Ideas Where The Sun Never Sets "Why, you might ask, now that empire has become an irrelevant historical fact, are pundits, intellectuals and sundry other commentators debating whether America is an empire or should be an empire, or whether the United States has what it takes to succeed as an empire? By using the word “empire” as if it were a living possibility, even people opposed to the idea of an American imperialism make it easier for the pro-empire crowd to make their fantastical case. But a country doesn’t decide to be an empire the way a person decides to wear black rather than brown shoes to a party. Newsweek 08/07/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 9:51 pm Visual Arts Is Art The Best Investment? "In a recent survey investors ranked art second only to property as the best place to park one's hard earned cash. But just like any other asset it might not turn a profit." CNN.com 08/08/03 Posted: 08/08/2003 12:00 am Edinburgh's Hottest Show... The hottest show in Edinburgh this summer? It's a show that's not part of the Edinburgh Festival or the Fringe Festival. It's the blockbuster Monet show at the National Galleries of Scotland, which is seeing record numbers of visitors as the Monet show opens. The Scotsman 08/07/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 10:26 pm The Whitney's New Director Adam Weinberg is the new director of the Whitney Museum. "Weinberg, who has been director of the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., since 1999, is no stranger to the Whitney. He has worked there twice before, most recently as a senior curator. He succeeds Maxwell L. Anderson, who resigned under fire in May." The New York Times 08/08/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 10:16 pm Record Crowds At Australian National Gallery Australia's new National Gallery of Victoria is a big hit with crowds. "About 1.5 million people have visited the Potter Centre in its first nine months." The gallery is so popular and "donors are so keen to be part of the action they have contributed more than $70 million under three different schemes in the past four years - a record for Victoria, if not the country." The Age (Melbourne) 08/08/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 9:49 pm Should National Gallery Be Concerned About Digital Piracy? The movie and music industries are warning London's National Gallery that the museum's digitization project is an open invitation to image piracy. "The National Gallery has been working with computer giant Hewlett-Packard for eight years on a scheme to digitise all of its 2300 paintings. The images have been captured with a digital camera that steps backwards and forwards over the painting, a technique that improves the resolution of the image to 100 megapixels, 20 times that of the best consumer cameras. When someone places an order, a six-colour printer in the gallery's shop will print out a high-quality copy in just five minutes. The gallery hopes to generate extra revenue by allowing accredited print shops around the world to sell copies as well." New Scientist 08/07/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 9:45 pm Music Are Music Pulitzers Getting Better? The music Pulitzer has long been derided for its lack of insight into the best of American music. But, writes Dean Suzuki, "perhaps real change is afoot in the Pulitzer music category, first awarded in 1943. You can, as I did, go on the Pulitzer website and find a list of all winners, as well as nominees (the latter for each year dating back only to 1980). And while it has been slow in coming, there is a perceivable transformation that is taking place. Not only has the past few years seen prizes awarded to composers who would not even have been nominated ten years ago, the stylistic range of nominees has expanded." NewMusicBox 08/03 Posted: 08/08/2003 12:23 am The CD DJ DJs perform by spinning vinyl records to get the sounds they're after. Now a new spinnable CD player offers DJs the opportunity to go digital. "The key to the system - which resembles a small version of a vinyl deck - is a grooved, touch-sensitive jog wheel, which allows records to be stopped and scratched at any time. Until now, the inability to do this was one of the key reasons DJs had shunned performing with CD decks. Deck has a memory card that recalls edit points for tracks. Additionally, the system has an internal memory that can remember cue and loop points, and allows tracks to be remixed live." BBC 08/07/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 9:54 pm Tiny Charleston Symphony Asks Musicians For Pay Cut The 46-member Charleston Symphony is facing money problems like every other orchestra in America. So the orchestra is asking its musicians to take an 18 percent pay cut. "The musicians make $21,000 a year on average. An 18-percent reduction would bring that figure down to $17,220." Charleston Post & Courier 08/07/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 9:44 pm Arts Issues Hinglish Spoken Here The form of English commonly spoken by educated Indians is unique in the grammar and formation. "Welcome to the wonderful world of Hinglish, a Hindu-inspired dialect that pulsates with energy, invention and humour — not all of it intended. Hinglish is full of cricket terminology and army metaphors, with echoes of P.G. Wodehouse and Dickens. It contains clunky puns and impeccably logical neologisms. In short, it is a delight." The Spectator 08/03/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 11:41 pm Where Aussie Arts Sponsorship Money Goes In Australia "about 6 per cent of all business sponsorship money goes to the arts, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. That added up to $29.2 million in 1996-97, the last time such figures were collected." And where does the arts money go? Mostly to established traditional arts ventures. "Other parts of the arts miss out because their works are too confronting and edgy for sponsors, art figures say." Sydney Morning Herald 08/08/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 10:50 pm Making A Go Of It On The Net "Can an individual with a talent for writing, drawing, photography or music use the internet, not to create millions, but to make enough to live comfortably and do what they want to do professionally? The answer may well turn out to be a hesitant yes. Six years on from the start of the popular web explosion, people are adjusting to paying for content on the internet." The Guardian (UK) 08/08/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 9:53 pm People Julius Baker, 87 "Julius Baker, the principal flutist of the New York Philharmonic for 18 years and the most prominent American flutist of his generation, died on Wednesday in Danbury, Conn. He was 87 and lived in Brewster, N.Y. As an orchestral player, he was principal flutist in several of the best orchestras in the United States. As a performer and a teacher, he was an institution among flutists..." The New York Times 08/08/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 10:23 pm The Best German... Er, Austrian Of All Time? A German TV poll to name the "best German of all time" "got off to a shaky start yesterday after the Austrian ambassador to Germany complained that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose name appears on a list of eligible candidates, is Austrian." The Guardian (UK) 08/07/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 9:58 pm Theatre Regional Theatre - Taking It Easy What does the fall theatre season across America look like? Conservative. "The prevailing theme of the coming season is a tendency to play things artistically safe in this economically challenged climate..." Backstage 08/07/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 11:52 pm Looking For A Definition Of Black Theatre At the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, it's time for a question - what exactly is black theatre? "Ask for a definition of black theater, and no consensus really emerges. Some suggest it's theater that celebrates black people and the black experience, as do a plethora of shows here this week based on real lives..." The New York Times 08/08/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 10:19 pm Publishing The Next JK Rowling? Yikes! Children's book writer Louisa Young was briefly touted in the press as "the next JK Rowling." That's good, Young supposes, but who wants to be the next JKR? "Why would anyone want a New JK Rowling? The old one works perfectly well. I'm not sure another one is practical. Are there enough trees? Well, I blame the papers. It's them wot want one, because JKR has become one of today's sure-fire, never-spiked topics." The Guardian (UK) 08/05/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 10:06 pm Where Are The Comics For A New Decade? The 70s, 80s and 90s each had their hit comics, those strips that seemed essential to their age. "Doonesbury and Bloom County—and heck, while we’re at it, let’s throw in Dilbert for the ’90s—each managed to perfectly capture the zeitgeist of the decade in which they were created. So what of our current decade—nearly four years old, without even a proper name to its credit (the Zeroes?). Are we still subsisting on fond memories of the long defunct Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side?" Newsweek 08/07/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 9:50 pm Media Movies Get Back To Questioning Authority "Two years less a month after the devastations of 9/11, an event that sparked flag-waving and brought the U.S. international sympathy not seen since World War II, the movies are getting back to the business of questioning American authority..." Toronto Star 08/08/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 11:34 pm Dance Wholesale Makeover Of Boston Ballet Boston Ballet will look very different this fall. That's because 32 of the company's 55 dancers will be new to the company. "Any time you have a big bunch of new dancers," artistic director Mikko Nissinen said, "it changes the company's chemistry." To find his new hires, he held auditions in London, New York, and Boston. "I saw over 1,000 people in the process. They're going to enhance the qualities I'm emphasizing onstage: more musicality; clean technique; simple, fresh presentation; and quality, quality, quality." Boston Globe 08/08/03 Posted: 08/08/2003 6:05 am Dancing Across The Screen... Summer is the doldrums for dance. But the video store offers a surprising wealth of good movies featuring dance...if you know where to look... The New York Times 08/08/03 Posted: 08/07/2003 10:12 pm