In Mexico - A Challenge To Intellectual Firepower In Mexico, where the term 'intellectual' usually connotes a person possessing mental gravitas, serious literary chops and at least a few friends in high places, intellectuals have enjoyed a degree of name-brand recognition that's rare in all but a handful of countries — France comes to mind — at least among the educated chattering classes. Along with that acclaim, intellectuals reap other rewards: generous government stipends, cultural and academic sinecures, ambassadorships and access to those wielding power. But lately something funny has been happening on the way to the symposium. Mexico's powerful mass media, particularly television and radio commentators, are steadily usurping intellectuals' power to shape public opinion." Los Angeles Times 07/01/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 1:12 pm
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Turning That Flat-Screen TV Into Art "Want to pretend you don't have a TV? Get the Groove Tube, a low-tech way to turn a high-tech TV into a light sculpture. Designed by Seattle artist Matt Griesey, it's a translucent box made of paper and plastic with a grid of opaque dividers that attaches to the screen with suction cups. When the TV (or computer) is on, the Groove Tube averages the picture pixels and creates an ever-changing display of colors in each square. Just turn down the sound and turn up the stereo." Detroit Free Press 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 12:59 pm
Chicago's Greatest Artist? Harry Callahan was "the greatest visual artist who ever grew to maturity in Chicago," writes Alan Artner. He was "up there with Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. His work has been collected by every major art museum and has been seen in several retrospectives. But while most Chicagoans have heard of Adams, ask about Callahan and you're likely to hear only about the movie cop played by Clint Eastwood, suggesting that special measures need to be taken." Chicago Tribune 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 12:32 pm
McDonald's Reinvents Its Look "The new, Starbucks-like look that McDonald's has rolled out in this classic Middle American test-market tickles the design palette in a way that no knock-your-eyes-out architectural whammy by Frank Gehry or Santiago Calatrava ever will. We visit museums by those architectural stars, but we practically live in McDonald's. The company estimates that more than 25 million people a day eat at its U.S. outlets. And now McDonald's is playing a controversial, high-stakes game of architectural catch-up, transforming its harsh, plastic-heavy interiors into soft, earth-toned places where you might linger with your laptop in an upholstered chair beneath a stylish pendant light." Chicago Tribune 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 12:29 pm
Guernica Wants "Guernica" Back "With the approach of the 70th anniversary of Guernica's destruction by German bombers serving the nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War", the townspeople of Guernica are seeking the iconic Picvasso work's relocation from Madrid's Reina Sofia modern art museum. The Age (Melbourne) 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 11:43 am
US Gallery Cancels Iraqi Gold Show The famed Nimrud Gold was to have been shown at Washington's Sackler Gallery. “I always felt that the gallery could not serve as a venue unless we received clear guarantees on a number of points, principally relating to security and funding. When no such guarantees were received, we concluded that we could not proceed.” The Art Newspaper 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 11:38 am
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Is Montreal Really Getting A New Concert Hall? "This is the seventh time in the past two decades that a Quebec government has promised a new home for the [Montreal Symphony]. One could put together a modest bus tour of all the sites around Montreal that have been touted as the orchestra's future address. This one will be different... because the plan is clear and the process foolproof. A private developer will design and build a hall to the orchestra's specifications (1,900 seats, shoebox shape), assume all the risks of construction and pocket $105-million during the course of a 40-year lease by the province. At the end of the lease, the province would own the building." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 1:04 pm
Controversy Over Chicago Symphony Musicians' Barenboim Honor As Daniel Barenboim was finishing his tenure as music director, a group of Chicago Symphony musicians got together and voted to name him their honorary "Music Director for Life". But now other musicians who were not present at the meeting are objecting that the designation was not put to a vote of the entire orchestra. Chicago Tribune 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 12:41 pm
High Gas Prices Squeeze Travelling Bands "Big-name, established acts with fleets of buses feel the gouge of those gas prices, but the initial pain is softened by the equally big bucks they bring in. It's the smaller bands living hand-to-mouth on the road that are feeling the money pinch the hardest. The price of gas has forced many to rethink how they travel. A new practicality -- a rare condition for free-wheeling rock bands -- is becoming the norm." Chicago Sun-Times 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 12:11 pm
The Trouble With iPods "The iPod experience is a smooth ride, as sleek and impervious as the minicomputer itself-set it to shuffle and you're sealed up in a dream machine, a twinkling drift through your own forgotten highlights. But for the Gen X-ers among us there's a problem. The signal squeezed through an iPod's white earbuds is not the warm and spacious headphone mindblow of old; to me it sounds bruisingly compressed, stripped of nuance, all bunched up in the midrange. Increasing the volume only distorts the bass and produces a nasty precipitation of treble, as if the drummer is flogging his cymbals with bicycle chains." Boston Globe 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 12:00 pm
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Measuring The Money You Donate And (As Important) The Results Throwing money at a problem is one way to help fix it. But how do you tell if a foundation is making an impact with its giving? It's a bigger problem than you might tink... Boston Globe 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 12:05 pm
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Andrew Carnegie, America's Prototypical Philanthropist "Fond of saying that 'the man who dies rich dies disgraced', Carnegie was the first great rags-to-riches American philanthropist - bluff, optimistic, intuitive and, as he got older and richer, increasingly sanctimonious. Born in 1835, he was the son of a jobbing weaver from Dunfermline who was reduced to poverty when hand-looms were supplanted by steam-powered ones. His mother, a proud and cultured woman, resorted to selling groceries and mending shoes to keep the family clothed and fed." The Telegraph (UK) 06/29/06
Posted: 06/29/2006 10:42 pm
The Critic As Rock Star Sasha Frere-Jones is pop music critic for The New Yorker. And he "occupies the somewhat unprecedented position of being both one of the most influential critics in the game — his colorful, incisive critiques are accessible enough for the layman, yet are revered by the cliquish music-crit community — while simultaneously moonlighting as would-be rock star." LAWeekly 06/29/06
Posted: 06/29/2006 7:36 pm
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Is Marketing Responsible For Broadway's Success? Broadway has been using a unified marketing approach over the past decade. "Over a turbulent decade when the road business changed, uncertainty after 9/11 shrunk ticket sales, and musicians went on strike, attendance on Broadway increased by almost 27 percent and grosses nearly doubled, to $862 million from $436 million." But is it really this "desitnation" ad approach that has made a difference? The New York Times 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 1:57 pm
Why Has Toronto Theatre Tanked? "Toronto audiences have simply gotten out of the habit of going to the theatre, a trend far different from periods in the 1990s when audiences were enticed by a number of big, concurrent productions, which then lent extra vitality to mid-sized theatres and the grassroots fringe scene. Theatrical productions, particularly independent shows not included in package theatre subscriptions or unusual cases such as Rings, which needed to attract sell-out crowds to survive, are struggling to get arty, urban audiences to fill the seats." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 1:03 pm
Theatre Aspen Doubles In Size, Goes Year-Round In only a year Theatre Aspen (Colorado) has doubled in size. And the growth will be even steeper. "That three-year plan to open a $10 million performing-arts institute for Theatre Aspen has now grown into more of a $50 million project that will include other local arts organizations." DenverPost 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 12:56 pm
Colorado Shakespeare Honcho Moves On Dick Devin is leaving after 17 seasons as director of the Colorado Shakespeare Fesival. "Shakespeare may have written only 37 plays, but Devin will have seen 107 stagings and overseen 68 by season's end. Way back in 1975, the CSF had become only the seventh theater company in the country to complete the entire canon, so repetition is inevitable." Denver Post 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 12:53 pm
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Publishing On Your iPod "Fader magazine has made its entire summer music issue available for download on iTunes, in what it says is a publishing first. The full issue is free to download as a PDF file, which offers a digital copy of every page -- article and ads -- in the magazine. It's accompanied by a 47-minute podcast featuring music covered by the magazine. The leap off the page and into an area of the Web typically reserved for audio files is one considered natural by Fader, which has covered emerging music since 1998." Detroit Free Press (AP) 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 1:00 pm
Samuel Beckett And His Strange Cult Of Personality "Beckett, who died in 1989, lived to see the full flowering of his fame, and the retiring Irishman was forced into a spotlight he had no desire to stand in. But what were the chances that this spotlight would shine on him in the first place? He was an obscure writer writing in a foreign language about obscure figures living in a very foreign world." Boston Globe 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 12:08 pm
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Hollywood Looks Around... And Thinks Older Hollywood has always been obsessed with youth. "But where does that leave truly older audiences, fossils over 50 or 60 or even 70? To Hollywood these have been the perennially invisible men and women. Yet change is afoot. Some filmmakers and smaller distributors have discovered a secret society of mature moviegoers, and they have decided that this audience may actually be worth courting." The New York Times 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 1:16 pm
Congressmen Demand Answers On Rating For Christian Movie Members of the US Congress are demanding to know why a Christian-themed movie was rated PG. "House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and other lawmakers are demanding explanations after hearing complaints that the movie 'Facing the Giants' was rated PG instead of G due to religious content. The Motion Picture Association of America claims the controversy arose from a miscommunication with the filmmakers. It says religion was not the reason for the rating." Yahoo! (AP) 07/01/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 12:14 pm
Oscars Revise Foreign Film Awards Rules It's actually a minor change. "Entries in the foreign language category are no longer required to be in the official language of the country submitting the film. Any language or combination of languages is acceptable, as long as the dominant one is not English." CBC 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 11:35 am
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(Everybody) Gotta Dance What accounts for the huge popularity of programs such as the summer dancing on the plaza at Lincoln Center? "Dance is something you already know even if you think you don't. Look in the street or in a schoolyard, and you will know right away if a person is sad or happy by the way they hold themselves, by the way they walk." The New York Times 07/02/06
Posted: 07/02/2006 1:19 pm
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