Is Copyright Killing Culture? "Culture as we know it is increasingly bound up in the very laws that are supposed to nurture it. Copyright law has gone from promoting creativity to hindering artistic expression, thanks in part to the efforts of a few giant corporations that are sitting on billions of dollars worth of intellectual property. Culture is paying the price for these bad laws. In fact, the labyrinth of copyright has already had a devastating effect on an entire art form." Durham Independent 12/03/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 5:36 pm
Art Basel, Miami Branch Art Basel converges on Miami Beach after a successful first outing last year. "The Art Basel people have utilized the Miami location to make it a fun event, creating something of the same atmosphere that they have in Basel. It becomes the event. Equally important is that museum directors, curators and patrons are coming. So it's not just a place for sales. It's a meeting place." The Sun-Sentinel (Florida) 12/05/03
Posted: 12/05/2003 8:52 am
Lasting Memories - What's It Take? "As we move into the final stages of the World Trade Center memorial competition, it's worth recalling this city's forgetfulness about tragedy. Perhaps if we make the monument sufficiently majestic - and devote enough resources to change the light bulbs, clean the pumps and scrub the glass - we can prolong the event's resonance, but we must also build for the future ebbing of emotions." Newsday 12/01/03
Posted: 12/05/2003 8:12 am
Regina Gallery Closing Reconsidered The mayor of Regina, Saskatchewan has reversed a decision to close a popular art gallery in the city's public library. The gallery was to be closed to save money, but protests from the arts community led the mayor to reconsider. The City Council must still be convinced to spare the gallery The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/05/03
Posted: 12/05/2003 8:00 am
- Previously: Closure Of Small Saskatchewan Gallery Draws National Protest The decision to close a small but important gallery attached to the Regina (Saskatchewan) Public Library, has "sent waves of shock and dismay through the national visual-arts community. This nationally recognized institution has been a critical thread in the Canadian cultural fabric since 1949." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/28/03
Out Of Nature Can you make art about nature anymore? "I still find my hackles rising at the glibness with which nature, according to ancient wisdom our nourishing mother, has been dismissed from the scene. In particular, I wonder whether artists, for whom, since the time of the cave-painters, nature has been the chief fount of inspiration, have been too hastily complicit in this dismissal." The Spectator 12/06/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 9:19 pm
View From The Top - Museum Directors Speak Out A roundtable of blue chip museum directors talks about the challenges faced by museums. “The more art museums look like multinational corporations and the more their directors sound like corporate CEOs, the more they risk being cast by the public in the same light.” ARTnews 12/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 5:59 pm
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From One Generation To The Next Some of the world's most distinguished artists gathered at Lincoln Center on November 10 to celebrate the completion of the inaugural year of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. www.rolexmentorprotege.com
Beethoven Quartet Sells For $2 Million Beethoven's Opus 127 String Quartet has sold at auction for just over $2 million. "The scherzo manuscript of the quartet is clearly a working document, with smudges, parts crossed out and late alterations added. Prince Galitzin of Russia, who played cello, commissioned Beethoven to write three quartets in 1822, but the composer was inspired to produce five." Baltimore Sun (AP) 12/05/03
Posted: 12/05/2003 7:17 am
A Balanced Grammy Slate No one artist dominates this year's Grammy nominations. "The most nominations any artist received was six, with four performers tying for that amount. Three were from the rap world — Jay-Z, OutKast and Pharrell Williams of the Neptunes — and the fourth was the R&B singer Beyoncé." The New York Times 12/05/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 9:52 pm
English National Opera Director Quits Paul Daniel, who has been mujsic director of the English National Opera for eight years, is quitting. The troubled company has just come through a rocky 18 months. "Mr Daniel has been unhappy at ENO since the mid-2002 resignation of Nicholas Payne, its general director. 'It's been hard to square what's happened over the past 18 months. I've been emotionally caught up in this. The change has been pretty distressing." The Guardian (UK) 12/05/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 8:50 pm
Klass: Classical Music Needs To Be Hipper (Maybe A Leather Jacket?) Former pop singer Myleene Klass - now trying to make a career in classical music, says classical music has to get hipper, not dumber: "Donning a leather jacket doesn't just suddenly make you accessible, it is the whole package. I think that's what the classical world needs to give. Let's get everything to the same edgy degree that the pop world's got at, because it looks stronger on the television - none of this soft-focus classical nonsense. Let's make it edgy, let's make it current, let's make it exciting." BBC 12/04/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 5:43 pm
Good News Bears Why does most research on culture end up with a positive spin, asks Andrew Taylor. "Much of the research on the public aspects of the arts is done by advocacy organizations or community coalitions with an admitted bias (of course the arts have a positive impact on city economies, education, at-risk youth, and luring the creative class, and we've designed research to prove it). Even at professional conferences, we are more likely to share 'best practices' and handy tips to sell tickets quickly, rather than exposing and exploring times we dropped the ball or didn't even see it. It's all fine and friendly, but such one-sided and guarded discussions are contrary to learning." Artful Manager (AJBlogs) 12/04/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 5:39 pm
Branding For Non-Profits "Large nonprofit organizations, like their corporate counterparts, have long recognized the value of branding. Now, small local groups are picking up on the importance of standing out from the charitable crowd. Nearly 1.4 million nonprofits are competing for dollars in the United States. Whether they hire a public- relations expert or buy an online-branding kit, they all hope their logos will convey a trustworthy cause to donors - and make it easy to distinguish their envelopes from the daily round of junk mail." Christian Science Monitor 12/05/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 5:08 pm
Jim Wolfensohn's Birthday Party "It's good to be Jim Wolfensohn, no question about it. He runs a global institution with 10,000 employees and doles out $30 billion annually to make the world a better place. A career in investment banking made him personally rich-rich-rich. He's got friends in high places and, because he loves music, is pals with some of the world's greatest musical artists. So Wolfensohn pulled some strings for the evening. Last night's performers included Bono, cellists Yo-Yo Ma, Cho-Liang Lin and Sharon Robinson, pianist Vladimir Feltsman, violinists Jaime Laredo and Pinchas Zukerman -- and the amateur of the bunch, Wolfensohn. 'Not a bad group,' he said with a chuckle." Washington Post 12/05/03
Posted: 12/05/2003 9:08 am
My Family, The Wagners Gottfried Wagner, great grandson of composer Richard Wagner, has a complicated family. "As Gottfried continues to speak, it becomes apparent that Richard Wagner (who died in 1883) isn't really the source of his angst. Although he firmly believes that his operatic great-grandfather was a raving anti-Semite who harmfully influenced German thought, what Gottfried is most concerned about is his more recent relatives' involvement in 20th-century Nazi politics, and their subsequent efforts to sanitize the family name. He contends that the family was left in charge of the Bayreuth Festival after the Second World War because they successfully hoodwinked the occupying forces." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/05/03
Posted: 12/05/2003 7:54 am
Mockbee Wins Architecture Gold Medal "In an era marked by celebrity architects and grand cultural projects, the American Institute of Architects has awarded its 2004 Gold Medal to Samuel Mockbee, a visionary designer and educator who devoted his career to building housing for the rural poor. The award, announced yesterday, is posthumous." Washington Post 12/05/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 10:12 pm
MTM Quits Neil Simon Play Mary Tyler Moore has quit Neil Simon's new play while still in rehearsals. "Ms. Moore was seen storming out the backstage door minutes before the 2 p.m. curtain on Wednesday. Several sources close to the production said she had just received a brusque letter written by Mr. Simon and delivered by his wife, the actress Elaine Joyce, reproaching her for not knowing her lines. Ms. Moore had received prompting through a microphone in her ear, the sources said." The New York Times 12/05/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 10:29 pm
Dario Fo's Natural Target Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has an unpleasant habit of burying dissent in the media (of which he controls a fair amount). So who's ready to skewer him? Playwright Dario Fo, of course. "Thus the time is clearly ripe for Fo to write and perform a commedia dell'arte based on Berlusconi. Fo and, involuntarily, Berlusconi have been building up to the moment for more than 40 years." Financial Times 12/05/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 8:18 pm
Bringing Multimedia To The Stage Live theatre offers an audience experience that can't be duplicated by TV or on film. And yet, "theatre artists are increasingly toying with multimedia, often in commercial settings. Off- and Off-Off-Broadway, is a daring and natural breeding ground for multimedia experimentation." Backstage 12/04/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 6:03 pm
B&N Gets Out Of E-books Barnes&Noble.com suddenly gets out of the e-book business. "Customers using Microsoft's eBook reader have until Dec. 9 to access downloads purchased from the store, while Adobe Reader customers have 90 days to retrieve any outstanding files, according to a notice posted on the site Tuesday. Meanwhile thousands of e-book titles were listed as unavailable." CNet News 12/04/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 9:59 pm
Peck: Too Many "Stepford" Novels Dale Peck on the decline of modern writing: "Even allowing for the fact that any living literary community produces its fair share of James Fenimore Coopers and Pearl S. Bucks and Henry Millers and that it takes time to separate the chaff from the wheat; and even taking into consideration the theory that cinematic and virtual media have displaced the printed word as the dominant narrative forms, and that the novel and its grown-too-big-for-its-britches sibling, the memoir, are only occasionally profitable anachronisms; and even recognizing that literacy standards and technological advances have made it theoretically feasible for just about anyone to write and publish a book--even considering all these factors, the number of Stepford novels that are written, published, reviewed, and read every year is completely out of control." The New Republic 12/04/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 7:34 pm
Grann Trying Again At Random House "Phyllis Grann, who oversaw a virtual assembly line of blockbuster books as chief executive of Penguin Putnam but later lasted just six months as the vice chairwoman of Random House Inc., is returning to Random House in a new capacity." Grann had told acquaintances that her time at Random House was "deeply unsatisfying," due largely to the lack of real responsibility that came with the job because of the autonomy enjoyed by Random House's various imprints. "In her new role, as a senior editor of the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, Ms. Grann is expected to acquire and edit as many as 10 books a year, both fiction and nonfiction." The New York Times 12/04/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 6:44 am
A Screener Issue That Threatens To Engulf The Industry The Motion Picture Association of America's new policy of not providing screeners to those voting on various awards is pissing off many in the industry. "The question producers might consider now: How bad a taste will the screener issue leave in the mouths of the Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild? Why? Because both these unions are currently in the process of organizing the positions and recommendations they'll carry into next year's negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on their feature-film and TV contracts." Backstage 12/04/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 7:23 pm
Cuban Ballet's Defecting Dancers This fall, five dancers from the Ballet Nacional de Cuba leftr the company during an American tour to seek asylum "Since November of last year, they said, a total of 20 dancers have defected in Mexico, Spain, the Dominican Republic and, now, the United States. The troupe had about 90 dancers before the defections. The company and the government have taken steps to stop the exodus. The dancers described a summer meeting in which Abel Prieto, the culture minister, announced that the ministry was considering allowing some dancers to work with foreign companies, which would give them international exposure." The New York Times 12/05/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 9:34 pm
The Royal's Bits And Pieces London's Royal Ballet has to sell tickets. So it produces mostly programs of full-length ballets. "Since the death of Kenneth MacMillan, the company has not had a resident choreographer, nor a candidate fit for the role, in itself a failing. Instead, bought-in goods, some wonderful, some frightful, papered over the chasms in artistic policy." This month the company shows off some shorter works... Financial Times 12/05/03
Posted: 12/04/2003 8:39 pm
