Monday July 31

• SOUTH AFRICAN ARTS IN DISARRAY: One South African artist applies to start a porn site so he can finance his art. Thus the extent of "the frustrations felt by many over the state of the arts in South Africa, where the only certainty is uncertainty. Will the country's last remaining permanent orchestra, the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic, still be around in 2001? Will Pretoria's State Theatre survive? Will lottery funding help to revive the performing arts? Will SA arts and culture help brand the country as a tourist destination and as the export product it once was during its theatrical high point in the '70s and '80s? Sunday Times (South Africa) 07/30/00
• WE DON'T DO BODY PARTS: Singapore's arts scene is tightly controlled by the government. Last month a production of "The Vagina Monologues" was banned by the censors. "The actors submitted the script, including stage directions. Part of the performance involved briefly projecting a picture of a vagina as a backdrop. Choo says the performance could have proceeded without the image but the theatre group refused a change. They were denied a license and will probably lose any government funding." New Zealand Herald 07/31/00
• EVERYONE'S A CRITIC: "The Australia Council has just thrown a shirtful of public money at an advertising agency to tell the arts community that it has to stop being "elitist" and make everyone feel relaxed and comfortable about the arts. Presumably when everyone is convinced that fingerpainting and being Richard Tognetti are equally easy, they'll start queuing for Schoenberg. It's enough to make me throw the papers across the room. But I don't. I heckle, silently. Well, almost silently. I do a lot of muttering." Sydney Morning Herald 07/31/00

Sunday July 30

• JOIN THIS: Statistics say that Americans are joining groups in fewer numbers - from bowling leagues to the Boy Scouts, we're not the "joiners" we once were. Is this a bad thing? Is our sense of community slipping? "A curious thing about this decline of community - or of 'social capital,' to use the favored public-policy term - is that America appears to be awash in 'community.' " Boston Globe 07/30/00

Friday July 28

• MEDIA LAB COMES TO DUBLIN: Tod Machover and MIT's thinky Media Lab have set up shop in Ireland. "They believe Dublin will host the creation of an entirely new, large-scale art form that combines a variety of media. 'We need to figure out what comes after theatre, what comes after cinema,' Machover says. 'We're hoping to develop a large part of it in Ireland.' " Irish Times 07/28/00
• MILLENNIUM DOME SOLD: Nomura will buy London's boondoggle Dome and turn it into a "state-of-the-art entertainment park using the latest in electronic effects and devices, and developing a further tranche of 50 acres around the site to offer shops restaurants cafes and a 'Camden Lock' ambience." London Evening Standard 07/28/00

Thursday July 27

• THE CULTURE WARS: "There is a direct connection between the ethics of a society and its architecture and art. Today's culture of ugliness and 'geography of nowhere' need to be replaced by a physical and cultural environment that enchants life, inspires faith, and encourages learning. The spiritual and evangelical communion more and more Americans seek requires a cultural language that artists and poets alone can provide." The Idler 07/27/00
• HIGH RENTS FORCE ARTISTS OUT: "The exodus of artists from Santa Monica has been both rapid and dramatic. When consultants hired to gauge the extent of the problem conducted a survey of artists’ spaces in May, there were 156 live/work and studio spaces left in the city. After the report on “Strategies To Preserve and Enhance Affordable Artist Housing and Studio Space” was typed up, the number had dropped to 117. By the time the final draft was presented to Santa Monica’s Arts Commission on July 10, there were only 78 studios left, half the number just two months ago." LA WEEKLY 07/27/00
• A MATTER OF QUALITY TEACHING: A debate rages in Australia about the value - or lack thereof - of a liberal arts degree. But those defending the idea of a liberal arts education are missing a crucial point, writes one critic. The fact is, he says, is that the quality of liberal arts teaching is low in Australian universities because the schools don't pay enough to attract quality teachers. Sydney Morning Herald 07/27/00

Wednesday July 26

• "ARTS MAYOR" TO THE RESCUE: Thomas Menino, Boston's self-styled arts mayor, wants desperately to help out the city's baseball team. "In a plan championed by the mayor's Office of Cultural Affairs, Menino effectively told Boston's struggling artists the following: If you help me drum up support for subsidized housing for the Sox, there might be some cash in it for you." Boston Herald 07/26/00

• EXHIBITION ETHICS: “Do you cancel a play if it provokes violence on the streets? Do you accept an exhibition of paintings collected by a businessman jailed for defrauding shareholders?” Such ethical dilemmas were discussed Monday at 'Turn up the Heat', an ethics conference of arts administrators in Sydney. Sydney Morning Herald 07/26/00

• ARTS WINDFALL: Britain’s Culture Secretary Chris Smith unveiled a huge funding package for the arts Tuesday to rejuvenate the country’s arts infrastructures - regional theatres in particular - that have suffered tremendously during more than twenty years of lackluster government support. The Arts Council of England will receive an extra £100m a year from 2003, the biggest increase in funding in its 44-year history. “What it says is that access to arts and creativity is a basic, like health and education.” The Guardian (London) 07/26/00

  • AND THE SQUEAKY WHEEL… Arts Council Chairman Gerry Robinson has been lobbying the government for an extra £100 million in arts funding for months - and yesterday’s announcement proves they heard him loud and clear. “He badgered the Prime Minister and Chancellor to the point where, he believes, "I seriously p***ed people off. At the end of the day, someone like Blair or Brown will say, 'Oh, for Chrissakes just give them the money.' " The Telegraph (London) 07/26/00

• THE $543 LUNCH: Philadelphia restaurant critic goes for lunch in New York's hot new restaurant. "It is enough to do a triple take at the prices, even as you settle into the Brazilian rosewood and gold-trimmed opulence of the dining room, with its Neapolitan fabrics, polished black columns and exploding rose bouquets. Did I just order a $50 appetizer? An $80 steak? Coca-Cola for $8? Uh-huh." Philadelphia Inquirer 07/26/00

Tuesday July 25

• IDENTITY ISSUES: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri (“Interpreter of Maladies”) reflects on the elusive nature of identity politics and the need of readers and critics alike to compartmentalize authors. “Take, for instance, the various ways I am described: as an American author, as an Indian-American author, as a British-born author, as an Anglo-Indian author, as an NRI (non-resident Indian) author, as an ABCD author (ABCD stands for American born confused "desi"). According to Indian academics, I've written something known as "Diaspora fiction"; in the U.S., it's "immigrant fiction." In a way, all of this amuses me.” Feed 07/24/00 
• RIGHT TO ALTER: When Charles M. Schulz retired from drawing "Peanuts" he said no one else would ever draw the cartoon. But some recent repeats of the strip have been altered adding current events references. So when is it okay to change the work of a deceased artist? Intellectual Capital 07/20/00
• THE SKY IS FALLING: "Beauty as presently defined is indistinguishable from ugliness. Relativism is a contagion that makes judgment impossible. As a consequence, anything goes, whether it’s dirty jeans, unkempt starlets, or a fashion statement that emulates homelessness." American Outlook 07/25/00
• SURVIVOR: Being the chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts is a no-win job - the criticisms come from all sides. Jane Alexander's big accomplishment in her time heading the Endowment was that it managed to survive. But her naivete and growing anger about the battles that had to be fought took their toll. Her memoir of her term is a sad chronicle. New York Times Book Review 07/23/00 (one-time registration required for entry) 

Monday July 24

• DO WE HAVE TO MENTION THE SPONSOR? The Roundabout Theatre sold its name to American Airlines. The Wintergarden almost had "Cadillac" above the marquee. The arts love those corporate dollars. But at what price? Newsday 07/23/00 
• THE VALUE OF AN ARTS EDUCATION: An article published in Australia last week argued, in essence, "that Australian universities are involved in the economically irrational overproduction of students with the generalist degree in the humanities and social sciences, the bachelor of arts." Yet at a time when students are being convinced that education is for the primary purpose of getting a job, the arts degree is still valuable. Sydney Morning Herald 07/24/00 
• A RESURGENCE IN BRITISH ART: "Despite the dreary, outdated prejudices of some of our burnt-out critics, tabloid hacks and politicians from all parties, it is clear that the arts, including museums and galleries, have never been more interesting or more popular and have never played such a significant role in national life as they do today. Recent MORI research for the Arts Council showed huge public support for the arts, with 78 per cent believing that the arts play a valuable role in the life of the nation, and 95 per cent believing that children should have more opportunities to experience the arts at school." New Statesman 07/24/00
  • ON THE OTHER HAND: "The first task is to shift spending away from institutions and into individuals and art itself. What is the point of having some of the most well-appointed theatres and galleries in Europe if there is nothing to put on in them? Throughout the Thatcher years arts bureaucracy grew while the work withered. That has to change." The Guardian 07/24/00
• BLAME IT ON THE INTERNET: "People are feeling that since English has become a dominant language through electronic technology, there is less and less pragmatic use for knowing foreign languages. We're seeing a loss of language teaching in the high schools...so fewer and fewer students come to universities wanting to study [languages]. It's a domino effect in many ways." Toronto Globe and Mail 07/24/00
• FIGHTING FOR THE FRINGE: In what’s been hailed as a “virtuoso demonstration of cultural leadership,” Brian McMaster has revitalized the Edinburgh Festival since becoming director nine years ago. He “wooed back the world-class ensembles, wowed the critics by staging daring epics that no other impresario could risk; and still managed to lift sponsorship and box office income to record levels.” London Times 07/24/00 
• PATRONAGE AMERICAN STYLE: American internet investor and opera lover Alberto Vilar has donated $2 million to Milan’s La Scala - the largest private non-European donation in the opera house’s history. “He is now waging a sort of one-man campaign to bring U.S.-style arts patronage to Europe at a time when governments are scaling back their arts spending.” Yahoo! News (Reuters) 07/23/00

Friday July 21

• USHERING IN THE TRUTH: Want to know the real theatre scoop? Talk to the people who see it all - the ushers. "Indeed, perhaps no one has seen the changes in theatre-and by extension, some of the cultural shifts in the society at large-more vividly than those doughty black-clad ushers who've been moving up and down the aisles, flashlights in hand, for the long haul. Backstage 07/20/00
• REAL REALITY? "Though it was never a part of the show's design, 'Big Brother' is broadcasting in prime time many of the unresolved fears that stretch across the nation's racial divide. The series already is being labeled groundbreaking television, with the raw footage captured by the cameras that film around the clock generating heated discussions in cafes and Internet chat rooms across the country." Los Angeles Times 07/20/00
• WHAT ABOUT THE HISTORY THAT NEVER HAPPENED? "Provisional history, standby history, or simply outtakes: whatever the name, it denotes an existential sphere that is vast and growing. Think of all the newspaper stories that editors have decided to spike; the millions of words that have been cut out of books; the miles of footage yanked by directors from their movies. Think of all the caps, manufactured but never sold, proclaiming the Buffalo Bills to be the champions of Super Bowls XXV, XXVI, XXVII, and XXVIII." The Atlantic 07/00
• THE BIG ORANGE: The Orange County Performing Arts Center posts a record $700,000 surplus. "This is a phenomenal thing to happen to a nonprofit performing arts center. We've had the most performances we've ever had and incredible quality. To finish this far ahead is extraordinary. We won't get these numbers again." Orange County Register 07/21/00
• THE POPULARIZATION OF JAPAN: "Pop culture is big business in Japan, with domestic 'J-Pop' alone racking up sales of nearly ¥40 billion ($373 million) a year. The most popular artists achieve sales of nearly 10 million copies per album. Volumes of manga (comics) as thick as telephone directories are read by children and balding salarymen alike. The best loved, 'Shuppan Shonen Magajin', sells 4 million copies a week." Now the rest of Asia is catching the Japan-pop bug. The Economist 07/21/00

Thursday July 20

• WASHINGTON DEBUT: Newly-named Kennedy Center director Michael Kaiser "was presented to the press, patrons and politicians yesterday, capped by a bipartisan dinner in the Capitol's Statuary Hall hosted by the four leaders of Congress. The accolades were lavish; in turn, the new arts center president promised to stay in the job for at least five years, which would be 'longer than I've ever been anywhere.' " Washington Post 07/20/00
• DEAD CULTURE OR DEAD CRITICS? "Culture as this particular academic knows it is dead, buried, reincarnated only to walk the earth as a movie remake based on the original sitcom. The problem isn't dummy art or the proliferation of immoral pop culture, or even a house of mirrors assembly-line media. The problem resides in the inability of the majority of those who comment on the arts - journalists, academics, professional artists, producers, editors, information-age cultural critics - to come to terms with emerging new ways of living with and through mass culture. Toronto Globe and Mail 07/20/00
• EXPRESSION VS SUPPRESSION : Korea’s artists, civic groups, and courts are struggling through a morass of mixed opinions over what’s considered art, and thus protected as free expression, and what’s deemed obscene. Two of the country’s recent decisions: the release of the popular movie “Lies” was postponed six months due to press outrage over its sexual plotline. And this week Korea’s premier cartoonist was fined $2.6 million for “encouraging misbehavior in minors” in his strip. Korea Herald 07/20/00
• HOW MANY BANKERS DO YOU REALLY NEED? Does Australia have too many students pursuing arts degrees? "A Centre for Independent Studies report says universities are producing too many arts and social science graduates, who lack employable skills." The Australian 07/20/00
• THE GIANT BILLBOARDS TAKE OVER: In San Francisco, "the boom in the dot-com industry and advances in digital imaging have led to an explosion of 'wall-scapes' and dot-com billboards. And many of them, industry and city officials say, are being hoisted without proper permits." San Francisco Chronicle 07/20/00

Wednesday July 19

• CULTURE ON THE BACK BURNER: From outside the country, at least, Britain seems to be making a surge in the arts. But "we have a government that tells us that it is pumping unprecedented amounts into the arts, yet around the country the arts are in greater distress than ever," writes Norman Lebrecht. Just how did the arts fall in the UK's political agenda? The Telegraph (London) 07/19/00
• NEW KENNEDY CENTER CHIEF: Michael Kaiser, who "helped rescue Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London from a financial crisis, is about to be named president of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a Kennedy Center official said." New York Times 07/19/00 (one-time registration required for entry 
  • THE MIRACLE MAN: "The Kennedy Center is very lucky," said dancer Susan Jaffe, a veteran company member of American Ballet Theatre, one of four organizations Kaiser is credited with rescuing from dire financial straits. "Not only has he tremendous business savvy, but his passion for arts has made him a miracle man." Washington Post 07/19/00

Tuesday July 18

• WHAT BECOMES A WELL-ROUNDED CITIZEN? "As high-tech leaders persistently, almost desperately, call for more educated workers, the 'info-tainment' business that is rapidly absorbing the Internet and all other media makes well-informed citizens even more rare and unusual. The constant 'dumbing-down' and vulgarization of the culture industry, driven by mass marketing and profits, is clearly at odds with educational excellence, but few high-tech leaders can bring themselves to admit their role in this depressing decline." Los Angeles Times 07/17/00
• BEHIND ANOTHER SELLARBRATION: He's America's oldest enfant terrible. Peter Sellars is directing the next edition of Australia's Adelaide Festival, and has already changed its focus from being the traditional international potpourri to one concentrating on Aussie artists. But before getting too excited about Sellars' plans it might be instructive for Adelaidians to take a look at his track record... The Idler 07/17/00 
• VALENCIA'S MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR INVESTMENT IN CULTURE: The Spanish city of Valencia is building Europe's most ambitious millennium project. "At an all-in cost of £2 billion the project eclipses the Dome in Greenwich and even the Getty in Los Angeles. The prodigious investment provides Valencia with a spectacular new Science Museum, an IMAX cinema, a music school, a magnificent new 1,800-seat opera house, seven kilometres of promenades and two streamlined road bridges." The Times (London) 07/18/00
• A MATTER OF HISTORY: The roar of protest over the distortions of history in the movie "The Patriot" has been deafening in recent weeks as the movie opened in Britain. So what is up with this month's Smithsonian Magazine article trumpeting how it helped the movie-makers get the details of history right? Has "the nation's attic" sold its soul? Washington Post 07/18/00  

Monday July 17

• NO TIME FOR THIS: "In his new book, 'The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics', Julian Barbour asserts that time simply doesn't exist. This by itself is not so shocking. My friend Artie, for example, has always insisted that there's only change, not time. Things move around; time may just be a way of noting that. But Barbour goes further. He says there's no such thing as motion either. Instead, Barbour sees a universe filled with static instants - instants that contain "records" that fool any conscious beings who happen to find themselves encased in one into believing that things have moved and time has passed." Feed 07/15/00
• YOU'RE INCREDIBLY SMART IF YOU READ THIS: "We've become warier, more ironic about praise in general. No one wants to seem like a smarmy suck-up. No one wants to appear too earnest. The language of superlatives has become worn out and phony. If Mike Ovitz is a visionary, what does that make Charles Darwin? If Donald Trump is charismatic, what does that make Martin Luther King? If every flavor-of-the-month actress is brilliant, what do you tell your seven-year-old daughter when she comes home with an 88 on her spelling test?" Time Europe 07/17/00
• HOW WE PAY FOR ART? Berlin is rebuilding, and signs of change are everywhere - physical and cultural. "In Germany, where government funding had never been an issue before, it seemed odd to hear people complaining about how excessive subsidies were creating an atmosphere of dependency and waste among their artistic institutions." The New Republic 07/15/00
• BEAR WITNESS: In recent years numerous museums and exhibitions commemorating the Holocaust have sprung up. But some argue that attempts to represent the Holocaust falsify it, making it an aesthetic rather than a history. "On the other hand, however uncomfortable academics may be with some of the popular representations of the Holocaust, few would question that films such as 'Schindler's List' and 'Life is Beautiful' have done more to raise public awareness of the Holocaust than a thousand scholarly tomes." New Statesman 07/17/00

Sunday July 16

• AN ODE TO DIVERSITY: The word "diversity" is repeated as a mantra by mainstream arts groups looking to expand their audiences. A new report in Chicago has some words of advice for arts groups trying diversify. Chicago Tribune 07/16/00
• SQUATTERS' RIGHTS? In the 1960s a group of artists took over an abandoned ruined hill town in Italy and over the next 40 years made it into something of an artists colony/tourist attraction. Now the Italian wants to evict the artists and restore the town to a ruin. The Independent (London) 07/16/00
• "ENTERTAINMENT" BAN: Canadian news and documentary crews say that for the past two years American immigration officers have made it difficult for them to get into the US. Many crews have been denied entry. "Officials in the U.S. say they are enforcing a policy which allows them to bar foreign film crews who want to shoot 'commercial entertainment' in the US But Canadians say the policy is being widely used to delay film crews working on 'information programs.' " CBC 07/16/00

Friday July 14

• THE RELENTLESS MARCH OF THE DOT-COMMIES: Dozens of San Francisco arts organizations and hundreds of artists have lost their leases as the city's landlords go after dot-com tenants. By one count, half the city's remaining arts organizations' leases are up for renewal this year. San Francisco Bay-Guardian 07/13/00 
• DOT-PATRONS? "Think of the impact a handful of newly minted multimillionaires could have on the local arts scene if they pooled just a bit of their dough. I'd like to propose a new kind of Rockefeller institution: A dot-com coalition of rich citizens dedicated to giving money back to the arts community that they are (unintentionally) helping evict." Salon 07/14/00

Thursday July 13

• WHAT DOES AN AUSTRALIAN ARTS CONSUMER LOOK LIKE? A new survey paints the picture. The study, which covered 1991-99, shows that each Victorian household spends about $25 a week on cultural pursuits and indicates what culture Aussies prefer to consume. The Age (Melbourne) 07/13/00
• BUY CANADIAN: Canada has elaborate tax-credit laws used to encourage use of Canadian content in the movie and TV industries. But a new audit reveals that up to a third of the companies that took advantage of the tax breaks in the province of Quebec deliberately or accidentally misrepresented their labor and production costs. National Post (Canada) 07/13/00
• ODE TO GEEKS: Geeks are getting a lot of attention these days. "Some constants emerge from geek studies. Geeks are almost always depicted as deficient in traditional social skills but as possessing some special gift or talent in recompense. Writers tend to be divided over which side of this equation should be emphasized (usually to the exclusion of the other). Some fear that the spread of geekdom means an irreparable hole is being torn in the social fabric; others see geekdom as a less hidebound and authoritarian society in the making." The Atlantic Unbound 07/00

Wednesday July 12

• THE ART WORLD'S NOBEL: Two American and three European artists (composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim, architect Richard Rogers, sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle, composer Hans Werner Henze, and painter Ellsworth Kelly) received the Japan Art Association's Praemium Imperiale Award Tuesday. The lifetime achievement prizes are among the largest in the arts world,  and come with a stipend of $140,000. New York Times 07/12/00 (one-time registration required for entry)
• GOING PUBLIC: The musicians' coalition Artists Against Piracy kicked off its national campaign against copyright infringement with full-page ads in five major U.S. newspapers. "If A Song Means A Lot To You, Imagine What It Means To Us" read the headline, above a list of 68 musicians in favor of protecting their music through stricter copyright-law enforcement. Billboard 07/11/00

Monday July 10

• "WORSE THAN THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION": China's booming tourist industry is threatening most of its precious cultural heritage and natural beauty, according to experts at a heritage preservation conference sponsored jointly by the government, the World Bank and UNESCO in Beijing last week. China Times (Taiwan) 07/10/00
• BEHIND THE BUBBLE: At a cost of $360 million, Beijing's Grand National Opera House, now under construction, figured to be controversial. Its bubble shape and the fact it wasn't designed by a Chinese architect makes for a triple whammy. But the real battle here is for the soul of the capital - protests erupt as old Beijing is cleared away to make room for the new. Washington Post 07/09/00 
• THE POLITICS OF GIVING MONEY AWAY: The MacArthur Foundation takes a breath to consider how it wants to spend its money. The so-called "genius" grants "symbolize how we would like to be known in the world - as a place that pays attention to releasing the potential of people." Chronicle of Higher Education 07/10/00

Sunday July 9

• ARTISTS AND THE NEW ECONOMY: "For the first time since the 18th Century, some observers believe, the arts world is poised on the edge of a massive shift in the way artists earn their keep. Nudged by the Internet and other technologies, a new paradigm is evolving, one that may render irrelevant the familiar quarrel over government funding of the arts." Chicago Tribune 07/09/00
• SAME OLD STORY/NEW STANZA: Ireland is hot right now, and after decades of depression Dublin is roaring to life economically. But artists are getting squeezed out. "The opportunities for getting a studio space in the city are decreasing," adds painter Mark Pepper, also from the Visual Arts Centre. "The commercial rents property owners can get for buildings now are huge, and artists can't afford those rates." The Irish Times 07/09/00
• SAVING THE VIENNA FESTIVAL: After international protests over Austria's inclusion of Jörg Haider's right-wing Austrian Freedom Party in Austrian government, organizers of the Vienna Festival feared a disruption in this summer's festival.  But after issuing an open letter strongly condemning Haider and the government's inclusion of him, and appealing to artists not to boycott, the festival has gone on as usual. New York Times 07/09/00 (one-time registration required for entry)

Friday July 7

• NEW LIFE FOR DOOMED DOME: What to do with London's boondoggled Millennium Dome now that the government has decided to sell it? As of now there are three contenders to take over the billion-dollar bust: a Japanese-backed company that would continue the current programming, the BBC, which, in partnership with Tussaud's, would turn it into a theme park based on BBC TV characters, and a business group that wants to "strip out the current content and turn the site into London's silicon valley." BBC 07/07/00

Thursday July 6

• INFORMATION OVERLOAD: "Our ability to generate information has outpaced our ability to comprehend it. We're driven to make sense of it all, to shape and sort and classify information into systems we can use. From the days of writing on cave walls to the creation of XML, we've tried to do a better job of comprehending the information at hand. The thing is, we've become so good at creating information that it's piling up faster than promises in a political campaign." *spark-online 07/00

Wednesday July 5

• NO-BROW CULTURE: What really sustained the old distinctions between good taste and bad, high culture and low? What sustains them now? They can be, and have been, criticized. Were the cultural distinctions of yore merely "an upstairs downstairs affair … arranged to protect the real artists from the ravages of the commercial market place?" Boston Review Summer 00
• THE EVILS OF GLOBALIZATION: The globalization of culture is accelerating at an alarming rate. "Through globalisation, people lose their local cultural identity and political autonomy; but sometimes they rid themselves of local fascists and thugs, isolation, poverty and ignorance. With good and bad homogenised thus, globalisation seems to negate all moral conscience. Globalisation also puts a new twist on critical terms like cultural imperialism, orientalism and colonisation." The Age (Melbourne) 07/05/00
• ARTS AT ANY COST: The price of going to an arts event went up 10 percent over the weekend throughout Australia as the country adopted a GST tax. But the sudden increase doesn't seem to have affected ticket sales. Sydney Morning Herald 07/05/00

Tuesday July 4

• THE PARIS OF THE MIDWEST? Chicago's Mayor Richard Daly has been traveling to Europe. And thinking that what his city needs is a little bit of Europe. He's proposed a London-style theatre district downtown, borrowed the downtown art cow idea from the Swiss, and proposed Venetian gondolas for the city's waterways. What's next? Chicago Tribune 07/04/00 

Monday July 3

• CALIFORNIA ARTS COMMISSION GETS BIG INCREASE: Legislature gives arts commission $12 million increase. The additional funds raise the council's annual budget from $20 million to $32 million and bring California's state arts spending to 92 cents per capita. The increase propels California from 42nd place into the top 25 states in the nation. Los Angeles Times 07/03/00

Sunday July 2

• REBUILDING ART AFTER WAR: "Croatia remained largely peaceful during the second half of the 1990's, but the earlier Balkan wars left a mark on the nation's cultural life. Its once-lucrative $4 billion-a-year tourist industry and vibrant artistic scene - almost destroyed through the mobilization of a large part of the male population, emigration and civil unrest - have only recently shown signs of recovery." New York Times 07/02/00 (one-time registration required for entry)

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