ARTS ISSUES
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Visa Difficulties/War Cancellations Take Toll On Arts Groups In Minnesota, "immigration difficulties and terror worries have led to the cancellation of scores of events since Sept. 11, 2001. Other artists have canceled in protest of U.S. policies, adding to the mounting financial and artistic costs." The Star-Tribune (Minneapolis) 04/13/03
Gioia And The Bureaucracy When he quit business, new NEA chairman Dana Gioia says he vowed not to be involved with bureaucracy again. "Appointed to his four-year term by President Bush, Gioia sees the bureaucratic dimension of his job as 'a necessary obstacle. There's no other way of administering these grants... except through a bureaucracy.' The key, he says, is to remain 'conscious of what your mission is. The constituency of the arts endowment is not merely artists. It's all Americans'." Philadelphia Inquirer 04/13/03
Rosenthal To Gioia: Fund Artists Over Institutions LA Times reader Rachel Rosenthal doesn't like NEA chairman Dana Gioia's emphasis on only funding arts institutions at the expense of artists. "Yes, art should be taught in school; yes, it's good to reach out; yes, art should be part of the fabric of social life. But by denying direct support to artists, what you are doing is forcing individual creative artists to mold their output to fit the tastes and policies of existing presenting organizations (theaters, galleries, concert halls) instead of following their own muse. This is a distorting and painful situation for most creators, and it favors interpretive artists: actors, musicians, curators." Los Angeles Times 04/14/03
Our Cultural Leaders - Where's The Considered Debate? Clive Davis is disappointed by the behavior of Britain's cultural leaders over the issue of the war. "At a time when cultural figures should have been leading a considered debate, Britain’s cultural elite (and a fair part of America’s too) responded with a mixture of hysteria, self-righteousness and wilful ignorance. If you think I am exaggerating, consider just some of the evidence. Exhibit 1 is the poetry (for want of a better word) of Harold Pinter, a once-respected figure who has turned into the literary equivalent of a sad old man with a 'The End Is Nigh' sandwich board." The Times (UK) 04/14/03
Denver - More Interest In Arts Than Sports A new study reports that in Denver "more people in the Denver area patronize the performing arts than professional sporting events, according to an unprecedented new study of attitudes and attendance patterns. It also shows that among the primary performing-arts disciplines, theater far outdraws dance, opera and the symphony." Denver Post 04/13/03
DANCE
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The Shrinking Dance Company Ohio Ballet is fading away. "Once a company of more than 20 dancers, the ensemble has been reduced to 12. Once a beloved cultural jewel with a subscription base of about 3,500 patrons, it now has a total of 848 subscribers in Cleveland and Akron." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 04/13/03
MEDIA
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Why Movies Are So Bad This Times Of Year There seems to be great consternation in the movie industry right now over the lackluster performance of recent movies." Why, asks Barry Koltnow? Because movies this time of year stink. "The reason they stink is that all the best movies come out in the last two months of the year because members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are brain-dead and cannot remember a movie longer than two months. Therefore, if you want your movie to be considered for an Oscar, you must release it just before the voting deadline. On the other hand, if you have a fun movie that has the potential to make a lot of money, then you must release it in the summer when school is out and kids have the time to see a movie 12 times a day." Orange County Register 04/13/03
MUSIC
http://www.artsjournal.com/music
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The Dictator And The Opera North Korean dictator Kim Jong II has written a book on opera. "You might assume the book is a socialist critique of La Traviata and Carmen. Unfortunately, it's nothing so delicious, and isn't even whacked-out enough to be fun. It's just desperately prosaic and, for us, a creepy cautionary tale about what happens when someone whose favorite opera is titled 'Sea of Blood' (and whose favorite movie is Rocky III, according to another of his aesthetic tracts, 'On the Art of the Cinema') attempts to legislate the artistic process." Philadelphia Inquirer 04/13/03
Legislators Propose Bills To Hold Recording Industry Accountable As CD sales fall and the recording business seems to fall apart, legislators in New York and California are considering tough new laws to help ensure artists get the money owed to them. Miami Herald (AP) 04/13/03
New Look For Radio Pay-For-Play? Last week radio giant Clear Channel Communications announced it would discontinue what many consider the pay-for-play system of choosing which music radio stations play. "But it's likely that the Clear Channel decision won't overturn the pay-for-play system so much as reconfigure it. Instead of funneling money through independent promoters to radio stations, record companies will now have to deal directly with Clear Channel programmers in seeking access to the airwaves. And, as in all things radio, money will talk. The radio giant said as much in a statement announcing the move, in which it promised a 'new, restructured relationship with the recording industry . . . on specific group-wide contesting, promotions and marketing opportunities.' Those words sent a shudder through many industry observers." Chicago Tribune 04/13/03
Power Women In The Orchestra World The appointment of Deborah Card as new president of the Chicago Symphony is notable. But then again, it's not notable that she's a woman taking the job. "Women may still be scarce on conductors' podiums, and gains still have to be made among the ranks of orchestral players, in brass sections especially. But more and more women are emerging in the top administrative ranks of America's most important orchestras and opera companies." Chicago Sun-Times 04/13/03
Card Widely Admired "In a field where jealousies and rivalries abound, it's rare to find an orchestra manager as widely admired as the savvy, experienced executive director of the Seattle Symphony (since 1992). Technically speaking, Deborah Card isn't the first woman ever to manage the CSO. That honor falls to the long-forgotten Anna Millar, who served in that capacity from 1895 to 1899 during founder Theodore Thomas' tenure. And there are numerous women running smaller U.S. orchestras." Chicago Tribune 04/13/03
Are "Talented" Kids Exploited? Are kids on talent shows really the "most talented?" "The success of 'American Idol' last year has spawned imitators like 'America's Most Talented Kid,' but the exploitation of child performers as a form of mass entertainment has existed as long as mass entertainment has. Most childhood careers are the product of adult fantasies; they are as much about the parents as they are about the child. A parent appears with each performer on 'America's Most Talented Kid'; the idea may be to deflect criticism about exploitation, but instead it reinforces it." Boston Globe 04/13/03
PEOPLE
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Hughes Pleads Guilty In Car Crash Art critic Robert Hughes has admitted guilt in the car accident he caused in Australia in 1999. "A Perth court fined him A$2,500 (£960, $1,500) after he pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm. Prosecutors said Hughes was driving on the wrong side of the road when the crash happened. But he said he does not remember anything about the head-on accident 120 km (75 miles) south of Broome." BBC 04/14/03
Charlotte Church's Rebellion Charlotte Church's holiday in Hawaii has been ruined by a terrible telephone row with her mother. Heading abroad with her 'disreputable' boyfriend, Steven, Charlotte was photographed at the airport in a pink T-shirt which read: 'My Barbie is a Crack Whore'. This didn't play too well with Mum back home." The Observer (UK) 04/13/03
Daniel Libeskind, Salesman Daniel Libeskind is a brilliant architect. But he has one other skill that is almost as developed. He's a salesman. "Sales is the right word, because we live in the marketplace, not only in terms of selling and buying but in the marketplace of ideas. It's a democratic city, democratic country, and that's how civic projects get developed. They're certainly not going to be done in an ivory tower somewhere - take it or leave it. Either you interact and communicate what you're doing or you're really cynical and should not be involved in civic art." Denver Post 04/13/03
PUBLISHING
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Cliche Central There's a central list of words that have become cliched and ought not to be used in good writing. "This year's list consists almost entirely of pat phrases associated with '9/11' and the 'war on terror', all of which are so far beyond mockery and have been so ruthlessly dissected in the (British) press that the list seems sadly unimaginative (it's become clichéd to remark on the clichéness of the clichés). But isn't there an unforgivable fundamentalism in proscribing certain words as 'bad' English and promoting others as 'right', even when done in jest - one that is, at best, pompously pedantic and, at worst, pernicious, given that many 'wrong' words originate with ethnic or cultural groups for whom they are perfectly 'correct'?" The Observer (UK) 04/13/03
Scrutinizing The Worth Of National Poetry Month "The designation of April as 'National Poetry Month' suggests special pleading and a strategy of containment-as if all other months were thereby declared poetry-free zones. For poets, readers, and even inadvertent overhearers of poetry, however, there is a constant stream of poetic activity, private and public, involving poets both new and old." But "if National Poetry Month can offer something other than hype, let's make it an opportunity to give our national discourse the scrutiny our best poets have always given to language." Boston Globe 04/13/03
THEATRE
http://www.artsjournal.com/theatre
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This Year's Humana Fest - The Fear Flows Through Louisville's six-week Humana Festival - America's biggest festival for new plays, is winding up. "In stylistically diverse ways, playwrights featured in the 27th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays tapped into our national post-9/11 angst and let the fear flow through their funny, sobering, provocative works." Miami Herald 04/13/03
Humana - Mirroring Our Fears Themes of this year's Humana Festival? "Terrorism. School violence. The dangers of human cloning. They spoke in a diversity of voices, yet the writers shared a common theme: We are afraid of our world." Rocky Mountain News 04/13/03
Shakespeare And Hip Hop - They're Like This, I Tell You... Shakespeare and hip hop - a natural fit, don't you think? "It was only a matter of time before an American stage production put us in touch with Shakespeare’s inner hip hop. The all-male, cross-dressing The Bomb-itty of Errors, a critically acclaimed sell-out on the Edinburgh Fringe last year, is now bound for the West End after a six-city tour. The marriage of hip hop and early Shakespearean comedy is by no means a shotgun one: they share a musicality of language, rhyming couplets, tongue-twisting obsession with wordplay and a taste for bawdiness." The Times (UK) 04/14/03
Royal Shakespeare - Time For A Makeover Directing the down-and-out Royal Shakespeare Company is called the toughest job in theatre. And Michael Boyd now has the job. Big changes are ahead he says. "At present, the RSC is 'too big for anyone to run' and 'too big for people to identify us'. He presides over an antiquated corporate structure, with 30 governors, 12 of whom are on the board. It is imperative, according to at least one governor I spoke to, that the RSC reorganise itself structurally and that creative and commercial genius coincide. Arts Council support depends on the ability to generate income by other means. Boyd has taken this on board, telling me that he and Christopher Foy, the company's managing director, will 'work seamlessly together to try and close the cultural divide between art and management'." The Observer (UK) 04/13/03
VISUAL ARTS
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London - Going Up... This week there will be a vote on allowing the building of Europe's tallest skyscraper in London. "Nothing can avoid the fact that this massive building will transform the scale of London. St Paul's Cathedral still holds its own against tall buildings in the City, but London Bridge Tower is three times its height. At the moment, Tower 42, the former NatWest Tower, sets an unofficial 600ft height limit in central London. If London Bridge Tower gets the go-ahead, all developers will be aiming at 1,000ft, the limit imposed by the Civil Aviation Authority. London will become a high-rise city, with the dome of St Paul's slowly reduced to a pimple. Organised opposition to such a transformation has largely evaporated." The Telegraph (UK) 04/14/03
Destroying Iraq's Museum - One Tank Could Have Saved It The looting of the Iraq Museum is a loss for the world. "The losses will be felt worldwide, but its greatest impact will be on the Iraqi people themselves when it comes to rebuilding their sense of national identity. International cultural organisations had urged before the war that the cultural heritage of Iraq, which has more than 10,000 archaeological sites, be spared. US forces are making a belated attempt to protect the National Museum, calling on Iraqi policemen to turn up for duty. There is no pay, but 80 have given their services. 'The Americans were supposed to protect the museum. If they had just one tank and two soldiers nothing like this would have happened. I hold the American troops responsible. They know that this is a museum. They protect oil ministries but not the cultural heritage'." The Telegraph (UK) 04/13/03
Erasing The Story Of Civilization The looting of Iraq's museums is "a cultural catastrophe. Yesterday the museum's exhibition halls and security vaults were a barren mess - display cases smashed, offices ransacked and floors littered with hand-written index cards recording the timeless detail of more than 170,000 rare items that were pilfered. Worse, in their search for gold and gems, the looters got into the museum's underground vaults, where they smashed the contents of the thousands of tin trunks. It was here that staff had painstakingly packed priceless ceramics that tell the story of life from one civilisation to the next through 9000 fabled years in Mesopotamia." The Age (Melbourne) 04/14/03
