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Weekend, July 19, 20
The Museum As Amusement Park: Where Has All The Intellectual Curiosity Gone? There was a time when science museums, children's museums, and the like were thought of as teaching tools, as a chance to impart important details about the workings of the world into the minds of visitors, especially children. But no more. "Museums aren't there to teach a systemic body of information in some prescribed manner, the current ideology goes. Nor, as studies show, are they very good at it -- people retain very little data from their visits. Instead, museums offer a kind of neutral platform where visitors explore the drift and dimension of their own curiosity as much as they do the accumulated knowledge about a particular subject or field." San Francisco Chronicle 07/19/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 10:04 am
Chronicling the Art of the New Persuaders They're often annoying, they're frequently invasive, they're more than occasionally misleading, and almost no one admits to liking them. But ads have come to define modern culture, and while it may be a stretch to brand naked salesmanship as art, it's difficult to overlook a phenomenon that causes millions of people to watch a specific football game in which they have little interest, just to see how Pepsi will be trying to get us to buy their product this year. A new 3-volume encyclopedia sets out to chronicle the history and uncover the cultural meaning of the advertising explosion of the last century. The New York Times 07/19/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 9:26 am
Affirmative Action Needed At The Justice League? Comic books are a booming business, and despite technological and marketing advances in the decades since the genre first burst upon the scene, superhero stories are much the same as they ever were. Good battles evil, and good wins nine times out of ten. Brooding crusaders in masks and (let's face it) ridiculously inconvenient capes swoop about densely populated cities like flying cat burglars, and no one but the bad guys ever takes a shot at them. And after countless battles, endless fistfights, and millions upon millions of horrible puns, nearly all the heroes are still white, and most of the women are, to but it bluntly, ridiculously top-heavy. Will comic books ever get with the times? Wired 07/19/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 10:26 am
Art Held Hostage in Philadelphia The Barnes Collection, a stunning private-turned-public accumulation of Renoirs, Mattisses, and other masterpieces housed in a Philadelphia suburb, has been in dire financial straits for quite some time, and a new book details the chaotic mess that has led the Barnes to such a desperate state. But author John Anderson is not interested in merely laying out a history of mismanagement. His book also points towards what is yet to come - the likely appropriation of the Barnes treasures by the city's political and cultural elites, who have a history with this sort of thing, and who have long been strangely irked by the legacy left behind by Alfred Barnes. The Wall Street Journal 07/18/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 9:13 am
Guggenheim Expanding Again "The Guggenheim Foundation and the mayor of Taichung, Jason Hu, have unveiled a proposal for a new Guggenheim Museum in Taichung, Taiwan. Plans for a spectacular new building have already been designed by the world-renowned deconstructionist architect Zaha Hadid... [T]he museum would be part of a larger cultural complex to include an opera house designed by Jean Nouvel, who designed the proposed Rio de Janeiro Guggenheim, and a new Taichung City Hall to be designed by Frank Gehry... This is the Guggenheim Foundation’s fifth attempt to open a museum in Asia, four plans for Japan having failed, and is the latest of a series of proposed Guggenheim’s throughout the world." The Art Newspaper 07/18/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 9:06 am
Glimmer Of Hope In San Antonio Mike Greenberg isn't predicting a rebirth for the bankrupt San Antonio Symphony just yet, but he's encouraged by the involvement of the city's mayor, and the work of a new task force charged with developing new strategies for orchestral success in South Texas. "In 1994, a similar task force... worked for several months and produced a report that said essentially nothing of value. The 1994 report set cost and revenue goals, most of which the symphony achieved in the short term, but failed to address the fundamentals of the orchestra's program and its relationship with the larger community. The current task force, it seems, intends to avoid that mistake." San Antonio Express-News 07/20/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 11:21 am
Balancing Past, Present, And Future In Cincinnati Despite the large number of news stories devoted to the financial crunch facing the orchestral industry, plenty of orchestras are doing just fine, thank you. Case in point: the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, which is using a combination of cutting-edge marketing strategy and reverence for the history of the industry to stay on the right side of the financial ledger. And budget-slashing boards at other major American orchestras also might want to make note of the fact that the CSO is accomplishing all this while continuing to make recordings, appear on nationwide TV broadcasts, and mount extensive (and expensive) national and international tours. Cincinnati Post 07/18/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 11:10 am
- Cincinnati By The Numbers Even with an orchestral success story like Cincinnati, the continued economic malaise has taken its toll. "Since the stock market decline, the CSO endowment has shrunk from more than $94 million to $61 million. To help make ends meet, the CSO has increased its endowment spending rate from 6 percent to 8.35 percent... Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on the players' two-year contract." Cincinnati Post 07/19/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 11:09 am
Concerto For Imagination The world probably isn't in desperate need of a bunch of new kinds of musical instrument, but sometimes necessity is the enemy of invention, and the participants in a Massachusetts residency sponsored by the Bang On A Can folks aren't letting a lack of public clamor for their work discourage them. Among the new instruments now on display at Mass MOCA is the whirlycopter, which looks like "a cross between a helicopter and an electric chair," yet sounds "like an Orthodox choir, chanting somewhere over in the next valley." The idea, of course, is to make new music more accessible and, dare we say it, fun, as well as to free up the musical imaginations of the participants. Boston Globe 07/20/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 10:41 am
Seattle Opera Stays In The Black "Despite a shortened season and fewer ticket sales than usual, the Seattle Opera ended the season on a high note... For the 11th consecutive year, the opera has ended the season in the black. For 2002-03, the opera spent exactly what its budget projected: $14.3 million." Not all the news was bright - slumping ticket sales are always a concern - but the company's board says that prospects for the future are brighter because of the financial conservatism the company has adopted for the present. Seattle Times 07/18/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 10:09 am
Feeding At An Empty Trough in Pittsburgh? The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, which has been mired in financial quicksand for more than a year, is asking a municipal funding agency to nearly double the amount it contributes to the orchestra. The Allegheny Regional Asset District gave the orchestra $725,000 last fiscal year, on a request for $900,000. This year, the PSO says it needs $1.5 million, which will likely be a hard sell at a time when states across the U.S. are strapped for cash themselves. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 07/19/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 9:59 am
Schultz Still Guilty Of Dealing In Stolen Goods "In a long-awaited decision, a US federal court has rejected an appeal by a New York antiquities dealer who argued that he should not be convicted of violating US law for having dealt in Egyptian antiquities. The objects are claimed as Egyptian property under Egyptian law. The dealer, Frederick Schultz, was sentenced in June 2002 to 33 months in prison for conspiracy to receive stolen property, but argued that Egypt’s claim to own the objects under its patrimony law did not make them 'stolen' in the U.S." The Art Newspaper 07/18/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 9:10 am
Ivry: Jacobsen Influenced Whole U.S. Literary Culture "The poet Josephine Jacobsen, who died last week in Maryland at age 94, was a cultural exception. Although she never attended college, she earned the respect of her fellow writers and was named poetry consultant to the Library of Congress (the honorary job now called United States poet laureate) in 1971. She did not gain widespread recognition until her 60's, although her collected poems, In the Crevice of Time, and selected prose, The Instant of Knowing, which appeared when she was an octogenarian, are still in print and winning new readers at a vigorous clip." The New York Times 07/19/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 9:48 am
The Woman Who Knows How To Rebuild Iraq When the U.S. government needed a blueprint for rebuilding Japan after World War II, they looked not within the American military-industrial complex, but to a cultural anthropologist named Ruth Benedict. "The choice to rely so heavily on cultural anthropologists in the rebuilding of a defeated enemy has particular resonance now as the United States struggles to rebuild a stable and viable Iraq, a country that, like Japan, is seen as both impossibly foreign and forbidding." The idea of rebuilding a foreign nation without a deep and abiding knowledge of and respect for its culture seems risky at best, but there seem to be few Ruth Benedicts around to help with the current mess in Iraq. Or, perhaps more accurately, if they do exist, no one's asking for their help. The New York Times 07/19/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 9:34 am
High Priestess of Bach Dies Rosalyn Tureck was one of the leading Bach interpreters of her generation, and a celebrated keyboardist who also embraced contemporary music, making her Carnegie Hall debut not on the piano or the harpsichord, for which she would become so well known later, but on the strange and eery electronic instrument known as the theremin. Brash and opinionated, she once snapped to a colleague, "You play it your way; I play it Bach's way." She passed away at her New York home this weekend, at the age of 88. The Guardian (UK) 07/19/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 9:02 am
Shakespeare on Tape: An Unexpected Treasure Trove Shakespeare himself could never have imagined a project of this scope, but Clive Brill wouldn't give up on it. The result of Brill's efforts is a new 98-CD set featuring the complete dramatic output of William Shakespeare, as performed by some of the great actors of the era. "Produced in London recording studios between 1996 and 2000, and featuring many of the most accomplished classical actors on the British stage, the full set feels like one of those astonishing feats of engineering that result in mile-high towers or friezes chiseled into the sides of mountains." Washington Post 07/20/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 12:15 pm
Playing Fast And Loose With Ticket Prices Theatre tickets are starting to resemble airfares, and not just because they're ridiculously expensive. Generally, when we go to the theatre, we expect to have paid the same price as the people on either side of us, but increasingly, Broadway producers are charging less for ticketbuyers willing and able to make their purchases well in advance, and even less for folks willing to be flexible about where they sit, and what date they attend the show. "For complete control — the ability to choose your seat and the date you sit there — you will probably pay top dollar. In most other cases, you can make a deal." The New York Times 07/20/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 11:35 am
Gatenby Exit Prompts Resignations, Festival Boycott "At least one international author will not be coming to Harbourfront's International Festival of Authors this fall as a direct result of the recent resignation of Greg Gatenby as the festival's artistic director and the Harbourfront Reading Series. Argentinian-born author Alberto Manguel, who now lives in France, said in an interview he faxed a letter on Tuesday or Wednesday to Harbourfront officials saying his participation is off because Gatenby is no longer involved. Manguel's decision follows the resignations of five festival board members, including three high-profile Canadian authors." Toronto Star 07/19/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 10:15 am
- Previously: A Backstage Drama Worthy Of A Novel "The dramatic parting of Harbourfront Centre and Greg Gatenby, announced Monday, was preceded by months of wrangling, intrigue and attempted fixes. Gatenby and Harbourfront officials are saying nothing, but based on the testimony of other players, the breakdown of the relationship emerges as a tale full of ultimatums, threats, end runs and cameo appearances by well-known personalities." Toronto Star 07/16/03
Harry Potter And The Academic Obsession No, you can't major in Harry Potter. Not yet, anyway. But JK Rowling's boy wizard is becoming a figure of increasing interest to academics and intellectuals who are spending hours at prestigious conferences deconstructing the world of Hogwarts and matching it up with minutiae from the history of various real-world intellectual movements. "A bit enthusiastic, perhaps, but such outsize claims may spring from insecurity. After all, no less a figure than Harold Bloom has derided Ms. Rowling's writing as 'goo,' while William Safire... scornfully (though presciently) predicted that 'scholarly tomes will be written about the underlying motifs of the Potter series,' despite its being largely 'a waste of adult time.'" The New York Times 07/19/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 9:42 am
Hollywood Learns To Interact With Online Critics "Advance information about upcoming film releases is stampeding online faster than ever -- and studios are finally learning to fight back. As the Internet matures and the film industry gets smarter, the two are increasingly engaged in a pas de deux of guerrilla marketing, official leaks, manipulated early reviews, and legal strong-arming." Boston Globe 07/20/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 10:52 am
Subliminal No More: Product Placement Prepares To Attack NBC's newest entry in the Reality TV sweepstakes is called The Restaurant, and it chronicles the inner workings of an actual Manhattan eatery, from the chef to the busboys to the customers. The network wasn't wild about the concept initially, but when the show's creator pitched it to ad execs, he found more support than he ever could have dreamed of. "Product placement is hardly a new phenomenon on TV -- think Coca-Cola's imprint on Fox's American Idol -- but Restaurant represents what could be a new breed of TV program built around marketing messages." Boston Globe 07/20/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 10:47 am
Perfect Line, Perfect Movement, and Really Ugly Feet Dance is all about line, and grace, and the beauty of the human form. But all art comes with a price, and while the dancers swooping and pouncing before us on a stage often appear to be impeccable specimens of the human aesthetic, you might not want to peer too closely at the ravaged soles inside those toe shoes. Says one Minneapolis-based dancer, "I sometimes can't tell the difference between ballet and Chinese foot-binding. Both cripple you in the name of beauty. Yet it is this divine thing that I have to do." Minneapolis Star Tribune 07/20/03
Posted: 07/20/2003 9:52 am
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