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Wednesday, January 15




Ideas

Pocket Guide To The Intellectual Property Wars Having trouble sorting through competing claims in the intellectual property wars? The Electronic Frontier Foundation issues a report called "Unintended Consequences" that documents the harm to the public interest since passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998. Among the documentation are examples of the chilling of free speech and scientific research, jeopardization of fair use, and the choking of competition and innovation." Electronic Frontier Foundation 01/03
Posted: 01/15/2003 5:53 pm

Visual Arts

Hell, No, We Won't Go! (But We'll Draw A Bit, If You Like) Where there is war, or the threat of war, there will always be anti-war protest, and a new exhibit examines the movement from an artistic perspective. From Vietnam-era posters depicting the My Lai massacre to T-shirts decrying the Bush administration's current Iraq policy, visitors can trace not only the recent history of American political demonstration, but the way in which contemporary sensibility informs the art of such protest. In Vietnam, shock value was front and center, but today's anti-war movement seems to rely as much as anything on the cynical humor often ascribed to Generation X. Los Angeles Times 01/15/03
Posted: 01/15/2003 5:47 am

The Archaeological Cost Of War One unintended casualty of the US government's preparations for war in the Middle East appears to be an extensive list of archaeological excavations scheduled for the region. "In any normal summer, dozens of excavations are conducted in Israel, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Yemen and elsewhere, tempting thousands of professionals and volunteers with the exotic mysteries of antiquity and the prospect of significant discovery." And it's not just the timing of the digs which are at risk: archeologists fear that a war could irreparably damage countless artifacts, just as the 1991 Gulf War did. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 01/15/03
Posted: 01/15/2003 5:28 am

Take That, New York! And the winner of the heated competition to be the only American city to be allowed to exhibit the Dead Sea Scrolls this year is... drum roll... Grand Rapids, Michigan? As a matter of fact, yes, and it may be more appropriate than you think. Grand Rapids, while certainly far from being a bustling metropolis, is a deeply religious community, and the exhibition, which will bring fragments of 12 manuscripts from the famous Scrolls to a local museum, is expected to draw visitors from all over the Rust Belt area of the Midwest. Curators hope that their coup will be a reminder to the arts world that people everywhere can appreciate art and artifacts - even people who don't live in New York or Chicago. Detroit News 01/15/03
Posted: 01/15/2003 5:18 am

Curators - The Season Of Their Discontent Curators are not a happy lot these days. Indeed, they're "the embodiment of demoralization, resentment, anxiety, stress, and alienation over what was happening in his or her museum." There is a mounting chorus of voices "articulating this critical disconnect in art museums. The gap is not necessarily between curators and their directors—though in some institutions that exists as well. Mostly the conflict is between the dramatically changing role of the art museum and the mounting pressures imposed by those changes on the people who have traditionally been the custodians, students, and interpreters of the art objects inside their institutions." ArtNews 01/03
Posted: 01/14/2003 7:44 pm

Trials For SF Jewish Museum Facing fundraising obstacles and internal disagreements, San Francisco's Jewish Museum is looking at scaling back a design for a dramatic Daniel Libeskind museum. "We had become too ambitious in our planning for the new museum. The idea was to expose Jewish culture and thought to a wider public in 'an architectural gem' in the heart of the city's cultural district. Now we're thinking about a smaller building with a smaller operating budget. How that smaller building will look, I don't know. It's unlikely that it will be the Libeskind design as we know it." San Francisco Chronicle 01/14/03
Posted: 01/14/2003 10:41 am

Music

Canada's Crucial Year "There is general agreement that 2003 will be a watershed for the Canadian music industry -- a year that could either set the industry on a course of renewed viability, or make it as moribund as those dust-covered eight-track cartridges piled in the furnace room." From digital music to file-sharing, Canadian producers face all the challenges of their American counterparts, compounded by an abysmal exchange rate, and a controversial national tax on blank, recordable CDs. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 01/15/03
Posted: 01/15/2003 5:35 am

Colorado Springs Will Miss Payroll The beleagured Colorado Springs Symphony, already in bankruptcy and facing the probable resignation of its music director, will miss its mid-January payroll today, leaving musicians and staff to fend for themselves, and almost certainly prompting the musicians' union to file a grievance claiming that the CSS is in material breach of contract. The orchestra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after musicians refused to accept the board's demands for a large cut of their already-bargain-basement salaries. Musicians also claim that the organization's upper management has been grossly incompetent, and should be held responsible for its own failings. Denver Post 01/15/03
Posted: 01/15/2003 4:35 am

  • Colorado Springs Music Director Will Resign (Or Will He?) "Lawrence Leighton Smith, the nationally known music director of the financially strapped Colorado Springs Symphony Orchestra, all but admitted Monday that he will resign his position today." Smith had threatened as much before the cash-strapped ensemble declared bankruptcy last week, as a show of support to the orchestra's musicians, who were being asked to take a pay cut. However, although this report claimed that Smith would announce his resignation on January 14, a subsequent article (see above) reports that he has not yet followed through. Denver Post 01/14/02
    Posted: 01/15/2003 4:26 am

Classical Action - This Year's Grammys The Grammys have not enjoyed a good reputation among classical music critics. But there are a few encouraging trends developing with this year's nominations - The influence of independent labels continued. "Across 12 categories, independent labels garnered 32 nominations this year and the majors 29, versus 31 for independents last year and 29 for the majors." Also, writes Bradley Bambarger, this years nominees reflect "an impressive percentage of modern and rare repertoire figures across the field." Andante 010/08/03

Arts Issues

The Debate That Wouldn't End "New York's wide-ranging civic conversation about the World Trade Center site degenerated into rhetoric that ricocheted off on all sorts of tangents at the start of the second round of public hearings on the fate of Ground Zero." Officials in charge of the process seem to be trapped by the dual expectations of the public that a) public opinion will not be ignored, and b) something will eventualy rise on the WTC site, even though whatever it is will not come close to satisfying all constituencies. Washington Post 01/15/03
Posted: 01/15/2003 6:25 am

MacArthur Hands Out Some Expensive Party Favors "The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is giving special one-time grants totaling $21.5 million to 41 Chicago arts and cultural groups ranging from the city's largest museums to small community-based arts education groups." The grants come as the foundation celebrates its 25th anniversary, and includes a $14 million gift to National Public Radio, and $1 million each for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Lyric Opera, among others. The Plain Dealer (AP) 01/15/03
Posted: 01/15/2003 6:15 am

Preservation Blues "In Chicago, far too many 'everyday masterpieces' are being discarded like so much gristle. The city has a national reputation for being a vigilant protector of marquee landmarks designed by such renowned architects as Frank Lloyd Wright and Daniel Burnham. But Chicago is much less careful about safeguarding the lesser-known architectural gems, that give its neighborhoods their character. Hundreds are gone... even though the city, in a 12-year study it conducted that cost more than $1.2 million, identified them as architecturally or historically important. The demolished structures--more than 200--ranged from Spanish Baroque theaters to Georgian mansions to Queen Anne taverns." Chicago Tribune 01/15/03
Posted: 01/15/2003 5:11 am

Some Public Interest In The Copyright Wars? Is progress being made in the battle over making copyright as "public-friendly" as possible? Perhaps. "Technologically speaking, at any rate - tomorrow is not on the side of the copyright control freaks. Information doesn't want to be free, but customers definitely want it to." And "at long last, tech companies are speaking up against the threat not just to their customers' rights but to their own ability to innovate and sell products. The entertainment people are hardly discouraged. They have far more clout than any other parties in this war, and they've used it." San Jose Mercury-News 01/13/03

The Rap On Learning "Teachers nationwide are using rap - the street-savvy, pop-locking, rhyming creations of Shakur, Geto Boys, Run-DMC and others - to teach history and English. Some colleges are even training future educators to weave rap into high school lessons. To some parents and teachers, the idea of mentioning Grandmaster Flash in the same breath as T.S. Eliot is wack. They reject the notion that rap, with its raw language and vivid depictions of violence, has anything in common with literature. But those who use it to teach say rap can be intellectually provocative, shedding light on the grand themes of love, war and oppression in much the same way as classic fiction." Los Angeles Times 01/14/03

People

Oberlin Prof To Head Up Smithsonian Division "Sharon F. Patton, a scholar and the director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, yesterday was named director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art... The museum was founded by Warren Robbins in 1964 as a small private enterprise on Capitol Hill. Under the Smithsonian mantle, it became part of the largely underground complex of halls near the Smithsonian Castle Building. It has 7,000 objects of traditional and contemporary art, the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives and the Warren M. Robbins Library." Washington Post 01/15/03
Posted: 01/15/2003 6:22 am

Publishing

First Gay Bookstore To Close The Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, in New York's Greenwich Village, was already a success by the time the Stonewall Riots gave rise to the modern gay rights movement in 1969. But this month, the bookstore, which is believed to have been the world's first to specialize in gay and lesbian literature, will shut its doors for the last time. Many gay bookstores have been closing in the last decade, ironic victims of the more open society they helped to create, in which gays and lesbians no longer feel the need to hide in self-contained communities, and general-interest bookstores often have gay and lesbian studies sections. Philadelphia Inquirer 01/15/03
Posted: 01/15/2003 6:06 am

The New Yorker's New Fiction Editor Deborah Treisman has taken over as fiction editor of The New Yorker. So how is her style different from Bill Buford, who just left the job after nine years? "We—probably 80 percent of the time— agree. And so in those 20 percent of stories it feels as though there's a different reason for each one. But it's never that he likes men writers and I like women writers. We both are drawn to different things in different stories. So I'm sure that things will start to feel a little different. But I'm actually looking forward to finding out how. And also, you know, neither of us works alone. There's a whole department and we do sit around and discuss things endlessly and argue about them." Book Magazine 01/03

Media

Mitchell To Stay On At PBS PBS's controversial chief executive appears to be close to inking a deal extending her contract with the public broadcaster for another three years. Pat Mitchell, who came to PBS from CNN in 1999, has presided over a stormy era for the network, in which it saw much of its market share usurped by specialty cable channels. Mitchell has been criticized for running PBS like a commercial network, but has also drawn praise for her realistic approach to the job, and her willingness to expand the network's overall mission. Los Angeles Times 01/15/03
Posted: 01/15/2003 5:54 am

Sundance's Raison d'Etre The Sundance Film Festival has its critics, of course. Indy producers complain that the Utah-based festival has become too enamored of big-budget Hollywood types in recent years, and big-budget Hollywood types grouse that they can't get a film shown there unless it stars Parker Posey. But Kenneth Turan thinks that Robert Redford's festival has found its niche, and it has little to do with budget size: Sundance is the place for films which just don't seem to fit anywhere else, and its organizers have never abandoned their effort to keep the event fresh and exciting. Los Angeles Times 01/15/03
Posted: 01/15/2003 5:41 am

Buy A CD Lately? Have Some Cash! You may not have heard, but the recording industry has some money for you. Specifically, if you purchased a CD, tape, or vinyl album between 1995 and 2000, you're entitled to part of a massive cash settlement paid by various record labels as a penalty for their collusion and price-fixing crimes during the 1990s. Now, don't get excited: you can't get more than $20, and if too many people file claims, you won't get anything at all (in which case, all the money would go to music education programs,) but hey, it's the thought that counts, right? Boston Herald 01/15/03
Posted: 01/15/2003 5:04 am

UK Movie Tix Selling Well A slew of high-budget US films has propelled 2002 UK movie ticket sales to a 10% increase over 2001, despite earlier fears that the World Cup would cut into cinema attendance during the crucial summer blockbuster period. The increase came even as the rest of Europe experiences a decline in sales and interest, and coincided with what many are calling a 'renaissance' of British film. BBC 01/15/03
Posted: 01/15/2003 4:06 am

Agreement Could Be Better, Say Consumer Groups A number of consumer organizations and digital rights groups are complaining that yesterday's landmark agreement between the recording industry and the computer industry concerning copyright protection and digital piracy doesn't go nearly far enough in protecting the rights of consumers to do what they wish with content they have legally purchased. The activists hope that Congress will press forward with the Digital Media Consumers Rights Act, proposed last year, but the new agreement was struck with the understanding that Congress would agree to keep government out of the issue. Wired 01/15/03
Posted: 01/15/2003 3:59 am

  • Previously: Big Tech And Big Music Strike Deal Technology companies and the entertainment industry have been fighting over whether laws ought to be enacted preventing requiring anti-copying hardware in machines. Now leaders of the two industries have made a deal. "Lobbyists for some of the nation's largest technology companies will argue under the new agreement against efforts in Congress to amend U.S. laws to broaden the rights of consumers, such as explicitly permitting viewers to make backup copies of DVDs for personal use or copy songs onto handheld listening devices. In return tech companies - Microsoft, Intel, Dell, etc - will actively campaign against digital piracy. Dallas Morning News (AP) 01/14/03

Maori Protest Tom Cruise Movie Filming Maori elders have told the makers of a £70 million film starring Tom Cruise that they cannot film a New Zealand volcano crucial to the script because it is sacred. Spokesmen for several of the region's Maori tribes have complained that 'there has been no financial recognition of their interest in the mountain'." The Telegraph (UK) 01/13/03

Korean Movie-Watching Soars Following trends elsewhere, Korean movie attendance was up in 2002, and 47 percent of all tickets sold were to Korean-made movies. After 9/11 2001, "foreign films saw a rise of only 6.6 percent while Korean films saw an abrupt increase of 96.8 percent. A total of 78 films were produced domestically, and foreign sales came to approximately $15 million. The average Korean saw 2.27 films last year, the most since 1975." Korea Times 01/15/03

Koreans Protest Bond Movie Koreans - North and South - are objecting to how Koreans are portrayed in the latest James Bond movie. "The MGM hit proves that the US is the 'headquarters that spreads abnormality, degeneration, violence and . . . corrupt sex culture,' said North Korea's Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland." The Age (Melbourne) 01/15/03

PBS Sanitizes Language For "Gin Game" Broadcast "The Gin Game", D.L. Coburn's 1978 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, has some salty language. But really - compared to your average movie these days, it's rather tame. But "in a bow to any skittish affiliates, PBS plans to provide alternate editions of the production: original as well as one that deletes some of the swear words uttered." Chicago Tribune 01/14/03

Dance

Remembering Nureyev It's been ten years since Rudolf Nueyev died. He has a long relationship with the city of Vienna, and the Staatsoper has staged a commemoration of his career. "The programme insisted upon Nureyev as apostle of the Russian classic repertory. It is only as you consider the list of his stagings, the revisions and re-workings that constantly occupied him, that you realise the ceaseless energy, the prodigious determination to 'do better', that marked Nureyev's creative life. Financial Times 01/15/04


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