The Sad Seedy Side Of Legendary Legendary performances take on an aura of their own. "The trouble with legends is that they simultaneously attract and repel. There's a serious downside. The world of legend worship is patrolled and inhabited by very sad people, almost all of them men. This is not a world that suffers fools gladly. There is something embarrassing about being part of it." The Guardian (UK) 04/17/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 11:25 am
Photos - Does Size Matter? There was a time - not all that long ago - when photographs were small and handheld. But "photographs have been steadily expanding in size, along with their importance in the eyes of critics and their value in the marketplace." Is there a relationship between size and importance? The New York Times 04/18/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 11:50 am
Ancient Jewelry Reveals Creative Thought "In a handful of pierced seashells found in a South African cave, scientists believe that they have discovered the world's oldest known jewelry and the earliest reliable evidence of creative symbolic thought at work." Los Angeles Times 04/17/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 11:02 am
Peabody's New Face Baltimore's Peabody Institute "unveils nearly $27 million worth of campus renovations, the most extensive and expensive construction project since the institution opened in 1866." The school campus has looked in for decades, and the renovations are designed to reconnect with the community. Baltimore Sun 04/18/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 1:26 pm
US In Iraq - Loud Music As Weapon Once again, US troops are using loud American rock music as a weapon against its foes. Last week the Americans blared music into Fallujah, hoping to set militants nerves on edge. "The loud music recalls the Army's use of rap and rock to help flush out Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega after the December 1989 invasion on his country, and the FBI's blaring progressively more irritating tunes in an attempt to end a standoff with armed members of the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas in 1993." The Globe & Mail (AP) 04/17/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 11:16 am
Today's Music: Give Me That Old Time Religion Christian music is big business now. "Sales of praise and worship albums have doubled since 2000, to about 12 million in 2003. While music sales over all slumped last year, including Christian music in general, worship music was up 5 percent. A series of CD's marketed on television by Time-Life, "Songs 4 Worship," has drawn a million subscribers and sold about 8 million CD's since 2000." The New York Times 04/17/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 11:14 am
Universal Raises CD Prices (Cutting Prices Didn't Help) Universal is abandoning its lower retail pricing plan, and increasing its suggested retail prices. "Universal's competitors didn't follow suit with wholesale price cuts. Some record label executives privately dismissed the price-cut plan as a promotional ploy aimed at boosting short-term sales numbers. Moreover, some retailers complained that the new system unfairly squeezed their profit margins." Los Angeles Times 04/17/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 11:04 am
Is Schwarz Done In Liverpool? Why did musicians of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic vote to not renew music director Gerard Schwarz's contract? "If it's because the Liverpool orchestra rejects him aesthetically, that might be a problem. If it's because the orchestra resents some changes he's making, that's different. They might resent him for firing somebody's brother. They might think that just because the tuba player is 80 years old, that's no reason for him to go away." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 04/17/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 9:17 am
Utah's Culture Boom Utah arts groups are struggling. But voters have recently approved bonds for several big cultural building projects. Indeed, there's a building boom going on in Salt Lake City as about $500 million in new cultural facilities are contemplated. Salt Lake Tribune 04/18/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 11:57 am
Is New Jersey In For An Arts Funding Increase? "After two years of budget cuts totaling about $4 million, the New Jersey arts community has something to celebrate: a proposed increase of $6.6 million in state funding for arts organizations and projects." New Brunswick Home News Tribune (AJ) 04/18/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 11:54 am
Is Mickey Mouse Over As A Cultural Icon? What's happened to Mickey Mouse? Once one of America's most-loved cultural icons, the Mouse doesn't cut it in today's culture. "Boring," "embalmed," "neglected," "irrelevant," "deracinated" and, perhaps most damning, "over" are some of the adjectives that cropped up in recent interviews with people in the cartoon, movie and marketing businesses. And strangely for such a well-known figure, Mickey doesn't even have a back story: no clearly defined relations, no hometown, no goals, no weaknesses." The New York Times 04/18/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 11:45 am
The New Immigration, The New Culture The culture of immigrants who passed through Ellis Island in the 20th Century has reverberated through the city's popular culture. But the culture of a more recent waves of immigrants is only slowly seeping into the city. "Nearly 1 million immigrants have settled in New York since 1990, and today 36% of city residents (or 2.9 million) are foreign-born, a figure rivaling the previous high of 41% reached in 1910, according to U.S. census statistics. The borough of Queens, where once-deteriorating neighborhoods have been revitalized by a flood of newcomers, is now thought to be the nation's most ethnically diverse county." Los Angeles Times 04/17/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 11:31 am
California Arts Council Director Resigns Barry Hessenius has resigned as director of the California Arts Council. "During his tenure, Hessenius has overseen Arts Council budgets that reached a high of $30.7 million in 2000-01 and a low of $1 million for the current fiscal year, a drop of more than 97 percent in funding for the arts by the state. The money had been awarded as grants to more than 4,000 of the state's arts endeavors, large and small, rural and inner-city - everything from artists in residence in schools to major orchestras." Sacramento Bee 04/17/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 9:40 am
Makeover - Bombay Dreams Gets The Works Before Broadway Though Bombay Dreams was a hit in London, it was not a big critical success. So before it comes to Broadway, the show has been extensively remade. "Though it is typical to tweak London imports like "Mamma Mia!" for Broadway, the "Bombay Dreams" revision is one of the most drastic in recent memory, along with the Broadway flop "Taboo" this season. Andrew Lloyd Webber, who produced the London production, has announced that the Broadway version is such an improvement that he will close the London version on June 13 and reopen it next year, in a different London theater, with the Broadway revisions in place." The New York Times 04/18/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 12:01 pm
Art From Vandalized Books For a year, someone came into the San Francisco Library and destroyed books with gay or lesbian themes. The culprit was finally caught, but until after many books were vandalized. Loath to throw out the books, librarians gave them to artists so they could make art from them. The resulting projects are now on display Slate 04/16/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 11:19 am
This Just In: The Current Thinking On Virgil Dr. Robert Fagles has spent painstaking years translating Virgil's Aeneid - "nearly as long as it took Virgil to write the epic poem." And why, when there are already translations available? "Every age needs classics translated into the idiom of the moment. It gives the works new vitality, new meaning. It offers to the living a connection with those who went before, the accumulated wisdom of the past, a protection from a dangerous provincialism." The New York Times 04/17/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 11:10 am
Are Bad Movies Badder Than They Were? AO Scott likes the best of today's movies. "The good movies may be doing just fine — they may even be better than ever — but I can't shake the gloomy feeling that the bad movies just aren't as good as they used to be. Now, by bad I don't mean actually incompetent or unpleasant to watch. Nor am I referring to movies that have become fodder for slumming, tongue-in-cheek, pseudo-camp enjoyment. What I mean is that a vital strain of American filmmaking — unpretentious, easily ignored by polite opinion, the opposite of respectable — may be in crisis, and that this malaise may be in danger of spreading upward and outward, robbing the best and the worst alike of intensity and conviction." The New York Times 04/18/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 12:08 pm
DVD's In Blazing Detail A new DVD digital scan process promises to deliver movies that approach the quality of a 35 millimeter print. "The scenes look as brilliant as anything I've seen on a video disc — and better than any video of a color movie that was shot 35 to 40 years ago. Colors are saturated and natural. Gardens have dozens of shades of green. Flesh tones are uncannily lifelike. Shadows look like shadows, not gray blots. Motions are smooth, not jumpy." The New York Times 04/18/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 12:05 pm
Stern To Satellite? Execs Hope... As Howard Stern gets forced off the radio airwaves by the morality police, satellite radio execs hope Stern will jump to them. "Like cable television, satellite radio does not face federal indecency scrutiny because it is only available to paid subscribers. So the indecency dust-up has satellite radio companies executives salivating." Wired 04/18/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 11:41 am
Cuban Connection - Cuban Artists Struggle In US Boston Ballet shares something with the National Ballet of Cuba - two principal dancers. "Artists from Cuba are torn about returning or not, and the work they make in the US often addresses that inner conflict." Boston Globe 04/18/04
Posted: 04/18/2004 1:30 pm
