IDEAS
http://www.artsjournal.com/ideas
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Getting Under The Hood Of Human Hardwiring Are personality, intelligence, gender, and the moral sense in the genes or are they the stuff of culture? A new book argues that "new sciences of human nature — combining cognitive science, neuroscience, genetics, and evolution—strongly suggest that our minds are partly 'hardwired' at birth. This hardwiring likely underlies many human universals—forms of behavior and mental structures shared by all peoples in all cultures, e.g., baby talk and incest avoidance. But it also seems likely that such hardwiring underlies some differences among people." New York Review Of Books 02/27/03
Art Isn't For The Rest Of Us! What's all this about trying to get the masses interested in art? They only spoil it for those who actually care... "The row in front of me was occupied by a family — let’s call them the Odious-Halfwits — who spent the entire evening smooching, snogging, conducting and, literally, jumping up and down in their seats in time with the music. They behaved exactly as they would have done in their own home, making not the slightest concession to the fact that, as part of an audience, they were surrounded by thousands of people trying to concentrate on a masterpiece. The truth is that art, by its very nature, is not for the masses. The attempt to prove otherwise is self-destructive." The Times (UK) 02/14/03
Missing (Seeing) What's Right In Front Of You "How can we look directly at things and not see them? The answer is that your brain perceives the world through what amounts to a mental 'soda straw.' When it aims that straw at one thing, all other objects—even those within your direct field of vision—recede into the background. Cognitive psychologists call this phenomenon selective attention, a neural process by which the 'volume knob' on one set of sensory inputs is turned up at the same time the intensity settings of all other stimuli are turned down." Discover 02/03
Learning To Improvise "For almost as long as we've had digital computers, enterprising programmers have been trying to teach them how to play music. Perhaps the most challenging remaining hurdle is the spontaneous back-and-forth flow of improvisation. Machines are quick to learn when it comes to rolling out standard chord progressions and following predictable rhythms. But they turn out to be lousy at riffing, precisely because riffing is a much more chaotic sort of pattern, one that relies on intuition more than structure. But as daunting as it sounds, free improv may yet become a part of the computer's musical repertoire, thanks to sophisticated software programs." Discover 02/03
Of Power Laws And The 80/20 Rules Weblogs have been touted as the loosing of democratic speech - anyone can publish, anyone can read. But as there are more weblogs, natural powerlaws are kicking in and predictably some blogs are rising above the rest. "For much of the last century, investigators have been finding power law distributions in human systems. The economist Vilfredo Pareto observed that wealth follows a 'predictable imbalance', with 20% of the population holding 80% of the wealth. The linguist George Zipf observed that word frequency falls in a power law pattern, with a small number of high frequency words (I, of, the), a moderate number of common words (book, cat cup), and a huge number of low frequency words (peripatetic, hypognathous)." Thus too, it appears with the success of weblogs... Shirky.com 02/10/03
Network Solutions... "How does individual behavior aggregate to collective behavior? As simply as it can be asked, this is one of the most fundamental and pervasive questions in all of science. A human brain, for example, is in one sense a trillion neurons connected in a big electrochemical lump. But to each of us who has one, a brain is clearly much more, exhibiting properties like consciousness, memory, and personality, whose nature cannot be explained simply in terms of aggregations of neurons. What makes the problem hard, and what makes complex systems complex, is that the parts making up the whole don't sum up in any simple fashion. Rather, they interact with each other, and in interacting, even quite simple components can generate bewildering behavior." Chronicle of Higher Education 02/14/03
Fast Food Nation - Not Such a Cultural Monolith After All For years, fast food - particularly of the McDonald's variety - has been the poster child for globalization and the unrelenting blandization of world culture. But scholars are increasingly disputing "the idea that mass production threatens the existence of particular cultural identities, either abroad or at home. After all, regional cuisines are displaying an unexpected vitality in this age of chain restaurants and global brand-names. Why? Many people, it seems, are content to preserve their local cultures through food that is as processed and mass-produced as a Happy Meal." Boston Globe 02/09/03
An Arts Alternative Should anyone be surpriseed that popular culture holds such a firm grip on teenagers? It's all around. Unavoidable. A ten-year-old program in San Francisco offers kids an alternative - an art alternative. Art and Film for Teenagers "offers Bay Area teens Friday night art movie screenings; Saturday outings to galleries, museums and commercial films; group trips to the symphony, opera and ballet (often three or more times a week); dinner parties and picnics, and an opportunity for mingling with peers passionate about the arts - an antidote to adolescent isolation." San Francisco Chronicle 02/14/03
Creatives Vs. Bean Counters - Who Should Prevail? The "combination of financial foundering and artistic success sums up the challenge of running an arts organisation. Which do you put first: the art or the accounts? Given that it is tough to find curators, opera administrators or artistic directors who are as good at managing as they are at having creative ideas, who do you put in charge: a bean counter who can balance the books, or the visionary with no head for figures?" The answer, every time, has got to be... The Guardian (UK) 02/13/03
NY Warns Venues To Drop Added Ticket "Fees" New York State is going after venues that add on fees to ticket prices. "When the consumer sees a ticket price advertised for $100, that should be the price you pay. We don't want the consumer exposed to a situation where they are led to believe that the ticket price is $100 and then you get to the box office only to be told that there's a $1 restoration or a $2.50 convenience charge or whatever the venue calls their added-on fee. If the theatre feels it needs a dollar to go to a restoration fund, that's their business, but they should advertise that the ticket costs $100 or $101, whatever the total is. The rest is accounting."
Backstage 02/12/03
NY City Council Overturns Mayor's Veto Of Cell Phone Ban Last year New York's City Council passed an ordinance prohibiting use of cell phones in theatres and concert halls. The mayor vetoed it. Wednesday, the council voted 38-5 to override the veto. Henceforth, in New York City, "talking on a cell phone, dialing, listening or even having one ring during a performance will constitute a violation punishable by a $50 fine." Wired 02/12/03
Arts Council To Give Arts Funding Big Boost The Arts Council of England says it will "nearly double" the amount it gives to individual artists, increasing spending to £25 million per year. The council also said it "would increase funding of the groups it already supports by a further £70 million, to £300 million by 2006. The Arts Council says the drive is designed to place 'the arts at the heart of national life'." BBC 02/12/03
- New Name, New Logo, Less Staff - Arts Council England Relaunches The Arts Council of England has relaunched itself as Arts Council England, with a new logo and 100 fewer staff. Now there will be just the Arts Council, with regional offices, one telephone number and one application form for artists, replacing more than 100 different grants schemes." The council says the changes would "save almost £20m over the next three years, and £8m a year after that, all to be ploughed back into the arts." The Guardian (UK) 02/13/03
A Real Deal On Culture? Britons spend £3 billion a year on culture." According to one study, "the amount spent by UK adults on going to the theatre, cinema, concert or art gallery is more than 15 times that spent on tickets to Premiership football matches in a season (classical musical ticket sales at £359 million a year account for almost twice the revenue of Premiership tickets). Yet how many of us are getting our money's worth?" The Observer (UK) 02/09/03
Cultural Council Comes Back After Disastrous 9/11 The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council lost everything on September 11—and "not just their offices in 5 WTC, the databases, the archives, the stage on the plaza. An artist in their residency program died in his studio on the 92nd floor of Tower One. Others had harrowing close calls. A tech crew was mopping the plaza stage for that night's dance performance as debris started falling. Another artist made it safely down the steps from the 91st floor. And executive director Liz Thompson was on the last elevator out of Windows on the World." Now they're into a new home. "They didn't just survive—they bounced back, stronger and more necessary than ever. Founded 30 years ago to help revitalize a moribund downtown, they face that challenge anew, but this time with a long track record of arts advocacy behind them." Village Voice 02/11/03
Economy Cuts Into Manhattan Arts In New York, a down economy and cuts in arts funding are starting to make a visible impact on the city's arts institutions. "Museums, theaters, concert halls, opera companies, public gardens and zoos throughout the five boroughs are cutting performances, exhibitions, days of operation and staff members. This is only the beginning, arts executives say. 'It's like a patient whose health is slipping. The strong will reduce what they do and the weak will have to take more drastic measures'." The New York Times 02/11/03
San Jose Turns Down Ballet Company Emergency Funding Last week San Jose Silicon Valley Ballet said it might have to close if it didn't raise $1.2 million. So the company applied to the San Jose city council for emergency funding. In the meantime, the company raised the money from other sources, so despite pleas from the company's director that the city money was the "linchpin" to the company's fundraising efforts, the city council turned down the dance company's request for a $100,000 emergency grant. San Jose Mercury-News 02/13/03
Martha Graham Reborn (After A Very Very Long Time) The Martha Graham Company is back. But it's been away long before the legal dispute that shut the doors. "In fact, this famous troupe, the oldest dance company in America, had been in trouble long before [heir Ron] Protas took over. Graham, who was born in 1894, choreographed for sixty-five years, but she was in top form for only the first half of that run. In the nineteen-fifties she slipped into despair and alcoholism. Eventually, she stopped going to the studio. The dancers ran the company. Later she dried out, and came back, but on the arm of Protas, whom many of the dancers and staff found impossible to work with. Some quit; others were fired. Year by year, the company consisted of increasingly young people facing, without the old-timers' guidance, increasingly serious problems: debt, dissension, cold reviews, defecting funders." The New Yorker 02/10/03
The Story On Houston Ballet's New Director Aussie Stanton Welch succeeds 66-year-old Ben Stevenson at the head of Houston Ballet. "One of ballet's brightest young stars, Welch has created several critically successful one-acts at American Ballet Theatre (ABT), San Francisco Ballet and other major companies. His appointment automatically boosts Houston Ballet's international profile, and not just because he's generated good media buzz for nearly a decade." Houston Chronicle 02/09/03
Moving With The Opera Dance has been a part of opera since its beginnings in the 17th century. But "the biggest difference between choreographing for an opera and a concert dance is not time or money — it's the role of the choreographer. 'Your goal is to realize the director's vision, not your own. Different art forms have more in common than people think. What makes good opera also makes good dance — structure and the ability to tell a story." The New York Times 02/09/03
Navigating Iran's Perilous Film Industry Iranian films have found an appreciative audience internationally. But at home, the difficulties of making these distinctive movies is enormous. "In Iran, the subversive subtexts of these provocative films are rattling religious conservatives in government. Iran is poised on the cusp between religious extremism and political reform. Conservatives believe the imbedded politics of new-wave films directly challenge their power by giving voice to the swelling discontent within the country. Enraged by the negative international attention the films bring to Iran's drastic social and political policies, they are attempting to subvert the filmmakers." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/14/03
Proposal For Tax Breaks For Hollywood Spending A recent study estimates that movie and TV productions that have left the US to be shot in Canada have cost the US $10 billion in lost spending, as "studios seek to save cash by taking advantage of more generous tax regimes elsewhere." Now two California politicians have proposed tax breaks to help keep productions in the US. "If passed, the new law would offer a 25% wage tax credit to each employee on wages of up to $25,000." BBC 02/14/03
Why So Serious? Oscar's Death Obsession Nominations for this year's Academy Awards are a sombre lot. "So what's new? Hasn't drama always relied on at least one killing, just to keep the action ticking along? Surely murder has been a staple of storytelling ever since Cain and Abel. But there is a difference with the movie crop of 2003. In film after film favoured by the academy this week, death is not just a useful plot pivot or even a narrative climax. It is a theme, a puzzle probed and examined from the movie's beginning to its end." The Age (Melbourne) 02/14/03
Online Gaming Ban Gets Greece In Trouble Last year Greece passed a law banning online games. The idea was to fight internet gambling. But the ban is problematic - some prominent Greeks have been caught playing, and the European Union says the ban "casts its net too wide, the EU says, ensnaring innocent Internet café owners and computer game companies." Why the ban? "Parliament took this decision spontaneously, and under unbearable pressure to wipe out the 'cancer' of gambling. As a result they voted one of the most excessive, unprepared and extreme laws ever enacted in Europe." Wired 02/13/03
Drawing Little Comfort - Animators Brooding "These are anxious times for film animators, whose business is being roiled by layoffs, new technology and tension between the industry's longtime leader, the Walt Disney Company, and its upstart partner, Pixar Animation Studios. Computer technology is the essence of both the creative and production process of every movie. Those are not soothing words to traditional animators, who have watched jobs dwindle in the wake of computer techniques." The New York Times 02/10/03
Miramax Dominates Oscars Like No Studio In 50 Years After grabbing three of the five Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Miramax Studio has dominated the Academy Awards like no studio has in 50 years. "That achievement is all the more significant because Miramax is not one of the major studios, like Warner Brothers or Columbia Pictures, but an indie start-up begun in 1979 by a pair of hustling, film-loving brothers from Queens, Harvey and Bob Weinstein. Their company grew steadily through the 80's, became an independent division of Disney in 1993 and after today has to be considered the equal of any of the major studios in Hollywood." The New York Times 02/12/03
Who Knows Who Listens? With all the money in the commercial world hanging on the results, TV ratings folks are constantly reinventing the way they measure ratings, and updating the demographics numbers for various networks, stations, and individual shows. And yet, radio, which relies at least as much on advertising revenue as television, has a laughably ineffective method of measuring audience share and ratings. The Arbitron company, which collects radio listenership data, "has long been under siege from its clients — radio stations — for this extraordinarily funky system, which is often blamed for wild spikes up and down in a station's ratings." St. Paul Pioneer Press 02/12/03
Do Automated Radio Stations Degrade Local News? Instant news response has always been one of radio's greatest strengths. However, with consolidation of ownership in the radio industry, many radio stations are automated, programmed from miles away. So when big news happens, it's often impossible for "local" radio stations to report on it. "This debate is particularly acute now, because the FCC is considering whether to let companies own even more stations." New York Daily News 02/11/03
"Chicago" Leads Oscar Nominations "Chicago," the musical, leads Oscar nominations with 13. "Other best-picture nominees for the 75th annual Oscars were the 1860s vengeance epic `Gangs of New York'; the Virginia Woolf-related drama `The Hours'; the fantasy adventure `The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers'; and the Holocaust saga 'The Pianist'. Nominations were announced Tuesday morning Boston Herald (AP) 02/11/03
Hitler Film Too Hot For Berlin Film Fest The film "Max," which portrays Adolph Hitler as a struggling artist in Munich after the First World War has been controversial in Europe. "Hundreds of films are being shown at this week's Berlin Film Festival, but Max was rejected, despite that fact that it has been hailed as a brave, thought-provoking picture with one of the sharpest scripts and some of the best acting you are likely to see this year." The Telegraph (UK) 02/11/03
TV Networks Scan For Appropriateness After Big Events When a national crisis hits, TV networks scramble to examine everything they've got on the schedule to see if it's appropriate. "Promos and scheduled commercials are reexamined as well. The discussions include heads of programming, sales departments, standards and practices and other top officials. The shuttle tragedy on Feb. 1 illustrated the intricacies of these behind-the-scenes machinations. Heavily promoted episodes of fictional dramas were yanked; movies and specials were sidelined." Los Angeles Times 02/10/03
Women Gaining Power At The Box Office Women are featuring much more prominent roles in the movies of the past year. And their box office clout has been climbing. In an industry where male stars are routinely paid more than their female counterparts, the shift in the balance of power is changing the industry Sydney Morning Herald 02/10/03
Orchestra Expenses too High? Here's A Plan - Dump Your Musicians (Now What?) The Colorado Springs Orchestra, which hasn't performed since December because of a million-dollar debt (and a filing for bankruptcy in January) petitioned a court to void its musicians' contracts, arguing that "the contract put an untenable financial burden on the organization." A judge voided it Thursday, and so now what happens? Maybe not much - without a contract the orchestra has no musicians. Without musicians, it'd difficult to play concerts. The orchestra's future is getting cloudier... Denver Post 02/14/03
Where Are The New Protest Songs? "Over a million Americans have already taken to the streets to protest President Bush's insane war on Iraq, so there's clearly an audience for musical dissent. It's not like there's a lack of other pressing issues to write about, either, with our civil liberties getting rolled back in the name of preserving freedom, and Bush and John Ashcroft attempting to return America to the God-fearing values of the '50s — the 1650s, that is." LAWeekly 02/13/03
The Case Of The Disappearing Diva Soprano Sumi Jo's reviews in Opera Australia's "Lucia" were good. She seemed happy, according to her New York agent. So why did she suddenly bolt from Australia before her final performance, without even telling the opera company's management? "The hotel staff told us about a change in her reservation; that's the first we heard of it. She didn't let us or her personal management know, but we gather she left for Rome on doctor's orders." The Age (Melbourne) 02/14/03
Famous Clarinet Factory Destroyed In Fire One of the world's best clarinet factories went up in flames this week. "The dawn blaze at the Leblanc factory in La Couture Boussey, in the Normandy region of France, incinerated 1,400 clarinets, along with the entire stock of spare clarinet fingering keys. The French factory, which has 37 employees, was founded under the name Ets. D. Noblet in 1750 when the flourishing of instrumental music at the court of King Louis XV created a demand for musical instruments." Edmonton Sun (AP) 02/13/03
Online Music Vendor Slashes Prices (Gotta Do Something To Get Customers) Downloading songs from pay services over the internet generally costs 99 cents or more. But though the sites have licenses to sell the music, and a way to get it to customers, there have been too few customers so far. So one of the services is slashing its prices to 49 centers per track. That's below cost, says the company - but you've got to get the customers somehow. Look for increasing competition in the next few months as more companies try to compete. Los Angeles Times 02/13/03
The Song Of Love... "Why is starry-eyed romance so tied to music? Nothing touches people like a good love song. The love theme has been around from the birth of music in general. 'It's a timeless kind of a medium. It runs the gamut of emotion. There's always a little sadness hidden in a love song because it reminds people of something that might not last'. The most-recorded song of all time, after all, is the lovelorn ode, 'Yesterday,' by Paul McCartney, reports the Guinness Book of World Records." Christian Science Monitor 02/14/03
You Send Me - The Top Ten Most Romantic Albums Just in time for Valentine's Day - What are the top ten most romantic albums ever recorded? The Telegraph's pop music critics have their say... (Roberta Flack? Really?) The Telegraph (UK) 02/13/03
Tale Of Two Opera Companies - With English National Opera The Loser While London's Royal Opera House seems to have steadied itself, The English National Opera is going in the other direction. Norman Lebrecht reports that dismay greeted ENO's choice of a new director last week. "The most dispiriting aspect of his appointment is its wilful myopia. Nothing about him inspires faith that Sean Doran will do better than any of the bathroom warblers who are lining up to try for an ENO role in Channel Four's gimmicky Operatunity contest. The idiocy of promoting an untested candidate from a provincial Australian ensemble was amply demonstrated by the fate of Ross Stretton at the ROH." La Scena Musicale 02/11/03
Big Score - Stadium Music Clones Why does music at sports stadiums all sound the same wherever you go? "Turns out that the folks who make decisions about stadium music are less interested in crafting a unique, venue-specific soundscape than in giving the people what they want—and they are not too proud to steal. If fans in Sports Market A love a given song, you can bet that it'll soon be pumping out of speakers in Sports Markets B, C, D, etc. Forget about regional music. These days, stadium music functions pretty much like mainstream radio—a combination of lowest common denominator hits and reliable standards, all played to death until they seem inescapable." Slate 02/12/03
Music and Race In Annapolis The Annapolis (Maryland) City Council is considering a resolution which would chastise the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra for its dismissal last fall of music director Leslie Dunner. The firing made waves among musicians in the ASO, and the orchestra management never made public the reason behind it, leading to no small amount of speculation in the community. The issue that bothers the city council is that Dunner is black, and while no one is overtly crying racism, a number of councilors are hinting at it, much to the ASO's dismay. Baltimore Sun 02/09/03
Digital Music Gets A Bar Code It's so basic, you wonder why no one thought of it earlier. The recording industry has unveiled a system it says will make it easier for artists and record companies to be compensated for digital music purchased online. The system is called GRid (Global Release Identifier,) and it works much like a UPC code attached to each song, allowing the seller to track songs sold. All sides seem to be guardedly optimistic about the system, although privacy advocates worry that the GRid could be used to pursue consumers who buy a tagged song and then allow it to be traded on a song-swapping site. Wired 02/12/03
Opera - MIA On PBS? Opera is disappearing from American television. "The prospect is not a pretty one for full-length opera on PBS. Shadowed by ever-diminishing ratings, opera telecasts are being chased even from the not-for-profit airwaves. This coming season, the most familiar, and once constant, 'content providers' - the Metropolitan and New York City Operas, respectively - find their programming plans in disarray. After twenty-five years of televising three to four operas a year, the Met has only one scheduled for 2002-2003." Opera News 02/03
PEOPLE
http://www.artsjournal.com/people
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Opera On First And Ten Keith Miller played football for the Oakland Raiders and Denver Broncos. But his love of opera has outlasted his football career. "Last fall, he won a full-tuition scholarship to the Academy of Vocal Arts, the prestigious, highly selective, post-graduate incubator for future opera stars. 'You watch a veteran football player like Jerry Rice make a catch, and he moves with such fluid grace and beauty. Hours and hours of practice and preparation make it look completely effortless. Same thing on the opera stage. A singer opens his mouth and out comes a sound that makes time stand still'." Philadelphia Inquirer 02/13/03
Muschamp Uncensored New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp has been one of the loudest voices in the debate over what should fill the huge space currently known as Ground Zero. But now, some observers are charging Muschamp with promoting the designs of architects to whom he has close ties. "Critics love to provoke, of course, but with the Ground Zero discussion down to a pair of finalists chosen by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, another question is being asked: Is Mr. Muschamp—long a lightning rod for criticism—getting too cozy with his advocacy? Some within the architectural community think so." New York Observer (first item) 02/17/03
Welcoming Back One Of The Greats Ben Heppner is back at The Met, after more than a year of recuperation from health problems that stole his famous voice. Heppner looks great (he's lost 60 pounds,) feels better, and this week at New York's famous opera house he gave "a performance greeted by roars of approval from the Met audience and applause from James Levine himself, who put down his baton at one point to join in the ovation." Toronto Star 02/12/03
PUBLISHING
http://www.artsjournal.com/publishing
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A Call For Self-Review The case of the New York Times Book Review running a review of a book by a reviewer who doesn't appear to have read the book prompts Alex Good to propose a solution. Since the regular reader of book review sections can be reasonably sure that some of the reviews are written without reading the books, "have authors write their own reviews. Sir Walter Scott did it. Poe and Whitman did it. And Anthony Burgess did it, prompting Gore Vidal to remark approvingly 'shouldn't there be at least one book review in all of England written by someone who had actually read the book'?" GoodReports 02/10/03
Reading Of Love... What are the ten most romantic books of all time? The Guardian's John Armstrong made a list... The Guardian (UK) 02/14/03
Where's Billy? Poet Laureate Speaks As poets have weighed in against or for an American war in Iraq, one voice has been conspicuously quiet - current poet laureate Billy Collins. So LA Times reporter Tim Rutten emailed Collins and asked. Collins replied: "I have tried to keep the West Wing and the East Wing of the White House as separate as possible because I support what Mrs. Bush has done for the causes of literacy and reading. But as this country is being pushed into a violent confrontation, I find it increasingly difficult to maintain that separation."
Los Angeles Times 02/12/03
Online Competition Sinks Rand McNally Competition from online map services has helped sink the most prominent roadmap publisher. Rand McNally has filed for bankruptcy, hoping to reorganize in a way better able to compete with the online competition. The company was the first - in 1917 - to produce a road map using numbered highways. Yahoo! (AP) 02/13/03
Library Of Congress Gets Digital Money The Library of Congress will get $100 million collect and preserve digital information, including images, CD's, Web pages and electronic journals. The Library has been "lagging in the task of archiving electronica: scholarly journals, books and magazines that are 'born digital'; CD-ROM's; digital photographs, music and films; and millions of miscellaneous pieces of Internet-based material. Digital technology "has spawned a surfeit of information that is extremely fragile, inherently impermanent, and difficult to assess for long-term value." The New York Times 02/13/03
Protesting Poets - Tradition or Knee-Jerk Reaction? "The belief that poets are naturally rebellious and 'progressive' is a fairly recent one. It is equally naive to think that poetic talent confers on its bearer some special grasp of political wisdom. Just in the past hundred years, renowned poets have supported some very bad causes, including communism and fascism. Today, the literary community is overwhelmingly left of center. Is this groundswell of antiwar sentiment among poets driven by well-considered opposition to the war, or is it a knee-jerk reaction?"
Reason 02/11/03
Books Based On Video Games? Better believe it. Games are big business. "Video game sales surpassed movie sales last year, with a staggering $9.4 billion take. Mario, the plucky plumber and star of an 18-year-old series of games, has brought in twice as much revenue as all five Star Wars films combined. The Sims, a digital family whom players manipulate through every stage of life, has sold nearly 20 million units. So it's no surprise that book publishers are turning to video game novels. Yes, novels." Publishers Weekly 02/11/03
The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name? (For Kids?) "Books for younger children about gay relationships are rare. A recent book "Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin" has caused a big debate in England. "Is homosexuality such a tricky subject for parents that they must tactfully broach it through books? I doubt it. I remember my older son asking when he was eight or nine, unprompted by any book, whether love could exist between people of the same sex. And when I said it could, he was curious, unjudgmental. Unlike adults, children accept the world as they find it." The Observer (UK) 02/09/03
New Harry To Get 6.8 Million First Printing At more than 1000 pages, the new Harry Potter - due to hit stores in June - is already big. And it sports a big price too - $29 for a children's book. The first print run will also be huge - 6.8 million copies are being printed. "J.K. Rowling's previous Potter novel, 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,' came out in July 2000 with a first printing of 3.8 million. It sold out within 48 hours and now has over l6 million copies in print." Nando Times (AP) 02/11/03
The Next Children's Book Phenom? An English woman and her daughter are being touted as the next children's book phenomenon. "Lionboy, the tale of a boy who talks to cats, has been created by Louisa Young and her 10-year-old daughter Isabel. Publisher Puffin, the children's arm of Penguin, has signed the pair in a 'substantial' three-book deal said to be 'in the high six figures'. The amount dwarfs the £2,000 paid to J K Rowling for her first Harry Potter tale, The Philosopher's Stone." BBC 02/11/03
Another Large Publisher Moves To Unload Unprofitable Division McClelland & Stewart, which used to bill itself as "the Canadian Publisher," is selling off a small but prestigious press it bought three years ago. "If no buyer can be found, the rights to its backlist of some 60 titles — as well as future projects already in the works — will revert to McClelland & Stewart and MW&R's core employees will lose their jobs. Non-fiction (MW&R's specialty) has been an increasingly hard sell, and the company "blames the loss of book review space in newspapers and magazines, new book-unfriendly programming by the CBC, and fewer and more tough-minded booksellers for the failure of many good non-fiction books to find their intended audience." Toronto Star 02/11/03
Poetic Justice - American Poets Speak Out Against War American poets are becoming an unexpectedly vocal opponent of a war with Iraq. "On Wednesday, in the kind of coordinated grass-roots action unseen since the Vietnam era, poets and writers will stage more than 50 readings in bookstores, libraries, churches and meeting houses across the country, inspired by poet and Copper Canyon Press publisher Sam Hamill, who in an e-mail late last month asked 50 friends and colleagues to dedicate the day to 'Poetry Against the War.' How did one e-mail launch a nationwide protest movement that will stage events through the month and beyond? Los Angeles Times 02/11/03
The New Women Literary Publishers A new generation of women running British literary publishing imprints is making a big success of them. "So what differentiates these women from the men who came before them? Perhaps the fact that they represent 'joined-up' publishing. The new hierarchies comprise editors who understand business, or business people who appreciate books. Unlike their predecessors, they can safely be introduced to an author without saying anything embarrassing." London Evening Standard 02/10/03
Amazon Dumps Ads - It's Prices, Not Ads That Inspire Customers Amazon has decided to dump its TV and print advertising. "Last year, the company spent just under than $50 million on its TV campaign, mainly in big cities right before Christmas. But it ran ads most of last year in Minneapolis and Portland, Ore., to see whether advertising increased sales in those areas." The results? The ads helped push business, but only a bit. Reducing prices was much more effective in driving sales... The New York Times 02/10/03
A Book Reviewer Who Failed To Read The Book... The American book industry is buzzing about a review that ran in The New York Times Book Review January 26 of Whitewater figure (and Clinton friend) Susan McDougal's new memoir. What's amazing about the review, notes Gene Lyons, is that it's quite obvious the reviewer never read the book. "Assuming minimal competence, Lowry simply cannot have done so." MobyLives 02/10/03
Re-Cast And Re-Bait "A look at the latest Broadway casts of 'The Producers,' 'Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune' and 'Oklahoma!' has confirmed one basic truth of the theater: if the chemistry of casting is an elusive and mysterious science, the alchemy of recasting is even more complicated. No matter how much electricity performers give off naturally, when you plug them into roles that don't fit, short-circuiting is to be expected." The New York Times 02/14/03
Recreating A Difficult Time The lives of people in North Yorkshire were ruined a few years ago when foot-and-mouth virus was detected, and livestock by the thousands were destroyed. Now a local theatre has produced a play about that time, using local people. "The non-professional cast have had only minimal rehearsal time, which gives the production a rough-and-ready quality. That doesn't diminish its effect, however. In fact, the lack of 'acting' only adds to the piece's power and the sense that what you are witnessing, rather than a mere performance, is a genuine dialogue between stage and audience."
The Guardian (UK) 02/12/03
Seeing What They Say On Stage - Captioning Catches On An increasing number of English theatres are "introducing a captioned performance in the run of their plays. The obvious beneficiaries of being able to read, and therefore 'hear' performances, are people with hearing loss. But the technique also helps those for whom English is not their first language, but who want to experience and enjoy English theatre - i.e., tourists." Theatrenow.com 02/11/03
Coveting A Charles Manson Poster? A Denver production of a play about murderer Charles Manson is having a poster problem. No sooner do posters for the play go up in local businesses when they're taken down. "The average poster life is about 48 hours, we're finding. They're either coming down because somebody's offended or because they're hanging them on their wall." Rocky Mountain News 02/11/03
End Of The National's Musicals So Nicholas Hytner decrees London's National Theatre won't be producing the big flashy musicals anymore. "This seems, at first blush, somewhat dog-in-the-mangerish of him. As a guest director, he was responsible a few years ago for a production of 'Carousel' that ranks as one of the National's most successful and enlightening musical revivals. It's as if, having had his fun, he's all set to stop other directors - not to mention other audiences - having theirs. He has a point or two, though." These big musical revivals - do they really work artistically? National Post (Canada) 02/11/03
V's Are Okay, But You Can't Print The "P" Word.. Last year when "The Vagina Monologues" came to Sacramento, the Sacramento Bee carried ads for the play - no problem. But evidently the "p" word is a bigger deal. The paper has refused ads for "Puppetry of the Penis," the hot Australian show currently touring the US. Sacramento News & Review 02/06/03
VISUAL ARTS
http://www.artsjournal.com/visualarts
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Cutbacks Cut Museum Hours To Five Hours/Month Museums everywhere are facing funding crunches. But none so bad perhaps, as Copenhagen's Royal Cast Museum, which holds "the world's second-largest collection of plaster casts, and a rich selection of works representing the past 3300 years of art history from ancient Egypt to the 19th century." The Royal Cast's problem is not how to get more visitors, but how to keep them away - funding cuts have shrunk the museum's hours to five a month - the "last Wednesday of every month between the hours of 10.00-15.00." Copenhagen Post 02/14/03
Did Courtauld Take Cash For Paintings? That's The Charge The Getty Museum in LA gave London's Courtauld Institute $10 million towards its endowment. Then the Getty "asked the institute to lend it some of its world-class collection of old masters, Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings and sculptures." Some of the paintings are covered by a bequest that prohibits lending them outside of London, so the Courtauld applied to change the bequest. "The request has upset many leaders of the London art world." Some charghe that "the Courtauld was accepting cash for paintings. 'There has to be a connection between the two things'." The New York Times 02/14/03
Officials Order Islamic-Themed Art Removed Officials in the English town of Walsall have ordered two artworks that reference Islamic themes to be removed from an exhibition. "The digitally manipulated images show a veiled Statue of Liberty clutching the Koran and the Houses of Parliament converted into a mosque. The authority issued a statement saying that, during a period of "heightened sensitivity", and following the events of September 11, the artworks could be viewed as "reinforcing controversy, fear and prejudice".
BBC 02/13/03
Sotheby's/Christie's Class Action Settlement Deadline Approaching Believe you might be owed money from the settlement of the $512 million settlement of the Christie's/Sotheby's price-fixing suit? Time's running out to get in on the settlement... Chicago Clearing 02/13/03
Barnes Collection Future Begins In Court Legal wrangling over the future of the Barnes Collection outside Philadelphia has begun. The foundation is trying to move to Philadelphia, but is being challenged by Lincoln University, which currently appoints board members to oversee the Barnes. The university wants to keep control of the board, and objects to the move. Tuesday a judge granted Lincoln full status in the case, denying the same to other parties that have interests in the Barnes. The Barnes says it will go bankrupt if it is not allowed to move. Philadelphia Inquirer 02/13/03
The First Titian Show In 400 Years (In Britain) Titian was one of the great painters of the Renaissance. The great biographer Vasari concluded that "Titian had invented a new form of art 'made up of bold strokes and blobs, beautiful and astonishing because it makes paintings seem alive." Every painter that has followed him has been influenced by his work in some way. So why, in 400 year, has there never been a British exhibition of his work? Now London's National Gallery has managed to beg and borrow more than 40 of Titian's finest paintings for an exhibition of his work. The Telegraph (UK) 02/13/03
Hot Pictures - Photography makes Its Move Photography is not only what Richard Woodward of the New York Times last year called the 'New New Thing in the art market,' but it is also, says Peter Galassi, chief photography curator at the Museum of Modern Art, 'the medium of the moment.' Despite a slowing economy, auctions continue to see record prices for classic blue-chip images." ArtNews 02/03
Miami Cops Sting Art Thieves A Renoir and a Monet stolen from a Florida mansion in December have been recovered by Miami police. The police used their acting talents as much as their investigative skills to recover the art. "A Miami-Dade officer posed as a seedy high-roller with a penchant for gold jewelry. A private investigator, hired by an insurance company, adopted the role of an Eastern European businessman with a professorial air and an appetite for boosted art treasures. Another Miami-Dade officer posed as a chauffeur-body guard to the artistic impersonator, driving him to the decidedly unswanky Hialeah hotel in a pricey Lincoln..." And the sting was on... Miami Herald 02/12/03
2002's Most Popular Museum Shows What were the most popular art exhibitions of 2002? The Art Newspaper does its annual survey. This year "Van Gogh and Gauguin" was the top show on both sides of the Atlantic. At the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam the show drew almost 7000 visitors a day - for a total of 739,117. The Art Newspaper ([pdf file] 02/07/03
Fixing The 70s...What To Do With Those Ugly Buildings? What to do with all those ugly (usually) concrete buildings of the 1960s and 70s? "Demolition is cathartic and the idea of a blank piece of paper seductive. But though developers can make a profit tearing down 1960s office buildings, elsewhere comprehensive redevelopment has proved hellishly expensive. That sort of money is never going to be available for the arts, though," so how to make arts buildings of that period work? The Telegraph (UK) 02/12/03
Melbourne Museum Proposes Free Admission The Melbourne Museum is asking the state government to eliminate the museum's admission fee. "The museum raises $10 million a year from admission fees but visitor numbers have consistently fallen below expectations. The museum faces a $6 million deficit by June 2004, if nothing is done, despite a management shake-up in December when three senior executives lost their jobs." Museum officials believe if the museum is free it will attract more visitors and customers to the cafes and gift shops. The Age (Melbourne) 02/12/02
Chicago Art Institute Shrinks Plans The Chicago Art Institute is shrinking its plans for an addition designed by Renzo Piano. "When museum officials announced plans for the wing in 2001, they envisioned a five-level structure of about 290,000 square feet, with 75,000 square feet of galleries. But the latest plans, approved Monday, foresee a slimmed-down structure of 220,000 square feet, with 60,000 square feet of galleries. Museum officials said they have raised $100 million. The project's construction cost is now placed at $198 million." Chicago Tribune 02/11/03
4000-Year-Old Body Giving Up Clues To Stonehenge A man buried near Stonehenge 4000 years ago is giving a number of clues about the monument. "The first scientific results, from a burial already regarded as astonishing, are bewildering archaeologists but give clues which could solve the continuing mystery, despite innumerable theories and experiments, of how Stonehenge's four-tonne bluestones were transported 240 miles from Preseli in the Welsh mountains." The Guardian (UK) 02/11/03
Reports Of My Death Are... Why do critics so often rush to declare the "death" of painting? "The supposed death of painting springs in part from another misbegotten belief that each new art movement or technology renders earlier ones obsolete, that it is impossible to go backward once something has gone forward. Among the many holes in this theory is its simple defiance of history. The arts long have been cyclical, not just a forward unbroken continuum, and artists frequently look to the past for inspiration and reinvigoration." Denver Post 02/09/03
Tycoon Gives Hamilton Museum $50 Million Art Collection Toronto tycoon Joey Tanenbaum is donating $50 million worth of 19th Century European art to the Art Gallery of Hamilton. "Tanenbaum, a contrarian investor in art as in business, has amassed a flamboyant collection that probes some of the more eccentric corners of art production in that period. Since the 1980s, the pendulum has swung in art scholarship of the period, with interest turning from the well-known work of the Impressionists to the works of French academic and salon painters such as Jean Léon Gérôme and William Bouguereau, as well as Symbolists Odilon Redon and Gustave Doré, and the marketplace has followed suit." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/10/03
Painting Lost In Crash Of Space Shuttle "One of the treasured objects lost in the Columbia space shuttle disaster was a painting of the Earth as it might look from the moon, created 61 years ago by a Jewish teenager in a Nazi concentration camp." Los Angeles Times 02/09/03
A Rebirth Of Roman Architecture Rome is so full of classic architecture, modern Romans have mostly shrugged their shoulders and said - can't top that. "So it may be a surprise to learn that Rome is regaining its creative momentum. Over the past several years, the city has seen the launch of a series of major building projects designed to update its cultural profile. The first of these, a $157-million complex of three concert halls by celebrated Italian architect Renzo Piano, was unveiled in December. Two major civic projects by American Modernist Richard Meier are under construction." Los Angeles Times 02/09/03
Compromises On The Way To A Design For Lower Manhattan These are serious architects vying to design a replacement for the World Trade Center. "But the selection also underscores the degree to which commercial considerations and political maneuverings will determine what the final master plan will look like. What the Libeskind and Think designs share, to different degrees, is an ability to bend to the political needs of the various interests that control the site's future, in particular downtown's commercial power brokers. And in that sense, the designs say less about our collective ideals than about the limits of the democratic process when it comes to building in New York." Los Angeles Times 02/10/03
WTC - Questions Of Design/Process "In light of the emerging power struggle that will determine how much of the grand designs for ground zero get built, any effort to assess the finalists may come off like an exercise in aesthetic hairsplitting. But as the redevelopment officials who sponsored the competition vie with real estate developers and others who remain intent on overstuffing the 16-acre site with commercial space, such an analysis becomes essential, if only because it reminds us what this exercise is all about." Chicago Tribune 02/09/03
Spanish Government Refuses to Talk About Painting Looted By Nazis An American citizen claims that a Pissarro painting in a Spanish museum was stolen from his family by the Nazis. "But despite a persistent claim to the Pissarro painting, the Spanish authorities say that the museum is the legal owner and that any claim should be made in the courts, a response that has drawn criticism from American lawyers familiar with the claim. 'The reaction of the Spanish government is quite astonishing. Why should a government that already has a law relating to the return of Holocaust property refuse to have a discussion on the issue'?" The New York Times 02/10/03
Double Down - Curators Play Cards To Get Art To convince collectors of important Picasso and Matisse art to loan their work for a show, curators started playing cards with them. "The object of the game? To create sparks for a three-city show in which the two artists would face off on the gallery walls. Collectors got to shuffle the deck, juxtaposing the cards in various ways. But the game always ended the same way: the collectors were asked to part with their card, their art, for a year. It worked." The New York Times 02/09/03
Cleveland Museum's $225 Million Addition Even when you're spending $225 million for an "extension" of a museum, there are trade-offs. Will the Cleveland Museum get its money's worth? "For me, the answer at this point is a resounding yes. Rafael Vinoly's design, which would cost $225 million to build, is undergirded by a precise, diamond- hard logic that mar ries dramatic physical changes with a new vi sion about the muse um's potential. The key is whether Vinoly can follow through with details big and small that will make all the difference in the final product. This is no minor question."
The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 02/09/03
Architects Buzzing Over Muschamp's Flip-Flop On Libeskind Last December New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp wrote of Daniel Libeskind's plan for the World Trade Center site that "If you are looking for the marvelous, here's where you will find it. Daniel Libeskind's project attains a perfect balance between aggression and desire. It will provoke many viewers to exclaim that yes, this design is actually better than what was there before." Then this past Friday he wrote that "It [Libeskind's idea] is an astonishingly tasteless idea. It has produced a predictably kitsch result." Architectrue watchers are wondering what happened, and some are angry... Archlog 02/07/03
A Poll On The Finalists Says... So which of the two competing finalists to design a replacement for the World Trade Center do people like? Hmmmmn...one poll says neither (by a wide margin). NY1 02/09/03
Painting Confirmed As Van Gogh Sells For $500,000 A painting thought to be anonymous, but revealed to have been by Van Gogh has sold for $500,000. A Japanese auction company was "planning to auction off the small portrait of a peasant woman for between 10,000 and 20,000 yen ($83 to $167) after struggling to establish the identity of the artist. But a last-minute fax from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam confirmed that the picture was an early work by the Dutch impressionist master." BBC 02/08/03
Curry Kicker Cancels Project A British performance artist was paid £12,000 to kick a carton of curry through the middle of the town of Bedford. But the event was canceled today for "fear of too much interest" and large crowds. The proposed stunt got a lot of publicity this week after controversy when some declared the idea a "waste of taxpayers money." The concept behind the take-away box performance was "to highlight rowdy Saturday night behaviour" and "destabilise and question this revelry by kicking a take away curry and carton from one end of the High Street to the other." BBC 02/09/03
