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Thursday, September 25




Visual Arts

Leonardo Theft, Reconstructed Want to see how thieves stole a valuable Leonardo painting from a Scottish gallery last month? Here's a Crimewatch reconsruction of the crime. BBC 09/24/03
Posted: 09/24/2003 6:36 pm

Fort Worth Proposal To Slash Public Art Money In a big surprise, the mayor of Fort Worth, Texas proposes slashing the city's public art funds. "Mayor Mike Moncrief's unexpected plan would cut funding for public art from 2 percent to 1 percent in the Feb. 7 bond election, shifting about $2 million in funding." Fort Worth Star-Telegram 09/24/03
Posted: 09/24/2003 6:11 pm

Saving The Barnes? Or Plundering It? It looks like the Barnes Collection will be moving to Philadelphia. "This plan was being painted as a boon to all parties: The Barnes would be saved, and Philadelphia would derive lucrative tourist income from the relocation. But you didn't have to scratch too far beneath the surface to reveal a web of influence that indicates that what is really under way is a raid on a beleaguered, helpless art collection." OpinionJournal.com 09/25/03
Posted: 09/24/2003 6:06 pm

Music

The Truth About Illegal Downloading File-trading is unquestionably illegal. It is very clearly an act which closely approximates stealing. So why can't the recording industry get any support for its efforts to stop the piracy? Simple, says Russell Smith. Corporate slimeballs who ignore good music in favor of brainless pap don't deserve any sympathy, and everyone knows it. "File-sharing is a rejection of the social power of bland culture. Why should we pay for crap?" The Globe & Mail (Canada) 09/25/03
Posted: 09/25/2003 5:59 am

  • Recording Industry Withdraws Lawsuit Against Grandparents The recording industry has withdrawn a suit filed against granparents who say they've never downloaded music. "They use a Macintosh, which cannot even run the Kazaa file-sharing service they are accused of using illegally'. "This is what happens when you sweep away all the due process protections and all the privacy protections. Those are the kinds of things that would stop this before it gets to the stage where you sue some nice old lady who did nothing wrong." Wired 09/24/03
    Posted: 09/25/2003 5:54 am

Music? Check. Press? Check. Public? Ummmmmm... The media covered it, the critics sang its praises, and the organizers went out of their way to book quality acts. But the Equinox Music Festival, a jazz fest based in Boston, somehow never managed to sell the public on its concert series, and this week, the festival shut itself down and cancelled all remaining shows. According to the festival's president, "The early events were extremely poorly attended, and the remaining events had extremely poor advance sales. It just came to the point where we had to pull the plug and stop hemorrhaging money. It's most unfortunate, because we had a really phenomenal lineup." Boston Globe 09/25/03
Posted: 09/25/2003 5:35 am

Talks To Resume In Charlotte The striking musicians of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra are set to return to the bargaining table after more than a week of stony silence. The musicians walked out earlier this month after the CSO's board demanded that they accept a hefty pay cut to assist the orchestra in dealing with a $650,000 deficit. A federal mediator will assist in the renewed negotiations. During the strike, the musicians have been staging their own concerts in an effort to garner public support. Charlotte Observer 09/25/03
Posted: 09/25/2003 5:24 am

Michener: Should NY Phil, City Opera Stay At Lincoln Center? The New York Philharmonic and New York City Opera both want to jump out of Lincoln Center to new homes. But "given the proposed alternatives—for City Opera, a pie-in-the-sky move downtown; for the Philharmonic, a schedule-gobbling takeover of Carnegie Hall—I’m beginning to think that it would be better for the health of the two deserters, not to mention that of the city’s musical life, if they stayed put. Both organizations are doing fine where they are." The New York Observer 09/24/03
Posted: 09/24/2003 7:21 pm

Arts Issues

Isabel's Arts Impact "After weathering Hurricane Isabel, arts groups and entertainment promoters are wearily assessing the damage and warily looking to the future. Many had to cancel or reschedule performances when concert halls were damaged and electricity and phones went out. The downed phone lines also temporarily halted subscription and single ticket sales that are crucial to arts groups' financial health at this time of year." In addition to physical damage, arts groups in the affected area are having to cope with an audience base made up of storm survivors for whom an evening out is the last thing currently on their minds. The Daily Press (Hampton Roads, VA) 09/25/03
Posted: 09/25/2003 5:21 am

Rise Of The "Illegal" Artists There's a growing movement of artists who break copyright laws on purpose. "According to a growing number of 'illegal artists', copyright infringement has become the moral affront of choice - and the cause of "cease and desist" letters and profitable copyright suits. Artists are now appearing in court to defend their entitlement to borrow or 'footnote' the work of other artists." The Age (Melbourne) 09/25/03
Posted: 09/24/2003 6:18 pm

People

Nixon, The Closet Bookworm There is a long tradition, on the American political right, of taking potshots at academics, professors, and other assorted "eggheads." In fact, mistrust of the academic elite is practically gospel amongst conservative opinion leaders, and former U.S. president Richard Nixon was no exception. Nixon was famous for his conviction that the "so-called intellectuals" were plotting against him. But Nixon had a decidedly intellectual side himself, as it turns out. Always resentful of the second-class education he had received, Nixon was a voracious reader throughout his life, and even struck up friendships with some of the "eggheads" he so publicly reviled. National Post (Canada) 09/25/03
Posted: 09/25/2003 6:14 am

Canadian National Gallery Chief Under Fire The director of the National Gallery of Canada has come under fire for some $600,000 in travel expenses over the past six years. Questions are being raised by members of the Canadian Alliance party in parliament. CBC 09/24/03
Posted: 09/24/2003 7:28 pm

Hayley Westenra, Teen Classical Sensation Singer Hayley Westenra is now 16, and "has a £3 million, five-album deal under her belt, to which, this week, she added the fastest selling debut classical record of all time. Pure, her third album (though the first to be released internationally) sold nearly 20,000 copies last week, beating anything Charlotte Church has managed - or Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli or Russell Watson, for that matter. She is also at number eight in the mainstream pop album charts, wedged between Daniel Bedingfield and the Black Eyed Peas." The Guardian (UK) 09/24/03
Posted: 09/24/2003 6:38 pm

Theatre

There Are Other Dead Playwrights, You Know Why is it that the world of "classical" theater in the U.S. has been reduced to a single name? William Shakespeare was a brilliant playwright, yes, but he was not the only guy to put quill to paper over the last millenium, and frankly, Michael Kilian is getting a little sick of him, particularly the comedies. "If we are to have classical theater in this country -- and certainly we must -- why keep dragging out the Bard's tired old comedies, which seem always to do with mistaken identities and mass marriages? Why not treat audiences to some actual classical fun, with rip-roaring Restoration romps such as Sheridan's The Rivals?" Chicago Tribune 09/25/03
Posted: 09/25/2003 5:48 am

Cheap Tix To Become An Annual Event In London The UK's National Theatre has announced that it will continue a ticket-sales promotion, launched this past summer, under which all seats to certain performances were reduced to £10. The price slash resulted in full houses throughout the summer for the National, and garnered a fair amount of media interest, as well. The theatre says that it plans to run the promotion again next summer, although ticket prices have returned to normal levels for the main season. BBC 09/25/03
Posted: 09/25/2003 5:11 am

Are High Ticket Prices Killing The West End? The leader of a regional theatre in Leeds charges that high ticket prices are killing creativity in London's West End. But defenders claim that London prices are "still relatively cheap compared with Broadway, where seats sell for more than £70. Last year 12 million went to West End shows - a record. Top-priced tickets [between £40 and £50] are always the first to sell." The Guardian (UK) 09/24/03
Posted: 09/24/2003 6:45 pm

Who Writes The Better Farce? "Farce, like cricket, comes in two forms: English and French. One is an exercise in connoisseurship, distinguished by its practitioners and ennobled by tradition; the other a jolly knockabout enjoyed by amateurs. Although the two traditions developed side by side, many people acknowledge that the English play real cricket, while the French write real farce." The Guardian (UK) 09/24/03
Posted: 09/24/2003 5:51 pm

Publishing

Hillary, Abridged Hillary Clinton's memoir is making a huge splash in China, where a translated version of the book is topping bestseller lists. But New York's junior senator is furious with Chinese authorities for censoring the book, removing all passages critical of the Chinese government before releasing it for domestic consumption. Washington Post 09/25/03
Posted: 09/25/2003 6:41 am

Ferlinghetti: Beats Weren't So Great Lawrence Ferlinghetti says the Beat poets have been over-romanticized. "It is really much more interesting today than in the 50's. There has been all of this mythologizing of the 50's and the Beat generation in San Francisco and so forth, but it has been wildly overdone, because it was a really depressing period, I thought, on account of the general repressive atmosphere and the political climate. Mr. Ferlinghetti described the Beats in San Francisco as 'New York carpetbaggers' who were fixated on an America that doesn't exist anymore." The New York Times 09/25/03
Posted: 09/24/2003 7:10 pm

Story: Trying To Publish Hitler "Thirty years after Hitler wrote his last and largely unknown book, it was discovered by Jewish scholar Gerhard Weinberg - who has spent four decades trying to publish it in English." The Telegraph (UK) 09/25/03
Posted: 09/24/2003 7:00 pm

Media

Porn Goes Mainstream When exactly did pornography become a mainstream product? A scant few years ago, porn was the elephant in America's bedroom: constantly present, but rarely, if ever, spoken of in polite society. Today, the porn industry is crossing over with mainstream Hollywood like never before, and no one is blinking an eye. What's changed? Well, "the adult-film industry is bigger than ever, making some 6,000 movies a year and grossing more than $4 billion - roughly as much as the National Football League. Money like that attracts other business people." New York Post 09/25/03
Posted: 09/25/2003 6:19 am

PBS Blues Series Pays Musicians On The Cheap A new PBS series honoring the Blues paid musicians whose music was used in the series a fraction of the going commercial rate. "I think the musicians deserve much more than we paid, said one executive who worked on the series, speaking on condition of anonymity. On the other hand, he added, the series could not have been completed if the fees had been higher." The New York Times 09/25/03
Posted: 09/24/2003 7:06 pm

What Happened To The BBC? "Even people who love the BBC worry that its status as Britain's most enduringly credible institution — more trusted than the government, more respected than the monarchy, more relevant than the church — is being frittered away by editorial blunders, an inability to negotiate the changing broadcast landscape, and an aggressively adversarial approach to the news among some correspondents that presents a striking contrast to the BBC's old style of measured politeness." The New York Times 09/25/03
Posted: 09/24/2003 7:04 pm

Dance

Stowell & Russell: What We've Learned "In a seemingly short span of time, Kent Stowell and Francia Russell went from being the international ballet circuit's ambitious and talented new kids on the block to its distinguished statesmen." Stowell and Russell have jointly run the Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Ballet for more than a quarter-century, and they are among the longest-tenured arts leaders in the world. Such longevity is unusual in the arts world, and even rarer among dance companies, where frequent financial woes often lead to burnout among managers. Seattle Post-Intelligencer 09/25/03
Posted: 09/25/2003 6:31 am

Deficit in Dairyland "The Milwaukee Ballet reported an operating deficit of $156,000 for 2003-'04 at its annual meeting Wednesday. The loss follows five consecutive years in the black for the company, which posted earned and contributed income of nearly $5 million." Employee turnover, and a slump in sales for the holiday juggernaut The Nutcracker are being blamed for the shortfall. Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 09/24/03
Posted: 09/25/2003 6:09 am


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