IDEAS
http://www.artsjournal.com/ideas
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The Next Frontier: Elective Neurology? "Some neurologists have recently wondered whether their field is the next frontier in elective medicine. The specialty now tries to protect ailing brains from conditions such as Parkinson's disease or migraine headaches. But doctors' efforts may one day extend to improving normal brains. This is coming, and we need to know it's coming. There's even a name for the field: cosmetic neurology." - Philadelphia Inquirer 11/08/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/ideas/redir/20041108-52992.html
ARTS ISSUES
http://www.artsjournal.com/artsissues
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Cycling Beats Tate In UK Lottery Affections Which of the UK's National Lottery projects has made the biggest impact on the public? "In a rare examination of public views on how lottery money should be spent, the £43.5m national cycle network - said to have saved 38m car journeys - was picked as the project which had made the biggest overall impact on UK life during the first decade of lottery funding. It beat Tate Modern and the Eden Project, the Cornish greenhouse complex, for its section of the national lottery day's "helping hand" awards." - The Guardian (UK) 11/09/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/artsissues/redir/20041108-53028.html
Manchester To Launch Big New Festival The city of Manchester is launching a new summer festival to rival the Edinburgh Festival. "The new endeavour will take over the city for three weeks of July every other year, starting in 2007. The festival will have a budget of £5m - compared with Edinburgh's £7.2m - and its artistic director is to be Alex Poots, currently head of contemporary arts at English National Opera." - The Guardian (UK) 11/09/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/artsissues/redir/20041108-53026.html
Georgia School Board Sued Over Creationism Stickers A Georgia school board is being sued by a group of parents who believe stickers afixed to textbooks by the school district "push the teaching of creationism and discriminate against non-Christians and followers of a number of other religions.The stickers read: 'This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered'." - Yahoo! (Reuters) 11/08/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/artsissues/redir/20041108-53025.html
In Arts - Where The Money Goes Just what so arts institutions spend their money on? You might think it was musicians' or actors' salaries. But most of the costs of running the modern arts enterprise are behind-the-scenes costs. Take Detroit arts groups, for example... - Detroit News 11/08/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/artsissues/redir/20041108-52999.html
Bay Area Artists Weigh In On Election How are artists feeling about last week's re-election of George Bush? The San Francisco Chronicle asked several... - San Francisco Chronicle 11/08/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/artsissues/redir/20041108-52990.html
DANCE
http://www.artsjournal.com/dance
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Checking Out The New (Old) Eliot Feld: "Eliot Feld’s latest company, Mandance Project—consisting of five men and a lone woman—recently made its debut in New York with a repertory of 11 dances, all but one of them brand new. Astonishingly, the work looks like much that Feld, a huge but inexplicably stymied talent, has been doing for the last quarter-century. The very antithesis of early Feld works like Intermezzo and At Midnight, they say no to organic flow and depth of feeling, substituting aren’t-I-clever? gimmicks for the qualities that lie at the heart of expressive dancing." Seeing Things (AJBlogs) 11/08/04
http://artsjournal.com/dance/redir/20041108-53037.html
Mark Morris, A Life: Choreographer Mark Morris' career has had a remarkable trajectory. " I am doing exactly what I want, which I love. It's way bigger than I thought it would be. I have much more presence and influence than I ever imagined I would. But, don't worry. I'm not planning on world domination or anything like that. There is too much competition there. There are too many Americans who already have that goal." The Guardian (UK) 11/09/04
http://artsjournal.com/dance/redir/20041108-53029.html
MEDIA
http://www.artsjournal.com/media
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Movie Ads - Turning Down The Volume A growing number of filmmakers have been complaining that movie trailers and ads before movies are too loud. "As a consequence, the Cinema Advertising Council is putting together its first set of sound standards to govern the loudness of commercials and preshow entertainment." BackStage 11/08/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/media/redir/20041108-52996.html
Cutting $10 Million From The CBC Canada's CBC is facing a government-mandated $10 million cut in its budget. "The CBC is already dealing with other financial pressures, including rising production and health-care costs, renewed contributions to the CBC pension plan and a massive loss of advertising revenue as a result of the NHL lockout (estimated to be about $50-million)." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/08/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/media/redir/20041108-52991.html
MUSIC
http://www.artsjournal.com/music
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La Scala Moves Back Home "After a three-year exile on the city's outskirts, the famed opera company is returning to its renovated 18th Century theater in the heart of Milan in time for its traditional Dec. 7 opening night. The contested renovation was completed a few weeks ahead of schedule, giving conductor Riccardo Muti time for rehearsals. Muti tested acoustics of the "new" La Scala with a 40-minute rehearsal last Friday, and theater officials reported that the maestro broke into applause at the end to express his satisfaction with the sound quality." Chicago Tribune (AP) 11/08/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/music/redir/20041108-53036.html
Jazz's Next Big Diva? Twenty-three-year-old singer Gwyneth Herbet is the hottest young thing in UK jazz. "In only 18 months, Herbert has gone from trying to persuade landlords to turn off the telly and let her sing in their pubs, to rehearsing for the concert she’s giving at the Queen Elizabeth Hall to open the London Jazz Festival on Tuesday. Not long ago she was lucky if she could get someone with influence in the music world merely to agree to listen to her demo tape. Now she can count princes and pop legends among her admirers." The Scotsman 11/09/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/music/redir/20041108-53033.html
Atlanta Opera Director Resigns William Fred Scott has resigned as Atlanta Opera's director. "The artistic director's exit caps a turnover of the $5 million opera's top managers in the last 18 months. Almost since the company was formed in the mid-1980s — to fill the gap when New York's Metropolitan Opera ceased its annual tours to the city — the Atlanta Opera has struggled with deficits, inadequate venues and artistic unevenness." Atlanta Journal-Constitution 11/04/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/music/redir/20041108-53024.html
Cleveland Orchestra Voting On New Contract Musicians of the Cleveland Orchestra are voting this week on a new contract. "The orchestra's previous contract expired Aug. 29, but it was extended to Oct. 31 to allow negotiations to continue. Last week, the parties agreed to continue talks past the second deadline." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 11/08/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/music/redir/20041108-52998.html
PEOPLE
http://www.artsjournal.com/people
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Grandage On Top Ten years ago Michael Grandage was unemployed and broke. Then he directed his first play and there was no looking back. In just a few years he jumped to the top of his profession, succeeding Sam Mendes as director of Donmar Warehouse. "Whereas Mendes's programming was essentially Anglocentric, Grandage has made it a much more European-based house, with outstanding productions of plays by Camus, Pirandello and Strindberg." The Telegraph (UK) 11/08/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/people/redir/20041108-52994.html
PUBLISHING
http://www.artsjournal.com/publishing
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Plans To Replace Nevada Poet Laureate Surprise Poet Laureate Norman Kaye, 82, a "Las Vegas resident who's written tunes for crooner Perry Como, is not happy the state wants a new promoter of the iambic pentameter. Kaye was torqued to learn the Nevada Arts Council recently sent out a press release seeking nominations for the post of poet laureate. The announcement does not mention the state has an existing poet laureate in Kaye, a grievous slight in my book." Lohantan Valley News (Nevada) 11/08/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/publishing/redir/20041108-52997.html
The Flawed Bestseller Lists Many newspapers publish their own list of bestselling book. But the methodology of the lists is flawed, and they are not timely (data is often weeks old) "It's a deeply unscientific -- one is almost tempted to call it whimsical -- compilation, which has a veneer of a certain kind of science." So why not use the more scientific Bookscan lists? Washington Post 11/08/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/publishing/redir/20041108-52989.html
THEATRE
http://www.artsjournal.com/theatre
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Ashland Attendance Falls For the second season in a row, attendance at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland has declined. "Attendance was 356,770 for the year, a drop of about 25,000 from 2003. The theater sold about 80 percent of its seats during the season, for ticket revenues of $12,854,751. The 2003 season finished at about 86 percent of capacity." The World (Coos Bay, Oregon) (AP) 11/08/04
http://www.artsjournal.com/theatre/redir/20041108-53023.html
VISUAL ARTS
http://www.artsjournal.com/visualarts
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Know Thyself - MoMA's New Home The new Museum of Modern Art building is essentially conservative. "This museum wouldn’t have wanted Bilbao if Frank Gehry had done it for nothing. The Modern has supported, collected, and celebrated architectural design more than any other museum in America, but it has never allowed its identity to be defined by any architecture of its own. It is one thing to display Frank Lloyd Wright models inside your galleries; it is quite another to have Rem Koolhaas design your building." The New Yorker 11/08/04
http://artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20041108-53034.html
John Updike Strolls Through MoMA "Is more truly more? moma, which I first visited in the late nineteen-forties, was a relatively intimate collection of human-scale works in non-palatial rooms. You could hustle through it in an hour or two, on a one-way route. With the expansion of 1964, which added the great Picasso-Matisse room, some choices for ambulation were offered; but it was still, on the second floor, a single experience. Now four floors, plus soundproof galleries for video and media, beckon from all sides. One of the charms of a museum for modern art was that there wasn’t too much of it, just as a lifetime of history wasn’t too much. After seventy-five years, a life is a stretch and the cathedral may have too many chapels." The New Yorker 11/08/04
http://artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20041108-53035.html
A Record Auction Of Photographs An auction of contemporary photography cleared $9.2 million Monday night, including a record $600,000 for a photograph - Barbara Kruger's "I Shop Therefore I Am." "This was a historical sale for a market born in the 80's that came to age in the 90's." The New York Times 11/09/04
http://artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20041108-53032.html
The Whitney's New Expansion Plan The Whitney Museum has proposed expanding in the past, but the timing (or building design) hasn't seemed right. "Now the Whitney is trying a gentler approach. A new design by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, approved last week by the museum's board, is conceived as a stoical nine-story tower that would rise alongside the existing 1966 landmark. The tower's simple form and silvery copper-and-aluminum-alloy skin would be a dignified counterpoint to Marcel Breuer's brutal dark granite masterpiece." The New York Times 11/09/04
http://artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20041108-53031.html
Can Contemporary Chinese Art Avoid Selling Out? Contemporary Chinese art is hot right now. "For a country that has virtually no contemporary art history, where artists' training is dominated by an ultra-traditional grounding in Chinese painting techniques, where the first clues as to what was happening in the postmodern western art world trickled through as recently as the late 1980s, the scene has mushroomed and transmuted with staggering velocity, artists running through mini-movements (political pop art, the much discussed trend for body art in the mid-1990s, through to a strong focus today on installation, film and video) with alarming speed." The Guardian (UK) 11/09/04
http://artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20041108-53030.html
Shanghai's Sinking After a decade of building skyscrapers, Shanghai is now the world's most densely populated city. But now the city is sinking. "The rock bed is about 300m from the surface and the underground water table is higher, about 1-1.5 m from the surface. There are now more than 4,000 buildings more than 100m tall in Shanghai. That results in extremely severe ground settlement." It's just one of the reasons why city planners are now desperately trying to halt the architectural annexation of Shanghai's skies. Dearth of greenery, horrible pollution, inadequate transport and an almost unbearable press of humanity on the streets are others." The Guardian (UK) 11/09/04
http://artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20041108-53027.html
Report: 90 Percent Of Iranian, Pakistani Archaeological Sites Looted A British archaeologist says that 90 percent of major archaeological sites in Iran and Pakistan have been looted. “Although the illegal destruction occurs abroad, much of the looted material is channelled here to Britain and is sold in London. The best material is coming to London. His research found that Iran is being plundered of treasures dating from 3,000BC to AD500, and Pakistan is being robbed of antiquities created between 500BC and AD400." The Times (UK) 11/08/04
http://artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20041108-53022.html
Impressions At Auction Last week's New York auctions of Impressionist and Modern art hit records and signaled a strong market. "What detracted from what was in most respects an astonishing sale was that Sotheby's marketing machine had hyped it so much and set such high estimates to get the business from vendors that the prices almost seemed disappointing." The Telegraph (UK) 11/08/04
http://artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20041108-52995.html
Report: Taj Mahal Isn't Sinking An investigation has concluded that India's Taj Mahal is not sinking. "Indian authorities launched an investigation in October when historians reported that the Taj Mahal was leaning and in danger of sinking.But the four Taj minarets were observed to be inclined at various angles by the Archaeological Survey of India’s (ASI’s) first scientific survey in 1941, which examined the position and verticality of the minarets as well as the foundations' stability." New Scientist 11/08/04
http://artsjournal.com/visualarts/redir/20041108-52993.html
