Ideas Pictorial Writing Westerners have always been fascinated by "writing systems of East Asia. "Chinese, Japanese and Korean, are 'syllabaries,' in which each character corresponds to a syllable of sound, and in Chinese, at least, a basic unit of meaning (called a morpheme). By contrast, alphabetic systems rely on letters that by themselves are pure abstractions: a single letter represents neither a syllable of sound nor a morpheme. While alphabets tend to be small, syllabaries can be quite large: there are more than 50,000 Chinese characters, though most people can get by with knowing about 5,000. But a better understanding of Asian writing systems has not stopped Western experts from making grand claims about their virtues and limitations." The New York Times 05/03/02 Posted: 05/03/2003 1:28 pm Visual Arts The MFA's Big Art Deal Boston's Museum of Fine Arts is after a painting - it won't say which, but it's rumored to be a major Degas - that would be one of the biggest purchases made by an American museum in years. To finance the deal, the MFA is hoping to sell off two Degas and a Renoir at auction, expecting to take in $17 million... Boston Globe 05/04/03 Posted: 05/04/2003 7:01 am Outsider Art - 100 Years Since Gauguin "Exactly 100 years ago next Thursday, Paul Gauguin died alone and in agonising pain in his shack on the Marquesas Islands near Tahiti. He was 54, heavily in debt, his paintings were almost universally derided and he was addicted to morphine ? he may even have been killed by an overdose of the drug, which he took for the suppurating syphilis sores on his legs..." The Telegraph (UK) 05/03/03 Posted: 05/03/2003 7:20 pm Photographs Vs Painting - Hockney Makes His Case David Hockney says photographs misrepresent war. "For a New York exhibition, Hockney has made a watercolour based on Picasso's painting 'Massacre in Korea'. He has called it 'Problems of Depiction' and added a note which suggests that both the Picasso and this new spin on it are 'a painter's response to the limitations of photography, limitations that are still with us, and need some debate today'." The Guardian (UK) 05/03/03 Posted: 05/03/2003 6:55 pm Music The Florida Philharmonic's Bleak Prospects With an annual budget of $10 million, the Florida Philharmonic is the state's largest performing arts institution. But after failing to raise $20 million in emergency funds by last Friday, the orchestra could go out of business at the end of next week. Friday the orchestra gave itself a one-week reprieve, saying it had to raise $4 million by then to remain open. The prospects are not good. Palm Beach Post 05/04/03 Posted: 05/04/2003 6:53 am Looking For Mr/Ms Right The St. Lawrence String Quartet is one of chamber music's rising young stars - the group has a prestigious residency, a recording contract, and plenty of concerts. But when its founding cellist decided to quit, the search for a replacement was arduous. Now, a year after taking in a new player, the group is beginning its search all over again... The New York Times 05/04/03 Posted: 05/04/2003 6:31 am Florida Philharmonic Extends Deathwatch Deadline The Florida Philharmonic didn't make its self-imposed deadline of raising $20 million by Friday; it came up with only $3 million. So is it filing for bankruptcy, as threatened? Not quite. The orchestra has stopped selling tickets for concerts after next weekend, said it needs to raise $4 million to keep going instead of $20 million. And it extended a self-imposed deadline for a bankruptcy filing. "The Philharmonic's board has authorized management to shut down the symphony `as early as May 10 . . . unless there is a groundswell of public support providing immediate commitments of at least $4 million'." Miami Herald 05/03/03 Posted: 05/03/2003 1:51 pm Previously: No White Knight For Florida Philharmonic (So Far) So far no one has stepped forward to help bail out the Florida Philharmonic, which needs to raise $20 million by Friday so it can stay in business. "The Philharmonic, which has run deficits ranging from $900,000 to $3.6 million each year since 1999, needs about $4 million right away, Lewis said. The orchestra can make its May 9 payroll but will run out of money before it can pay employees on May 23. 'What is difficult for me as a potential donor . . . is to hear that the orchestra has been so badly managed before and now we should trust you to make a better orchestra." Miami Herald 04/29/03 Making Pops Sing Again Attendance for the Milwaukee Symphony's pops concerts seems to be waning. Partly, its a problem of headlining stars who are getting older and appealing to fewer people. Many younger music stars just don't seem right for the pops. Tom Strini proposes not getting rid of the pops, but reforming how the concerts are mounted... Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 05/02/03 Posted: 05/03/2003 1:45 pm St. Louis Symphony Digs Out The St. Louis Symphony, which earlier this season said it was in danger of collapse if a major emergency fundraising campaign wasn't successful, says it has raised three-quarters of the $40 million it needs to survive. "With $30 million pledged or in hand, the Symphony has 20 months left to bring in the remaining $10 million. But to be really healthy, the Symphony needs more than the $85 million to $90 million in endowment that it will have by the end of the campaign - somewhere more in the neighborhood of $150 million." St. Louis Post-Dispatch 05/02/03 Posted: 05/03/2003 1:19 pm Arts Issues San Jose Slashes Arts Grants States are slashing arts funding. So are cities. This week the San Jose City Council revealed that "grants for 2003-04 would drop 24 percent below last year's, to a total of $2.54 million." San Jose Mercury-News 05/02/03 Posted: 05/03/2003 1:09 pm Assessing New York Arts Funding Cuts "In the past year's budget, New York spent more than any other state on the arts, $44.4 million. Now, with the state arguably facing the biggest budget crisis since the Depression, Governor George Pataki proposes to trim grants to arts organizations by 15 percent, to about $37.8 million. But critics want deeper cuts." Gotham Gazette (NYC) 05/02/03 Posted: 05/03/2003 7:17 am McGreevey: New Funding Source For NJ Arts New Jersey Governor James McGreevey says he'll find a new dedicated sourse of funding for the arts. McGreevey had proposed eliminating arts funding altogether, but an intense statewide lobbying effort for the arts seems to have changed his mind. "The governor made the pledge Thursday during a private meeting with the leaders of several major arts institutions. While he did not specify any details about the funding source or how much money it might generate, administration officials have been considering plans to use a portion of proceeds from a proposed new hotel tax to fund the programs." Newsday (AP) 05/02/03 Posted: 05/03/2003 1:12 am People Asteroid Names After Mister Rogers An asteroid has been named in honor of Fred Rogers. "Misterrogers," formerly known as No. 26858, honors Fred Rogers, creator and host of public television's "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." Rogers died Feb. 27 at age 74. Los Angeles Times (AP) 05/03/03 Posted: 05/03/2003 7:25 pm Theatre "Hairspray" Cleans Up With Drama Desk Nominations "Hairspray" gets 14 nominations for the 48th Annual Drama Desk Awards, tying the number received in past years by "The Producers," "Ragtime" and "The Secret Garden." Other high scorers included the musicals "La Bohème," "A Man of No Importance," "Movin' Out," "Nine" and "Avenue A," the new play "Take Me Out" and the revival of "Long Day's Journey Into Night." Hartford Courant 05/03/03 Posted: 05/03/2003 7:01 pm Publishing Library Burning: War On Words In Iraq The burning of Iraq's National Library destroyed records of much of the country's intellectual life. "Even if alert curators and librarians succeeded in moving significant numbers of books to safety, Baghdad's most recent bibliographic losses are enormous. The National Library was the country's copyright depository, like our own Library of Congress; as such it contained copies of all books published in modern Iraq. Although Cairo and Beirut are the traditional centers of Arabic publishing, Iraqis have long been recognized as great readers-and in the 20th century, particularly before Saddam Hussein took power, the country's book trade flourished. But the library's holdings reached back to long before the rise of the Ba'ath Party." Boston Globe 05/04/03 Posted: 05/04/2003 7:13 am Reimagining Orwell George Orwell's 1984 has longe been interpreted as an anti-communist tract. But that's not entirely accurate, argues Thomas Pynchon. "Though 1984 has brought aid and comfort to generations of anticommunist ideologues with Pavlovian-response issues of their own, Orwell's politics were not only of the left, but to the left of left." The Guardian (UK) 05/03/03 Posted: 05/03/2003 7:14 pm Underground Nation During 2002, Eric Schlosser's history-cum-polemic Fast Food Nation sold almost 200,000 copies in its UK paperback alone. His next target? America's underground vices: "Today, revenues from porn match Hollywood receipts and exceed sales of rock. Some 20 years after Reagan's 'War on Drugs' began, marijuana cultivation has probably overtaken corn ? worth $19 billion annually ? as the nation's most lucrative cash crop. In Los Angeles County, 28 per cent of all workers are paid in untraceable cash: 'a triumph of underground practices and values'. Everywhere you look, the underground has flooded the mainstream. Together, these essays build into a secret history of America's favourite vices." The Independent (UK) 05/03/03 Posted: 05/03/2003 7:06 pm Spoken Traditions Into Pages "The Hmong had a purely oral culture, with no form of writing until the 1950s, when Christian missionaries developed one using the Roman alphabet." But for Mai Neng Moua, "raised and educated in the United States, it is the permanence and durability of words fastened into sentences and placed on a page that make sense of her life, her family's history and a culture at a crossroads. Mai is among the first generation of Hmong to write about the history and give voice to contemporary Hmong experiences." And she's collected Hmong stories for a book, the first-ever anthology of Hmong-American writing." Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 05/02/03 Posted: 05/03/2003 1:58 pm Media The Real Reality: Scripted TV Shows Make Money (Lots Of It) So you think the reality shows are going to completely take over the TV landscape? Don't count on it. "According to a recent Morgan Stanley research report, profits from scripted shows (before syndication) have risen 36 percent over the last five years, to $3 billion this season from $2.2 billion in 1998-99 — and that's without any new breakout hits. So despite predictions that this fall's schedule would be flooded with low-cost reality shows, and that writers would find themselves teaching "The Art of Sitcoms" at the Learning Annex, there appear to be at least as many drama and comedy pilots in production as last year." The New York Times 05/04/03 Posted: 05/04/2003 6:41 am Dance Fighting Back From Injury And Weight Gain "In late 2001, Miranda Weese, one of New York City Ballet's most infallible and dramatically captivating dancers, underwent arthroscopic surgery to repair torn cartilage in her hip. She remained sidelined for a year, and not merely because of the time it took to regain her strength. Another nightmare occurred during her recovery: Ms Weese gained 40 pounds. Until then, she had never even gone on a diet." It's a long road back... The New York Times 05/04/03 Posted: 05/04/2003 6:21 am