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Thursday, February 12




Ideas

America's Christian Right The potent force in American culture? "An estimated 70 million Americans call themselves evangelicals, and their beliefs have already reshaped American politics. In the last election, 40 percent of the votes for George W. Bush came from their ranks, and now those beliefs are beginning to reshape the culture as well - thanks to a group of best-selling novels known as the 'Left Behind' series." CBSNews 02/08/04
Posted: 02/11/2004 6:12 pm

Visual Arts

Boston MFA Adds To Expansion Boston's Museum of Fine Arts is working on a $180 million expansion. Yesterday it announced the addition of a new 10,000 square-foot underground gallery to the project. "The new Graham Gund Gallery, which will sit under a new East Wing, will house major temporary exhibitions. The space, part of an expansion to be completed in 2009, isn't expected to add to the $180 million price tag." Boston Globe 02/12/04
Posted: 02/12/2004 6:58 am

Surge In UK Preservationists Britain's National Trust heritage preservation organization is seeing a surge in membership. "New members joined the trust at a rate of one every 46 seconds last summer, faster than the British birth rate of one every 55 seconds. It now has 3.3 million members, making it the largest organisation in Europe." The Guardian (UK) 02/12/04
Posted: 02/11/2004 9:51 pm

British, Swiss Call For Tighter Enforcement On Stolen Art Britain and Switzerland get together to talk about the traffic of stolen cultural goods. “Governments need to raise the profile of cultural goods to the same level of priority as tobacco, arms and alcohol,” and greater enforcement of borders is key. Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland) 02/11/04
Posted: 02/11/2004 5:53 pm

Bragging Rights For Hockey The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia will unveil Thursday a 137-year-old painting it claims is visual proof that Canada's national past-time was first played in Nova Scotia. 'There is quite a debate. There are tonnes of written records of hockey and hurley and all these others claims, but ... to our knowledge there's no one else who has an earlier visual record of hockey being played'." Canada.com 02/11/04
Posted: 02/11/2004 5:08 pm

Music

Carnegie Hall Announces Nex Season "Continuing its transformation into a full-fledged arts center from merely one of the world's most storied concert halls, Carnegie Hall next season will fill its three stages with 140 classical concerts, plus more than 45 jazz, folk, world-music, and even pop performances." Philadelphia Inquirer 02/12/04
Posted: 02/12/2004 8:30 am

Hip Hop: Coming To America "So far, foreign rappers have had little success in the United States. But that could change. Hip-hop has long spoken in foreign accents, even if Americans have turned a deaf ear. And if Americans assume that rappers from elsewhere are just copycats, merely translating rather than creating, they'd be wrong."
Fort Worth Star-Telegram 02/12/04
Posted: 02/12/2004 7:12 am

In RoadTrip: Nice To Be Taken Seriously On tour with the Minnesota Orchestra: "We've rarely gotten any actual bad press in New York, but the last two times we were in town, the reviews all carried a decidedly irritating "Awww, look at the cute little Midwesterners with their very own orchestra!" quality, and even complimentary passages seemed to suggest that while we might be doing our best, we were miles away from competing on New York's level. This time, however, the reviews are quite serious..." RoadTrip (AJBlogs) 02/12/04
Posted: 02/11/2004 11:55 pm

Promoting Classical Music On Its Strengths "Rock music, to adopt Nietzsche's famous distinction, is perceived as alluringly Dionysian - a surrender to instinct and emotion, an invitation to the orgiastic. Classical music, on the other hand, has become purely Apollonian: it represents restraint, structure, order and discipline." But, writes Rupert Christiansen, the way to incite the passions about classical music isn't to hip it up. Rather, play to the strengths...
The Telegraph (UK) 02/11/04
Posted: 02/11/2004 5:44 pm

Arts Issues

Bush's NEA Increase Proposal - Just Hot Air? George Bush proposes increasing the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts by $18 million. But in arts circles, "suspicion of Bush's motives, however, is widespread. Why in the world is this president offering a palm frond to the arts, even a modest one, while cutting other domestic programs in a $2.4 trillion budget that's heavy on defense and military spending and simultaneously aimed at deficit reduction?" San Francisco Chronicle 02/12/04
Posted: 02/12/2004 8:42 am

Finalists For WTC Cultural Center New York City Opera is among the arts groups in consideration for a new cultural center at the World Trade Center site. "Other groups competing to relocate to the site include the Joyce Theater Foundation, the Signature Theatre Co., the Children's Museum of the Arts, the Drawing Center, the Museum of Freedom and the New York Hall of Science, the agency said. The list released Tuesday was narrowed from 113 interested institutions who responded to a worldwide invitation last summer." Andante (AP) 02/12/04
Posted: 02/11/2004 10:05 pm

Sacramento Helps Out Opera, Ballet With Loans The Sacramento City Council votes to help the city's opera and ballet companies financially. "Both the Sacramento City Council and county Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to grant the Sacramento Ballet a dollar for each dollar it pays of a $362,000 consolidated loan from 1989 and 1995, without interest. Over the next decade, the ballet will donate half that amount in tickets and arts programming to underprivileged audiences. The Sacramento Opera will pay half of a $76,781 loan from the city in the same manner over five years." Sacramento Bee 02/11/04
Posted: 02/11/2004 4:54 pm

People

Touring Lou Harrison's House The late composer's house near Joshua Tree National Park, is made of straw, and constructed in a unique, quirky way. "Like Harrison — who incorporated Baroque, Asian and a wide range of other musical forms into complex, achingly beautiful works — it's a glorious mixture."
Los Angeles Times 02/12/04
Posted: 02/12/2004 7:17 am

Theatre

Broadway's Winter Blues Three more shows are closing on Broadway. "This month's closings will bring the total since the season began last fall to 11, making it one of the more disappointing sessions in recent Broadway history. 'No one in the Broadway community expected this traditionally challenging season to be so rough'." New York Daily News 02/12/04
Posted: 02/12/2004 7:37 am

Gypsy Decides To Hang Around Ticket sales to Broadway's "Gypsy" have surged since producers announced that the show would close. So it's not going to... The New York Times (1st item) 02/12/04
Posted: 02/11/2004 10:02 pm

Wolfe Leaving The Public George C. Wolfe is leaving the helm of New York's Public Theatre. "Mr. Wolfe has established something of a cult of personality at the Public, in the tradition of the legendary Joseph Papp. And as the leading black stage director in the country and an openly gay man, he embodied the Public's determination to reach diverse artists and audiences." The New York Times 02/12/04
Posted: 02/11/2004 10:00 pm

The Theatre Of Factual Fiction On London stages, there are now plays devoted to true events. "The resurgence of the theatre of fact is perhaps suggestive of a deeper problem for writers, namely that modern life in its unimaginable complexity seems to defy invention itself. The convention-bound play, assembling representative characters in symbolic spaces to rehearse the concerns of the hour, looks as capable of capturing the zeitgeist as a fishing net is of landing a blue whale." The Guardian (UK) 02/12/04
Posted: 02/11/2004 9:54 pm

Do Playwrights "Plunder" Other Cultures When They Write About Them? Playwright Lennie James went to New Zealand to write a play about teenagers there. But he encountered resistance. And it was brutal. "I mean, what is your deal, Lennie James? Are you going to travel the world stealing people's culture?" When I was thrown out of the club to avoid any more "trouble", Wiri followed me out, screaming my name at the sky and wishing me well in my quest to rob the "lesser" cultures of the world of their stories. "You go Lennie James! You go, bro!" The Guardian (UK) 01/12/04
Posted: 02/11/2004 9:48 pm

Publishing

Nazi Expose Suddenly Canceled By Publisher "The latest novel of Germany's hot young writer Thor Kunkel exposes the Nazis' previously unknown trade in pornographic films. Sounds like a guaranteed bestseller. So why has the book's publisher cancelled it and kicked up a literary storm?" The Guardian (UK) 02/12/04
Posted: 02/11/2004 9:57 pm

NY Nannies Get Tossed By Publisher "Last week that Random House canceled the second novel by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, the authors of the phenomenally best-selling The Nanny Diaries. As news began filtering out that the newly reconfigured little Random had canceled the reported-to-be $3 million contract, phones all over town started to ring. 'Random House wants its money back,' people said. 'The book is a disaster!' It may come as a shock to those who work in more normal businesses, but this kind of thing doesn’t happen every day." New York Observer 02/11/04
Posted: 02/11/2004 5:28 pm

Media

Congress Threatens TV US Congressional lawmakers, angry about the Janet Jackson Superbowl incident, are roaring about getting tough on TV. "In separate hearings, members of the House of Representatives and Senate told the Federal Communications Commission and the president of Viacom Inc. that fines could just be the beginning of a new crackdown on profanity and indecency on the nation's airwaves. Most immediately, they appear headed toward passing legislation that would increase tenfold the fine on television and radio broadcasters that violate the FCC decency rules, to a maximum of $275,000 per violation." Los Angeles Times 02/12/04
Posted: 02/12/2004 7:21 am

Some In Congress Want To "Clean Up" TV Sensing a good political issue, some in Congress are jockeying to further regulate what can be shown on television. "Senate Commerce Committee chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., led the charge, saying he is so offended by what he sees that he backs regulating cable and satellite TV programming." Critics say "the FCC commissioners have used their free-floating indecency standard to censor counter-cultural ideas, sexual discussions and language that reflects a sensibility different from their own. Yet the FCC's censorship power would immediately be recognized as unconstitutional if the medium weren't broadcasting." Denver Post 02/12/04
Posted: 02/12/2004 7:07 am

FCC Outrage Is Political Theatre There's been an amazing amount of posturing and speechifying over Janet Jackson's breast. "But even as the TV networks race to delete images of nudity and sex from such prime-time dramas as ER and Without a Trace in an effort to show that they can police themselves, media historians and analysts say real, lasting change is unlikely. As dramatic as the pictures and soundbites coming out of Washington today might be, it will be mostly political posturing, the experts say, merely the latest movement in a dance between Hollywood and Washington that started with the Communications Act of 1934." Baltimore Sun 02/11/04
Posted: 02/11/2004 5:19 pm

Dance

Fired Bolshoi Ballerina Sues Director The ballerina fired by the Bolshoi last year after being told she was "too fat" by the director, is suing for $1 million. She had already won reinstatement to the company from the court, but her attorney says she wants money and a public apology. "We believe that remarks made by the Bolshoi Theater director offend the honor, dignity and business reputation of my client." Baltimore Sun (AP) 02/11/04
Posted: 02/11/2004 5:15 pm


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