Is Science Being Undermined By Religion? "As a student of the history and philosophy of science, I have been watching with concern how modern science itself — perhaps the single most powerful force for secularisation — is being re–coded as sacred, either as affirming the Bible or the Vedas, or as ‘lower knowledge’ of ‘dead matter’, in need of spiritualisation. As an old–time partisan of the Enlightenment and scientific temper, I have been watching with concern as my fellow intellectuals and activists, in the United States and India, who identify themselves with social justice, anti–imperialism, women’s rights and sustainable development, have themselves paved the way for re–enchantment or re–sacralisation of science." New Humanist 01/07/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 10:41 pm
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Major Painting Theft In Netherlands A number of 17th Century paintings worth 10 million euros were stolen from a Dutch museum Sunday. "Up to 20 Dutch paintings and numerous silver items were taken during the Sunday night break-in at Westfries Museum in Hoorn. 'The heart of our collection is gone, including top artworks of national importance'." BBC 01/10/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 4:28 pm
Architects Rush To Help Architects around the world are volunteering to help in the tsunami-affected region. "Many feel that sitting at a screen sweating over the design of handrail details for the next cute downtown boutique hotel just doesn't make sense when more than 150,000 people have lost their lives, more than five million people have been made homeless and whole towns have been swept away." The Guardian (UK) 01/10/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 7:20 am
MoMA Neighbors Unhappy With Museum Views "In a case of life imitating art, the renovated museum, with a clear glass floor-to-ceiling wall looking out onto West 54th Street, gives its 10,000 daily visitors a bird's eye look into the upmarket apartments across the road. Even in a city where gazing into other people's apartments is an acceptable pastime, the residents of West 54th, who include the former Beatle Paul McCartney, have had enough." The Guardian (UK) 01/10/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 7:15 am
Louvre, Pompidou To Open Branches Two big French museums are opening satellite branches. "The Louvre is to open a $100 million satellite in the northern French city of Lens, near Lille, in 2009 and will occupy a new annex at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta for three years from 2006. Still, the Louvre's director, Henri Loyrette, has said he considers Britain's Tate to be a closer role model than the Guggenheim. The Tate, founded a century ago on London's Millbank, now runs three other museums in Britain, but it has no permanent presence abroad. In contrast, while the Pompidou will inaugurate a new $68 million branch in the northeastern French city of Metz in 2007 it is also looking beyond France." The New York Times 01/10/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 7:06 am
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John Eliot Gardiner Launches His Own Recording Company Sir John Eliot Gardiner was stunned when his long-time recording company Deutsche Grammophon canceled his contract on the eve of his biggest project ever. "Sir John faced a crisis when the company pulled the plug just as he was planning the gargantuan project of touring with and recording live the complete Bach cantatas throughout the year 2000, which would have resulted in over 50 CDs." So Gardiner has started his own recording label to issue the music... The Guardian (UK) 01/10/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 8:51 am
America's Newest Orchestra Has A Season "The Boca Raton Philharmonic Symphonia has announced the schedule for its inaugural 2005-2006 season, and a very impressive one it is. The new chamber orchestra, composed largely of former Florida Philharmonic members, will offer five concerts that serve up a bracing and imaginative mix of the familiar and adventurous." The Sun-Sentinel (South Florida) 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 6:53 pm
Kentucky Opera Ditches Orchestra For Students Kentucky Opera drops the Louisville Orchestra for performances of its next production in favor of using students from the University of Louisville. Why? The company explains that "scheduling conflicts made it difficult, if not impossible, to use the orchestra for this particular production, which involves parallel student and professional casts. When you are rehearsing two casts you have a lot of orchestral rehearsals, and there were several services where (the Louisville Orchestra) would be unavailable because of contractual restrictions." But an Louisville Orchestra spokesperson expressed surprise at the decision... Louisville Courrier-Journal 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 5:46 pm
Music Singles Surge On The Web The single music track is staging a comeback - online. "Although sales of vinyl and CD singles declined again by 14% to 26.5m last year, more than 5.7m downloads were sold during the year. 'We have already announced that downloads will soon be included in the official UK singles chart and had downloads been included in the singles figures for 2004, the market would have shown a 4% increase'." The Guardian (UK) 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 5:26 pm
Opera And Film - A Match Yet To Be Made "Where are the great films of opera? Yet to be made. The form has never conquered what might be called the tongue-and-teeth problem. While it makes perfect sense within the opera house that everything is sung, when transferred onto film, the opera illusion often breaks down. Suddenly one is wrenched from a world where it's normal for people to say hello and good night and I love you in song into a world where you notice huge gaping mouths, swelling diaphragms, quivering tongues and glistening teeth. And even when the films are dubbed, and the singers attempt to look as if they're speaking, there's an uncanny sense that the voice is emerging from a hole not big enough to produce it." Washington Post 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 3:44 pm
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Funding Australian Art In The 21st Century Australia needs to reconsider how it funds the arts, writes the head of the Australian Council Jennifer Bott. "Australians now spend $10 billion annually on arts goods; 85 per cent of Australian adults attend cultural events or performances; 78 per cent read for pleasure on most days; and close to 30 per cent of Australia's children are involved in after-school arts activities. All this builds a grid of new arts stakeholders whose needs must be considered by the Australia Council along with its more traditional areas of focus. The arts develop qualities that are the building blocks of the new economies shaping the world. Demand for the arts is growing but, by and large, funding is not." The Age (Melbourne) 01/10/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 6:28 pm
Between Madness And Art "I've never believed there is anything more than a coincidental relationship between madness and making art. For every self-mutilating van Gogh, there's a sane, mild-mannered Matisse. Artistic creativity arises from a variety of fluid inner equations; the old image of artists producing masterpieces in some sort of possessed frenzy is far more common in movies than in life. In actuality, making art is a respite from inner demons. Sanity is necessary for the strategy, planning, and trial and error needed to bring a good artistic idea to fruition." Philadelphia Inquirer 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 5:08 pm
And It's All For Your Convenience Between the endless maze of automated phone menus and the do-it-yourself ticketing websites, you wouldn't think that Ticketmaster and its fellow national ticket brokers would even need to employ human beings anymore. So why, exactly, does every ticket still come with a hefty "service fee" slapped on top of the admission price? "Tack-on fees are wrapped up in the larger world of live-entertainment deal-making, which gets particularly shady when it comes to concerts. The service charges are determined not just by Ticketmaster but also the promoter, venue and act, all of which can share in the revenues -- and increasingly want to." Chicago Tribune 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 8:43 am
Atlanta Arts Exec Salaries Raising Eyebrows Atlanta's two largest arts organizations, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the High Museum of Art, have been slashing budgets and negotiating wage freezes in recent years, desperately working to balance their books. But the fiscal austerity apparently doesn't extend to the executives in charge of the troubled arts groups: High Museum director Michael Shapiro's salary has jumped $155,000 since 2000, and ASO President Allison Vulgamore's pay has ballooned from $275,000 to $440,000 in the same period. Atlanta Journal-Constitution 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 8:16 am
- The Growing Budget Gap Atlanta's arts scene is rapidly losing its middle class. Some organizations seem to be flush with cash, mounting hundred million dollar expansions and bolstering already-sizable endowment funds, while the city's have-nots see their budgets shrink and donations dwindle. Atlanta Journal-Constitution 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 8:10 am
Promoting The Arts Takes A Backseat To Controversy "San Diego's cultural tourism program – an aggressive effort to promote the arts community and its creativity as a tourist destination – isn't quite what it used to be. About a year ago, the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau shut down its cultural tourism office, and its manager, Rick Prickett, moved to Hawaii... A city audit of ConVis' finances took issue with bonuses, car allowances and how ConVis spent money on entertaining clients... Amid the controversy, the bureau's budget was slashed by more than 20 percent and it was stripped of responsibility for marketing the San Diego Convention Center." San Diego Union Tribune 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 7:46 am
Name-Brand Tragedy When celebrities donate their abundant cash to charitable causes like tsunami relief, it's usually assumed that they are calling attention to their own regular-guy generosity as much as genuinely trying to help out. But does the motivation even matter? "Is this charity-plus, a kind of righteous one-upmanship with public relations benefits? Or is it smart fund-raising, recognition that in a society saturated with pop culture even tragedy sells better with a name brand attached." The New York Times 01/08/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 7:03 am
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All-American Diva "Renee Fleming is currently the Great American Soprano. Late-night television? Check. She recently made her second appearance on Letterman, singing three minutes of music by Handel (music featured on her latest recording). White House? She sang at a New Year's Eve gala there in 1999, among other appearances. Major international events? She sang for Russian President Vladimir Putin and 50 other heads of state at the Mariinsky Theatre to celebrate the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg in 2003. Magazines? She's on the cover of the current Town & Country, which dubs her 'the down-to-earth diva.' Oh yes, and she also sang, in the made-up language of Elvish, on the soundtrack to The Lord of the Rings." Washington Post 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 3:45 pm
Writing For Hollywood: A Lesson In Art & Politics John Logan is Hollywood's hottest scriptwriter of the moment, "a true author who creates from scratch in an era of sequels and adaptations... As with much in Hollywood, however, the honors mask a more complicated reality, [with Logan standing] on the shoulders of others who contributed material and either received no credit or have had to fight for recognition in a dog-eat-dog scramble for a place on the film. And his rise to the top - in which Mr. Logan was caught up in a spat over his contributions to The Last Samurai - appears to illustrate a cardinal rule of contemporary film writing: success depends on the fine art of positioning, as well as a way with words." The New York Times 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 9:07 am
Jarvi In The Garden State As Neeme Jarvi prepares to leave the Detroit Symphony after 15 years, he has already taken up his next challenge as music director of the embattled New Jersey Symphony. Most observers would consider the NJSO a significant step down from Detroit's higher-profile orchestra, but for Jarvi, Newark offers a chance to wind down his career with an enthusiastic group of musicians who don't mind taking a few chances in the programming department, and to do so without all the inherent pressure of a world-famous ensemble. Oh, and he gets to live in Manhattan, and see his grandchildren nearly every day. Detroit Free Press 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 8:04 am
Social Reporting, With Word Balloons Comic artist Will Eisner, who died last week, was more than a pioneer of an underappreciated art form. He was, in his own words a "social reporter", a politically engaged artist who made a point of digging out a side of modern reality that would otherwise have been hidden from much of the world. Furthermore, Eisner was notable for the longevity of his creative impulse - the work he created in his 80s was as dynamic and rebellious as the graphic novels that first made him famous. Chicago Tribune 01/08/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 6:35 am
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Looking For The Great Scottish Musical "Sir Cameron MackIntosh has joined the Scottish Executive in funding the Highland Quest, a competition to find a piece of musical theatre to mark the Highland Year of Culture in 2007. The winning entry will be staged at a new 250-seat studio venue at Eden Court Theatre in Inverness, which is undergoing a £15 million refurbishment, before going on tour, possibly as far as London’s West End." The Scotsman 01/08/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 7:53 am
British Theatre - Ready For Some Big Themes? Last month's Birmingham Rep Sikh protests proved that theatre still matters. But what to do with that energy? "New writing in British theatre seems at a real crossroads, facing a choice between bite-sized, narrative-dominated star vehicles or a renewal of the kind of large-scale statement that is thought to have perished under Mrs Thatcher's tank tracks but has clearly re-emerged in the past 12 months. The re-creation of a culture of large-scale new writing in British theatre won't just happen - without Monsterism, minimalism will triumph." The Guardian (UK) 01/10/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 9:29 pm
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Da Vinci Code Fans Endangering Chapel Fans of The Da Vinci Code are endangering the historic Roslyn Chapel in Scotland. So many are visiting that the chapel is showing wear. "The fragile carvings in the 15th-century Midlothian church risk being damaged by people brushing against them and the humidity from their breath." The Daily Record (UK) 01/10/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 4:36 pm
Will Databases Replace Libraries? "Many librarians believe they're competing with and losing against search engines like Google, that for most users the convenience of a simple, clean interface outweighs the quality of the quality of the results. Whether this is true or not Google's digital library project is an opportunity for libraries to remain competitive by working with the competition. For the sake of users, and their own future, libraries just have to make sure they're taking advantage of the opportunity and not being taken advantage of." MobyLives 01/10/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 9:01 am
Mississippi Libraries Ban Stewart Book Librarians in two Mississippi counties have banned Jon Stewart's best-selling "America (The Book)" because of a picture in it depicting the Supreme Court justices naked. "The book by Stewart and the writers of 'The Daily Show,' the Comedy Central fake-news program he hosts, was released in September. It has spent 15 weeks on The New York Times best seller list for hardcover nonfiction, and was named Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, the industry trade magazine." Yahoo! (AP) 01/09/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 8:38 am
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Christian Group Sues BBC Over "Springer" A Christian group is charging the BBC with blasphemy after the broadcaster aired Jerry Springer, The Opera. Christian Voice national director Stephen Green said: "If Jerry Springer - The Opera isn't blasphemous then nothing in Britain is sacred." He said the show was "much worse" than he expected when he saw it and said it portrayed Jesus as a "coprophiliac sexual deviant". A coprophiliac is someone sexually aroused by faeces." BBC 01/10/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 4:24 pm
TV Right To Your Cell Phone "With viewers increasingly abandoning TV for the Internet and video games, studios, and other media outfits are rushing to jump into the fledgling market for cellular video. In just the last month the likes of Fox, Warner Bros. (TWX ), and ESPN have all signed deals to bring everything from sports highlights to comic books to super-small screens." BusinessWeek 01/17/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 8:35 am
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More Than A Tap Phenom Savion Glover is a genius, a phenomenon. "Sometimes he rides the music; sometimes he becomes one of the instruments in the ensemble; sometimes he converts the score into a concerto in which he alternately plays solo and blends back seamlessly into the group. He’s his own choreographer, of course, and his invention is wide-ranging and seemingly inexhaustible." Seeing Things (AJBlogs) 01/10/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 10:20 pm
Rockwell On Dance Longtime New York Times arts writer John Rockwell is preparing to take on a new position as the Grey Lady's chief dance critic, and he sees much to recommend a corner of the arts world which seems always to be on the edge of fiscal collapse. "Dancers are paid less than other performing artists. Dance companies, even the big ballet troupes, must furiously run in place, like terpsichorean hamsters, just to sustain themselves. But that means dancers do it for love, not fame or fortune, though some are famous, and a very few earn modest fortunes. Dance critics can still cover any and all forms of dance without feeling that they're sullying themselves." The New York Times 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 9:11 am
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