War and the Power of Images Everyone in America knows that the U.S. is currently fighting a war in Iraq, and that American soldiers are dying there on a regular basis. So why the big brouhaha over whether photos showing the flag-draped coffins of the dead are published stateside? Because, says Joanne Ostrow, images of war have always been the most powerful method of swaying public opinion in times of war. "The debate hasn't changed since Matthew Brady's 1862 battlefield photos of the Civil War. Printed as etchings in newspapers, they shocked the nation." The coffin photos, however respectful, have the same capacity to bring the horror of war home in a starkly visible way, at a time when political leadership would prefer that Americans keep a pragmatic outlook. Denver Post 04/29/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 6:33 am
The Confusions Of Multiculturalism "We live in a multicultural society now, right? Well, I think we deserve a lot better from it. On the other hand, maybe Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, is right when he says we should abandon multiculturalism completely. Encourage everyone, immigrants and asylum seekers included, to embrace English culture and history as their own. Perhaps that will help to remove stereotypes for ever. But that brings up a new set of problems. What form of English culture do we all adopt? In fact, what is English culture? I do not know what that is." The Guardian (UK) 04/29/04
Posted: 04/28/2004 9:27 pm
Boston Museum Gets Site Approval For Expansion "The projected expansion of [Boston's] Museum of Fine Arts moved forward this week when the Boston Redevelopment Authority unanimously approved the museum's site plan during a key hearing. The approval gives the museum permission to start work on a plan that will nearly double its size, as well as reestablish entrances on the south... The museum is a year away from breaking ground on the first phase of the expansion, which is expected to be completed by 2009. It will add galleries, new courtyards and -- its most architecturally significant feature -- a crystal spine running through and over the existing building. A planned $425 million capital campaign will pay for the project." Boston Globe 04/29/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 6:17 am
Wolbers Wins Beck's Futures "Saskia Olde Wolbers has won the £24,000 Beck's Futures art prize. The 33-year-old was handed the cheque by Yoko Ono last night at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London." The Guardian (UK) 04/28/04
Posted: 04/28/2004 9:20 pm
London's Giant Pickle Norman Foster's new skyscraper has "slipped so easily into the London skyline that it comes as a shock to discover that it officially opened only yesterday. That is the trouble with a very, very tall building. It takes so long to go up that, by the time it is finished, you feel you’ve known it for ever." The Telegraph (UK) 04/29/04
Posted: 04/28/2004 9:13 pm
Could Picasso Set A Record? Some auction watchers are saying (no self-interest there) that Picasso's "Boy With a Pipe" might set a record sale price. "Dealers and experts are betting that it could fetch as much as $100 million next week, eclipsing the world record set in 1990 when van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" sold at Christie's in New York for $82.5 million." The New York Times 04/29/04
Posted: 04/28/2004 9:07 pm
Spam Spam Spam Spam... (It's A Hit) Minnesota's Spam Museum has become an oddball hit. "Opened in September 2001 on the site of an old Kmart, the Spam Museum has become something of a kitsch icon throughout the Midwest. The folks at the museum have taken out billboards up and down I-90 with quirky messages like: "The Spam Museum: Believe the Hype" and "Find Out What's Inside." OpinionJournal.com 04/29/04
Posted: 04/28/2004 8:44 pm
Met Opera Still Looking For Radio Funding Last weekend, the Metropolitan Opera broadcast its final live performance of the season, the last time the series will carry a sponsorship credit for Texaco, which kept the opera on the air for more than six decades. And while the Met has found money to cover the cost of next season's broadcasts, the long-term future of the wildly expensive series is still very much in jeopardy. Met chairwoman Beverly Sills is spearheading the effort to solicit donations for future seasons, and her basic strategy is a simple appeal to the warm, gauzy memories of all the moneyed folks who grew up listening to the Met. Miami Herald (AP) 04/29/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 6:40 am
Cleveland Orch Spurns Proms Over Web Payments The Cleveland Orchestra has declined an invitation to perform at the BBC Proms because its concerts would be webcast on a BBC website with no additional payment to the Cleveland musicians. Norman Lebrecht cannot believe his ears: "Open access is what makes the Proms a magnet for the world's great orchestras who, after the formalities of their overlong seasons, feast upon its effervescent atmosphere like nomads at an oasis. The trade-off is that everyone does it on the cheap... We are not talking here of the poor and downtrodden of the musical earth. The basic wage in the Cleveland Orchestra is $97,090 per annum, twice the going rate for London musicians and for less than half the work." La Scena Musicale 04/28/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 5:33 am
Rattle Attacked By German Critic Is Simon Rattle's honeymoon as director of the Berlin Philharmonic over? He's been attacked by a leading critic. "The article, entitled "Simon von Rattle" compared the conductor to the dictatorial Herbert von Karajan, the Berlin Phil's last director but one, and described Sir Simon's music-making with the orchestra as "uninspiring", "insubstantial" and "transparent"." The Guardian (UK) 04/29/04
Posted: 04/28/2004 9:22 pm
Last Days Of Scottish Opera? "The odds are that the new production of La Bohème, which opens tonight at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, will be the last time that Scottish Opera performs as a full-scale, year-round national organisation. The crisis has a long, bitter history. Nobody has ever doubted that Scottish Opera has been pitifully under-funded for the job it is required to do, but all attempts to rationalise its operations have foundered." The Telegraph (UK) 04/29/04
Posted: 04/28/2004 9:17 pm
Ontario Orchestra Decides Not To Rehire Music Director Several months ago the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony fired music director Martin Fischer-Dieskau. But an uprising among the orchestra's supporters won a commitment to re-hire him. After months of negotiations, though, the orchestra has decided not to rehire him. "Negotiations between Fischer-Dieskau, the symphony board and management fell apart over the weekend, with the symphony eventually deciding Tuesday evening that it could not meet with the Berlin-based conductor's demands, which reportedly included full artistic leadership of the symphony." CBC 04/28/04
Posted: 04/28/2004 8:56 pm
iTunes At One "When Apple launched its online music store in the US on 28 April 2003, few could have predicted the impact it would have. But a year later, iTunes has helped transform the fortunes of the flagging global music industry, selling about 70 million songs and proving, once and for all, that there is a market for paid-for music online." BBC 04/28/04
Posted: 04/28/2004 8:42 pm
Is Variable Ticket Pricing Good For Business? A limited study of Broadway ticket pricing practices, under which two people sitting in the same section of a given theater may have paid wildly different prices depending on when and where they bought their tickets, suggests that, contrary to some industry concerns, variable pricing doesn't seem to make consumers unhappy. "[C]onsumers were largely unaffected by price discrimination relative to uniform pricing, while producers experienced a 5 percent increase in profits... [O]n average, it looks like it didn't make much difference to consumers whether there was price discrimination or not." BusinessWire 04/29/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 5:50 am
Atlantic Theatre Festival Cancels Season Nova Scotia's Atlantic Theatre Festival has canceled its 2004 season. "Not enough money put our organization into a tailspin of not being sure where we stood. We didn't have funds to pay staff, to pay the artistic community, and putting it all together -- morally and from a fiscally responsible point of view -- we could not proceed." CBC 04/28/04
Posted: 04/28/2004 8:51 pm
The Writing Soldiers A new National Endowment for the Arts program aims to teach soldiers how to write. The program will involve some popular literary stars. "Workshops in fiction and non-fiction will be open to U.S. military personnel and their families, at bases across America and elsewhere in the world. The instructors will include poet Marilyn Nelson, as well as Tom Clancy, the author of best-selling technothrillers, and the award winning novelists and short story writers Bobbie Ann Mason and Tobias Wolff." Voice of America 04/28/04
Posted: 04/28/2004 8:47 pm
Goodman: PBS Sucks, And It's Time We Faced It As San Francisco's PBS affiliate, KQED, celebrates its 50th birthday, Tim Goodman has decided that its time for PBS supporters to face the obvious fact that the network and its affiliates are visionless blobs on the cultural landscape, fulfilling no mission and serving no real viewership. "This is essentially what PBS is now: A channel for people who don't get cable. There's a reason PBS' viewing audience is moving beyond age 55 -- much of the core audience, loyal to a fault, believes PBS is the only alternative to dumb or bad network television series. But these are people using 8-track tapes in a CD world." San Francisco Chronicle 04/29/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 6:55 am
Edwards Savoring His Martyr Role Ever since National Public Radio announced that it was replacing Bob Edwards as host of "Morning Edition," listeners have been howling. NPR is standing by its decision to take the program "in a new direction," but senior managers are admitting that they could not have bungled the situation more completely. For Edwards's part, he seems to be enjoying the attention, and is making no effort to alleviate the discomfort of his NPR bosses. From the listener who set up a "Save Bob Edwards" website to the defendant at the Tyco fraud trial who began badgering the NPR reporter covering him, the NPR faithful are creating a groundswell, and Edwards is loving every minute of it. Baltimore Sun 04/29/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 6:08 am
RIAA Sues 477 More The Recording Industry Association of America has sued another 477 alleged illegal file-swappers, who the industry claims are undermining commerce and causing a prolonged slump in music sales. The new round of lawsuits brings the total number of sued swappers to 2,454. Wired 04/29/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 5:38 am
BBC To Up Culture Programming The BBC says it will dramatically increase its arts anc culture programming. "A new arts programme called The Culture Show will air on BBC Two along with a media analysis show on BBC Four. BBC Radio 2 will relaunch its weekly arts strand and increase the number of hours it dedicates to the arts to more than 100 hours per year." BBC 04/28/04
Posted: 04/28/2004 8:39 pm
PA Ballet Launches $10 mil Drive "In an effort to help the Pennsylvania Ballet leap higher onto the national dance stage, company officials yesterday launched a $10 million capital campaign. It is hoped that the money, $6 million of which has already been raised or promised, will secure the troupe's place among the country's most prominent companies by funding more touring, more dancers, and more new ballets. The company would also like to add office and studio space, expand its artistic repertoire, and create a substantial endowment." Philadelphia Inquirer 04/29/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 6:51 am
