Advertising - Losing The Message Businesses spend $1 trillion a year on advertising. But "the advertising industry is passing through one of the most disorienting periods in its history. This is due to a combination of long-term changes, such as the growing diversity of media, and the arrival of new technologies, notably the internet. Consumers have become better informed than ever before, with the result that some of the traditional methods of advertising and marketing simply no longer work." The Economist 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 10:20 pm
Who's Who Of UK Intellectuals Prospect Magazine lists Britain's top 100 public intellectuals. Its most interesting value is comparing it with lists of decades past. "The list may also seem curiously old-fashioned. It offers little room for the new "isms" that have broken through in recent decades: feminism, multiculturalism, postmodernism. There aren't many young voices: few under 45, hardly anyone under 40. It is very middle-aged, and also very male and very white." Prospect 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 9:53 pm
Massachusetts History Museum Drapes Stone Memorials A hundred years ago, descendents of Massachusetts settlers commemorated their battles with local native Americans with stone markers. Now the local history museum is covering up those markers. "The aim is to drape the rhetoric of the 1870s and 1880s, when the museum was established, with a more modern version of events in the late 1600s and early 1700s that no longer denigrates one-time foes. 'It was hard for me and other members of the staff to rationalize the words. Phrases like 'bloodthirsty savages' are hurtful to people'." Newsday (AP) 06/25/04
Posted: 06/25/2004 7:45 am
Scottish Museum To Return Maori Artifacts "Three tattooed Maori warrior heads that have been hidden away in a Glasgow museum vault for up to a century are to be returned to their native New Zealand. The somewhat grisly relics have never been on display and have lain in storage in Kelvingrove art gallery and museum." The Guardian (UK) 06/25/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 10:43 pm
Rosenberg To Quit SF Opera Pamela Rosenberg is stepping down as director of San Francisco Opera. "Rosenberg has spent more time and energy than she had expected in efforts to rectify the company's financial problems. In the face of steep budget deficits, she has had to scale back the scope of the company's activities by almost 25 percent, cancel some new productions and make across-the-board staff cuts." San Francisco Chronicle 06/25/04
Posted: 06/25/2004 7:41 am
- Rating The Rosenberg Regime And what will be the legacy of Pamela Rosenberg's three-year reign at San Francisco Opera? "Rosenbergism -- the complex blend of unusual repertoire, edgy musical values and concept-driven, psychologically fine-tuned dramaturgy that has defined her tenure so far -- hasn't been a complete success, but it hasn't been tried and found wanting, either. The truth is that it was never completely tried at all." San Francisco Chronicle 06/25/04
Posted: 06/25/2004 7:28 am
US Senate Asks NJ Symphony For Violin Deal Records A US Senate committee has asked the New Jersey Symphony to turn over all records concerning a sale of 30 rare instruments for $17 million. The seller - Herb Axelrod - has been arrested for tax fraud, and the Senate is investigating abuse of charitable deductions. Meanwhile Axelrod's lawyer is denying any wrongdoing. "Herb Axelrod didn't cheat anybody. The fact is, he hasn't taken a dime in charitable deductions with respect to the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. All the good he has done with respect to these violins has been denigrated unfairly." Newark Star-Ledger 06/24/04
Posted: 06/25/2004 6:36 am
A Prescient Guantánamo Opera Keith Bernstein set out to write an opera about torture at Guantánamo, but he had no idea the images he imagined for his plot would hit so close to home. "The whole scenario of the opera has flooded the world since it was written to a degree that we could not have predicted. Or perhaps we all knew subconsciously that Abu Ghraib was inevitable, and it just took a librettist of sufficient prescience to imagine it." The Guardian (UK) 06/25/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 10:34 pm
A Jazz Label That Makes Money Blue Note Records, owned by another big company, EMI, is a legend in jazz recording. But though jazz isn't a big seller, Blue Note is consistently profitable. "That financial stability gives CEO Bruce Lundvall and the label's musicians the freedom to follow their vision and to take risks. It also means Blue Note is a force for enriching and continuing the genre. Last week, it picked up another award for Best Jazz Label from the Jazz Journalists Association - an indication that even with the addition of a broader range of artists, it hasn't lost its roots." Christian Science Monitor 06/25/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 4:42 pm
Seattle Arts Group Recruits Audience For Reviews Seattle contemporary performance presenter On the Boards signs up audience members to blog reviews of its performances. Powered by ArtsJournal, the blogs stimulate interaction with OtB's audience. Sure there have been negative reviews mixed in with the good, but OtB figured that "we want to offer a place for our audience to exchange ideas, and that's what it's turning out to be." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 06/25/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 11:13 pm
NY's Indian Invasion Broadway's Bombay Dreams is only the latest piece of Indian culture to hit New York. "Jazz musicians have been absorbing ideas and collaborating with Indian musicians at least since the 1960's. Hip-hop has latched on to Indian rhythms. In New York's clubs, the sounds of Bollywood and other South Asian fusions have been drawing crowds for years: some to dance, some to listen, some to mingle and network." The New York Times 06/25/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 10:54 pm
Will Non-Profits Be Reclassified As "Political Committees"? "The Federal Election Commission is examining whether to classify 501(c)(3) organizations, a category covering arts groups, as "political committees." "Calling nonprofits 'political committees' would require them "to register and report on activities that are currently legal but require no registration or reporting." Backstage 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 10:14 pm
Americans For The Arts Sues Bank Americans for the Arts is suing the bank that managed the $100 million bequest from Ruth Lilly. "The lawsuit alleges that the bank, rather than selling the stock after the creation of the trusts in January 2002, held on to it during a time when the share price declined from $75 to $47. The result, he said, lowered the overall value of the gift by some $25 million." Backstage 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 10:08 pm
Artists, Not Buildings Why is the Austraian government of Victoria spending most of its money on culture on building buildings? "Each year, arts and cultural buildings and the bureaucracy required to manage them, suck more and more out of the arts budget. This is not to say that we should tear down these buildings, but there must be more provision in the budget for artists to make the work that complements them; some balance between the desire for infrastructure and a genuine attempt to support the industry for which these buildings are created." The Age (Melbourne) 06/25/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 4:23 pm
Culture In Canada - An Election Issue Culture has become an issue in the Canadian federal election. The parties have staked out their positions. "In this election, culture is about owning our own airwaves, being able to tell our own stories and the ability of performers to make a living in our country. These are the issues we put to the five major political parties." CBC 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 4:13 pm
Ray Bradbury - A Man In The Past Ray Bradbury made his career on being a man of the future. His science fiction set the tone of the future. At 84, he now seems firmly rooted in the past. Bradbury is famously anachronistic, a science-fiction writer who has never driven a car or used a computer. “I’ve got three typewriters,” he will later tell me. “I don’t need a computer.” When I call, his line is busy, indicating an absence of call waiting." LA Weekly 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 6:03 pm
Study: Theatre Productions, Attendance Up, Money Down "Attendance is up and the number of productions has risen by 15 percent at nonprofit theaters nationwide over the past three years. At the same time, more than half of the country's noncommercial theater companies have been operating in the red, according to a Theatre Communications Group study." Boston Globe 06/25/04
Posted: 06/25/2004 6:54 am
A $250,000 Two-Night Hamlet how does a man with no stage training and a poor command of the English language wind up playing Hamlet in the middle of Hollywood? And what marketing genius suggested $35,000 billboards to advertise an 85-seat theater production? Yet, given such extravagant publicity, why didn’t Hamlet learn his lines? What were they thinking? All of them?" LA Weekly 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 5:47 pm
25 Playwrights, 1 Play The Provincetown Repertory Theater finally has a home of its own at the tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and artistic director Lynda Sturner wanted to create something "spectacular" to celebrate its opening. So she signed on 25 playwrights to write a "chain" play. Each writer wrote a scene, evolving the stories and characters as they went along. Christian Science Monitor 06/25/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 4:46 pm
From The Words Of The Dead "You don't have to be personally involved or angry to notice how often dead writers' words are lifted and put in the mouths of their novelized selves today. Their lives and ideas have been borrowed, even more insidiously than they are on screen, in three novels about Henry James, one about his brother William and two about Sylvia Plath." The New York Times 06/25/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 11:04 pm
UK Libraries Get A Bandaid The British government allocates £2 million more for public libraries. But critics aren't happy. "The money will do nothing to restore the value of book budgets or improve drab buildings, two factors often seen as being central to libraries' falling popularity over the past 20 years. One report forecasts they will cease to exist in a further 20 if trends continue." The Guardian (UK) 06/25/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 10:27 pm
Hollywood Actors - The Summer Of Their Discontent Two things are making Hollywood actors cranky this summer: "reality TV and DVDs - too new to have been fully absorbed into business as usual. The former is putting actors and writers out of work, and the latter is filling the coffers of the studios, to the consternation of the talent." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/25/04
Posted: 06/25/2004 7:31 am
Big Chill - Let's Criminalize Tech Companies Who Innovate A proposal in the US Senate extends copyright responsibility to tech companies that enable file-sharers to download copyrighted material. "In a prepared statement, Senator Orrin Hatch compared peer-to-peer networks, which allow people to exchange any digital content over their computers, to villains of literature and film, including a character in the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang who lured youngsters into danger with false promises of free lollipops. He said the networks should be held liable for creating technologies that enable often unwitting consumers to house pirated materials on their computers." Wired 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 5:09 pm
The Cost Of Broadcasting Dirty Just Went Up The US Senate has passed a measure that would increase fines for broadcast indecency. "Under the new measure, the maximum fine would increase to as much as $275,000 for each indecent incident. The fines would keep increasing per incident until a maximum fine of $3million a day was reached. The US House of Representatives passed a similar bill in March that set fines for indecency at $500,000." BBC 06/24/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 4:52 pm
Dance - Gone To The Men? "American modern dance was created by women, who brought men into the fold as performers. The men began to make dances and now, some female choreographers say, have taken over the field. Even fewer women choreograph ballet. This is history simplified, of course, but questions linger." The New York Times 06/25/04
Posted: 06/24/2004 10:59 pm
