The Death Of The Middlebrow? "Middlebrowism, which dominated mid-century culture in the Anglo-American world, can be a complex subject beset by issues of status and social power, but at its heart lay the duty of all educated persons to become "well-rounded" citizens, especially by exposing themselves to great ideas, great art, and great literature. The precipitous decline in middlebrow culture is in large measure a function of technological innovation, which has had the effect of redrawing culture's sociological map. 'Cable, VCRs, satellites, and the multidimensional changes wrought by the home computer have not only opened a vast array of new cultural choices to people, they are achieving something much larger: They are moving the consumption of culture out of the city and into the home. Reason 10/16/03
Posted: 10/16/2003 10:52 pm
The Next Big Thing In Art? Look East. "A powerful argument can be made that the most exciting art in the world is being made by Chinese artists - most younger than 40 - who work in their homeland or have immigrated elsewhere... China has emerged from the intellectual repression of the Cultural Revolution to become an economic tiger ready to assert its place in the world. And that sometimes tumultuous transformation has sparked an incredible explosion of creativity." Denver Post 10/17/03
Posted: 10/17/2003 6:30 am
Looking To The Future In Baltimore A new $20 million art education center on the campus of the Maryland Institute College of Art is big, futuristic, and chock full of the kind of cutting-edge sub-disciplines that didn't even exist a decade ago. The just-completed Brown Center "will house newly created departments in fields such as digital imagery, video, animation, interactive media and graphic design... With the Brown Center, administrators aim to position MICA as a leading art school for art and digital technology studies." Baltimore Sun 10/17/03
Posted: 10/17/2003 6:06 am
Amazing What You Can Find In A Basement "A collection of 18th century paintings featuring Canadian landscapes has been discovered in a basement at Oxford University. It will go to auction next month. The paintings - possibly the earliest renderings of Quebec in existence - were the work of British army officer Major-General Benjamin Fisher." The watercolors were painted in the late 18th century, when Fisher was instructed to survey the Canadian shore, and send documentary evidence of its contours back to Great Britain. The paintings are of more historical than artistic significance, but they are expected to fetch as much as CAN$100,000 at auction. CBC Arts Report 10/17/03
Posted: 10/17/2003 5:40 am
An Artist's Grassy Knoll An artist has covered a church in London in grass. From the inside. "The walls of the church - indeed, every vertical surface, including doors and the railings around the organ loft - are covered in grass. It is a pelt-like, sensual second skin, and the first thing you want to do is reach out and touch it. The blades are superfine and delicate, damp and slightly resistant to the touch. This is nothing like a groomed, respectable, well-kept British lawn, nor a disciplined, close-shaved grass court or golf course. It is something altogether wilder and stranger." The Guardian (UK) 10/17/03
Posted: 10/16/2003 10:19 pm
First Impressions In Detroit As part of the massive expansion of the Detroit Symphony's Max M. Fisher Music Center, a new 450-seat chamber music hall was built, and the DSO is hoping that it will be the key to drawing new audiences to classical music in the city. The new hall looks great, but how does it sound? "Judging acoustics based on only one night in the hall is a bit like tasting Bordeaux from the barrel, but with that caveat in mind, the sound-bite summary is this: The hall is not perfect, but the acoustics Wednesday were promising enough that it's safe to call the Music Box the best hall for chamber music in metro Detroit." Detroit Free Press 10/17/03
Posted: 10/17/2003 6:36 am
Fighting For The Soul Of R&B At some point in the 1980s, the pop music genre known as R&B went crushingly, horrifyingly commercial, and became less traditional "soul" music than overproduced pap designed to be as inoffensive as possible to as wide a range of consumers as could be snookered into buying it. Then, in the mid-'90s, a new breed of talented young singers - the "neo-soul" movement, they were dubbed - began to revitalize the genre with original albums that picked up where artists like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye had left off back in the '70s. But the movement has stalled out, the neo-soul musicians are flying well under the pop culture radar, and slick commercial R&B is again dominating the charts. Still, there may yet be hope for serious soul musicians. Chicago Tribune 10/17/03
Posted: 10/17/2003 6:20 am
Trouble In Paradise The Honolulu Symphony Orchestra has become the latest American orchestra to make drastic cuts to its infrastructure in order to avoid fiscal insolvency. The musicians of the HSO this week accepted a stunning 20% salary cut, reduced pension benefits, and a 4-week reduction in their season. Prior to the new agreement, HSO musicians earned $30,345 for a 34-week season. The cuts are all the more ominous because the HSO's musicians were in the middle of a 5-year contract when the orchestra's management informed them that they would not be able to honor its terms. Honolulu Advertiser 10/17/03
Posted: 10/17/2003 5:47 am
Miles Davis Raw...Is It Fair? In 1970, Miles Davis was "clean and healthy and at the height of his powers." He made a set of recordings in which he tested out music. But the recordings were never meant to be released, and now that they are, some Davis fans are angry. "The set offers unprecedented insights into the musical intelligence that went into the album's creation. But with mistakes and doodles included in the mix, are these private explorations really for public consumption decades later?" The Guardian (UK) 10/17/03
Posted: 10/16/2003 10:09 pm
Disney-High Ambitions LA's Disney Hall opens next week. "For all the energy and playfulness of this $274 million piece of civic sculpture, Disney Hall also bears a heavy burden as an instrument of this city's heady ambition. Sixteen years in the making, it represents Los Angeles' determination to shake off its perpetual No. 2 status, to be recognized, along with New York, as an international cultural heavyweight, yet on its own highly theatrical terms." San Francisco Chronicle 10/16/03
Posted: 10/16/2003 9:50 pm
Latino Museum Plan Takes A Step Forward The idea of starting a National Museum of the American Latino has begun to gain traction in recent years, and this week, supporters got a legislative boost, when a California congressman introduced a bill to authorize a feasibility study for the museum. "The museum would be based in Washington and might be under the umbrella of the Smithsonian Institution." If it were built, it would join two other new museums dedicated to American minorities: "A museum dedicated to Native American culture is nearing completion at the southeast corner of the Mall. An African American museum is awaiting full congressional approval." Washington Post 10/17/03
Posted: 10/17/2003 7:22 am
A Snapshot Of Scotland's Artists There's the romantic notion of what an artist's life is like. Then there's the economic reality. A new study of Scotland's artists shows that "40% of artists under 35 made work that generated no income. Only 17% of the artists earned more than £10,000 a year from artistic practice alone, and many supplemented their income. The figures also contain a fascinating snapshot of contemporary Scottish artists as economic players. In the past two years, they pumped £4.6m into the economy through their expenditure on art materials, transport, and premises, of which £443,000 was spent on assistants." Glasgow Herald 10/17/03
Posted: 10/16/2003 10:30 pm
After The Budget Cuts Comes The Pain It's been a tough year for arts funding, with cutbacks in public funding across America. "Taken together, it's clear that last spring's budget battles, in which most state legislatures agreed to substantial cuts in arts funding, are now being acutely felt by not-for-profits nationwide." Backstage 10/15/03
Posted: 10/16/2003 9:47 pm
Tragedy and Possibility: The Sylvia Plath Revival "She died 40 years ago, succumbing intentionally to a kitchen oven's gas fumes at age 30. He survived 35 years longer before dying of cancer. They were still married but no longer together when she left the world of the living. So why are Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes the golden couple of fall 2003?" Newsday 10/16/03
Posted: 10/17/2003 7:04 am
New Leadership In Houston Brings Hope For Stability "The board of the Menil Collection in Houston named its new director yesterday: Josef Helfenstein, director of the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Mr. Helfenstein succeeds Ned Rifkin, who resigned almost a year ago to head the Smithsonian Institution's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington." The Menil Collection has functioned amid considerable internal turmoil over the last several years, but with the appointment of Helfenstein, it is hoped that an organization which has sometimes had trouble defining itself will finally have a chance to establish a firm direction. The New York Times 10/17/03
Posted: 10/17/2003 7:00 am
The Wallpaper That Killed Napoleon? A little scrap of wallpaper that might have helped kill Napoleon has been sold at auction. "Tests eight years ago, on a lock said to have been cut from Napoleon's hair after his death revealed eight times normal levels of arsenic. One culprit could have been the red-and-gold wallpaper of his bedroom, at Longwood House on St Helena, where he was exiled for six years until his death in 1821." The Guardian (UK) 10/17/03
Posted: 10/16/2003 10:26 pm
Ligeti At 80 Gyorgy "Ligeti has a unique place in the history of 20th-century music: an avant-gardist who is familiar to a wide public (even if he has Stanley Kubrick's use of his music in 2001 to thank for that popularity), and an uncompromising modernist whose music revels in its connections with other cultures, other art forms, and the music of earlier centuries." The Guardian (UK) 10/17/03
Posted: 10/16/2003 10:14 pm
Where The Children Are Thriving Children's theatre is thriving at a time when other performing arts are struggling. "This is a corner of the theatrical world that, as Rodney Dangerfield would say, has gotten no respect, but may now be seeing a renaissance. Although economic times are tough for all regional theaters today is 'a remarkable time' for children's theater. There's been 'nothing less than a sea change in the field. It's a significant historical moment." Christian Science Monitor 10/17/03
Posted: 10/16/2003 9:59 pm
The NEA's Shakespeare Guild The National Endowment for the Arts is forming a performers guild to support its program touring Shakespeare across the country. "The endowment has taken on the guild image in organizing the respected performers and art experts who will openly support the Shakespeare project. Shakespeare in American Communities will bring professional performances of the Bard, along with related educational activities, to more than 100 communities throughout the country." Backstage 10/16/03
Posted: 10/16/2003 9:53 pm
Book Sales Surge In August The economy might be down, but book sales are up. "Preliminary estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show a large gain in bookstore sales in August, up 15.5% to $2.11 billion. The Bureau reported that bookstore sales for the first eight months of the year were up 3.3%, to $10.53 billion." Publishers Weekly 10/16/03
Posted: 10/16/2003 10:57 pm
We Want Our Free DVDs! "Rarely in recent Hollywood history has there been an uprising of this magnitude over such an apparently trivial matter. But ever since the Motion Picture Association of America announced two weeks ago that studios had to stop sending out free DVDs of their movies to voters during the coming awards season, the mob has been storming the castle gates. The ban on so-called 'screeners' was intended to stop unauthorized duplication of the films, a problem that concerns many in the industry. But to read the daily headlines in the industry trade papers, nothing less than the future of creativity in the movies is at stake." Washington Post 10/17/03
Posted: 10/17/2003 7:20 am
Progress, Slow But Steady Racial diversity is slowly coming to American TV, according to a new report from a media watchdog group. Hispanics have made the greatest gains in recent years, with Hispanic characters being introduced in many mainstream shows, but Asian-Americans are still grossly underrepresented on U.S. screens. The coalition that issued the report singled out CBS's new drama, Joan of Arcadia as being absurdly devoid of Asian-Americans, since it takes place in the heavily Asian town of Arcadia, California. Still, the coalition is no longer calling for the network boycotts it threatened a few years ago, and acknowledges that real progress is being made. Philadephia Inquirer (AP) 10/17/03
Posted: 10/17/2003 7:08 am
iTunes: Not Just For Toy Computers Anymore! When Apple launched its music downloading service, iTunes, last spring, it marked a seismic shift in the computing and music industries towards an eventual embrace of the new technologies which have caused so many headaches for copyright holders. Now, Apple has (finally) launched a version of iTunes that runs on PCs, thereby greatly expanding the company's reach and share of the legal downloading market. Cross-promotions with Pepsi and AOL will follow soon, and just like that, Apple CEO Steve Jobs hopes to do what the music industry has been insisting isn't possible: convince consumers to pay for music they can still find for free on other services. Wired 10/16/03
Posted: 10/17/2003 5:30 am
Marvelous Merce At 50 Interest has been intense on Merce Cunningham's dance company celebration of 50 years, writes Tobi Tobias. "For the opening night gala, attended by a packed house of the rich, the famous, and the curious, augmented by squads of rock music fans and their Cunningham-reverent equivalent, as well as an extra component of security folks, the dice rolling was done onstage, in the presence of the musicians who would later be hidden in the pit and a few dancers picturesquely warming up. It featured New York’s Mayor Bloomberg at his most aggressively exuberant (to compensate for Cunningham’s decades of under appreciation?), with the rolling done by celebs like former Cunningham collaborators Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cunningham ur-dancer Carolyn Brown. Eventually, after all the brouhaha, here it was, another Merce Cunningham dance, and this time, as chance would have it, not a particularly distinguished one." Seeing Things (AJBlogs) 10/16/03
Posted: 10/16/2003 11:18 pm
Out Of Cuba: When A Dance Is More Than A Dance "It is not an exaggeration to say that the Ballet Nacional de Cuba is among the best in the world. That alone makes watching its dancers take flight on stage a thrill for any lover of the arts. But for us, Cuban exiles from Miami of different generations in emigration and age, this evening was more than a performance. It was an act of rebellion against a 44-year-standoff, my entire lifetime, and of faith that not all is lost." Miami Herald 10/16/03
Posted: 10/16/2003 10:39 pm
Frankfurt Pulls Out Of Deal For Forsythe Project "The nitty-gritty details of a contract for a ballet ensemble directed by William Forsythe and funded by the cities of Frankfurt and Dresden and their respective state governments had all been worked out months ago. But when representatives of the contractual parties met in Dresden on Tuesday to sign the deal, two chairs remained empty. On the same day, Frankfurt's city council passed a decision that Frankfurt would pull out of the cooperation, to which it would have contributed EUR200,000 ($232,600) per year." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 10/17/03
Posted: 10/16/2003 10:07 pm
