selected on no basis other than the
availability of corporate sponsors and the expectation of a
box-office gold mine." The
New Republic 11/20/01
GLEE
IN DESTRUCTION OF ART: Eyewitness accounts of the Taliban's
systematic destruction of art in the Kabul Museum last year say
that the destruction was carried out with glee. "They walked
through the National Museum here last year, inspecting each object
to determine which ones depicted living beings. And then they
raised their axes and brought them down hard, smashing piece after
piece of Afghan history into oblivion. Over three days, as the
Taliban ministers walked from one artifact to another, an Afghan
archeologist and a historian followed at a respectful distance,
pleading for mercy as if begging for the lives of their own
children." International
Herald Tribune (LATimes) 11/24/01
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9.
ISSUES
http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#issues
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ANTICIPATING
HARD TIMES: Just as large corporations often lay off workers
in an attempt to be ahead of sharp economic downturns, arts groups
are beginning to look for ways to save money in anticipation of a
period of reduced cash flow. The unique combination of the events
of September 11 and the national recession has created a jittery
atmosphere which has arts administrators questioning everything,
from programming decisions to expansion plans. San
Francisco Chronicle 11/29/01
- CALIFORNIA
CUTS: The California Arts Council, citing hard economic
times, says it will probably have to cut the amount of money
it gives arts groups by 15 percent next year. Among the cuts
will be arts education grants. "Starting next September,
hundreds of schools won't get arts funds."
San Francisco Chronicle
11/28/01
- THE
HOTEL/MOTEL BLUES: Tourism is way down in San Francisco.
That's bad for arts groups on two counts. First, it means
attendance at art events is down. Second, the city's tax on
hotels and motels generated $11.6 million last year for the
arts, and declining occupancy means big cuts in tax
collections for the arts. "The latest forecasts predict
that the Grants for the Arts program will have 25 percent less
money to dish out in 2002 than it did this year. San
Francisco Chronicle 11/27/01
- BAY
AREA ARTS CRASH: "On their own, the terrorist attacks
of Sept. 11 aren't going to sink any Bay Area arts
organizations. But they have accelerated the economic downturn
that was already roaring through the arts community, sending
tremors through medium-size and smaller organizations. What
happens in the next few weeks - prime fund-raising season for
all nonprofit groups - will be critical to the survival of not
only some Bay Area artists but also of their counterparts
everywhere." San Francisco Chronicle
11/27/01
THE
LINCOLN CENTER PROBLEM: The restoration of New York's Lincoln
Centre is an exciting project. So why has it gathered up so little
public enthusiasm? "Of the $1.2 billion budget of the
redevelopment plan for Lincoln Center that will soon be made
public, only 15 percent is devoted to public space. It is,
however, a crucial 15 percent. For in one respect the critics are
right: the center's public spaces are miserably flawed. To make
them perform on the same level as the artists who tread its stages
is one of the plan's stated goals." The
New York Times 12/02/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
BUILDING
A BETTER CRITIC: "Most of the available writing on the
arts today consists of consumer guides that provide brief synopses
or trivial background information. These guides are not about
providing substantial and thought-provoking criticism. The
shortage of critical approaches has spurred a team of researchers
to spend the past three years investigating the issues and
considering solutions. The project is sponsored by the Thailand
Research Fund and is titled 'Criticism as an Intellectual Force in
Contemporary Society.'" Bangkok
Post (courtesy Andante) 11/29/01
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10. FOR FUN
http://www.artsjournal.com/Arts%20beat.htm#forfun
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE
ACCENT CANNA TAKE ANYMURE, KEPTIN! An Edinburgh professor has
released a tutorial for actors wishing to learn a Scottish accent,
perhaps the most-often massacred dialect in Western film. The
biggest challenge in teaching Americans and Brits the Scottish
sound, it turns out, is getting them to stop trying to talk like
Scotty from Star Trek. BBC
11/29/01
THE
FORBIDDEN SONGS: A new recording of Italian songs is
prohibited in Italy. "The truth is, you would not be sitting
listening to this music in Italy: the police there will not allow
it to be performed. For now the only place that you are going to
hear it is on a new compilation CD called Il Canto di Malavita.
The musicians who play on the album insist that it is simply a
record of rather gory folk songs, but gore is not the reason these
songs have long been an illegal commodity in their home country.
These are Mafia songs - blood-drenched ditties that document a
secret strand of Italian folk culture." The
Guardian (UK) 11/26/01
PAINTER
OF LIGHT (AND SUBDIVISIONS): Thomas Kinkade sells thousands of
paintings. Now he's also selling homes in Northern California.
"The California painter has licensed his name and artistic
inspiration to Taylor Woodrow Homes, a London-based housing
developer. With Kinkade's paintings as a guide, Taylor Woodrow
laid out a 101-house gated community called the Village. Streets,
houses, fixtures and landscaping will epitomize Kinkade's
nostalgic style. About 300 people tour the Village's model homes
each week. Seven homes have sold so far."
Los Angeles Times 11/25/01
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