How To You Preserve The Ephemeral? (Should You?) There was a time when some artists, rejecting the whole art "scene", strove to make art that couldn't be captured, couldn't be collected, couldn't be bought and sold. That was then. "We do live in more conservative times, not just politically but culturally; hence the impulse toward conservation. More poignantly, artists want to be remembered when they're gone. It's easy if you're Rembrandt, even though all things must eventually fade. But it's not so easy if you're a creator of youthfully defiant ephemeral art." The New York Times 04/30/04
Posted: 04/30/2004 9:31 am
Some Museums Suffer With UK's Free Admissions Policy British museums that previously charged entrance fees have seen a 72% increase in attendancesince December 2001. That's 11 million extra visitors. "But the organisation behind May's Museum and Galleries Month says many of England's 1,500 museums and galleries have not reaped the benefit." BBC 04/30/04
Posted: 04/30/2004 9:09 am
San Diego Museum Names New Director "Derrick R. Cartwright, director of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, has been named the executive director of the San Diego Museum of Art." San Diego Union-Tribune 04/29/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 4:36 pm
Online Music - Good For Music Industry, Or Not? "Online services account for just a small fraction of overall music sales, but they're growing rapidly. And the new choices they give consumers threaten to remix the recording industry's traditional revenue streams, pumping up the volume of singles and subscriptions and turning down album sales. The shift to online shopping could be lucrative for the music industry if the flexibility and convenience lead people to spend more on tunes than they do today. But some industry executives and analysts fear the opposite result, with music lovers buying a few 99-cent singles instead of $15 CDs." Chicago Tribune 04/30/04
Posted: 04/30/2004 9:21 am
Politico To Direct Harlem Boys Choir The Boys Choir of Harlem has named Ernie Hart, chief of staff to New York City Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott as its new director. The choir's founder was asked to step down earlier this year for failing to report allegations that a counselor was abusing a student." Baltimore Sun (AP) 04/30/04
Posted: 04/30/2004 9:06 am
Scottish Orchestra Tries To Minimize Hearing Damage To Players "The Royal Scottish National Orchestra launched two days of workshops yesterday, with a 'noise team' aiming to work out ways of playing orchestral music safely. While deafening music is usually associated with the thundering basslines and power chords of rock, the classical world has been stirred into action by European regulations limiting the noise to which musicians can be exposed. There has been rising concern in the UK over the potential damage to musicians’ health from sound and stress in the workplace." The Scotsman 04/30/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 8:00 pm
Shouting In Four-Part Harmony The chief cultural export of the Finnish town of Oulu is "the Shouting Men's Choir, which is exactly what it sounds like: 30 men of Oulu in black suits, shouting in harmony. You don't get that sort of thing down in Geelong, or in Helsinki, for that matter. It is a product of long nights in a town with little to do, a northern sense of humor that revels in the absurd, a high city count in eccentrics, and a lot of vodka." The Age (Melbourne) 04/30/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 7:37 pm
Runnicles To Take Helm Of BBC Symphony? Who will be the next chief conductor of the BBC Symphony after Leonard Slatkin departs? "One name on the orchestra's shortlist is said to be Donald Runnicles, the Scottish conductor who now works largely in the US." Glasgow Herald 04/29/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 7:30 pm
Physicists In New Way To Restore Old Recordings Physicists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have "found a way to digitally map the grooves in warped or damaged shellac records and wax cylinders, and play them back using a sort of virtual needle — all with the same powerful microscope and computer technology they use to measure particle tracks. The 'non-contact' optical scanning method could also detect any scratches, or clicks and pops due to dust, and automatically filter them, allowing a digital rendition to sound as clear as the original performance." USAToday (AP) 04/29/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 7:03 pm
Take That Concert Home With You Like that concert you just heard? Now you can take a recording of it home with you after the concert. "On May 21, new digital kiosks offering the tiny drives will be installed at Maxwell's, a small indie-rock club in Hoboken, N.J. At $10 a pop for the recording, and $20 for the reusable, keychain drive, let the downloading begin. This is a tool that allows fans to take home and share some of the best independent music from small live venues around the country." Wired (AP) 04/29/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 6:31 pm
Wage Gap Between Soloists And Orchestra Players Causes Discord The gap between what orchestra musicians earn and what star soloists and conductors earn is wide. And causing some unhappiness in the ranks. "A typically eminent conductor earns, per concert, about a quarter as much as the typical full-time player earns all year. Given that most freelance orchestral contractors can expect as little as £75 per concert, the fees lavished on top conductors and soloists can rankle." The Independent (UK) 04/26/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 4:51 pm
California Arts Economic Engine "California's nonprofit arts groups pump $5.4 billion annually into the state's economy, according to an economic impact study released Thursday by the California Arts Council. This represents a 152 percent increase since the last study was done in 1994." Sacramento Bee 04/30/04
Posted: 04/30/2004 8:53 am
Report: Arts Council Should Move From London A new report suggests that Arts Council England should consider moving out of London. "The institute's report suggested museum attendance outside London was half that of the capital's. The report said there had to be more effort to encourage arts participation. The report said London was so much higher than the rest of the country because there were many more artistic venues in the capital." BBC 04/30/04
Posted: 04/30/2004 8:07 am
WTC To Get Smaller Insurance Payout - Some Rebuilding Projects In Doubt A jury has limited the payout of insurance to the developer rebuilding on the World Trade Center site, cutting $1 billion from the expected total. "The decision cast doubt on his financing for four office towers planned for the ambitious project designed for ground zero. Still, money seems assured for the $1.5 billion, 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, while federal funds will be available for a $2 billion transit center. A combination of private and federal money will pay for the planned memorial and a museum and performing arts center." The New York Times 04/30/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 9:51 pm
Arts Funding Outlook Mixed For 2004 "If 2003 was the year of uniformly negative news nationwide on the state arts-funding front, 2004 is shaping up to be the year of the definite maybe, with some states looking at boosting funding and some localities considering more cuts. And in Florida, which sustained deep arts-funding cuts last year, well-mobilized cultural organizations may find themselves feeling sorry/grateful for their advocacy efforts." Backstage 04/29/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 7:32 pm
Study: Philanthropic Giving Down By Almost $1 Billion "Charitable giving by America's grant-making foundations -- a universe of nearly 65,000 organizations -- fell from $30.5 billion in 2001 and $30.4 billion in 2002 to approximately $29.7 billion in 2003. A downward shift of $800 million might, arguably, be small change when one compares it to America's multitrillion-dollar economy, but for nonprofits, it is another sign that times have been tough, are still tough, and are likely to remain tough for the foreseeable future. A nearly $1 billion decline in giving in just three years, in fact, stands in stark contrast to the boom years of the late 1990s, when foundations, feeling flush and optimistic due to the dot-com stock market upswing, seemed to forever be moving their giving levels via a northern trajectory." Backstage 04/29/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 7:27 pm
Miami - America's New Arts Capital? Is it true that experts consider "greater Miami as a potential capital of arts in the Americas?" If so, the state of Florida isn't stepping up to the table to support it happening. Miami Herald 04/29/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 4:41 pm
The Color Of Bollywood The much-hyped $14 million Bombay Dreams finally opens on Broadway. Ben Brantley finds it colorful but familiar: "Such is the perverse spell cast by this friendly, flat and finally unengaging tale of glamorous movie folk and lovable untouchables that everything seems to melt into one neutral blur before your eyes, like a monochromatic symphony in the key of beige. Advertisements for the show may tout it as a voyage to "somewhere you've never been before." But even theatergoers who have never seen a sari or eaten papadum are likely to find "Bombay Dreams" as familiar as this morning's breakfast. It takes more than color, evidently, to be colorful." The New York Times 04/30/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 10:02 pm
Wicked Cops Drama Desk Noms "Wicked," the Broadway musical inspired by "The Wizard of Oz," has swept the 49th annual Drama Desk Award nominations today with 11 nominations. Two shows about politics and betrayal, Steven Sondheim's "Assassins" and the Lincoln Center Theater production of Shakespeare's "Henry IV," tied for second place with seven. The New York Times 04/30/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 7:52 pm
Beijing Theatre Delay Beijing's US$324.6 million National Grand Theatre of China has been under construction since 2001. "The futuristic design of the theatre, by French architect Paul Andreu, features a titanium and glass dome set in the centre of an artificial lake. Andreu's concept beat 68 other candidates in an international bidding process, but sparked criticism because it doesn't complement the solemn atmosphere of Tian'anmen Square. But as the dewdrop-like design emerges ever more clearly with each passing day, old concerns about the look have been replaced by new worries about the theatre's operation." The theatres was to open in July, but the most optimistic opening is now predicted for late 2005. China Daily 04/29/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 6:25 pm
Strong Short List For Australia's Top Lit Prize "Australia's premier prize for writing, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, has arguably its strongest shortlist in recent history and its most lucrative prizemoney. The six novelists on the list include a Nobel Prize winner, a Booker Prize winner and a US National Book Award winner". Sydney Morning Herald 04/30/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 8:03 pm
A Tale Of Two Book Festivals "For obvious cultural and plainly practical reasons, it runs counter to logic that Spokane should have a better literary festival than Seattle does. The disparity between what Get Lit!'s organizers have to work with and what Bookfest's organizers have to work with is staggering. Bookfest has name recognition, a 10-year history, and a $600,000 annual budget. Get Lit! has hardly any name recognition, a six-year history, and a $180,000 budget. And don't forget that it takes place in Spokane. So how is it possible that Bookfest fails on so many levels where Get Lit! succeeds? How can it be that Spokane, a city so putatively inferior, does this book-festival thing so much better than we do?" The Stranger (Seattle) 04/28/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 7:18 pm
Is BBC 1 Irrelevant? BBC 1 Radio is about to announce this year's ratings, and it might not be pretty. "Last year, the station shed nearly half a million listeners, falling to its third consecutive all-time low. While the station may like to claim they are a casualty of greater choice, the growth of their rivals hints at something more obvious - Radio 1 is totally misjudging on a daily basis what its listeners actually want to hear." The Guardian (UK) 04/30/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 7:46 pm
US Broadcasters Consider Voluntary Obscenity Rules The US Congress is proposing to enact anti-obscenity laws that would raise fines against broadcasters to $500,000. Broadcasters - trying to get ahead of Congress - are establishing a to "discuss a voluntary code of conduct and other options. The group hopes the move will head off new government regulations to stop shows broadcasting indecent material." BBC 04/29/04
Posted: 04/29/2004 4:30 pm
