Swarming Onto What's Happening Used to be you went someplace where people were to find out what was going on. Now "swarming" makes it more efficient. People broadcast text or cell phone messages to get people to a location where something is happening. "Swarming reverses the idea that geography, in an Internet age, has become irrelevant. The whole point is to bring people together in one location for face-to-face contact. Swarming also is leading to such social developments as 'time-softening,' 'cell dancing' and 'smart mobs'."
The Star-Tribune (Minneapolis) 12/29/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 11:34 am
The Ideas (Best & Worst) Of 2002 What were the most underrated ideas of the year? The most overrated? From baseball stadiums to spas to war and propaganda, leading adademics and scholars made their nominations to the New York Times. The New York Times 12/28/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 8:11 am
Corporations - Collectors For Our Times Why do corporations collect art? "Apart from the profits and tax relief such sales and donations generate for companies, they also produce what social theorist Pierre Bourdieu has called "cultural capital," the prestige and importance that come with a reputation for high-mindedness and civic responsibility. Cultural capital is especially important for companies that make things that can hurt people, such as tobacco and alcohol. It's no accident Philip Morris and Seagram have two of the most respected corporate art collections." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12/29/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 12:20 pm
Erasing The Past By Demolition Los Angeles issue 1,211 demolition permits in 2001. This 'erase-atecture,' as some architectural historians call it, gives builders room to press forward with their perpetual reinvention of the city, and it often protects the public from unsafe structures. But nobody knows just how much valuable history the wrecking balls obliterate each year, because in most cases, nobody's keeping track. About 85% of the city's standing structures have never been surveyed for historic or cultural significance. Los Angeles Times 12/29/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 11:17 am
The Surrealist's Library - A Record Surrealist artist Andre Breton's collection of art - to be sold next year - provides "the most complete history of the evolution of an iconoclastic group which opposed all forms of moral and social convention and replaced them by the 'values of dreams, instinct, desire and revolt'." The 400 paintings, 1,500 photographs and 3,500 documents are an invaluable record. The Surrealists "1924 manifesto laid the ground for some of Europe's most devastating artistic quarrels, often turning on a love-hate relationship with Marxism, including Breton's falling out with the communist poet Louis Aragon." The Guardian (UK) 12/28/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 10:30 am
Chinese Artist Owns Rights To Mao Yes, China is still a Communist state. But the country's leadership is anxious to show the rest of the world that it respects property rights. So that might explain a ruling by the Beijing Higher People's Court, that ordered the Museum of the Chinese Revolution - a major landmark in central Beijing - to pay an artist's family the equivalent of $31,000 for selling copies of a picture of Mao Zedong without permission. The court ruled "that while the museum is allowed to display Dong's painting, reproduction rights are still held by his widow and children. The verdict would likely have horrified Mao, leader of the 1949 revolution that eliminated most private property." New Jersey Online (AP) 12/28/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 8:16 am
Latin Music's New Starmakers For years, Miami's Latin music scene was a one-man show. No longer. As Latin music has increasingly penetrated the mainstream US, a new generation of producers is wielding power. Los Angeles Times 12/29/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 11:22 am
Anyone Can Conduct, Right? Punk Rocker Leads Royal Philharmonic A British TV show called "Faking It" picked a punk rocker out of a pub and spent four weeks teaching him how to conduct a symphony orchestra - the Royal Philharmonic. "His first hurdle was learning to read music: 'I didn't do that well at school. So at first I just saw little black dots. The experts said, 'There's no right way to conduct but there's a wrong way.' I found it incredibly confusing." London Evening Standard 12/23/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 10:50 am
When Violins Are Played Only As "Investment Opportunities" Owners of a 1718 Stradivarius violin have loaned it to the concertmaster of the Detroit Symphony. But only for two-and-a-half weeks. Then it's back to the vault in which it lives. Why? The instrument is for sale, and it's good publicity to get it played. But the instruments are so expensive - this one valued at about $3 million - that very few musicians could ever afford to play, let alone own one. Detroit Free Press 12/29/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 10:06 am
Langston Hughes Opera Recovered A long lost blues opera by Lanston Hughes and James P. Johnson performed only three times in 1940 has been reconstructed and performed. "The music is a combination of jazz, swing, blues and ragtime, all set within a classical structure. At various points it recalls the work of Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Scott Joplin and Dvorak. Some of the numbers set spectators to tapping their fingers and toes in rhythm." The New York Times 12/28/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 8:04 am
Thwarting The Artistic Inmate The Australia Arts Council awarded $26,000 to inmates of a regional prison to perform an opera and cabaret. But the state's justice minister, who found out about the grant after it was made, says he'll have the money returned, saying "the money would be better spent on victim support services, or programmes aimed at reducing re-offending." ABCNews 12/28/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 8:28 am
Why The Performing Arts Are In Danger Kennedy Center president Michael Kaiser warns that the performing arts are in danger, and issues a five-point call to action. "We have been scared into thinking small. And small thinking begets smaller revenue that begets even smaller institutions and reduced public excitement and involvement. No wonder so many arts organizations are announcing record deficits." Washington Post 12/28/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 7:50 am
Circle Of Life - Melbourne Artists Forced Out By Developers In recent years West Melbourne has been a place for artists. Not because it was so aethetically interesting, but because it was cheap. But now building restrictions have been changed and the area is suddenly desirable to developers. And the artists are moving out... The Age (Melbourne) 12/28/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 7:42 am
Business Titan Quits Museum George David has quit as president of the board of Connecticut's Wadsworth Atheneum. "He is one of the corporate world's top executives [CEO of United Technologies], running a business that has thousands of employees, tens of billions of dollars in assets and a global reach of staggering proportions. In short, David is a master of his universe who took a personal interest in a state arts treasure, wanting it to grow in profound ways, to be a major player in the world art arena. He put his money - and his company's money - behind that vision. But David didn't feel he had the unanimous support of the Atheneum board he led for the last four years, a leadership position that was seemingly his for as long as he wanted it..." Hartford Courant 12/29/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 10:39 am
JK Rowling's Kindness To A Dying Girl JK Rowling is famously protective of her privacy. But when the mother of a little girl dying of cancer wrote to the author telling Rowling of her daughter's love of Harry Potter, Rowling contected the girl and struck up a friendship, even revealing details of her next book to the girl before she died. The Observer (UK) 12/29/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 10:26 am
The Incredible Shrinking Play One of the phenomenons of Broadway in recent years has been that "you can now sell the public a 70- or 90-minute play on Broadway for $75 and they swallow it as readily as they do spaghetti in oil and garlic, though it may be far less nourishing or tasty. This only becomes a problem when Tony nominations loom and there aren't enough American plays to fill the Best Play category. Filling the category these days is a more important question than the quality of the work." New York Daily News 12/29/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 11:46 am
Gehry To Redesign Lisbon Theatre District? Is Frank Gehry going to redesign a rundown theatre district in Lisbon? "According to Associated Press, Lisbon officials want to build two modern theaters, a film complex, a museum, stores and offices. 'I'm just going to see what they're up to. If it's real, it's a wonderful project'." Los Angeles Times 12/28/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 11:09 am
UK Theatre - A Changing Of The Guard Many of the UK's biggest theatres are getting new leadership this year. "The appointments have been common currency for some time, but it's only now, with an unprecedented flurry of handovers just around the corner, that mouths are beginning to water at what lies ahead. The players who dominated the scene during the 1990s are making way for fresh blood." The Telegraph (UK) 12/28/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 10:57 am
The Poet As Suicide Bomber? Was 17th Century poet John Milton a terrorist? Since September, the pages of a venerable British Times Literary Supplement have rung with the charge: "that Milton's verse play 'Samson Agonistes' is 'an incitement to terrorism' and that its hero, the blind Israelite champion, who pulled down the pillars of the Philistines' temple, killing himself along with thousands of citizens, 'is, in effect, a suicide bomber'." The New York Times 12/28/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 7:59 am
What Ever Possessed Them - Tales Of Bad Publishing Choices The way it works is this - people get paid by publishing houses to sort through the crap and figure out which book ideas are good and which aren't. Paid real money. To have judgment. Make informed choices. And then, books like these always seem to end up in print... What were they thinking? Toronto Star 12/28/02
Posted: 12/28/2002 7:33 pm
Can LA Live Without TV Car Chases? Since OJ's low-speed freeway chase, the car chase has been a staple of LA's TV news shows. Local stations often devote large chunks of their shows to police car pursuits. But the LA Police Department is "considering asking television stations to eliminate or significantly reduce their coverage of live police chases. The broadcast of police pursuits is more entertainment than informative, [police chief William] Bratton has said publicly and in informal discussions with local news executives, and could be interpreted as encouraging criminal activity. Such a change would mark a distinct shift for local TV stations."Los Angeles Times 12/28/02
Posted: 12/29/2002 11:04 am
