Ideas HERE FOR WEEKEND STORIES (20 stories) Posted: 04/20/2003 10:20 pm When Theory Gets You Shut Out Of Society's Decisions For much of the past 25 years, academic humanists have lived in a world of theory. But theory has had less and less impact on the direction of our culture, and some academics are wondering if a new direction is called for. So recently, an intellectual "town hall" was convened in Chicago to talk things over. "Has theory forsaken 'sociopolitical engagement' for a 'therapeutic turn' to ethics and the care of the psyche? Should humanists devote themselves to securing 'some space for the aesthetic in the face of the overwhelming forces of mass culture and entertainment'? Have the Internet and biotechnology rendered both human nature and printed dissertations obsolete?" Boston Globe 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 4:54 pm Visual Arts Iraq Art - Failure To Act During the Second World War, Allied governments made protecting Europe's art treasures a priority. It was a policy that paid many benefits. So why did the Americans not have a similar policy to help protect Iraq's culture? Chicago Tribune 04/21/03 Posted: 04/21/2003 7:36 am Appreciating The Barnes Collection The Barnes Collection, outside Philadelphia, is one of the America's great collections. "The Barnes collection, all 8,000 pieces of it, is like a multilayer cake. The masterpiece paintings that traveled around the world between 1993 and 1995 are the creamy, highly visible icing. Underneath, less readily noticed, other specialized groups of objects produce a fascinating and incomparable texture. These subcollections are themselves of splendid quality and variety. Not only are they aesthetically stimulating, but they also help to create the distinctive displays, called 'ensembles,' that make the Barnes unique." Philadelphia Inquirer 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 9:11 pm US Combat Artist Corps US forces in Iraq include two "combat artists," "part of a tradition dating back to the American Revolution, charged with going into war to capture its 'essence'. Unlike war photographers today, combat artists are in no way restricted by the military. Their orders: Go forth and do good. That's it. Absolutely nothing is dictated, from the medium to the subject to the tone." Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 04/18/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 5:27 pm The difficulty of War Art Art about war is difficult. Passions of artist and viewer have to be negotiated, and the symbolism can be complicated. "With so few works considered truly enduring, is it possible that the power, ugliness and odd beauty of war is simply inexpressible, even in art? If it can be expressed, then who is qualified? Do artists have to see first-hand what they translate into art?" Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 04/18/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 5:23 pm Stolen Iraqi Art Seized At Jordanian Border "Jordanian customs authorities have seized 42 paintings believed to have been looted from Iraq's National Museum, government officials said Saturday." Nando Times (AP) 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 4:00 pm Music Gergiev - A Falling Star At The Met? Conductor Valery Gergiev was greeted as a star at the Metropolitan Opera when he first arrived. And the reviews were terrific. But "in recent seasons he has had tense relations with the Met musicians and choristers, who are from all reports dismayed by what they consider his idiosyncratic technique, lack of focus and penchant for showing up late to rehearsals. That tension, and even hostility, showed. What is going on? Few artists have risen so fast at the Met." The New York Times 04/21/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 9:31 pm It's Piazzolla Time "Although often vilified in his lifetime, in the years since he died in 1992, the Argentinian musician Astor Piazzolla, who invented what he called "new tango", has become lauded by increasing numbers in the classical world as one of the greatest contemporary composers of the last century." The Telegraph (UK) 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 5:12 pm Life In The Old CD Yet... The compact disc is 20 year5s old. And two new enhanced CD formats introduced in 1999 offer big improvments in the sound of a CD. Questionj is - will consumers catch on and want them? Chicago Tribune 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 4:51 pm Sarasota Opera's Winning Formula The Sarasota Opera in Florida is thriving. "Sarasota County - with a population of just less than 326,000 - is home to two professional orchestras, more than 10 theaters, 30 art galleries and a ballet company. None of them raises bigger budgets or draws on a larger local, national and international public than the $4.8 million Sarasota Opera. Ticket sales this year declined only 2 to 3 percent, for a loss of about $46,000, from last year's record revenues of $2.04 million - not bad for any opera producer in a flat economy. The less obvious reason is that Sarasota Opera is giving its audiences - business-suited seniors as well as the jeans-and-Gucci-loafers younger crowd the company actively woos - the kind of opera they can't hear or see anywhere else." Chicago Tribune 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 4:46 pm Rap Music In Trouble? "Rap music, which ushered the wonders of hip-hop culture from graffiti-splattered playgrounds to suburban front lawns, is in trouble. Nearly three decades since spoken wordscapes were married to beats to create a new musical vocabulary, rap music is flirting with creative bankruptcy. A genre once characterized by innovative, restless spirit now seems little more than an assembly-line product. Take a menacing scowl, a few platinum rings and pendants, a video filled with lip-licking, come-hither hotties, and someone who can rhyme about bullet-riddled mayhem, cognac, sneakers, dubs, or the latest Hummer -- and an MTV or BET-ready rap star is born." Boston Globe 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 4:04 pm Creativity On A Deadline (And Sometimes You Miss It) "Creativity is hard to schedule. Yet orchestras today have to plan their seasons months, even years in advance. This leads to a disparity: on one hand, stringent deadlines; on the other, a process of creation that requires flexibility and can never quite be pinned down. For when you commission a piece, you're never sure what you're going to get — or when you're going to get it." The New York Times 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 9:50 am Is Music Better/Worse Depending On Who Wrote It? Does a piece of music's back-story change the way we hear it? Of course. But "do we serve music as a whole by giving attention to pieces whose qualities, taken by themselves, rarely rise above the competent and the agreeable? In other words, does a life that resonates with profound circumstances justify the reputation of music that falls short of such depths? Music moves the spirit in a way that other arts do not. Dare we compromise its integrity, no matter how moving the story attached? Some would say not." The New York Times 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 9:45 am Arts Issues Why Do We Fear Experts? Just when did we become so distrustful of people who know things? "Unfortunately, this skepticism has metamorphosed over the decades into a determination that no one with special knowledge or experience is worth listening to. If Rembrandt were alive today, he'd be reviled by art students who don't know how to prepare a canvas. Beethoven would be booed by experimental composers who couldn't identify the key of C major on a bet, while Duke Ellington would be denigrated by rappers who couldn't pick out a simple melody, much less aspire to the harmonic empyrean." St. Louis Post-Dispatch 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 9:16 pm San Francisco Area Arts Hurting For Money, Support A bad economy is hurting Bay Area arts groups and artists. "The big four - the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Ballet and American Conservatory Theater - are straining to cope with dwindling donations, volatile endowment funds, cuts in government grants and smaller, choosier audiences. 'The arts have become a victim of the sour economy. Everybody's ox is being gored. No one is exempt from the red ink'." San Francisco Chronicle 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 5:47 pm Doing The Numbers All five streams of financial support are down for Bay Area arts groups - corporate, government and individual donations, ticket sales and endowment income. San Francisco Chronicle 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 4:50 pm People San Diego's First-Couple Of The Arts Ann and Ian Campbell run San Diego Opera. As general director, Ian Campbell is the primary decision-maker, the one most responsible for determining the repertoire and singers as well as the artistic goals. Having headed the 38-year-old company longer than anyone else, he has come to symbolize San Diego Opera, whether in boardrooms or classrooms, radio or television. Ann Campbell is San Diego Opera's director of strategic planning and special projects, responsible for the company's earned and contributed revenue." San Diego Union-Tribune 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 5:18 pm Theatre NY Critics Insist On Seeing Sondheim Out-Of-Town "The community of theater critics is turning itself inside out over whether to storm the barricades at Chicago's Goodman Theatre in late June and buy our own tickets to review 'Bounce.' This is the first collaboration between Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince since their brilliant partnership imploded with the failure of "Merrily We Roll Along" in 1981. Sondheim and Prince don't want national press. They claim we can review the show when a later edition plays the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in the fall. But this is a big deal. It is being offered as part of the Goodman's regular nonprofit series, which should be open to national critics. It is not an out-of-town commercial tryout." Newsday 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 6:07 pm TV Generation - So That's Where The Playwrights Are Going... More and more playwrights are finding themselves writing for TV, as the lines between who works for stage and who works for screen get blurry. "For young playwrights, the new opportunities offer another way to make a living as the theater world is pummeled by a faltering economy. They move to Los Angeles, dividing their time between television and theater productions, writing plays and screenplays. And they do it without hearing the cries of 'Sellout!' that met earlier generations who charted similar paths." Boston Globe 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 4:07 pm   Publishing Used Bookstores See Sales Increase Independent bookstores as a group may be facing declining sales, but used bookstores are soing well. "The latest consumer book-purchase study shows that, nationally, used bookstores have increased their market share from 3% to 5% in recent years. The increasing retail prices for hardcover and paperbacks have encouraged consumers to seek out used books for better savings, according to the Book Industry Study Group. Some used-book sellers have found a way to make the Internet work for them, and most have garnered strong customer loyalty." Los Angeles Times 04/21/03 Posted: 04/21/2003 7:29 am Bookstore Sales Down Though retails sales in America rose 3.5 percent in February, bookstore sales fell 4.3 percent, to $1.07 billion. "For the first two months of the year, bookstore sales inched up 0.5%, to $3.32 billion, while sales for all of retail increased 4.6%." Publishers Weekly 04/21/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 10:17 pm Saving Washington's Library Washington DC's central library was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and opened in 1972. Now the city wants to redevelop the area around the library, and the building is endangered. "Already, scores of District operatives are lining up for the political staring contest. The Committee of 100 on the Federal City and the Downtown Artists Coalition want the Mies building to house books—and not under the banner of Barnes & Noble." Washington City Paper 04/18/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 9:47 pm FreeRiders - On The Backs Of Famous Writers A new category of novel is developing, one we might well call 'Freerider Fiction.' In these books, the author rides the reputation of some true- to-history literary figure to a place he probably would not have reached on his own. Some recent examples of Freerider Fiction (FRF) are Monique Truong's 'The Book of Salt', Kate Taylor's 'Mme. Proust and the Kosher Kitchen', Helen Humphreys' 'The Lost Garden' - and, of course, Michael Cunningham's 'The Hours'." National Post 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 5:34 pm Crime Does Pay? (Depending On How Many Copies You Sell...) Should criminals be allowed to earn money by writing books about what they've done? "The debate about paying criminals for their stories is an enduring one, with the slippery notion of morality at its centre." The Observer (UK) 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 5:08 pm Media When The Arts Mattered On BBC - And How They Disappeared How did the arts disappear on BBC? "First, expelling the arts from the main channels. We have seen the almost complete disappearance of the arts from BBC1. So, goodbye Omnibus, after 35 years. It was also decided that even BBC2, a "minority channel" for challenging programmes, shouldn't be cluttered up with the arts. So, if they survived the culling of the mid-1990s-when long-running series like 'The Late Show' and 'Bookmark' were killed off—arts programmes were booted onto BBC4. The BBC does not even have a music and arts department any more. It is now part of specialist factual programming. Then there is the retreat from seriousness." Prospect 05/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 10:11 pm Hollywood - Land Of The Toga Pix The new thing in Hollywood movies? Really old. "Beginning in the summer of 2004, a horde of 'toga movies' set in ancient times will be poised to invade local cineplexes. As befits the epic scale required by this new breed of old sagas, studios are spending big money on big directors and big stars." Boston Globe 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 4:22 pm Dance Jenkins - A Check On State of West Coast Dance "The Margaret Jenkins Company's 'Thirty Years of Dance' may turn out to be a West Coast reality check on where American dance has been as well as where it may be going." San Francisco Chronicle 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 5:44 pm Melder Of Dance Forms "At 28, Akram Khan is the great new hope in the dance world. A third-generation British Asian, he brings vitality to cross-cultural expression, fusing Western contemporary dance with kathak, the Indian classical genre in which he trained from the age of seven. He is also renowned for building bridges between the disciplines." The Observer (UK) 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 5:05 pm Rethinking All That Moving Around Western dance - particularly ballet - has emphasized athleticism (and thereby youth). But more and more, dancers are exploring the Asian tradition, which is less athletic, and concentrates more on the upper body. "By the time critics notice something in art, artists have almost always long since led the way. So it is with Asian dance and its impact on the West, which has by now insinuated itself into our dance vocabulary. Ballet remains popular, and rightly so: there is something thrilling about artistically inflected athletic accomplishment, and we'll always respond to that. But feats of studly skill are not all there is to dance, and Asians know it." The New York Times 04/20/03 Posted: 04/20/2003 9:38 am