Ideas Venice - A Theme Park Of The Past Venice - it looks so old, so preserved, so of another time. And it is. But it has been a battle - between those who believe it should always look the way it looked and those who wanted the city to evolve. So Venice now sits a prisoner of the past - but not really. Like all theme parks, Venice must be maintained and restored to keep the illusions alive. "In 1966 a great flood deluged Venice, and when it was repaired it looked exactly as it had done. After decades of restoration it looks as well as it ever has. Its international audience luxuriates in Venice. But the numbers of tourists rise uncontrollably and the city is flooded with monotonous regularity." The Economist 03/01/03 Posted: 03/04/2003 1:19 am Visual Arts Australia's Booming Art Market Australians spent $100 million on fine art last year, "with a record $80 million passing through the hands of the nation's art auctioneers. Despite the uncertain economic and world political climate, that record could be broken this year as well-to-do newcomers who boosted sales last year by taking their money out of the sharemarket continue their splurge on paintings, prints and drawings. Salesroom turnover last year was up by $10 million on the previous year and four times greater than a decade earlier." Sydney Morning Herald 03/04/03 Posted: 03/04/2003 12:53 am UK Churches Call On American Museums To Return Artwork Two English churches are demanding the return of three priceless tomb brasses stolen from the churches' flagstone floors in the 19th century. The brasses were discovered in the vaults of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. "The churches remain scarred by the holes left in the floor where they were prised out" and the churches want them restored. But a spokesman for the churches says the museums have denied the request. The Guardian (UK) 03/04/03 Posted: 03/04/2003 12:05 am Bay Area Art Schools Call Off Merger The San Francisco Art Institute and the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland have called off a previously announced merger. "The merger would have produced one of the nation's largest fully accredited, independent school of visual arts outside of New York City. Currently, the Art Institute has about 650 students and 137 faculty members; California College of Arts and Crafts has about 1,300 students and 370 teachers." The schools said that after much negotiation, "at the end of the day, out of respect for the two institutions, we concluded it just couldn't be done." San Jose Mercury-News 03/03/03 Posted: 03/03/2003 5:22 pm Music Setting The Price Of Music "After years of denial and confusion, belligerence and panic, most of the big record labels have coalesced around a set of prices at which they will make almost all of their music available to an ever-expanding array of legal online services." The New York Times 03/04/03 Posted: 03/04/2003 7:54 am Houston Symphony To Musicians: Take Pay Cut Or We'll make You Take It The Houston Symphony said Monday that "the organization is dealing with a 'flat-out crisis' in its finances and the 97 musicians need to accept an average 7.4 percent pay cut. The players have until Saturday to decide or risk having the society impose the cut, which it has authority to do under U.S. labor law. Musicians still would have the right to strike." Nando Times (AP) 03/03/03 Posted: 03/04/2003 1:06 am Berlin's Opera Battles "The future of government-sponsored opera in Berlin may be in the balance. In practice, even more is at stake. In a peculiar way over the last three years the opera story has become a gauge of the still volatile relations between the two halves of this long-divided city and even a test of Germany's willingness to give Berlin the profile of a genuine capital city." The New York Times 03/04/03 Posted: 03/04/2003 12:47 am Time To Abolish Queen's Master Musician? With the death of the latest Master of the Queen's Music, maybe it's time to abolish the position. "There is little evidence that Her Majesty takes much interest in music (Her website finds room for the Master of the Horse but not, alas, of the Music). As with the poet laureate, one's heart bleeds for anyone given the unenviable task of having to write memorial verse or songs for most royal or state occasions. So the kindest thing might be quietly to declare the job redundant. That would be a shame. There have been many undistinguished composers since the first Master in 1626, but also many distinguished ones - including Bax and Elgar." The Guardian (UK) 03/04/03 Posted: 03/04/2003 12:15 am Reinvent It - Maybe A Musician Laureate? Maybe it's time to revitalize the idea of a Queen's Musician. "Of course the whole notion of having a master of the queen's music is an anachronism, especially with a royal family that shows little obvious interest in the arts, but then so, equally, is the role of the poet laureate, and the present holder of that post, Andrew Motion, at least has shown how a nebulous role can be used effectively. There are plenty of issues that a publicly confident and committed master of the queen's music could get behind, numerous ways in which he or she could promote new music and expand its audience." The Guardian (UK) 03/04/03 Posted: 03/04/2003 12:13 am UK Government Backs Down On Live Performnce Licensing British culture minister Kim Howells has bowed to objections by musicians and withdrawn a bill that would have required pubs to license live music. "Musicians believe the bill would have a devastating impact on the number of venues where they can perform. Says Howells: "We saw it as a civilising bill, relaxing licensing laws, cutting down on bureaucracy. It was only when it started going through the Lords we realised how it would be interpreted." The Guardian (UK) 03/04/03 Posted: 03/04/2003 12:11 am Taking Aim At Norah - Critics Pile On Norah Jones Everyone's focusing on Norah Jones, who won big at the Grammys last week. "Sure, listeners worldwide love her, scooping up 6 million copies of her debut album, 'Come Away With Me.' Yes, the album has been on The Billboard 200 chart for 52 weeks. And fine, Grammy voters awarded her best new artist, best pop vocal album, album of the year, record of the year and song of the year honors." So why are critics taking pot shots at her? Chicago Tribune 03/02/03 Posted: 03/03/2003 11:20 pm Arts Issues Who Will Get To Control Innovation? Has "digital rights management" which allows copyright holders to control access to their work, gone too far, choking off innovation? And is public access to the airwaves something that should be open or should the broadcast band be tightly owned and managed? Two conferences in California last week chewed over increasingly complicated issues of control of ideas and innovation. The New York Times 03/02/03 Posted: 03/03/2003 11:11 pm People Atlanta Opera GM Resigns Russell Allen has resigned as general manager of the Atlanta Opera. "Allen suffered a heart attack Aug. 13 and underwent quadruple-bypass surgery two days later. His recuperation time was brief, however, as he was back on the job by the end of September." At;lanta Journal-Constitution 03/04/03 Posted: 03/03/2003 11:42 pm Ronald Lauder - Looted Art Champion Faces Question About Own Collection "As chairman of the Commission for Art Recovery of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder has been a patron of scattered efforts to help Jews reclaim what had been theirs. In testimony before Congress, he called these stolen artworks 'the last prisoners of war.' But in an interview he also conceded that he had artworks in his collection whose provenance was at best ambiguous and at worst unknowable." The New York Times 02/27/03 Posted: 03/03/2003 10:38 pm Theatre West End Theatres Start Program To Fight Racism Several theatres in London's West End have banded together to start a program to promote diversity in theatre management. "There is a general feeling that theatres have got to sharpen up their act. They've got to diversify, they've got to refresh themselves. There was a danger of theatres being elitist, being out of touch and failing to reflect multicultural society. There's quite a recruitment crisis and this is a real opportunity to recruit high quality people." BBC 03/04/03 Posted: 03/04/2003 8:11 am Broadway-In-A-Can? The consequences of a musicians strike on Broadway could be big. "There are about 325 musicans working in the 19 musicals running on Broadway, but overall the shows are responsible for most of the 6,000 people employed by the industry each season. The theatre scene is responsible for $4.4 billion (US) pouring into N.Y.'s economy." So the shows are practicing using canned music in case musicians walk later this week. Reports are that "aasts of shows such as 'Chicago' and 'Thoroughly Modern Millie' had no trouble in performing to the canned music. Over at 'La Boheme', however, it was a different story, with the rehearsal coming to a disastrous halt. Whereas it's one thing to perform a tap routine to pre-recorded sound, singing Puccini is obviously another matter." Toronto Star 03/03/03 Posted: 03/04/2003 1:00 am Cleaning Up London's West End A couple of months ago Charles Spencer wrote a column complaining that London's West End had seriously deteriorated and that the area was so rundown it was discouraging theatre-goers from going to the theatre. "It is too early to talk of a Broadway-like renaissance of the West End," he writes now. "A zero-tolerance crackdown on vagrancy, loutish drunks and aggressive begging in the West End is urgently required." But things seem to be getting better... The Telegraph (UK) 03/04/03 Posted: 03/04/2003 12:37 am Previously: London's Sick Theatre District Who wants to go to London's West End theatre district anymore? "Whether you travel by car or train, it is a nightmare to get there, and when you arrive the place is squalid. The streets are filthy and poorly lit, there are horribly persistent beggars everywhere, and the place is overrun by groups of marauding yoof, out on the booze and aggressive and foul-mouthed with it. Drug-dealing takes place more or less openly, and the atmosphere is deeply depressing when it isn't downright threatening. Of a policeman on the beat there is hardly ever a sign." The Telegraph (UK) 01/07/03 Keith Haring, The Musical "Radiant Baby" the new musical about the life of artist Keith Haring, opens on Broadway. Nice try, but "the show never brings either Haring or his world into crisp focus, relying instead on a blurry shorthand of artist-bio clichés (the agony, the ecstasy, the egomania, the triumph of the creative spirit) and composite social archetypes. Haring's insistently vital art is so spectacularly in evidence — thanks to the splendid projection designs of Batwin and Robin Productions — which only underscores the musical's limitations." The New York Times 03/03/03 Posted: 03/03/2003 11:26 pm Publishing Minneapolis May Postpone New Central Library Minneapolis civic leaders are considering postponing construction of the new downtown central library. "Though voters approved the $122.5 million project, the library system faces a major problem: A $25 million shortfall in its operating budget over the next 10 years, even before likely cuts in state aid are taken into account. The shortfall is roughly equal to the entire cost of running the system this year." The Star-Tribune (Minneapolis) 03/04/03 Posted: 03/04/2003 7:36 am Wouldn't You Like To Write A Children's Book Too? So Madonna's got a contract for a series of children's books. That's got Malene Arpe thinking about other "role models" who might have a future in kiddie books. How about "Chemistry For Toddlers by Saddam Hussein, "The Silly Silly Voices In My Head Head" by Phil Spector, or "Look At You! You Forgot Your Pants" by Pee-Wee Herman? Toronto Star 03/04/03 Posted: 03/04/2003 12:56 am Alexandria Library Wants To Offer All Books In The World - Online The ancient library at Alexandria claimed to own copies of all the books in the world. Now "the directors of the new Alexandria Library, which christened a steel and glass structure with 250,000 books in October, have joined forces with an American artist and software engineers in an ambitious effort to make virtually all of the world's books available at a mouse click. Much as the ancient library nurtured Archimedes and Euclid, the new Web venture also hopes to connect scholars and students around the world." The New York Times 03/01/03 Posted: 03/03/2003 11:18 pm Fire In Alexandria Library Fire broke out in the new Alexandria Library on Sunday. "No books or Bibliotheca Alexandrina resources were damaged, according to a library spokesman. Bibliotheca Alexandrina was inaugurated in October amid great fanfare. The £150m project aspires to reflect the spirit of the ancient Alexandria library, which was founded around 295BC by Ptolemy." The Guardian (UK) 03/03/03 Posted: 03/03/2003 11:12 pm The Year In British Publishing Last year was a pretty good one for British publishers. "There are two universal anxieties for British publishers, one shared with their American counterparts, one not: the shared problem is that of an essentially flat book market, with sales that are simply not keeping pace with a growing population. The anguish that is special to British publishers is the extraordinary pressure on margins created by the ever-increasing push for higher discounts, especially by supermarkets that sell books." Publishers Weekly 03/03/03 Posted: 03/03/2003 11:06 pm Media Screen Actors Guild Issues Sttement Against Blacklisting The Screen Actors Guild has issued a strong statement warning against an industry blacklist of those who oppose war with Iraq. "While passionate disagreement is to be expected in such a debate, a disturbing trend has arisen in the dialogue. Some have recently suggested that well-known individuals who express 'unacceptable' views should be punished by losing their right to work. This shocking development suggests that the lessons of history have, for some, fallen on deaf ears. We deplore the idea that those in the public eye should suffer professionally for having the courage to give voice to their views. Even a hint of the blacklist must never again be tolerated in this nation." Screen Actors Guild 03/03/03 Posted: 03/04/2003 7:58 am CBC Funding - Down? Up? Who Knows? When the Canadian government announced this year's budget for the CBC last week, it looked as though the national broadcaster was in line for a $50 million cut. Then Heritage minister Sheila Copps indicated that with supplemental funding, the CBC would be funded at an all-time high. Then a couple more budget figures came out, and clarifications failed to make things less cloudy. So will the CBC be getting more or less money? Unclear - even the CBC itself seems bewildered... The Globe & Mail (Canada) 03/03/03 Posted: 03/03/2003 11:58 pm