Kiddieporn Charge Shutters London Gallery London's Spitz Gallery was shut down on Sunday night after detectives from Scotland Yard showed up in response to concerns by some patrons that a photograph by American Betsy Schneider featured a child in a pornographic pose. The photograph in question is part of a series of shots Ms. Schneider had taken of her daughter, from infancy through the age of 5. The child is nude in most of the photos, but the artist insists that there is nothing pornographic about them. The gallery is reportedly considering its legal options. The Guardian (UK) 03/08/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 9:13 am
Art, Fame, & Unintended Consequences Winning Australia's $35,000 Archibald Prize is one of the fastest ways for an artist to get a stunning amount of media exposure, so it's no wonder than so many enter. But as any Hollywood celebrity will tell you, fame ain't all it's cracked up to be. "Winning the annual portrait prize has many consequences for the careers and lives of artists, beyond the sudden fame. Doors open, certainly, and commissions might follow. But bruised egos, ruined friendships and a broken marriage have been among its unanticipated results." Sydney Morning Herald 03/06/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 8:21 am
They Couldn't Have Fired The Costumer? In one of the more bizarre stories to come out of the UK's Royal Opera House in recent years, acclaimed soprano Deborah Voigt has apparently been fired from an upcoming production of Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos for being too large to fit into the dress the costumer had designed for the role. There's no denying that Voigt is a large woman, but she is also quite a well-known woman who has made Ariadne her signature role over the course of a very distinguished career. But the casting director at the Royal Opera insists that the producer's vision for the production simply precluded Ms. Voigt's participation, and further added that, in his opinion, many singers use their profession as "an excuse to eat too much." The Sunday Telegraph (UK) 03/07/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 8:02 am
Jansons In Pittsburgh: The Exit Interview Mariss Jansons's tenure as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra has been an unqualified success by artistic standards, and as the maestro prepares for his final concerts in the Steel City, he still speaks of his musicians with great affection, praising their humility and work ethic as well as their talent and skill. But if Jansons has any regrets about his time at the PSO, the blame can be laid squarely at the feet of America's political and cultural disinterest in great art. "What I can't understand is having this orchestra in the city and not supporting it, or making it a treasure. This I don't understand as politics. I lived in Soviet Union, the officials didn't like classical music, but how they supported art and sport, you can't imagine." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 03/07/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 7:45 am
Is The Pop Critic Irrelevant? "Thanks to fan blogs, artist Web sites and legal (and not so legal) downloadable music that's often peer-reviewed, a music fan can get instant information - and opinion - about an artist without ever turning to the pages of Rolling Stone. Or a fan's daily newspaper, for that matter... With so many new outlets for music fans to connect with artists and vice versa, and with the days of hanging with the band on the tour bus for a week more often than not replaced with a 15-minute phone interview of say-nothing sound bites, has the pop music critic become as outdated as an eight-track tape?" Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 03/06/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 7:36 am
Safire: The New Improved NEA William Safire has had a change of heart about the National Endowment for the Arts: "Remember the hoo-ha a while back about the funding of edgy art, offensive to some taxpayers, by the National Endowment for the Arts? That controversy is over. The N.E.A. has raised a banner of education and accessibility to which liberal and conservative can repair." The New York Times 03/08/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 4:58 pm
Reconsidering the Big Box Approach It's been five years since the announcement of a new £22 million arts center for the city of Belfast, and very little progress seems to have been made. For one thing, not everyone in the arts community wants a big, unwieldy, centralized home for the city's myriad groups, fearing that it will detract from neighborhood-based art. For another, the plans for the center seem as much about revitalizing a run-down section of the city as they do about promoting culture, and many prominent arts groups have already issued a polite "no, thank you" to the invitation. Belfast Telegraph 03/05/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 9:06 am
Playing It Safe In Adelaide "Stephen Page, the artistic director of the 2004 Adelaide Festival that began on February 27 and runs until March 14, has put together a program that, by importing plenty of foreign acts, is intent on making amends for Peter Sellars' home-grown, half-baked fiasco of two years ago... Although he defends the American director's festival as 'the most cutting edge' he has seen in its ambition of embracing community, social and regional concerns - 'it was sloppy; it had no order'. So Page, charged with bringing the the festival back from the brink, which includes regaining corporate confidence and that of the politicians who ran a mile from the Sellars fall-out, has shaped a something-for-everyone program." The Age (Melbourne) 03/08/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 9:02 am
L.A. Culture: No, It's Not An Oxymoron To hear most people tell it, you would think that Los Angeles is a sun-drenched wasteland of zombified Hollywood dunderheads, sipping mineral water while they sit in traffic on their way to yet another insipid premiere. As far as arts and culture go, most East Coasters would probably smirk at the mention of such things existing in L.A. But while the rest of North America looks down its nose, Los Angeles has quietly become one of the continent's best arts towns, and other cities would do well to follow its example, says Martin Knelman. Toronto Star 03/07/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 8:35 am
A Scourge Joins The Establishment He may not fit the conventional mold for the job, but Peter Mazwell Davies is nonetheless about to be named "Master of the Queen’s Music, in a move likely to send shockwaves through royal, political and musical circles. Maxwell Davies describes himself as an old-fashioned socialist who passionately opposed the war on Iraq, and has previously been labelled 'a scourge of the establishment'. He has criticised institutions including the Royal Opera House, loathes Tony Blair and has never made any secret of his homosexuality. But, while his music is an acquired taste, Maxwell Davies, 69, is also regarded as Britain’s greatest living composer and is thus believed to have been earmarked by Buckingham Palace for a vacant position described as the "musical equivalent of the Poet Laureate". Scotland on Sunday 03/07/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 8:17 am
Bourgeois Revival Few artists could claim to be at their professional peak at the age of 93, but Louise Bourgeois is having a crack at it. "Bourgeois’ reputation is growing steadily, boosted by the fact that she regularly shows work alongside artists half her age. French-born, but now living in Manhattan, she represented the US in the Venice Biennale in 1993, and completed the inaugural commission for Tate Modern’s vast turbine hall in 2000." Her work is unquestionably contemporary, which may account for some of her continued success, but more than merely seeming fresh, it comes across as intensely autobiographical, a trick which few visual artists have mastered without seeming trite. The Scotsman (UK) 03/05/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 8:11 am
How To Do Shakespeare As another round of Shakespeare gets underway on Broadway, the directors of this year's installments share their vision of the Bard's work through contemprary lenses. Jonathan Miller argues that King Lear is not remotely the "cosmic" play it is often mistaken for; Edward Hall makes the case for his all-male production of A Midsummer Night's Dream; and Bartlett Sher discusses the importance of establishing a common rhythmic pulse within the cast of any Shakespeare production. Village Voice 03/01/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 8:43 am
Lloyd Webber's Secret Life Of Grime Last week, theater mogul Andrew Lloyd Webber suggested that it might be time to let some UK theaters (not any of his, it should be stressed) close, rather than spend public money to repair or refurbish them. It may be a legitimate point of view, but to actress Nichola McAuliffe, it's a joke coming from Sir Andrew. McAuliffe has worked in several of Lloyd Webber's West End theaters, and from rotting windows to audience-assaulting chunks of plaster to rodent infestations, she encountered deplorable conditions at every one of them. So where does such a man get off complaining about other people's theaters being in disrepair? The Independent (UK) 03/04/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 7:26 am
Just Like School, But Without The Pop Quizzes The civic reading programs that seem to be springing up all across America have a suspicious ring of junior high to them, writes Patti Thorn: "Reading is personal; do we really want to follow a crowd in our march to literacy?" But there does seem to be some merit to the idea of encouraging average folks to dissect the plot of a community-read book the way we all used to hash over the latest episode of Seinfeld, and the book Denver has chosen for its citywide read is uniquely positioned to promote not only literacy, but community as well. Rocky Mountain News 03/06/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 7:54 am
Should The BBC Lose Its Funding? A strong majority of Britons would like to see a wholesale change in the way the BBC is funded, according to a new survey. The current system charges a license fee to anyone in the UK owning and using a television, and the funds from that tax go to support the government-backed broadcaster. But with the advent of cable and satellite networks, many of which target the same audience as the venerable BBC, the license fee has become increasingly controversial, and it no longer seems certain to continue in perpetuity. BBC 03/06/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 8:51 am
Smart Is Boring. Let's Kill It! The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is considering killing off Radio National, the ABC's news and culture network, and ABC Radio director Sue Howard has been quoted as calling the intellectually-focused network "boring as batshit." The proposed elimination of one of the company's six radio networks comes as the ABC is being forced to cut budget, but there is likely to be stiff opposition to Howard's desire to kill off what many view as an icon of Australian broadcasting excellence. Sydney Morning Herald 03/07/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 8:25 am
Standards & Practices: The New Broadcast Puritanism "After years of pushing limits and pocketing profits, broadcasters find themselves in a gathering storm over indecency. And it is not likely to blow over soon. Too much is at stake. The FCC, having been blasted as inattentive, is seeking congressional support for a tenfold increase in fines for objectionable content. Last week, a U.S. House committee said the proposed increase - from $27,500 to $275,000 - wasn't steep enough, voting to raise penalties to $500,000. Commission member Michael Copps is saying it is high time the FCC, which has never pulled a station's license for indecency, got the attention of broadcasters by holding revocation hearings." Philadelphia Inquirer 03/07/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 7:42 am
Little Island, Big Hollywood Dreams When the British government announced that it was closing a tax loophole long used to finance big-budget movies being shot in the UK, industry observers warned that it would spell the death of the nation's film industry. And indeed, movie production has ground to a virtual halt since the loophole closed. But on the tiny Isle of Man (seen by countless American moviegoers when it stood in for Ireland in Waking Ned Devine), two films are ready to roll, thanks to new subsidies from the island's own film commission. It may not be the saving grace of the entire UK industry, says David Gritten, but it's a start. The Telegraph (UK) 03/05/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 7:13 am
Preservation Through Adulation More than any other performing art, dance is dependent upon the memories of its practitioners to keep its history alive. There may be an extensive vocabulary used to define the basic positions and steps of classical ballet, but there is no perfect way to write down a dance in order that future generations might dance it again. "Even today, despite the advent of video, a choreographer without disciples is in constant danger of having his work fade away after his death. Video can capture the external form and movement, and notation the positions, but the philosophy and technique of the great choreographers is impossible to get down." Slate 03/05/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 8:39 am
Dance Mecca Of The North Other than New York, the most important and vital dance center in the U.S. is... Minnesota? So says former Dance Theater Workshop executive director David R. White, who moved to the Twin Cities last year. "In terms of the work that emanates from the Twin Cities, the receptivity of the community to dance and people's perception of the area as a progressive place where dance can take root, the Twin Cities always have been perceived as a strong community for people in dance who also care about their living environment." Minneapolis Star Tribune 03/07/04
Posted: 03/08/2004 7:39 am
