-
COLLATERAL
DAMAGE: Since only a small percentage of artists are able
to support themselves working full-time on their art, the vast
majority rely on income from other salaried work. Now the Australian
government is drafting legislation to limit artists' tax deductions
that could make it that much harder to earn a living wage. The
government's real target has been tax evasion by rich professionals,
but artists writing off work expenses and losses will be the
"collateral victims." Sydney
Morning Herald 3/31/00
-
UNLIKELY
HERO: Australian Federal Arts Minister Richard Alston, who
has been criticized in the past for his preoccupation with the
communications industries, is set to "become an unlikely
hero when he announces a massive increase in arts funding next
week." After a nationwide performing arts report found
many Australian arts companies to be burdened by debt, Alston
is "proposing that funding to Australia's 31 major performing
arts companies be increased by about $67 million over four years."
The
Age (Melbourne) 3/31/00
-
HEART
OF A NATION: The New Zealand government has appointed a
commission of cultural experts to study how the country can
boost culture and help make it better contribute to the economy.
"What we don't want to happen is for everyone to trundle
up and say, 'Give me a lot of money and I could do a lot better.'
We assume that." New
Zealand Herald 03/30/00
-
THE
POCKETBOOK ARGUMENT: Berlin's cultural institutions are
crying about being underfunded. Now the city's tourism office
warns that any further cuts in cultural funding will imperil
the city's tourism. "Key to solving the acrimonious debate
between cultural institutions, city politicians and national
culture officials over who can best to manage the capital's
culture, how to manage it, and how much money to spend, is a
willingness to begin deep-going restructuring," says the
official charged with promoting tourism. Die
Welt 03/30/00
-
DOWN
FROM THE MOUNT: Charlton Heston, speaking at Georgetown
University last night, declared a culture war. "Our culture
has traded in the bloody arena fights of ancient Rome for state
fights on Sally, Ricki, Jerry, Maury, Jenny and Rosie. . . .
Our one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all,
now seems more like the fractured streets of Beirut, echoing
with anger." Washington
Post 03/30/00
-
PONY
UP OR THEY'LL LEAVE: Novelist Margaret Atwood tells the
Toronto City Council they need to spend more on the arts or
artists will leave the city. "Currently, the City of Toronto
spends $11 per capita on arts and culture. Vancouver spends
nearly twice that: $21 per capita annually. And New York City
spends $63 per person per year on the arts"
CBC 03/20/00
-
DEATH
OR TRANSFIGURATION? Sven Birkerts says computers are eroding
our ability to read deeply. Internet speed discourages reflective
reading of literature and we skip across oceans of information
without diving deep. "We've reached a critical juncture
in the transition from print culture to screen culture,"
he says, and "We're metamorphosing from individual and
private people to fungible, Web-linked brain connectors in a
bright, buzzy, gregarious info-hive." He couldn't be more
wrong, declares one critic. Salon
03/30/00
-
THE
FUTURE OF TRADITIONAL ARTS: Performing arts scholars meet
to discuss the future of traditional performing arts in India,
concluding that concern over their impending death is exaggerated.
The
Times of India 03/30/00
-
REDO
BEFORE THE REDO: On the eve of a major redevelopment of
Lincoln Center, its president resigns. Norman Leventhal can't
take credit for all the artistic successes in his 17 years running
America's premiere arts campus, but he helped transform the
institution into a year-round destination and helped diversify
its programming. New
York Times 03/29/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
-
SO
LONG, FAREWELL: Nathan Leventhal announced he would step
down as president of Lincoln Center after nearly 17 at the helm.
His departure "comes at a crucial time for the center,
which is considering a $1.5 billion campaign to upgrade its
40-year-old 11-acre campus." New
York Times 03/28/00
-
LOSING
THE LEAD: A study released by the European Fine Art Foundation
predicts that next year the European art market's sales figures
will lag behind those of the U.S. market for the first time.
Who's responsible? Analysts are pointing their fingers at a
range of factors: stringent EU tax regulations, increasing competition
among auction houses, a dearth of available masterworks, and
the success of Internet auctioneers. "The very nature of
the art business is in flux." Time
(Europe) 4/3/00
-
CRIME
& PUNISHMENT: As part of Eastern Connecticut University's
"Alternative Restitution Program," students committing
infractions on campus may now choose their course of punishment;
community service...or an opera performance. It's hard to predict
what results this program will have on its subjects, but it
certainly can't be the best way to send a positive message about
the arts to young people. "This business of opera as punishment
may be the worst thing to hit classical music since the Stanley
Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange, which juxtaposed Beethoven
with coldblooded violence." Philadelphia
Inquirer 03/28/00
-
END
OF AN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE: The Boston Museum of Art sent
out a letter to educators last week saying they would no longer
be able to access the museum's slide library for use in their
classes. The slides, which are used in senior and community
centers to educate the public about the MFA's collection, are
being stashed while the museum focuses its energies on putting
digitized images on its Web site. A discouraged teacher laments,
ending "'rental privileges for slides from the MFA slide
collection takes away our most valuable teaching tool, and the
loss of this tool will result in the cancellation of many of
our courses,''' and possibly the loss of the 15,000 - 30,000
new MFA customers each year. The
Boston Globe 03/28/00
-
NO
NEVER MIND: Word is that the spring's auction house sales
will be as strong as ever in a robust market, despite investigations
of Sotheby's/Christie's. New
York Times 03/27/00
(one-time registration required for entry)
-
IN
LIEU OF: Britain's museums don't have the acquisition resources
of their American counterparts. So the government set up a plan
that allows estates faced with paying large sums of inheritance
tax to settle part of these bills by handing over works of art
in lieu of money to the Government. These are passed to institutions
such as the Tate Gallery or the National Gallery. It's been
a boon to museums. Daily
Telegraph 03/27/00
-
GIVE
ME A (TAX) BREAK: If wealthy collectors can claim tax breaks
when they donate art to museums, why shouldn't artists get the
same deal? The director of the Whitney takes on the cause. Los
Angeles Times 03/26/00
-
THE
POLITICS OF CONTROVERSY: It hasn't been lost on anyone that
New York mayor Rudy Giuliani is in the middle of a hot campaign
for election to the US Senate. Artist Hans Haacke's artwork
for the Whitney Biennial makes fun of the mayor, but does it
achieve anything? Washington
Post 03/25/00
-
LET
THE FUNDING SEASON BEGIN:
Heads of the national arts and humanities endowments testify
that they desperately need the funding increases proposed by
the Clinton administration. "We have a dramatic inability
to fund projects," they said before the appropriations
committee.
Washington Post 03/24/00
-
YANKEE
ART BOOM: A new survey of the art markets shows that the
United States is on the verge of exceeding Europe in art sales.
While European art sales rose 26 percent between 1994-1998,
the American market increased 81 percent in the same period.
The Art Newspaper 03/24/00
-
THE
NEGOTIATOR: The Mayor of Boston has stepped in to help resolve
a development dispute over the Boston Center for the Arts in
the South End. The proposal for the new $69 million complex,
which will include two new theaters and artists' studios, was
being held up because the BCA's neighbors objected to the placement
of a loading dock. The
Boston Globe 03/23/00
-
ROCK
ON: Rock n Roll attorney
named to head California's state arts commission. Says that
arts education in schools is his top priority for the $20 million
agency.
San Francisco Chronicle 03/23/00
-
A
NEED TO REMEMBER: After initial plans to create a Holocaust
memorial gallery within the new Canadian War Museum drew protests
from veterans, the Canadian Jewish Congress is renewing its
demand that the federal government fund a national Holocaust
museum in Ottawa. CBC
03/22/00
-
WHITE
LIKE ME: Here comes New Zealand's Prime Minister promising
her constituents a push for "quality TV." But what
is quality? One pop culture expert says that when politicians
talk about quality TV, "they are usually talking about
ensuring that television reflects their own middle-class values
and interests." New
Zealand Herald 03/23/00
-
VISUAL
CONSUMPTION: The Whitney Biennial Exhibition, which opens
tomorrow, is reminiscent of the Paris Salons of the 19th century
- a smattering of collected art crammed under one roof.
With an added abundance of film, video, and Internet art, there's
no way any of the projects will get the attention they deserve,
but the "Salons, both old and new, are about visual consumption
-- a breezy shopping trip for mind and eye in the art world's
megamall." The
Globe and Mail (Toronto) 03/22/00
-
LIFE
LESSONS: Armed with recent data showing the long-term benefits
on children of studying the arts in school, a star-studded panel
of actor/activists made a plea in Washington for increased federal
arts spending. A UCLA study "found that students who studied
the arts in grades eight to 10 made higher grades, scored better
on standardized tests, and were less likely to drop out of school."
The 200 attending representatives of arts advocacy groups pledged
to pass on the message to lawmakers. New
Jersey Online (AP) 3/21/00
-
FEELING
THE SQUEEZE: Berlin's state-subsidized opera houses, theaters,
and orchestras are straining to make ends meet due to the city's
crippling budget deficits. "If we cut any more staff, we'll
not be able to function," laments the State Opera House's
general manager. Rumors are spreading that renowned conductor
Daniel Barenboim may leave Berlin when his contract at the State
Opera House expires if the government doesn't allocate more
funds to support the arts. Die
Welt 3/22/00
-
GIDDY
ABOUT TECHNOLOGY: Musicians weren't the real stars of this
years' South By Southwest music conference. It was "the
techies and entrepreneurs who spoke on packed panels, sponsored
lavish parties and displayed their wares at a trade show overflowing
with free goods. Promoting Internet radio stations, entertainment
guides, online stores and multi-service sites, these networking
demons were the week's real rock stars, riding a wave of hype
and vision." New
York Times 3/22/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
-
A
STRONG SHOW OF SUPPORT: According to a statement from the
National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, U.S. states plan to
spend a record $396 million, more than $30 million more than
last year, to promote the arts. The combined states' spending
dwarfs the $100 million annual budget of the NEA. New
Jersey Online (AP) 0 3/20/00
-
SINKING
YOUR OWN CULTURAL FLAGSHIPS: The priorities of the Canadian
government? "Three levels of government have cheerfully
committed between $17-million and $22-million to Toronto's Olympic
bid -- yes, that's just the bid. But the Canadian Opera Company's
desperately needed new home is dead in the water, because those
same levels of government are squabbling over each other's obligations."
Not to mention the country's premiere recital hall - the George
Weston - which "has been turned into a glorified community
centre, with scarcely a peep of protest." National
Post (Canada)
0 3/21/00
-
PLAYS
THE POPE WON'T SEE: The Catholic League for Religious and
Civil Rights has come out with its annual report on anti-Catholicism;
the arts section lists 18 plays that contain "anti-Catholic
motifs," including one work by Nobel prize-winning author
Dario Fo. The league objected to Fo's play, which depicts "Pope
John Paul II as endorsing birth control and drug legalization
after 'being confronted with thousands of third world orphans.'
Fo's pope also suffers from paranoia, and is under the care
of a witch doctor." Backstage
3/21/00
-
MONOSYLLABIC
MEN: Bush, Gore. Any coincidence that the two presidential
candidates have one-syllable last names? Some linguistics think
not. One simple explanation: short names "are processed
more quickly by our brains and cause a more positive reaction."
(Apparently 'Bradley' and 'McCain' were too much for American
minds.) Chicago
Tribune 3/21/00
-
AUCTIONING
THE BOTTOM LINE: Beneath the pleasantries attending the
opening of the European Fine Art Fair, an undercurrent of worry.
The buzz is about how the art markets might change with the
investigation of auction houses Sotheby's and Christie's. New
York Times 03/20/00
(one-time registration required for entry)
-
CONFLICT?
WHAT CONFLICT? As NEA money for the arts has dried up in
America, should we be surprised that private financing interests
have moved in and that charges of conflict of interest are being
leveled at museums and theaters? Robert Brustein writes
that: "the high arts have become an endangered species
in this country, being picked off by a variety of sharpshooters,
including commercial producers, populists, politicians, multi-culturalists,
middlebrow critics and, not least of all, the foundations. At
the event celebrating thirty-five years of the NEA, I imagined
that I saw the heads of many of those extinct animals mounted
on the walls, under a plaque designated 'Art with a capital
`A.' ' New
Republic 03/27/00
-
IT
WAS THE BEST OF TIMES? Record profits and good times defined
the past few years in the art auction business. But the prosperity
might have been an unsustainable illusion for auction giants
Sotheby's and Christie's. "Their old-money monopoly on
taste had been unraveling for years, as the Internet began to
make buying-by-bid both digital and - gasp - democratic."
New
York Magazine 03/20/00
-
I'M
AN ACTOR (OR, "HOW I GOT SCREWED BY HOLLYWOOD"):
One actor's disappointing odyssey from theater to film. "These
'creative people' never went to writing school, acting school
or storytelling school and have no idea what is happening in
the communities of North America, let alone the world. But they
sure know how to sell some Nikes, boy." The
Nation 03/20/00
-
MEET
THE POVERTY ELITE: They can barely afford bus fare. But
"the junior stylists, assistant editors, associate marketing
managers, and assorted other aspiring media executives, mostly
middle-class and private-college-educated, spend their days
greasing the wheels of Manhattan's entertainment-industrial
complex." Their salaries are real-world modest, forcing
ingenuity in their personal budgets. But they "spend their
nights at Pastis, wrapped in trade-price Burberry scarves, chatting
on loaner StarTACs, or in clients' courtside Knicks seats drinking
expensed Bud Lights," all courtesy of the clients trying
to woo their favors. New
York Magazine 03/20/00
-
WHEN
CORPORATIONS BUY ART: "No corporation will tell
you it buys art as an investment. Art isn't liquid enough for
most companies, and there's no real tax advantage to collecting.
What really happens is that the nature of physical space calls
for you to put things on the wall. But if you can put things
up that increase in value, that's a good financial investment.
Why put up hotel art when, for relatively little more, you can
invest in your community and in a point of view?" Chicago
Tribune 03/19/00
-
FAUX
SAVINGS: Until it closed last month, the 84-year-old Universal
Studios Research Library was the oldest and largest collection
of its sort in Hollywood - a remarkable resource for screenwriters,
producers, art directors and set designers who relied on its
books, magazines and indexed images to give their projects factual
and atmospheric credibility. Now the library has been closed
to save money, and its users worry about the fate of its collections.
San
Francisco Chronicle 03/19/00
-
WHAT'S
IN THE CLOSET: British museums - like those in most countries
- have only a fraction of their collections on display. But
some treasures haven't been out of storage in decades. Now a
British government initiative to get more of the art out to
be seen. The
Independent 03/19/00
-
FUTURE
PERFECT: Is "modern" art soon to be relegated
to the dustbin of history, recognized for the dead end some
want to consider it, as Tom Wolfe prophesies? Not so fast, writes
one critic. If history teaches us anything... National
Post 03/18/00
-
STRENGTH
IN NUMBERS: Artistic partnerships are a mysterious alchemy.
When they work, they produce art that exceeds either partner's
solo efforts. How they work seems to follow no recipe.
Feed 03/17/00
-
BOLSHOI
EMERGENCY: The famed theater is in such disrepair that experts
want to shut it down. Despairing that the state won't come through
in time with needed funds to repair the long neglected building,
theater managers have sent out an SOS to the world. The
Guardian 03/17/00
-
TOO
MANY MFA's:
Are there too many artists with university degrees? "We
can no longer justify preparing more and more graduates to compete
more stylishly for fewer and fewer jobs inside the academic
pyramid. But, the important question remains: What do we do
instead? Do something, is the obvious answer. But what?"
New
Art Examiner 03/17/00
-
SHARE
THE WEALTH: But not for another 15
years. Britain agrees to grant artists a share of the resale
price when their work is resold, bringing it into line with
other European countries. London's art sellers predict disaster.
The
Independent 03/16/00
-
JOB
(IN)SECURITY:
Now that Britain has accepted European Union proposals to
impose a levy on art sales, employees at the UK’s biggest
auction houses are worried about losing revenues – not to
mention their jobs. The
Guardian 03/16/00
-
A
WATERED DOWN AGREEMENT: European Commission is unhappy
with the deal.
BBC 03/16/00
-
YOUR
AD HERE: We can't simply have a Rose
Bowl or a Chicago Stadium anymore. They have to be the RotoRooter
Rose Bowl and the Wonder Bread Center. And now an airline has
got its name plastered all over a Broadway theater. What's next,
actors trotting around stage with "Joe's Sandwich Shop"
stitched across their backs?
Chicago Tribune 03/16/00
-
THEY'RE
BACK... The culture wars of the 1980s and early 90s centered
around public funding for the arts. After quieting down for
awhile, art controversies are back - but this time museums are
on the front lines. New
York Times 03/15/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
-
CZECH
BULLDOZERS DIG UP A CONTROVERSY: A medieval Jewish
cemetery in the center of Prague has become a battleground between
Orthodox rabbis and a local insurance company that would like
to build a garage and offices above the 13th-century burial
ground. Washington
Post 3/14/2000
-
FEAR
OF FORM: "Sophisticated gallery-goers are now
armored gallery-goers, afraid of trusting their instincts. Worse
yet, they are afraid of their conflicting instincts--of their
wish for some clarity of form, and then for something else.
Yet what is wrong with asking artists for layers, for ambiguities?
If we are afraid to ask artists for anything much, this may
be because we are worried about getting in too deep, about being
forced to revise our ideas. By now there is an unwillingness
to think about underlying issues - about factors that run through
all art. This unwillingness casts a pall over gallery-going."
The New Republic 03/20/00
-
COMPUTER-AGE
CARNEGIE: High-tech
billionaire Michael Saylor, worth $13 billion at the ripe old
age of 35, plans to give $100 million to launch a free online
university. Washington
Post 3/15/2000
-
HOW
TO GET RICH ON ART? Ask Steve Wynn. Casino mogul owns half
the art in Vegas' Bellagio Hotel, which he leases to the hotel
for $5 million a year. As Wynn made a deal to sell the hotel,
he retained first right of refusal to buy any of the rest of
the $400 million worth of art in the hotel. Las
Vegas Sun 03/15/00
-
ART
BY ANY OTHER MEDIUM: Okay, so the new Whitney Biennial includes
some internet art. SFMOMA has its $50,000 prize for net art.
And the emerging genre certainly has buzz. But does all this
validation make it any easier to buy, sell or even define art
on the web? Salon
03/15/00
-
NEW
CANADIAN REPORT calls for more support for artists. Study
says that twice as many people are entering the cultural workforce
in British Columbia than any other industry.
CBC 03/15/00
-
HIGH
AND LOW: What's the different between "high" culture
and "low" culture, anyway? Between Mozart and Madonna,
Picasso and the World Wide Wrestling Federation? Is one superior
to the other? Not necessarily. The old cultural arbiters, whose
job was to decide what was `good' in the sense of `valuable,'
have largely been replaced by a new type of arbiter, whose skill
was to define "good" in terms of "popular."
Ignore them at your peril. Chicago
Tribune 03/14/00
-
ARBITER
OF TASTE: In
our still-glowing economy, where technology-crazed consumers
are snapping up purple iMac's and falling for bubbled cars,
high style design is no longer just for the elite. "Where
design used to be considered vaguely precious, the province
of the Sub-Zero-refrigerator-owning elite, it's now available
to all - from the crowd that shops at Target to those aesthetes
who can pick out an Enzo Mari from 20 paces." Pardon
me, but what is the definition of "high style" these
days, anyway?
Time
03/20/00
-
WHY
DETROIT? How Detroit landed the honor of being the opening
venue for an important new Van Gogh exhibition. Boston
Herald 03/14/00
-
AWASH
IN MONEY: The world's two auction giants may be having their
difficulties, but the art market is the strongest it's been
in years. London
Telegraph 03/13/00
-
FRENCH
FRIED: Seventy-eight percent of the world's websites are
in English - only 1.2 percent are in French. "More than
any other medium of recent years, the Internet is challenging
France’s attempts to control and protect its culture. Its pride
in its culture is fierce. No other country—save Spain—has a
body quite like the Académie Française, dedicating itself for
the past 365 years to the defense of the national language."
The
Economist 03/13/00
-
REASON
TO SAVE: To help arts institutions stop living paycheck
to paycheck, the Missouri Cultural Trust has a proposition:
for every dollar arts groups put aside for a rainy day, the
Trust will add 50 cents. It's working. By 2008, the Trust expects
to have given away $100 million. St.
Louis Post-Dispatch 03/13/00
-
AFRICA
FOR THE CULTURE: "For a long time, people saw Africa
as only animals," said Comfort Opoku Wave of the Ghana
tourism board. "Now they're realizing that there is culture,
fabrics, lakes, rivers." Die
Welt 03/13/00
-
MASS
RETIREMENT: As the wave of college professors hired in the
60s and 70s to teach baby boomers nears retirement age, universities
are bracing for a major turnover in their faculties. Chronicle
of Higher Education 03/13/00
-
FORGET
MY MTV: Digital technology is turning all corners of the
entertainment world upside down. Music, radio, books, movies
- all are being reborn out of new technologies and new ways
of making and getting product to market. Boston
Globe 03/12/00
-
SWOONA
in LAGUNA: In a lease dispute, the
venerable 68-year-old Festival of Arts and Pageant of the Masters
has told the California beach town of Laguna Beach it might
leave. Uproar ensues. Orange
County Register 03/12/00
-
POWER
OF POETRY: The Israeli minister of
education decided last week to add the poetry of a Palestinian
to the school curriculum. Sure, they're love poems, but "loving"
is the last word to describe the political row that's erupted.
Salon
03/11/00
-
"HEART
OF THE CITY": After decades of dreams and empty promises,
the Greek culture minister says that building an opera house
for Athens is a priority of the government. Athens
News 03/10/00
-
CULTURAL
MANIPULATION? Critics charge that a Malaysian broadcaster
is airing too many foreign programs and that by watching, young
Malaysians will lose their sense of patriotism and national
identity. They want the government to impose content restrictions
to boost Malay content.
The Star (Malaysia) 03/10/00
-
"RECKLESS
INDISCRIMINATE SEDUCTION": Media critic Todd Gitlin
says that rather than uplift and educate people, modern media
conglomerates are a Band-aid. "Fortunes are to be made
in offering ever-reliable analgesics to a public hungry for
fast relief,'' he says. The guys who run the networks, the newspapers,
the studios, the magazine and music companies are getting richer
while our civic life grows poorer. Toronto
Star 03/09/00
-
DOES
ART MATTER? CALL....: Students at the Ottawa School of Art
have put up statues all over town with cards attached to them
reading: "Does Art Matter? Call this number to argue your
case." If people decide to call, they have three minutes
to sound off. It's part of a class project to find out how much
the average person on the street cares about art. CBC
03/09/00
-
BEGINNING
OF THE CORPORATE END: So American Airlines supported the
arts by giving New York's Roundabout Theater $850,000 a year
for 10 years. In return the airline gets its name on the theater.
But "American Airlines isn’t supporting the arts, bless
them. They are paying a tax-deductible fee in order to advertise
and sell their corporate logo on Broadway. Philanthropy has
sweet zilch to do with it." New
York Observer 03/07/00
-
MARGINAL
UNTIL THEY'RE NOT: A couple of weeks ago the NEA's present
and past chairs got together to talk about the role of arts
in America. "What emerged most pointedly was how the panelists
attempted to define artists and the arts as utilitarian tools.
The underlying sentiment seemed to be if we don’t cast the arts
in terms of their social-political-economic usefulness, how
can we justify underwriting them at public expense?" Backstage
03/08/00
-
EDINBURGH
IN HEAT: The Adelaide Festival - 530 events in 100 venues
in three weeks - is like Edinburgh only in the blazing summer
heat. This year the eye dominates the ear. The
Guardian 03/08/00
-
IT'S
HOWDY LAWSUITY TIME: The Detroit Institute of the Arts has
sued the estate of Rufus Rose, the creator of Howdy Doody, saying
that the puppeteer had promised to give Howdy to the museum.
Rose's family says there was no such deal. CBC
03/08/00
-
VANDALISM
IN THE THEATER: Cell phones and pagers going off in concerts
and theater performances have become a crisis of sorts. "To
receive a cell phone call during a performance is an act of
violence, not terribly different from aiming a spray gun at
a Botticelli. It's worse, in fact, since a damaged painting
can be restored." Los
Angeles Times 03/07/00
-
NOW
A WOMAN CAN SING ONSTAGE! For the first time in two decades
a woman is allowed to sing onstage in Iran. "We cried when
she was singing, with a feeling of happiness and sorrow, thinking
of all those years that we had been deprived of the art of a
woman's voice," one Iranian man said. Under their strict
interpretation of the Koran, women were prohibited from singing
in public, except to a carefully segregated female-only audience.
The ayatollahs were afraid the voice of a woman soloist might
arouse impure thoughts in men's minds. Toronto
Globe and Mail 03/07/00
-
EVERYONE'S
(NOT) A CRITIC? "There seems to be no critical culture
in America today. A critical culture is one that struggles actively
over how human beings should live and what our life means. Most
of us can remember living in the critical culture of the sixties-a
few of us can even remember the critical culture of the thirties-and
we can feel the difference. When a critical culture breaks down
or wears out or fades away, sources of joy dry up. What makes
this happen? Why has it happened now?" Dissent
03/00
-
KANT
BUY ME LOVE: It's fashionable these days to lament the dumbing
down of our culture. But there are some 2,500 "Great Books"
societies across North America, and the growing number of such
study groups suggests that many thirst for learning more. "In
these tiny cells of unofficial civilization, intellectual discourse
moves outside the universities and becomes a question of personal
initiative, energy, insight and need." National
Post 03/07/00
-
SPOLETO
BOYCOTT: Several artists have decided to boycott this year's
Spoleto Festival in Charleston, as NAACP calls for economic
boycott of South Carolina to protest confederate flag. New
York Times 03/06/00
(one-time
registration required for entry)
-
YOUR
PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE AND YOU: Know where your US presidential
candidate of choice stands on arts issues? Now might be a good
time to find out.
Boston Herald 03/06/00
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AN
LA TIMES SURVEY:
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McCain:
"I oppose federal funding of the National Endowment
for the Arts because of the obscene and inappropriate
projects this organization has supported with tax dollars."
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Bush:
"I want to continue federal funding for the arts,
but give states a greater say in how the money is spent."
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Bradley:
"He has always supported
funding for the NEA; he has voted against efforts to
cut it and efforts to censor it."
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Gore:
"...the administration is proposing doubling arts
in education programs, which Gore strongly supports."
Los Angeles Times 03/06/00
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CRITIC-PROOF:
After studying the
life of critic Clement Greenberg, an amateur artist declares
his manifesto: "In my private universe the act of creativity
is always just in its beginning, formative, emergent stages,
before it becomes crystallized into the known, predictable,
and dismissible. Art has not yet been hijacked by anyone to
be critiqued, theorized, and deconstructed; subverted into something
unintended, opposite and unforeseen; used against itself in
the cause of one tyranny after another." *spark-online
03/00
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PROP
UP: Only about four of Australia's major performing arts
groups can be described as financially secure. Now the government
is considering a plan to spend $40 million over the next four
years to help stabilize the rest of them. Australian
Financial Review 03/04/00
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INTELLECTUAL
COMING-OF-AGE: Is the breakthrough of 1960s North American
intellectuals the real legacy of that decade? Salon
03/04/00
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WHEN
YOU'VE SEEN ONE AFRICAN PERFORMANCE, YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THEM ALL:
The Kennedy Center has just completed its three-year "African
Odyssey" initiative. It staged 260 events of contemporary
dance, theater and music from 40 countries, as well as presentations
by African artists living in America and American creations
inspired by Africa. Was this attempt to reach out beyond traditional
European art successful? Washington
Post 03/04/00.
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HERR
HAIDER AS CULTURAL PATRON: In Joerg Haider's province in
Austria, he is his own culture minister. Haider has two
rhetorical enemies: foreigners who sponge up social benefits,
and artists who crave subsidies and then refuse to toe the line.
Herr Haider believes that art should be for the people. Avant
garde artists have lost commissions because their work is too
modern. What do people want? plenty of folk music. Herr Haider's
cultural adviser is Andreas Mölzer, whose view is that artists
"behave like whores".
London Times 03/04/00
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VIENNA'S
OPERA BALL is the highlight of the city's social calendar.
This year's version was controversial before it even started,
with much protest about the latest Austrian politics. And then...at
the ball itself, an actor made up to be Hitler, jumped out of
a Rolls, "marched straight into the opera house,
giving Hitler's salute and nodding to astonished guests in white
tie, tails and ball gowns." As the actor - who claimed
he was making an anti-Haider protest - was dragged away by security
staff, he shouted "I'm back. I'm here to greet my people".
London
Evening Standard 03/03/00
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BAZILLIONAIRE
TEACHERS: There's a new class of college professor, recently
made wealthy by their internet ventures. And yet, while they
may dress better and take more leaves, their multi-millions
are no reason to quit, they say. Chronicle
of Higher Education 03/03/00
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EMPOWERING
THE ARTS: Former cultural officers in a Zimbabwean province
have banded together to found a Performing Arts Empowerment
Foundation, aimed at promoting the arts while improving the
welfare of artists in the province. The group will set up a
fund, contract with medical services and implement a retirement
scheme. “We intend to empower
artists, most of whom did not own houses and left their families
in abject poverty when they died." Zimbabwe
Mirror 03/03/00
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ARTLISTING:
Publication of a list of 350 artworks in Britain with questionable
provenance during Nazi years, had British museum organization
on the defensive Tuesday. "in Britain some museum directors
after the war had not been 'fastidious' about checking whether
paintings they bought or were given might have had a Nazi connection.
But the organization believes many of the gaps in history are
innocent but cannot yet be explained because papers have been
lost, owners have died or dealers and auction houses are unwilling
to release documents." London
Telegraph 03/01/00
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ME
TOO: Three weeks after rival Christie's lowers its sales
commissions, Sotheby's follows suit. Did you talk to each other
about the new fees, guys? Nah.... "We did this in
light of the competitive environment we're in," said William
F. Ruprecht, Sotheby's new president and chief executive. New
York Times 03/01/00 (one-time
registration required for entry)
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THE
ART OF POLITICS: Artists' reaction to Austrian politics
is problematic. "It is generally accepted in Western societies
that the arts are a democratic safety valve, articulating ideals
around which public sentiment can refocus. Artistic freedom
has become as sacrosanct, in principle, as freedom of the press.
All agree that it is abhorrent for politicians to interfere
with the arts. At what point, however, does it become unacceptable
for the arts to meddle in politics?" London
Telegraph 03/01/00
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PROTECT
THIS: "There is an inherent conflict between intellectual
property rights and freedom of speech, a tension between your
right to control a story you've written and my right to use
it as raw material for my own work. Thanks to two trends, that
tension is turning rapidly into a collision." Reason
03/0
