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Weekend, January 1-2




Ideas

The US - Failing At School "Nearly six in 10 high school graduates in 2005 will start college in the fall, but half of them — and more than two-thirds of the African American and Latino students who enroll — will fail to earn either an associate's or bachelor's degree. So why do U.S. media, policymakers and university administrators continue to worry more about who gets into elite colleges and how much they pay for that privilege? Why don't they focus on how few students make it through this nation's higher education system with the tools to help keep the society we all share on track?" Los Angeles Times 01/02/05
Posted: 01/02/2005 5:46 pm

TV For The Good Of Humanity TV is bad for you, right? Or is it? "Critics ceaselessly point out television's alleged faults. The growing girth of the nation is blamed on it; increased violence; higher levels of teen sexual activity; and finally, we are assured, the idiot box is generally dumbing us all down. But we have plenty of reasons to doubt that bill of indictment on television." Reason 12/29/04
Posted: 01/02/2005 10:57 am

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Visual Arts

The EU's Resale Madness A proposed levy in the European Union would grant a resale tax on every resold piece of art. "The measure will give artists, and their descendants for 70 years after their deaths, claims upon a levy imposed every time one of their works is resold. Very fair, some will say. Yet in practice, it will simply cause owners of contemporary art to send works for sale in markets where the levy is not applied, notably Switzerland and the US." The Guardian (UK) 01/03/05
Posted: 01/02/2005 7:48 pm

A Big Buisness In Stolen Religious Art Stolen religious art is big business in Mexico and all over Latin America. "Churches, convents and shrines all over Latin America are under siege. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency in Washington and the FBI, which will soon unveil a "rapid response" task force to fight trafficking in smuggled art, say they are beefing up enforcement efforts. A key tactic is monitoring the Internet, where much of the loot is sold." Los Angeles Times 01/02/05
Posted: 01/02/2005 7:45 pm

Art Of The Moment (After The Moment Has Passed) "Art made from obviously impermanent materials that is being painstakingly preserved; art made to stay shiny and new that is being treasured for its age; art challenging the notion of originality that is being scrutinized for that quality; once-standard, off-the-shelf materials that are now hard to find; collectors who cling to a piece of paper that proves their dated light fixture is worthy of a museum, not a recycling bin; and caretakers of a reputation who make decisions that they readily admit run counter to the artist's original intentions. Such is the strange afterlife of work that produces beauty from the banal, an object lesson in how the legacy of a strong-willed radical can be brought to heel by an even stronger force, the market." The New York Times 01/02/05
Posted: 01/02/2005 6:08 pm

The Temporary Contemporary What is with contemporary art's fascination with disposable art? "Our age is obsessed with the glory of spent materials: we love scattered detritus, piles of old tyres, dirty beds surrounded with rubbish. The Young British Artist is part of a dumbshow now, each of them a performer too hung up on the joke of disposability, too unintelligent about language and image to avoid becoming poster campaigns for their own boredom." The Telegraph (UK) 01/01/05
Posted: 01/02/2005 5:35 pm

Victoria And Albert Museum Worker Stole Thousands Of Objects The Victoria and Albert Museum suffered a series of losses to its collection that went unnoticed for decades, say records in the National Archives. "The thief, a man called Nevin, stole 2,544 items from the museum, prompting a security report in 1954. A subsequent stock-take revealed about 5,000 objects were missing, although not all were attributable to Nevin." BBC 01/02/05
Posted: 01/02/2005 10:22 am

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Music

Music In 2004 - Top 10 Disagreements This is the time of year when most publications put out top ten lists. "The most glaring trend in these lists is the lack of agreement as to what constituted the best music of the past year, not only among critics but also - especially - between critics and popular tastes (as judged by album sales and radio airplay). Comparing the 10 best albums as ranked by the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, and Amazon.com, one finds that exactly half of the albums mentioned appear only once among the lists. Only one record - Kanye West's "The College Dropout" - appeared on all of the lists; no other album appeared more than twice." The Missoulian (Montana) 12/30/04
Posted: 01/02/2005 7:58 pm

Music In Time And Place "Today, the environments that music occupies have gotten either very small or very large: the isolation chamber of headphones or the anonymity of the stadium. Live, unamplified music still exists in the cloistered precincts of the concert hall; local bars soldier on and dance clubs still find new ways of embroidering a heavy beat. But for much of the world, music has become either a solitary experience or a form of mass ritual. Yet the history of music is inseparable from the history of places where people gathered." Newsday 01/02/05
Posted: 01/02/2005 6:36 pm

Glenn Gould - 50 Years Ago Today It was 50 years ago today that pianist Glenn Gould made his American debut at the Philips Collection in Washington DC. "With the exception of his celebrated pan of singing first daughter Margaret Truman (which elicited a threatening letter from the White House), this is probably the most famous review Washington Post critic Paul Hume ever wrote. And rightly so, for Gould's debut stands out as one of the highest peaks in the history of Washington musical life -- an unheralded Sunday afternoon concert in a small venue that helped set a magnificent career into play." Washington Post 01/02/05
Posted: 01/02/2005 10:37 am

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Arts Issues

A Meditation On Endings Steve Winn ponders endings: "Endings define and disappoint, gratify and frustrate. They confer meaning and confirm the structure of what's come before -- in a movie, a sonata, a work of fiction. But they also kill off pleasure, snap us out of the dream and clamp down order on experience that we, as citizens of the modern world, believe to be open-ended, ambiguous and unresolved. It's a delicious paradox. Fairy tales, adventure films, mystery stories and Mozart symphonies all gain velocity by pointing us at one ending, toying with our biology of anticipation and racing off toward some new false conclusion and then another and another before finishing themselves off." San Francisco Chronicle 01/01/05
Posted: 01/02/2005 8:03 pm

What The Arts Mean To Students "Students with high levels of arts participation outperform "arts-poor" students in virtually every important measure. We only recently have begun to document the impact of the arts on teaching and learning. But re search has linked arts-based education to the development of basic cognitive skills, skills used to master other subjects such as reading, writing and mathematics." The Plain Dealer 01/02/05
Posted: 01/02/2005 6:55 pm

Conflicting Faith - Religion Vs Free Speech "Religion as faith and as an explanation of the world - why God exists, what happens after we die, who gets to heaven (or hell): most of us would run a mile from such a conversation. We know that argument was won a long time ago and there is no point discussing it. Real believers (as opposed to the soppy "there-must-be-something else" brigade) are infrequently encountered and are not in any case amenable to what we believe is reason. They have their private beliefs; let them get on with them." The Guardian (UK) 01/01/04
Posted: 01/02/2005 4:55 pm

Chicago's Millennium Cultural Gamble Chicago's new Millennium Park is a hit with critics and the public. "In many minds, the vibrant new downtown park represents a spectacular and vital transformation of a city's core, and a populist tide that, especially given all the rhapsodic national press that has flowed its way, cannot help but raise all local cultural boats. But there's a downside. The construction of Millennium Park ate up a whopping $200 million in local arts philanthropic dollars. And it's seeking still more donated money in 2005 to fully establish its ongoing conservancy. Some are starting to suggest that the local moneybags are in danger of being tapped out." Chicago Tribune 01/02/05
Posted: 01/02/2005 3:21 pm

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Media

Star Factor - Promoting Oscar How do you promote your movie's Oscar prospects? Ads are good. TV promotions too. But the classy approach is to hold an event to talk about the movie. And if a few of the stars stop by to make a contribution... Denver Post 01/02/05
Posted: 01/02/2005 7:54 pm

Reinventing American Radio American radio has been stagnant for a few years. So how to revive? "The nation's biggest radio companies are responding to a grousing and mercurial audience by cutting the number of commercials per hour, expanding the range of music played on the air and experimenting with new formats." Washington Post 01/02/05
Posted: 01/02/2005 7:17 pm

The End Of Epic The History Picture? A number of big splashy epic historical dramas have done poorly at the box office. That's causing Hollywood's interest in the genre to wane... The Observer (UK) 01/02/05
Posted: 01/02/2005 5:06 pm

A TV Network For Everyone "As the parade of special-interest TV networks marches on, the trick for programmers is to be both broad enough and narrow enough to stay afloat. Too general and they lose the benefit of selling a targeted audience to advertisers. Too narrow and there isn't the interest level to support their product. If you can pinpoint an audience of 10-15 million households who do not have enough programming choices, you can pitch a network for them." Denver Post 01/02/05
Posted: 01/02/2005 4:28 pm

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Dance

The Classical Savion Savion Glover could do anything next in his career. So what has he chosen? Classical music. "I've been listening to classical music since my mom introduced us to it. So it's nothing new, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-rat-a-tat-tat." The New York Times 01/02/05
Posted: 01/02/2005 6:21 pm

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