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Thursday, August 14
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Toledo Museum Names New Director San Diego Museum of Art director Don Bacigalupi has been named director of the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio. Bacigalupi is said to have rejuvenated the San Diego Museum in the four years he has been there. San Diego Union-Tribune 08/13/03
Kramer Discourses Art critic Hilton Kramer expounds on the artworld and reflects on his career as an art critic in a series of audio clips... Among the juicier bits: "Critics who refuse to make judgments...are quickly seen to be... either the whores or the eunuchs of their profession. They may elicit our pity or inspire our contempt, but they can never command our respect..." New Criterion 08/03
Why Doesn't Classical Music APPeal? (Don't We Get It?) "While today’s iconoclastic visual artists like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin are hotly debated among art aficionados, in the world of music, contemporary classical composers inhabit a dissonant ghetto all their own. Few people listen to them, few critics review them and few people understand them. Western classical music as a whole makes up only 3.5 percent of the world’s total music market (contemporary works aren’t broken out separately). In 2002, classical-album sales were down 17 percent. Orchestras rarely feature contemporary works."
Newsweek International 08/18/03
Disney Hall - Sounding Good "Disney Hall will finally open this fall—16 tortured years after the late Lillian Disney, Walt’s widow, instigated the project with a $50 million gift. The ultimate verdict on its acoustics will come from music critics after the gala first concert on Oct. 23. But if the building does sound as good as it looks—and early reports are enthusiastic—it will be a masterpiece, even greater than the spectacular Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which made Gehry an international star in 1997." MSNBC 08/18/03
Internet Providers Protest Recording Industry Tactics A coalition of 100 internet service providers is protesting against the Recording Industry Association of America's tactics trying to force ISP's to turn over names of customers the RIAA suspects of downloading music. The group "contends the RIAA's enforcement tactics would essentially force its members, such as EarthLink and America Online, to act as the 'police of the Internet' for the recording industry's interests." The NewsHour 08/13/03
Florida Phil Rescue Plan Abandoned Supporters of the Florida Philharmonic working to revive the bankrupt orchestra announced they are abandoning their efforts. "The Philharmonic reorganization team, unable to raise enough money to save the symphony, will try instead to purchase the orchestra's music library in the hope that it will provide the seed for a future Philharmonic in South Florida. But assembling a new orchestra will take more than a music library and may be more difficult than the fundraising effort the group abandoned." Miami Herald 08/13/03
Do Music Lessons Reduce Your Chances Of Getting Fat? A new Canadian study reports that "children involved in even low levels of physical activity - including such things as Boy Scouts, music classes or art lessons - have a reduced chance of becoming overweight or obese" - as much as a 43 percent reduction. National Post (Canada) 08/14/03
San Jose Artists Oppose Funding Idea San Jose, California arts groups are opposing an offer by the city's mayor to be funded
out of the city's general budget rather than from a hotel-motel tax (which was sharply down this year. "Once you get into the general fund, you are then competing with police, fire, recreation. And the arts, whether you look at the state or the schools, are always the first to get cut. So if the arts have a dedicated source, like the transient occupancy tax, why would we want to jeopardize that?" San Jose Mercury-News 08/13/03
Study: Three-Quarters Of Americans Participate In Arts A National Endowment for the Arts Study measures arts participation in the US. "The study found that 76 percent of adults, or 157 million people, participated in the arts in some form during the one-year study period that ended in August 2002. Most adults participated by watching or listening to music, plays or dance on television, radio, audio recording or the Internet. Since the study was last conducted in 1992, there has been a drop in this kind of participation; however, rates still exceeded those of live attendance." NASAA 07/03
Donors - Who Calls The Tune? How much influence do donors to arts institutions have on artistic decisions or management of the institution? "Does he who pays the piper call the tunes? Equally relevant, how do the not-for-profits negotiate these treacherous (or, perhaps not-so-treacherous) waters in straitened economic times? For their spin, Back Stage talked with half a dozen theatre administrators, who oversee fundraising, in major not-for-profit theatres nationwide." Backstage 08/07/03
Cultural Imperative In Rural Australia Rural Australia needs an influx of investment in culture. "Cultural policy can easily smack of Big Brother (the political concept, not the TV show), but there are valid reasons why we need to keep culture high on the national agenda. It has nothing to do with opening nights, and everything to do with what Australia needs for a sustainable future. In 2000, the economic value of arts and related industries was about $8 billion. For indigenous Australians, the arts are their single biggest source of non-government income. The arts can provide jobs through flow-on effects such as tourism, but like any other investment, the money tends to gather where the people are." The Australian 08/14/03
LA's Theatre Entrepreneurs A couple of California investors sink millions of their own money into building their own new theatres in Los Angeles. The question is why? LAWeekly 08/15/03
Where Are London's Playwrights? Playwrights are all but invisible in London's West End. Now it takes celebrities to sell anything. "The author is dead in the West End. Particularly, as it were, the living author. In a talk at the Edinburgh book festival on Monday, Alan Ayckbourn railed against the dominance of celebrities - picking out Madonna and Ewan McGregor for particular bile - in theatreland, and the now near-impossibility of staging good plays with decent actors, without a Matthew Perry or a Jason Priestley to jolly the whole thing along." The Guardian (UK) 08/14/03
Minnesota Fringe Busts Records While many arts organizations are struggling to keep audiences and cash flowing, this year's Minnesota Fringe Festival - America's biggest fringe - turned out record numbers. "Marking its 10th anniversary this year, the Fringe sold a total of 40,500 tickets to the 162 shows staged during the festival, which concluded Sunday. The box office figure is 27 percent higher than last year's festival." St. Paul Pioneer-Press 08/14/03
Mickey And Donald Are Back For two years Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and his pals have been off the comic book shelves. Now a comics enthusiast is bringing them back. "It's always been a bit of a mystery why the Disney Comics are huge in Europe and Latin America but have languished in the North American market. Mickey Mouse, after all, is the ultimate American icon. Disney comics have had such a huge influence outside North America that they have been the subject of political rants arguing that they were thinly veiled American propaganda designed to spread capitalism and counter the spread of communism." National Post (Canada) 08/14/03
Poetry (And Poets) Explained "Being a poet in America makes as much sense as a butt full of pennies. That’s one of the pleasures of being a poet in America. There’s something wonderful, something perversely subversive about being disconnected from the world of goods and services and John Maynard Keynes, if only for an hour or two every now and again. It’s freedom. Poetry is an uncharted wilderness along whose margins capitalism wilts like arugula in the Wedge parking lot on the Fourth of July." The Rake (Minnesota) 08/03
Are UK Publishers Failing Readers? Are Britain's publishers failing their public? "The director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival has accused Britain's publishing industry of being parochial and leaving readers largely ignorant of intellectual debate in the rest of the world." The Independent (UK) 08/09/03
Cleveland Orchestra Principal To Retire Cellist Stephen Geber has been principal cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra for 30 years, "the longest tenure for a principal cellist in the orchestra's history. It's a seat he will relinquish next week, when he retires at the end of the ensemble's season at Blossom Music Center." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 08/14/03
New York Classical Station Fires Longtime Announcer WQXR radio announcer Gregg Whiteside, whose voice was "synonymous with classical music in New York for 25 years" was fired by the station without notice or severance this week. "The station said the firing was 'because of inappropriate comments which he admitted making'. Neither Whiteside nor the station would say exactly what those comments were." New York Post 08/14/03
Protesting The Disposable DVD Environmentalists are protesting Disney's plans to begin producing disposable DVDs. "The DVDs are designed for those who find renting inconvenient. Sealed in an airtight package, the DVD is usable for two days once opened. A customer can watch the flick as often as they want during that time period. When the time expires, bonding resin on the DVD reacts with the air around it, making the DVD unreadable." Wired 08/13/03 |
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