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Monday, June 23




Ideas

Brain Jolting Scientists have discovered that stimulating the brain with a "transcranial magnetic stimulator" enhances brain function and creativity. "You could call this a creativity-amplifying machine. It's a way of altering our states of mind without taking drugs like mescaline. You can make people see the raw data of the world as it is. As it is actually represented in the unconscious mind of all of us." New York Times Magazine 06/22/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 5:31 pm

How The World Solves Big Problems (But They Don't Work) The world has lots of big problems. But at present there are only "four types of mechanisms to finesse the world's world-sized problems. Unfortunately, none of them are of much use."
Wired 06/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 5:12 pm

Visual Arts

Hiro's Light Hiro Yamagata is one of the most commercially successful artists alive today. "His work, much of which is sold at shopping malls, generates an estimated $4 billion in sales a year." Now he's covered two building-size cubes on the Yokohama waterfront with mylar, shooting light into them to make them shimmer and pulse with color. CNN.com 06/23/03
Posted: 06/23/2003 8:18 am

British Art Sales Down Since 9/11 Sales by the 400 leading British art and antiques dealers declined by almost 10 per cent in 2001-02. Dealers blame the downturn on the aftereffects of 9/11. The Telegraph (UK) 06/23/03
Posted: 06/23/2003 8:13 am

Museum Insurance Rate Soar 37 Percent "When Los Angeles County Supervisors on June 3 approved a new insurance policy covering the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, they found that premiums had jumped 37% from the year before. Also, the new policy doesn't cover most potential losses from terrorism ? an exclusion many insurers have added since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001." Los Angeles Times 06/22/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 9:22 pm

Venice - Politics Ruins The Day The Venice Biennale has been compromised and ruined by politics, suggests Laura Cumming. "Fifty festivals, a golden year, but no birthday celebrations. The Biennale has become so worried about its inflated status as the Grandest Show on Earth that it wouldn't dream of congratulating itself in these desperate modern times. It is still a multinational market, of course, where droves of dealers tout their artists to rich collectors and curators on the look-out. But the real world presses in, and the director, Francesco Bonami, wrings his hands." The Observer (UK) 06/22/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 5:52 pm

Iraqi Looting Count Climbs Above 6000 The count of items stolen from the Iraq National Museum is going up. The U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement say that as of June 13 "the official count of missing items had reached 6,000 and was climbing as museum and Customs investigators proceeded with an inventory of three looted storerooms. The June 13 total was double the number of stolen items reported by Customs a week earlier," and the final total will likely be much higher. Washington Post 06/21/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 5:26 pm

Music

Opera - State Of The Art Opera America meets in St. Louis to discuss the state of the art. "On one hand Opera America touts opera's growth in the last 20 years: more than half of its 119 member companies were founded after 1970, and the organization reports growing and increasingly younger audiences. On the other hand the troubled economic climate has meant shrinking endowments, a falloff in donations and a consequent need for companies to rethink and even to restructure along conventional business lines." The New York Times 06/23/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 8:13 pm

Arts Issues

Is Corporate Philanthropy On The Rise Again? "Overall corporate giving decreased in 2001, according to the American Association of Fundraising Counsel, which will release 2002 estimates Monday. But anecdotal evidence suggests that Philanthropy Inc. is growing again. Despite the struggling economy, many socially responsible companies are not only matching past giving, they're increasing it." The Star-Tribune (Newhouse) 06/22/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 5:06 pm

People

Dana Gioia, Poet Politician Dana Gioia turned down thye Bush administration when they first asked him to be chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. The second time he said yes. "It sounds terribly Jimmy Stewart, but I guess I'm a terribly Jimmy Stewart kind of guy. I felt a certain duty to put aside my own artistic career for however many years and try to rebuild this agency." Newark Star-Ledger 06/22/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 9:51 pm

On Being John Adams John Adams is the most-performed living composer. "A sophisticated media handler, he has the tongue of a liberal intellectual and the laid-back aura of a hippie-turned-family man. He neither starves in a garret - orchestras are falling over themselves to play his scores - nor inhabits an ivory tower. Adams has kept in touch with what audiences like to hear. His music is the most beautiful, witty and technically assured of anyone writing for orchestra and opera house today. Listen to Nixon in China (1987), his first work to reach a wide audience, and the chances are you will respond to its subtly distilled rhythm and verve." Financial Times 06/20/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 8:40 pm

Theatre

America's Theatres - How're We Doin? Leaders of America's non-profit theatres gather in Milwaukee to talk about the state of the business. "Last year more than 50 percent of the membership's theaters ran deficits (compared to 29 percent the previous year). 'For this [current] year, if I'm hearing the murmurs in the field correctly, it brings an even darker picture'." Hartford Courant 06/22/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 9:39 pm

Shakespeare's Life - A Made-For-TV-Movie "Amazingly, while Shakespeare's plays have been regularly shown on television and there have been dramas and documentaries speculating on their authorship, there has never been a full-blown television biography of the national icon. Perhaps it is not so surprising, because so little is actually known about his life, particularly the early years. When Michael Wood first posited the idea, one TV executive sniffed that it would be rather dull as you would only be able to film in Stratford-upon-Avon and at the Globe, while an eminent history scholar pointed out that it was going to have to be a very short series given the paucity of solid facts known about Shakespeare's life." The Guardian (UK) 06/23/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 8:54 pm

West End Waste Cameron Mackintosh is spending £30 million to clean up some of his West End Theatres. But the West End itself is a dismal disgrace. "The West End is absolutely sordid. No Londoner goes there. It only exists for junkies, itinerants and tourists. It's not London, it is something else. Having better, more attractive streets makes people behave better. Why don't they wash the streets, as they do in Paris? I don't know what the Mayor of London is doing but addressing the West End would be a start. Ten years ago, in Barcelona, the mayor spirited the city into something else, stopped it from being a sleazy tip. I don't know anybody who goes to West End theatres - if you were to ask them, it would be as if you had passed them a dead rat." The Observer (UK) 06/22/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 5:44 pm

Publishing

Harry's $100 Million Weekend Harry Potter sells 5 million copies on its first day. "That is nearly twice as many as the estimated sales in 12 months of last year's best-selling novel in hardcover, "The Summons," by John Grisham." The book even outsold the weekend's blockbuster movie. "The five million copies sold, at retail prices from $17 to $30, surpassed the first weekend's box office for the latest blockbuster movie, 'Hulk,' which sold $62.6 million in tickets in its three-day opening weekend." The New York Times 06/23/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 8:21 pm

When Marketing Overruns Creativity The Harry Potter books are deserving of attention. But the assault of marketing we've seen is way over the top. "When this level of marketing is applied to books or to sport, then it soon becomes impossible to distinguish between artistic considerations and financial ones. Rowling may say that she is secretive out of concern for her readers, but it is hard to separate this question of 'intellectual property' from concern for the 'marketing campaign'. Then there is the squeeze effect on other books, other authors, other types of story, some of whom might merit a fraction of the Potter treatment, but who cannot get any place in that over-Pottered shop window. Small bookshops already look set to lose out because of the huge discounts being offered by major stores. Worse, hype like this sows the seeds of its own creative destruction." The Observer (UK) 06/22/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 5:39 pm

Oppressive Ghosts - The Art Of Invisible Writing "Most ghostwriters are broke, young journalists. They do it once, for the money. Perhaps twice for the show: to see how the rich and famous live. Most never do it again, because celebrities take as much pleasure in sharing the limelight (and the profits) as journalists do in restraining their opinions. Yet as long as there are people with stories to sell and no time or no talent to tell them, the products of such precarious partnerships continue to sell." The Telegraph (UK) 06/16/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 5:15 pm

Finally - Harry On Review "A considerably darker, more psychological book than its predecessors, 'Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix' occupies the same emotional and storytelling place in the Potter series as 'The Empire Strikes Back' held in the first 'Star Wars' trilogy. It provides a sort of fulcrum for the series, marking Harry's emergence from boyhood, and his newfound knowledge that an ancient prophecy holds the secret to Voldemort's obsession with him and his family." The New York Times 06/21/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 1:05 pm

  • Harry By The Numbers So how popular is the new Harry Potter book? One major bookselling chain has already declared it to be 'the fastest-selling book ever,' outpacing even the frenzied buying that accompanied the release of the previous installment of the Potter series. At W.H. Smith, another chain, managers estimated that they were selling eight copies per second. Amazon has taken orders for 1.3 million copies. The first printing run of the book was for an astounding 13 million copies, and author J.K. Rowling is expected to net £30 million from book sales alone. BBC 06/22/03
    Posted: 06/22/2003 1:04 pm

Media

Finding Fellini A new documentary about Fellini spends time with the director just before he died. ?Fellini was a huge narcissist, hugely generous in other ways, a contradictory man. There are a lot of nasty things we can say about Fellini because he had a diva personality, but he really was a genius. He?s someone who stayed true to his vision, and didn?t compromise one bit . And I have great respect for that.? Newsweek 06/20/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 8:00 pm

Lost In America - When All The Radio Sounds The Same Used to be you could tell where you were in America by what was on the radio. "When I turned on the radio, I heard America singing, even in the dumb banter of 'morning zoo' hosts. But then last summer, rolling down a highway somewhere between Montana and Wisconsin, something new happened. I lost my way, and the radio couldn't help me find it. I twirled the dial, but the music and the announcers all sounded alike, drained, disconnected from geography, reshuffling the same pop playlists and canned bad jokes. What a miserable trip. I heard America droning." New York Times Magazine 06/22/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 4:58 pm

Dance

Joffrey - At Home In Chicago A dozen years after the Joffrey Ballet moved to Chicago, director Gerald Arpino says the city has become the ideal home. Chicago is "a typical American city in that it's still striving for its standards. It has that pioneer quality about it. It's ambitious ? you can see it in the architecture, you can see it in the museums. Yet it's still always looking forward to new frontiers in the arts. This is always what the Joffrey has been about to me." Los Angeles Times 06/22/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 9:17 pm

Dance Dreams - NY's International Ballet Showcase Forty-eight dancers with dreams of the big time converge on New York for the New York International Ballet Competition. "Arriving from as far away as New Zealand and as nearby as Brooklyn, the dancers, in tattered tulle skirts, ripped T-shirts or see-through tights, are a varied lot with a common denominator: most view the dance world from centerstage in a mid-level company, or through the crowd in a corps de ballet. They want to catapult their careers into what many believe is the center of their universe." The New York Times 06/22/03
Posted: 06/22/2003 4:53 pm


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