Gambling With Bankruptcy "With personal bankruptcy filings at historic highs, a growing number of grass-roots organizations contend that the phenomenon is fueled, at least in part, by the explosion of legal gambling in the United States over the past quarter of a century." And here's data to back up the claim - a study shows that bankruptcy rates are highest where casinos are. Christian Science Monitor 03/18/04
Posted: 03/18/2004 7:20 pm
Schjeldahl: A Whitney Based On Good Instincts Peter Schjeldahl appreciates the instincts demonstrated by artists in this year's Whitney Biennial. "All of a sudden, artists are again plainly smarter in their bones than art intellectuals are in their brains. The operative word is 'plainly.' Painting and drawing are back. That’s the big news of this Biennial." The New Yorker 03/15/04
Posted: 03/18/2004 8:12 pm
Rust-As-Art - Florida County Relents on Public Sculpture Officials in Tampa Florida have relented in insisting that an artist scrape the rust off a public sculpture he made. The artist - Bradley Arthur - insisted that the rust wasn't an error, but part of his artistic intentions for the piece. St. Petersburg Times 03/12/04
Posted: 03/18/2004 7:50 pm
- Previously: Florida County Wants Artist To "Fix" Rust On Sculpture Florida artist Bradley Arthur was hired to make sculpture out of melted guns. He did. But shortly after the sculpture was installed, it began to rust. "The county now contends Arthur has delivered a defective product. He must have done something wrong in making the sculpture. Officials with the county's public art program want him to 'fix' it. Arthur, 50, of Land O'Lakes, says there's nothing broken. Of course the pieces are rusting, he said, because they're made largely of gunmetal. He fully expected his artwork to rust in parts, and took that into account in his design." St. Petersburg Times 09/15/03
- The Meaning Of Rust As public officials attacked his public sculpture because it was rusting, Artist Bradley Arthur suggests that the rust is part of the pieces' status as living art, a common theme in works subjected to the elements. He's a gregarious sort who loves discussing meaning and subtext and symbolism. He's given to making lofty statements that can sound pretentious to people less aesthetically minded. At the Ybor City sculpture, he kneels to rub off a reddish smudge. 'It's like the piece is crying,' he says wistfully." Weekly Planet (Tampa) 01/04
Posted: 03/18/2004 7:34 pm
ROM To Get $25 Million Gift Canada's second-wealthiest family is set to announce a major gift to the Royal Ontario Museum, which is in the planning stages of a CAN$200 million expansion project. Galen and Hilary Weston will contribute as much as CAN$25 million to the ROM's capital campaign, a donation which will buy the Westons the naming rights to at least some part of the new expansion. The contribution means that the ROM should have all the cash it needs to go ahead with the first phase of its expansion. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 03/18/04
Posted: 03/18/2004 6:27 am
The Music Biz - New Beginning The end of the music business? Not hardly, says Mark Cuban. "If you're a music consumer, this is the glory days. It's a golden age if you're not trying to protect your arcane business practices. Instead of listening to music lovers who want to take the path of least resistance to hear their tunes, the labels are trying to get you to do it their way. There are a lot of untapped opportunities that are not being utilized." Wired 03/19/04
Posted: 03/19/2004 8:53 am
Do Or Die - This Is The Year For The UK Music Industry "This is going to be the most important year for the British music industry in nearly a decade. Many of its challenges have already been documented: from expensive Pop Idol flops to the effect on CD sales of illegal internet downloads. But the real problem is that the UK business is in danger of becoming nothing more than a regional office for the rest of the world. Where we used to amaze and confuse the competition with our maverick, sulky, ingenious pop star exports, the past year has seen the UK left in charge of the stationery cupboard." The Guardian (UK) 03/19/04
Posted: 03/18/2004 11:23 pm
Is Elliott Carter Too Hard For Detroit? When the Pacifica Quartet came to perform at the Chamber Music Society of Detroit this week, they were specifically asked not to perform the Elliott Carter quartet they had planned. Why? Fear of "alienating" subscribers. "Never mind that Carter's Fifth (1995) is a brilliant work in the composer's late style, muscular but communicative, full of spry dialogue and texture. Never mind that the Pacifica's reputation is based partly on its passionate advocacy of Carter. Never mind that removing Carter to placate a few reactionary patrons drives a stake through the heart of the society's artistic integrity and tightens the noose more securely around the future of classical music. If you do not play the music of today, to paraphrase composer Gunther Schuller, there will be no masterpieces for tomorrow." Detroit Free Press 03/18/04
Posted: 03/18/2004 8:05 pm
Backlash - The Creative Class Emily Hall is happy to see that a "backlash" is building against Richard Florida's ideas about the "creative class." "It didn't take much nudging for people to start to see, among other flaws in his arguments, that he meant to improve social conditions for computer programmers rather than reform the way arts are funded in this country. Florida can claim as loudly as he likes that he never meant to be an arts advocate, but as far as I can tell, he was the keynote speaker at a gazillion 'save the arts' conferences all over the country, probably accepting nice little fees every time." The Stranger (Seattle) 03/18/04
Posted: 03/19/2004 7:35 am
Kennedy Center Expansion Wins First Approval Washington, DC's Kennedy Center cleared its first regulatory hurdle this week when the Federal Commission of Fine Arts voted to approve the project for a new plaza. "We at last see the promise of the Kennedy Center, that it will be connected to the rest of the city. It is floating now in that tangle of spaghetti roadways. The design will go a long way to not only connecting it to the rest of the city, but you will be able to walk around it without getting run over." Washington Post 03/19/04
Posted: 03/18/2004 11:14 pm
LA Mayor Says Cultural Department Will Be Saved Last week Los Angeles officials were suggesting they might abolish the city's cultural affairs department. But "Mayor James K. Hahn said Wednesday that he would preserve the agency and maintain its popular arts grants and educational programs while finding other ways to streamline it in the face of a municipal budget crisis. Hahn said he aimed to "refocus" the department, including giving it a new mandate to pump up tourism by promoting the city's cultural attractions." Los Angeles Times 03/18/04
Posted: 03/18/2004 8:03 pm
Christa Ludwig At 75 "At 75, mezzo Christa Ludwig has lost nothing of her sharpness. There is little of the diva in her manner. She has presence, of course. You can't have a career that dominated opera on both sides of the Atlantic for 40 years without that. But, immaculately dressed in a dark-grey trouser suit, the effect is discreet. She once wrote that while she always wanted to be a prima donna, she was "too lazy" for the scandal and circus that went with the role." The Guardian (UK) 03/19/04
Posted: 03/18/2004 11:27 pm
Virtually Yours - Musicians Battle The Box The musicians union in New York, battling use of the "virtual orchestra" on Broadway, says the electronic box "is all part of an interconnected scheme to ultimately replace live music on Broadway and elsewhere with a machine." Backstage 03/18/04
Posted: 03/19/2004 9:06 am
The National Theatre's Boffo Year London's National Theatre is having a boffo first year in its first year under artistic director Nicholas Hytner. The theatre is "enjoying the sort of critical and commercial success to which most theaters on the other side of the Atlantic can only aspire." Christian Science Monitor 03/19/04
Posted: 03/18/2004 7:33 pm
The Power Of Th Da Vinci Code "In Paris, throughout the U.S. and elsewhere, insatiable fans are exploring the controversial themes in "The Da Vinci Code," even pulling members of the intelligentsia into the novel's energy field. The book's grip on the popular imagination is so fierce that academics and theologians are putting aside their ancient Greek and Latin texts and boning up on Brown's characters, including a self-mutilating, white-haired albino villain." Los Angeles Times 03/19/04
Posted: 03/19/2004 7:48 am
Little Book Makes Big The reality of the publishing business these days is that it's the rare "little" book that gets any traction in the marketplace. All the more remarkable then, for Matthew Sharpe’s "stunning, offbeat coming-of-age novel," The Sleeping Father, which, though rejected by 20 publishers and published by a small press for only a $1,000 advance, has become a hit. New York Observer 03/17/04
Posted: 03/18/2004 10:54 pm
Claim: Da Vinci Code Is Bestselling Adult Novel Ever The publisher of The Da Vinci Code says that in its first year the book has become "the bestselling adult novel of all time. Doubleday announced Thursday that after 53 printings - including 14 consecutive weeks in first place on The New York Times bestseller list - there are 6.8 million copies in print." Christian Science Monitor 03/19/04
Posted: 03/18/2004 7:26 pm
Writers Guild President Resigns Charles Holland has resigned as president of the Writers Guild of America's Western branch after only two months on the job. Questions have persisted about "the accuracy of claims he made about his past." SFGate 03/18/04
Posted: 03/18/2004 7:16 pm
The A-List Actor And The Video Game Movie stars are turning up in new video games. "A-list actors have taken notice of games, and it's not hard to see why. They're a quick route to digital-age street cred. Appearing in a game gives an actor a sense of being on the cutting edge of technological "convergence" (whatever that is), as well as a vague whiff of indie flava. More important, it keeps a star current among young men. Any canny star—or, more likely, any star with a canny agent—eventually winds up looking enviously at a hot video game like the Grand Theft Auto series, which is objectively cooler than almost anything that's come out of Hollywood in years." Slate 03/18/04
Posted: 03/18/2004 11:10 pm
Boston Ballet Makes Deal With Wang Though Boston's Wang Center sent Boston Ballet packing for Nutcracker season next year (Wang evidently favors Rockettes over Sugar Plums), the theatre has signed a new deal with the dance company for the rest of its season. Under the new agreement, "Boston Ballet will be able to earn more money through sponsorships. And there will be more flexibility in scheduling ballet productions, for both sides." Boston Globe 03/19/04
Posted: 03/19/2004 7:07 am
Doing A Lot With Nothing Much Johnathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion don't do much in a piece of dance, writes Tobi Tobias. But what they do do is compelling. "Here’s what they do: shake their hands wildly in front of their chests, so their fingers look like sparklers; use one hand to count the fingers of the other with a child’s deliberation, as if the answer might be in doubt; stroke their palms along their trousered thighs; palpate the floor with their fingertips; curl their fingers into vivid mudras that yield no explicit meaning; extend their arms in semaphore signals or classical ports de bras. A couple of times they stand up for a few seconds, even go so far as to turn in place, repeating a raucous cry; once they shift the position of their chairs so that one lies in the other’s shadow. Such departures from what they’ve set up as the parameters of the piece have the impact of high drama—violent and haunting." Seeing Things (AJBlogs) 03/19/04
Posted: 03/18/2004 11:39 pm
Classical Gas "Ballet is very crotchy. Apart from gymnastics, it is the only job in which a female is allowed to make public use of the structures between her legs as an element of design. This may be one reason that so many girls want to go into ballet: they can use their whole bodies, just like men, and nobody makes rude comments. Indeed, no one comments at all. The Sugar Plum Fairy may turn, in supported arabesque, and show her full lower anatomy to four thousand opera-house patrons, and nobody says a word. Karole Armitage did say a word, or her work did. She took the pelvic action of the ballerina and pushed it further. Those legs were always open. She thereby extended ballet technique and got herself a reputation." The New Yorker 03/15/04
Posted: 03/18/2004 8:16 pm
