Ideas Are We Losing Our Sense Of Distance? Our Ability To Reflect? Have we lost our critical distance from the cultural things with which we interact? "American culture as a whole has grown increasingly spellbound by electronic media to the point where now every other person we see wears a headset, has a cell phone to one ear or eyes fixed on some porthole of cyberspace. The critical distance that once appeared to be a virtue, or at least an advantage, now appears to be one more illusion, or perhaps a mere spasm of arrogance on the artist's or the critic's part." San Francisco Chronicle 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 6:09 pm Should Politics Be Like Reality TV? Is voting someone out of the Big Brother reality TV house much different from voting out politicians? "Television has always been a problem for politicians, but never more so than now, when it is questioning their very ethos and raison d'être. Politics is going through the biggest change since the emancipation of women. It is massive, what could happen in the next five to 10 years, in the meshing of direct and representative democracy. It is something new. Television has picked up on interactivity in the telecommunications world. That is driving it." The Telegraph (UK) 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 5:16 pm Visual Arts 7000 Spaniards Strip Naked For Spencer Seven thousand Spaniards strip for photographer Spencer Tunick in Barcelona, the most people he's used for one of his photos. "There was a festival-like atmosphere among the crowd even though many of the models became quite cold from standing around naked for 90 minutes in temperatures of 15 degrees Celsius." The Age (Melbourne) 06/09/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 6:52 pm US: Most Iraqi Artifacts Now Accounted For US officials say that estimates of Iraqi artifacts stolen from the Iraq Museum were grossly overestimated and that most of the art has been recovered. "Initial estimates after the war ended in April suggested that as many as 170,000 pieces, including the Nimrud treasures, were lost or stolen during the sacking of the museum, according to U.S. officials. They now say 3,000 pieces remain unaccounted for and may have disappeared into the shadowy world of black market antiquities trading." Washington Post 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 6:26 pm Controversy Over Cleaning David "Italy's art world is in a flap as experts quarrel over how to preserve the priceless cultural icon. In 2004, it will be 500 years since the 4-metre-high statue depicting the courageous, naked young biblical hero was unveiled in Piazza della Signoria, the square that remains Florence's lifeblood. The block of marble itself is even older. Now, one of Italy's leading restorers has thrown down her tools — chamois cloth, silky soft brush, cotton swabs and an eraser — in a spat with other experts over how to clean David." Toronto Star 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 3:10 pm Hadid's New American Masterpiece Herbert Muschamp is unequivocal about Zaha Hadid's first American building, the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati: "It is an amazing building, a work of international stature that confidently meets the high expectations aroused by this prodigiously gifted architect for nearly two decades. Might as well blurt it out: the Rosenthal Center is the most important American building to be completed since the end of the cold war." The New York Times 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 11:09 am Previously: Hadid's Latest Is A Coup For Cincinnati Cincinnati's new arts center is not the type of outsized, over-the-top structure generally associated with today's high-profile architecture. In fact, Zaha Hadid's design is in many ways the antithesis of the Blockbuster Building, which may be part of the reason that critics have been falling all over themselves to praise it. Benjamin Forgey is impressed with the building, if not with the hype, and says that the museum will reflect well on its hometown. "For the city itself, which contributed money along with the state and private donors, the architecture is a coup. The building will become an "early Hadid," a period piece folks will fight to save from the wrecking ball in a half-century or so." Washington Post 06/01/03 Music Study: Canada's Troubled Orchestras Canadian orchestras commission a study on the state of their business. The results are sobering. "Among its findings? That many orchestras lack a clearly articulated vision of what they are about. That boards are often untrained and imperfectly informed. That managers are so overworked that little time is devoted to planning. That close to a decade of budget cuts has begun to erode artistic quality." Toronto Star 06/09/03 Posted: 06/09/2003 7:36 am Celebrating French Music of the French Baroque is very popular right now. And no one has done more to popularize it than conductor William Christie. "Why this sudden surge of interest in music ignored by the public for 250 years? Partly it's a matter of the larger early-music movement and our culture's growing fascination with its own cultural legacy. That fascination has its healthy and unhealthy aspects, suggesting a welcome attention to its past and perhaps a waning interest in its creative present." The New York Times 06/09/03 Posted: 06/09/2003 7:09 am The Most Popular Music Right Now? "Right now, the Billboard Top 10 includes six straight hip hop records (as well as a further two that could be described as strongly hip hop-influenced). Furthermore, hip hop is currently the best-selling musical genre worldwide, outstripping pop, country, rock and any other you can think of. Amazing, eh?" London Evening Standard 06/06/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 7:48 pm Lincoln Center's New Opportunity So what will become of Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall after the New York Philharmonic leaves? Lincoln Center says there's a big opportunity and management envisions "new uses sweeping and small, including hosting the world's top orchestras, staging festivals, introducing interactive technology to audiences and emphasizing youth education programs. The hall 'is now a blank canvas, and we have a palette of musical colors that we're going to paint on that canvas'." New Jersey Online (AP) 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 5:48 pm Domingo Shells Out $2 Million To Make Good On Vilar Pledges As New York's Metropolitan Opera removes Alberto Vilar's name off its building for failing to make good on pledges, Placido Domingo, director of Washington Opera and Los Angeles Opera, reveals that he has loaned Vilar $2 million to make good on his pledges to those two companies. Los Angeles Times 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 5:28 pm Sorting Out Winners And Losers In NY Phil Move To Carnegie John Rockwell writes that Carnegie Hall gives up something important by becoming home to the New York Philharmonic. "At Lincoln Center, meanwhile, the immediate impression might be that the rats are scurrying down the hawser, fleeing a sinking ship. The New York City Opera is making noises about abandoning the center for a Ground Zero cultural center not yet designed, let alone built. The Philharmonic is on its way out. Who's next? What is to become of the grand late-50's and early-60's dream of a cultural center that would bring everyone together, a dream that spawned imitators all over the world? Not much bad, say I, and maybe something good. The urban-renewal aspect of the Lincoln Center project has long been fulfilled." The New York Times 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 12:26 pm How To Make Sense Of The NY Phil Move To Carnegie? Anthony Tommasini wonders what's in it for Carnegie Hall in bringing over the New York Philharmonic from Lincoln Center. "To make sense, this move must be seized by the Philharmonic as a chance not just to enhance its aural impact but to jolt its artistic metabolism. For Lincoln Center, meanwhile, this decision is more than a disruption. It's a disastrous setback, no matter how much administrators try to spin it as an opportunity for new ventures." The New York Times 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 12:13 pm Arts Issues Foundations Protest Proposed New Giving Rules American charitable foundations are protesting a proposal in Congress to force them to give away more money each year. "U.S. giving by foundations, corporations, and individuals will fall this year from $212 billion to $165 billion, a 22% drop. For arts organizations in particular, Charity Navigator predicts even worse news: Giving may decline by as much as one-third, from $12 billion in 2002 to $8 billion in 2003." Backstage 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 6:42 pm Colorado Arts Commission Fires Director Completing its gutting of the Colorado Coucil on the Arts, the CCA's director was fired Friday. "The action effectively completes the elimination of the current CCA staff, a move that could also cost the state an additional $614,000 in federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts because it only distributes its grants through viably functioning state arts councils. On Wednesday, Owens ordered that no more than $40,000 of the council's 2003-04 budget of $814,000 could be spent on payroll, utilities and all other operational costs. A year ago, the office had seven staff members, each making more than $40,000, Holden said. Since then, the CCA's state funding has been cut from $1.9 million to $200,000, and the staff had been cut to three even before Friday." Denver Post 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 10:14 am Previously: Colorado Governor Slashes At Arts Staff First Colorado Governor Bill Owens is instrumental is slashing the state's arts budget from $1.9 million to $200,000. Now Owens is telling the arts council that it mustn't spend the money on itself. "Currently, he said, 82 percent - $165,000 - is allotted to infrastructure. Owens asked that only $40,000 be used." Rocky Mountain News 06/05/03 People The Yentob Effect Alan Yentob is a rarity - a famous TV exec. "He chalks up his 35th year at the BBC this year. He has risen relentlessly. He has made celebrated films for Omnibus, created Arena, run Music and Arts, BBC2 and BBC1. Then in 1997, when he stopped controlling BBC1, it was as if the Corporation didn't know what to do with him. They gave him a job called director of programmes in production, which had you genuinely scratching your head. Now his title is director of drama, entertainment and CBBC, which, in his translation, 'is essentially the creative director of the BBC'." The Telegraph (UK) 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 5:22 pm Gehry - Man Of Many Projects "At the age of 74, architect Frank Gehry shows absolutely no sign of slowing down. At any given moment, there are perhaps 30 projects at various stages of development being worked on by the 103 people in the Gehry office. Two major events dominate the life of the white-haired genius who started life as Frank Goldberg in Toronto in 1929 and moved to Los Angeles 18 years later." Toronto Star 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 3:07 pm Jane Alexander: On Saving The NEA Jane Alexander is back performing on a Washington stage again. "It's possible, though, that her four-year run as NEA chairman, during the political tumult dubbed the Culture Wars, will prove to be her most memorable local performance. It had everything: hostile congressmen vowing to take the NEA apart, life-or-death budget battles year after year, angry artists urging defiance. 'Jane kept it alive and reinstated a sense of credibility for the agency.' Alexander is proud of its survival. A weakened agency can be strengthened again, she reasoned at the time. But 'if it had gone under, it's doubtful it would have been revived within 20 years. Certainly not in this climate.' Could she have done anything more, or differently? Arts supporters doubt it. The consensus is that Alexander salvaged what could have been salvaged." Washington Post 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 2:59 pm Theatre Hairspray Wins Big At Tonys "`Hairspray' took a firm hold of the 2003 Tony Awards Sunday, winning five, including best book, score and direction. Eugene O'Neill's masterpiece `Long Day's Journey Into Night' was named best revival, while Brian Dennehy and Vanessa Redgrave, the play's tortured parents, received the top acting prizes." The New York Times 06/08/03 Posted: 06/09/2003 8:02 am Runaway Hairspray "Slickly produced to the point of corporate blandness, the three-hour telecast featured generally well-mounted selections from the five nominated musicals and two youth-market swatches of 'Def Poetry Jam,' winner of best special theatrical event. The show also sold Broadway artistry short by consigning the design awards, including best scenic design and lighting for 'La Boheme,' to brief tape-delayed snippets." San Francisco Chronicle 06/09/03 Posted: 06/09/2003 7:49 am Night Of Stars "This year the program felt less rushed, and it included some clever promotional touches, like having Jason Alexander and Martin Short, stars of the Los Angeles production of "The Producers," announce the best-musical winner from the stage of their show. The cadre of presenters came from the worlds of film, theater and television, all delivering tributes to their roots (or brief stints) on the stage. The luminaries ranged from Sarah Jessica Parker and Benjamin Bratt to Rosie Perez and Danny Glover." Washington Post 06/09/03 Posted: 06/09/2003 7:33 am Peters Loses To Newcomer "Seldom on Broadway does a kid topple an icon, but Bernadette Peters, musical theater's top female box office draw, lost the top prize to newcomer Marissa Jaret Winokur, the bubbly fat girl who stars in "Hairspray." In the past, Peters has usually bested the competition, once even picking up a Tony for "Annie Get Your Gun" in which she was hilariously miscast. But in the case, the kid benefited from the icon's enduring difficulties playing Momma Rose, the ferocious stage mother who turned her mousy daughter into the celebrated stripper, Gypsy Rose Lee." Neww York Post 06/09/03 Posted: 06/09/2003 6:44 am "Hairspray" Stands Out In Lacklustre Crowd The competition really wasn't all that fierce. "Hairspray" faced Twyla Tharp's "Movin' Out," a dance-musical based on the music of Billy Joel. The other two entrants in this category were hardly prepossessing. New York Daily News 06/09/03 Posted: 06/09/2003 6:42 am The Tonys' Regional Theatre Contribution The Tonys were heavy with contributions by regional theatres from around America. The Star-Tribune (Minneapolis) 06/09/03 Posted: 06/09/2003 6:35 am Honors All Around "Broadway found a way to honor everything from a Eugene O'Neill masterpiece to a play about a baseball player's coming out; from hip-hop poetry and opera to a dance-driven show and movie-inspired musical based on a John Waters cult hit and a Federico Fellini film." Miami Herald 06/09/03 Posted: 06/09/2003 6:31 am Tonys In A Cross-Generational Year "The ceremony, which annually honors the best of Broadway, combined a new generation of shows and stars with the traditions and talents that go back to 'The Impossible Dream' and Mama Rose in 'Gypsy'." Hartford Courant 06/09/03 Posted: 06/09/2003 6:25 am Breathy Promotion And Men In Dresses The Tonys celebrated themselves. "More than ever this year, the Tonys broadcast served as apt reminder of how much the liberal and gay-friendly Broadway universe proudly marches to its own contrary drumbeat in these conservative times." Chicago Tribune 06/09/03 Posted: 06/09/2003 6:11 am Hartford Stage Takes Foot Off Accelerator After six years of deficits, Hartford Stage is downsizing in an attempt to grab control of its budget. "It's like the last scene in the movie `Thelma and Louise.' But instead of pressing on the accelerator, as many organizations are doing, we are taking our foot off the gas and putting on the brake. And then we're going to turn the car away from the cliff." Hartford Courant 06/08/03 Posted: 06/09/2003 5:22 am Inspired By The Silver Screen Broadway had a healthy year at the box office this season. But more and more it seems, theatre is looking for its inspiration from the movies. "Despite these flashes of risk-taking creativity, the looming presence on Broadway this season has been the movie-musical and the musical revival. In the former genre, the year's biggest smoking craters were left by such derided bombs as Dance of the Vampire and Urban Cowboy. But when producers turn their envious eyes to the grosses from Hairspray, the exuberant version of the John Waters cult film and a heavy favorite tonight, they still want to take a chance and get into the picture." Philadelphia Inquirer 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 5:55 pm Edinburgh Fringe: We Have To Get Bigger Or Bust The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, with a 22-day calendar and 1,541 acts, staged in a record 207 venues, is the largest performing arts festival in the world. But in "unveiling the 2003 Fringe programme, Fringe director Paul Gudgin warns that, without future growth, 'the law of diminishing returns will kick in' and the quality and reputation of the Fringe would be undermined." The Scotsman 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 3:17 pm The HipHop Musical - Reinventing Musical Theatre? So far, hip-hop theater's most distinctive, exciting quality is 'how' — the way in which its stories are told. In the brightest moments of 'Flow,' Will Power shows that hip-hop's fusion of verse and song could make it a potent update of the traditional 'Oklahoma!'-style musical, one better suited to the stage than rock music. Like Rodgers and Hammerstein, who proved that even a carnival barker can sing a musical soliloquy, his work suggests that hip-hop's narrative tools will function well beyond one generation's concerns." Maybe hiphop musicals operate more like opera, "with one critical exception. 'Right now there are no conventions, the way opera is full of well-understood, time-honored conventions. It's evolving now." The New York Times 0/6/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 12:19 pm Getting To The "Authentic" Shakespeare What exactly is authenticity in Shakespeare? There are so many ways of interpreting, remaking, and reimagining the plays, stretching them in unaccustomed directions. So what exactly is authenticity in Shakespeare? The Guardian (UK) 06/07/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 11:02 am Publishing Sorting Through The Orwell Noise George Orwell has become a symbol for many justifications... "Scholars and public intellectuals use him as a pretext for preening about the clichés of the moment. Self-regarding leftists assail him as a renegade and alleged 'snitch' because he denounced Stalinists. Revisionist historians of the Spanish Civil War, seeking to burnish the reputation of the Stalinists in that conflict, have made him their chief object of hatred. Certain diehard leftists, on the other hand, insist that had he lived Orwell would have remained faithful to socialism, not to capitalist democracy. Feminists use him as a target for their obsessions, projecting on him, decades back in time, their insistence that nobody of traditional masculine habits and prejudices can be considered worthy of respect." New York Sun 06/09/03 Posted: 06/09/2003 7:46 am City Lights Burns Bright San Francisco's iconic bookstore City Lights turns 50. "Since emerging as a center for the Beat movement, it has become a purveyor of poetry, alternative political views, hard-to-find novels and literature by Third World writers. In a retail landscape dominated by Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com, City Lights remains an independent bastion of literary possibility. The soft-spoken, grandfatherly Ferlinghetti, 84, is uneasy with words like icon, even though City Lights helped launch the Beat movement by publishing Allen Ginsburg's `Howl' in 1956. The spry, bearded poet and publisher can only guess why the store, which he founded with Peter D. Martin, has endured. 'We survived by creating an intellectual center, a literary meeting place'." San Jose Mercury-News 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 6:31 pm Iraq - News Explosion Iraq, which formerly had a media tightly controlled by the government, has seen an explosion of new publications. "Dozens of daily and weekly newspapers have sprung up in the capital since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April, a raucous rush of unfettered expression that is utterly new to this country, and rare for any part of the Middle East." Washington Post 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 2:53 pm Media Australia Bans American Film From Sydney Festival The Australian government has banned the American film "Ken Park" from the Sydney Film Festival. The film, which has been screened at several film festivals internationally, "includes scenes of explicit sex, suicide and auto-erotic asphyxiation, is about four teenagers struggling with uncertain futures in suburban California." The Sydney Festival's director protests: "It seems ironic that in the festival's 50th year, we are still fighting censorship battles." Sydney Morning Herald 06/09/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 7:03 pm Aussie Actors Protest Free Trade Deal Prominent Australian movie and TV actors get together to protest a proposed free trade agreement between Australia and the United States. If the deal goes ahead, they fear, "the local screen industry will be consumed by American content." The Age (Melbourne) 06/09/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 6:56 pm How Did TV Lose Its Promise? "Television is no longer an experience we share with the neighbours, except on such dire occasions. When we gather to drink and mourn and shout idiotically at the screen, it is part of a wider life. At other times in public places, it is merely part of the furniture, a familiar but unobserved accessory, while in the home it has become a utility as plentiful as tap water. All this seems a long way from a working-class Stirlingshire village in June 1953, when there was a sense that the box of tricks had been invented for the purpose of giving ordinary people an access to extraordinary events." The Scotsman 06/06/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 3:21 pm 500 Channels And Nothing To Watch It wasn't that long ago that there was genuine excitement about the coming 500-channel TV landscape. So how come now that we have it there doesn't ever seem to be anything on? "The truth is, as the networks become ever smaller pieces of ever-growing media empires, there is dwindling potential for the kind of risk-taking that gave us breakout programming such as All In The Family or Seinfeld. Imagine some boardroom type green-lighting a comedy about a bigoted, racist right-winger or "a show about nothing." Toronto Star 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 3:13 pm Dance The Big One That Left (And The Little Ones That Took Its Place) It's been awhile since Cleveland San Jose Ballet left Cleveland for the West Coast. "No large-scale classical company has risen from the ashes of the former Cleveland San Jose Ballet. Instead, more than a dozen small ensembles are keeping dance alive." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 06/08/03 Posted: 06/08/2003 6:02 pm