Semiotically Speaking "Shout the word semiotics across a room today, and the room will very likely shout back at you, 'What do you mean, semiotics?' It is a good question and at the same time, according to semiotics, a uselessly subjective question, for semiotics is the study of meaning itself -- or rather how images and words (like semiotics, for example) come to mean anything at all. Put another way, semiotics is about how we derive meaning from context. Brown University semiotics program produced a crop of creators that, if they don't exactly dominate the cultural mainstream, certainly have grown famous sparring with it." Boston Globe 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 9:20 am
Seattle Public Library - Setting A New Standard Next week, Seattle's new public library - designed by Rem Koolhaas - opens, and Herbert Muschamp is ecstatic: "In more than 30 years of writing about architecture, this is the most exciting new building it has been my honor to review. I could go on piling up superlatives like cars in a multiple collision, but take my word: there's going to be a whole lot of rubbernecking going on." The New York Times 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 9:28 am
Beaverbrook Goes To Court To Get Paintings "The British Beaverbrook Foundation, a trust established by the late Lord Beaverbrook to continue his charitable works, has filed a lawsuit in an effort to claim millions of dollars' worth of art housed at the Fredericton (New Brusnwick) Art Gallery. The gallery holds an exquisite collection of art by such masters as Turner, Botticelli, Gainsborough and Dali. However, his grandsons, Max and Timothy Aitken, who head up the British and Canadian Beaverbrook Foundations, say that 175 art works at the gallery are the property of the foundations and they want at least some of them back." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/15/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 7:44 am
Global Art On Demand An electronic kiosk promises art on demand. "At a touch-screen terminal called a Totem, you'd browse for a painting by its name, the artist's name, or the museum in which it is housed. Works are available from institutions like the Louvre in Paris, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the National Gallery in London. Then you'd choose how many copies you'd like to print, at what size and on which medium (choose between 25 types of paper, including canvas and photographic paper). Then go pay the cashier. The Mona Lisa on canvas costs about $30, but larger prints run up to $150." Chicago Tribune 05/15/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 6:47 am
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Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative: Discover the power of mentoring. Launched in 2002, the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative programme pairs gifted young artists with renowned artists in their fields, for a year of one-on-one mentoring. The mentors for the Second Cycle are Sir Peter Hall, David Hockney, Mario Vargas Llosa, Mira Nair, Jessye Norman and Saburo Teshigawara. The Second Year of Mentoring begins in May 2004. http://www.rolexmentorprotege.com/
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Scottish Opera's Impossible Position The entire board of Scottish Opera should resign to protest the impossible position the government has put them in. "Five years on from the devolution settlement and all those lofty words about the arts being put at the centre of Scottish life, the company’s programme has been cut to just one new production. It is facing hefty redundancies. Confidence is low. Morale among the 240 staff is at rock bottom. Given all the rhetoric expended by the arts and political establishment in Scotland, what is unfolding here is shocking, and the position in which the directors have been put is wholly invidious. They are effectively being asked by the Executive to collaborate in an attack on the artistic base which they as directors are duty bound to defend." The Scotsman 05/14/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 8:08 am
St. Louis Symphony Won't Go To Voters For Support The ailing St. Louis Symphony won't ask voters to join the city's zoo-museum district that distributes $50 million for St. Louis cultural institutions. "Some observers believe the St. Louis Symphony serves too wealthy an audience to need tax support. 'That is always going to hurt the Symphony. Most voters are not Symphony-goers, and they think it's elitist. Voters look at what they really need, and funding the Symphony would be one of the last things voters would support." St. Louis Post-Dispatch 05/14/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 7:29 am
Art For Art's Sake (And More) How to support the arts and solve funding problems? The answer is not just to talk about about the economic benefits and social goods that can accrue. "Put another way, the Medicis weren't asking Michelangelo why this was good for business. Unfortunately, that was the almost exclusive approach of summit participants, perhaps because so few artists and other creative types were in evidence. Modern Medicis should take note." San Jose Mercury-News 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 9:00 am
Scottish Artists Protest Government "Fifty-five of Scotland’s best-known musicians, authors and artists have signed an open letter to the country's First Minister in which they argue that 'a void' has opened up where an arts strategy should exist. The signatories include the composer laureate Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, authors Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith and Alasdair Gray, and opera singer Jane Irwin. Dozens of theatre directors, poets, critics and administrators have also put their name to the letter, which represents an unprecedented revolt against government arts policy." The Scotsman 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 8:11 am
- Arts Funding Equation - Not Money In, Quick Results Back "Politicians have to give up the idea that financial investment in the arts has to produce a quick and easily measurable result comparable to shorter hospital waiting times or improved school exam results. The insistence on the institution of a national theatre shows that the politicians remain incapable of giving up that perennial question when it comes to arts funding: “But what do we get for our money?” Glasgow Herald 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 8:06 am
Art As Fodder For Other Art Artists are increasingly useing other artists' art as the raw materials for their own work. While artists have always drawn inspiration from other work, "the difference now is that artists -- professionals and amateurs alike -- are taking existing works and messing with their content and expression to create something new. If you want a name for the phenomenon, you could look at its insistence on the rights of the individual and call it democratic art, or focus on its wholesale limb-splicing and call it FrankenArt, in a nod to Mary Shelley's science-fiction horror story." The Blobe & Mail (Canada) 05/15/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 7:40 am
Who Will Raise $600 Million For WTC Buildings? New York governor George Pataki has had difficulty finding a leading fundraiser to head the effort to raise $600 million for a memorial and cultural buildings at the World Trade Center site. "Mr. Pataki's inability so far to find a leader for the campaign has contributed to a delay in deciding which cultural organizations will occupy the site The New York Times 05/15/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 7:35 am
James Roos, 60 James Roos, who was the Miami Herald's classical music critic for three decades, died Thursday after a 17-month battle with brain cancer, one day after his 60th birthday. Miami Herald 05/14/04
Posted: 05/14/2004 9:18 am
Chandelier Falls In West End Theatre, 15 Hurt A chandelier crashed to the seats in a West End theatre Saturday night. "Audience members ran for safety as plaster started to fall during When Harry Met Sally at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on Saturday. The show's star, Luke Perry, leapt off the stage to help people to safety." BBC 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 9:04 am
Defending the Tonys (Sort Of...) Last week's Daniel Okrent column in the New York Times about the Tonys in which he called the awards a sham had Broadway producers fuming. But on a couple of points at least, writes Simon Houpt, he had a point. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/15/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 7:50 am
Ancient Library Of Alexandria Discovered Archaeologists have discovered what they claim is the long lost great Library of Alexandria. The Library is often described as the first great university in the world. "The 13 lecture halls uncovered could house as many as 5,000 students in total. A conspicuous feature of the rooms was a central elevated podium for the lecturer to stand on. It is the first time ever that such a complex of lecture halls has been uncovered on any Greco-Roman site in the whole Mediterranean area." BBC 05/15/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 7:54 am
It's Moore V. Eisner "However it was cooked up, the confrontation between Disney and Michael Moore looks like a ready-made scenario for one of his films, since it casts him, once again, as a populist Paladin going into battle against a corporate enemy. It hardly hurts his cause that the company in question, in spite of its widely beloved, universally recognized brand name, is currently headed by Michael Eisner, one of the least beloved of modern chief executives." The New York Times 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 9:34 am
Cannes's Upbeat Opening "Cannes 2004 may be only a few days old, but already, it seems, the winds are blowing in a different direction than Cannes 2003 -- one of the more roundly criticized in many years. Last year's Cannes was faulted, largely by American journalists, for slights to Hollywood and for too many lousy art films on the schedule -- something the programmers, especially festival head Thierry Fremaux, seem to have taken to heart. Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom and director Wolfgang Petersen of the multimillion dollar epic "Troy" have already provided much of the Hollywood star power critics said was missing in 2003." Chicago Tribune 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 9:15 am
An On-Air Chill The almost-anything-goes world of shock-jock radio has turned upside down since Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl halftime show. Since that fleeting glimpse of Jackson's mostly obscured anatomy, the Federal Communications Commission has issued more than $1.5 million in fines. Moreover, with the U.S. House of Representatives recently passing a bill allowing fines of $500,000 for each instance of radio 'indecency,' with the White House voicing support and the U.S. Senate considering even more draconian measures, the climate for provocative speech on America's radio airwaves has changed dramatically and swiftly." Chicago Tribune 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 8:47 am
A Quota For Canadian Films? Should Canada enact a quota that would force movie theatres to show a certain percentage of Canadian movies? The idea, writes Dan Brown, is "based on a false assumption: that the average ticket buyer actively seeks out Canadian movies. The young performer might like to believe this is true, but this is not how the majority of movie lovers behave in the real world. Before the average person goes to the theatre on a Friday night, they don't say to their friends, 'Is there anything Canadian playing? I'm in the mood for something domestically made.' Instead, they say, 'Is there anything good playing?' The public has moved beyond making its choices based on a film's nationality, if that ever truly mattered." CBC 05/14/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 7:24 am
