Burned By Branding Why have so many managers bought into the idea that success is mostly a branding issue? "From dry academic papers to self-help blockbusters, the literature of the branding guru is notable not for clarity or coherence, but for a tendency to lapse into a form of post-modern patois - a managerial gibberish that has infected everything from psychometric profiling and ‘third way’ political discourse to the pseudo-intellectual ‘mission statements’ of conceptual art." Eye 12/04
Posted: 12/12/2004 6:53 pm
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Judge Okays Barnes Move To Philly "More than two years after the Barnes board, backed by a $150 million fundraising promise from three charitable foundations, petitioned the court for permission to move the collection, Montgomery County Orphans' Court Judge Stanley Ott agreed that the Barnes needs to relocate to a more-accessible location to avoid going broke." Philadelphia Inquirer 12/13/04
Posted: 12/13/2004 12:06 pm
Allegation: Mob-Connected Contractor Got MoMA Job Were the walls at the new Museum of Modern Art put up by a contractor with ties to organized crime? That's the allegation. "The firm, Interstate Drywall, has been affiliated with the family of the late John (Dapper Don) Gotti for years, according to several mob informants and public documents. Construction companies align themselves with mob families so they can get cheaper nonunion help on union jobs, and so they can intimidate other contractors from bidding against them for certain contracts, authorities say." New York Daily News 12/13/04
Posted: 12/13/2004 12:00 pm
NY Museums To Raise Admission Prices To Cover City Funding Cuts New York City will likely cut its funding to city museums, and the museums are weighing ways to make up the difference. "Leaders of the 34 city-owned arts groups that make up the Cultural Institutions Group got a face-to-face account of the city's financial problems in a meeting with Mayor Bloomberg a couple of weeks ago. What officials heard was that they'll have to absorb the same cuts of 9 percent over 18 months required of all other city agencies. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the city's top tourist attraction, is upping its suggested donation from $12 to $15 next month." New York Post 12/13/04
Posted: 12/13/2004 7:39 am
Free Admission To Continue At UK Museums The UK government is announcing that free admission will continue at the nation's major museums for three more years. "Under today's package being announced by Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, the big national museums will get increases of a fraction over inflation, while the lion's share of a £40 million injection of extra cash to arts and heritage will go outside London to modernise regional museums." London Evening Standard 12/13/04
Posted: 12/13/2004 7:32 am
Istanbul Goes Modern Istanbul has opened a Museum of Modern Art. "Istanbul has been a very important city like New York, London, Paris etc. for centuries. Its only deficiency was a modern arts museum. Now we have one. This museum has added another beauty to the city. Istanbul will be the city of museums and our studies for this will continue." Turkish Daily News 12/12/04
Posted: 12/13/2004 7:29 am
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Licitra Wants To Be Next Pavarotti Salvatore Licitra has been annointed by some as the next Pavarotti. He likes the comparison: "All singers have to thank Pavarotti because he transformed opera. Everybody knows opera because of him. I hope to become like him. All singers dream of that. Pavarotti and Domingo presided over the last golden age of opera. Now opera is in a dramatic crisis. Even in Italy young people don't care about opera. They are only interested in TV, computers, fast and easy communication. To appreciate opera you have to know it." Miami Herald 12/13/04
Posted: 12/13/2004 11:52 am
NY Phil To Break Performance Record The New York Philharmonic will set the Guinness World Record for 'the most concerts performed by a symphony orchestra' with concert No. 14,000 on Dec. 18. "In the course of our 163 years, we have commissioned 128 new works, and performed 485 world premieres and 443 U.S. premieres, including music that has become a staple of the classical repertoire." Miami Herald 12/12/04
Posted: 12/13/2004 7:23 am
MacMillan To Scots: People Think We're Philistines Composer James MacMillan says recent events in Scottish arts have portrayed his country in a bad light. "Many people outside Scotland are beginning to speculate that Scotland is a philistine country, and I find this very troubling. I find it insulting but I can understand why it’s coming about because the indications from the top are precisely that. Those in power, those in the government, those associated with some of the arts provision in Scotland are giving marvellous impersonations of being philistines." The Scotsman 12/12/04
Posted: 12/12/2004 11:15 pm
The History Of Classical Music - Re-evaluated Is it possible anymore to tell a coherent history of "classical" music? Richard Taruskin attempts it with a six-volume 3,800-page new history. "Taruskin's chef-d'oeuvre, however, is a feast of contrarian ideas, with enough spice to sting the palate of anyone with a stake in telling the old stories in the old way. It aims for nothing less than the revaluation of practically everything you thought you knew about "classical" music." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/12/04
Posted: 12/12/2004 10:59 pm
Suing Wal-Mart For Obscene Lyrics The parents of a 13-year-old are suing Wal-Mart for selling music with "obscene" lyrics. "The lawsuit seeks to force Wal-Mart to censor the music or remove it from its stores in Maryland. It also seeks damages of up to $74,500 for every customer who bought the CD at Maryland Wal-Marts, and also naming record label Wind-Up Records and distributor BMG Entertainment in the legal action." BBC 12/12/04
Posted: 12/12/2004 10:01 pm
Studying Australia's Musical Life (Where's The Money?) "Do reviews of the arts always lead to dollars? The music community must be asking itself this, as no fewer than three separate federal studies have been taking place into Australia's musical life this year." The Australian 12/12/04
Posted: 12/12/2004 6:22 pm
Rigoletto House For Sale The house where Verdi wrote Rigoletto is up for sale. "The asking price for the house in Busseto, near Parma, is about $8 million (Cdn). Whoever buys it will probably have to spend $4 million more to renovate it." Toronto Star (AP) 12/12/04
Posted: 12/12/2004 5:46 pm
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In Minnesota: Arts Giving Up, Social Services Down "In all, Minnesota's 12 largest arts organization -- driven largely by proceeds from major capital campaigns -- saw total revenue rise 18.1 percent. Meanwhile, total revenue generated by the state's 29 largest social service agencies -- from Lutheran Social Services to Catholic Charities to the Salvation Army -- fell 4.4 percent." The Star-Tribune (Mpls) 12/12/04
Posted: 12/12/2004 7:06 pm
Learning The Lessons Of North Adams Could the success of MassMOCA in revitalizing the town of North Adams be repeated elsewhere? Researchers are planning to find out. "The question is, can this be translated to other communities as a model, or are there special things about North Adams that have contributed to its growth? That's what we're trying to find out." Berkshire Eagle 12/12/04
Posted: 12/12/2004 6:05 pm
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Yes Men And Their No-No's Recently, the Yes Men hoodwinked media by issuing a dummy statement on the tenth anniversary of the Bhopal disaster. "Somewhere between satire and surrealism, activism and absurdism, the Yes Men seem likely to wreak embarrassment and confusion for some time to come, and not even the censure that followed the 'Bhopal incident' seems to have dimmed their determination." The Guardian (UK) 12/12/04
Posted: 12/12/2004 10:23 pm
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Mary Poppins, Generations Removed A new stage musical version of the Mary Poppins movie involves an unusual collaboration between songwriters removed by decades. "Richard and Robert Sherman's songs from the original film have been joined by eight new songs by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe. But it's not quite as simple as that. Five of the film's most iconic numbers – including Chim Chim Cher-ee, Feed the Birds and Supercalifragilistic-expialidocious – have been supplemented and extended, not by the older composers, but by the younger ones." The Telegraph (UK) 12/13/04
Posted: 12/13/2004 11:47 am
What Happened To Resident Theatre Companies? "When did the idea of a regional theater supporting a resident artistic company become quaint, outmoded and ultimately, insupportable? Somewhere along the line, we lost our belief (or maybe just our interest) in the notion that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We don't think of theater companies as teams of artists anymore. They are simply temporary homes for "hot" directors and "star" actors -- and the shows they send to Broadway." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 12/12/04
Posted: 12/12/2004 6:41 pm
Denver Center's New Era Denver theatre watchers are wondering what kind of director Kent Thompson will be as he takes over the Denver Center Theatre. He's got a reputation for championing American plays but also someone who can dish conservative fare. "One challenge is making sure you have programming that will appeal to 25-to-49-year-olds, and that material, I think, has to speak in a more contemporary voice. At the same time, though, you must continue cultivating that core audience in their 40s to 60s. So I suspect we will be thinking of 'cutting edge' here as cutting edge within a larger season." Denver Post 12/12/04
Posted: 12/12/2004 4:15 pm
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Computer Model Predicts Book Sales A new computer model is proving accurate in predicting how books will sell. "Information about a book travels through the network of potential buyers in two possible fashions: exogenous and endogenous. Exogenous shocks come from sources outside the system they affect, like billboards or newspaper articles; endogenous shocks are made up of very small exogenous shocks that happen in a coordinated fashion, like word-of-mouth recommendations. The model predicts how sales will decline after they peak according to how the peak occurred." MIT Technology Review 12/12/04
Posted: 12/12/2004 10:07 pm
US Bans Some Foreign Writers American publishers are under US government sanctions not to publish works by foreign writers in certain countries. "In an apparent reversal of decades of U.S. practice, recent federal Office of Foreign Assets Control regulations bar American companies from publishing works by dissident writers in countries under sanction unless they first obtain U.S. government approval. The restriction, condemned by critics as a violation of the First Amendment, means that books and other works banned by some totalitarian regimes cannot be published freely in the United States." Philadelphia Inquirer (AP) 12/12/04
Posted: 12/12/2004 5:56 pm
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Why Should Tiny Minority Dictate To FCC Morality Campaign? The "morality" wars being played out by the FCC seem to be at the instigation of a tiny minority. "If 2004 was the year the Culture War became a scene out of 'The Lord of the Rings,' we now know that scare tactics and chest-pounding about moral values came from the finger-clicking of a relative few and found their way up through the FCC and out of the mouth of President Bush. Just remember, you might feel like you're in Helms Deep right now, but when you look out at the vanquishing horde of conservative watchdog goons, it's really just a CGI illusion. Which means there's hope in beating back the censorship rampage of a very tiny minority." San Francisco Chronicle 12/13/04
Posted: 12/13/2004 12:17 pm
Bogdanovich: Today's Movies Are Just Computer Graphics Director Peter Bogdanovich says today's movies are lacking. "There isn't the cumulative effect of beginning, middle and end, and an impact that grows. There's no craft left. Maybe I sound old-fashioned, but I'm proud of it." BBC 12/12/04
Posted: 12/12/2004 10:03 pm
DVD Rules Pixar's postponement of its next feature to summer indicates a new reality in the movie business. "The DVD tail is now wagging the movie dog. There is so much money to be made from the fast-growing home DVD market, studios are beginning to plan their movies around the DVD release, not the theatrical one. Many movies now make their money not from the theatre, but from the living room and rec room, where box-office disasters frequently turn into cash cows — and people are much more willing to buy a DVD than they were the old VHS format." Toronto Star 12/12/04
Posted: 12/12/2004 4:28 pm
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Remembering British Ballet Roots "The audience for ballet – between the wars, and during them too, in blacked-out studios – understood the virtue of escaping from everyday things, of vaulting over the grimy clichés of life. British ballet's first audience knew that an hour or two in front of a blaze of talent might begin to fortify one for the blaze outside, or kindle a fire in one's heart. It is a basic demand, but one that ballet may no longer be required to meet or even address." The Telegraph (UK) 12/13/04
Posted: 12/13/2004 11:42 am
The Paris Opera Ballet's Extraordinary School Tobi Tobias spend a day at the School of the Paris Opera Ballet and comes away dazzled. "On their own, these 16- to 18-year-old ingénues display sparkling footwork that makes you think of water drops set in play by an exuberant fountain. Their extensions fly high, as do their huge cross-stage leaps, yet everything appears unforced. The beautiful alignment in which they’ve been schooled from the start—and can now maintain even when they’re sweeping through space—has become second nature, and they’ve learned to make the correctness that governs their most complicated and difficult feats look like child’s play." Seeing Things (AJBlogs) 12/12/04
Posted: 12/12/2004 9:48 pm
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