Entry-Level Art On The Internet Selling art online was one promise of the internet. But it's never really caught on. Now an artist in Washington State is offering art to be digitally printed for prices beginning at about $25. It's not schlock but the kind of art you might find in reasonable galleries. Artists receive 75 percent of a sale, with the remaining 25 percent going to maintain and expand the site... Seattle Post-Intelligencer 01/11/05
Posted: 01/11/2005 8:07 am
Still Searching For Kuwait's Art Where did the art stolen by Iraq from Kuwait during the Gulf War in 1990-91 go? "Although most of the collection looted from Kuwait's National Museum has been recovered, almost all the jewellery, Islamic art and other works taken from wealthy Kuwaitis by the Iraqis during the six-month occupation has vanished. Only a few pieces have surfaced on the international art market, and none of it was found in Iraq after the war in 2003." The Telegraph (UK) 01/10/05
Posted: 01/11/2005 7:22 am
MoMA's Art For The Hard-of-Seeing The Museum of Modern Art now offers audio description tours for the visual-impaired. "The regular tour takes about two-and-a-half hours, with 75 stops, and is available in six languages. What's new here is a multiplicity of voices, including some from the past read by actors. Also, instead of hearing from one curator, visitors now hear from many, with additional perspective from conservators and artists, including Chuck Close, Marcel Duchamp and Lorna Simpson." The New York Times 01/11/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 10:01 pm
Major Painting Theft In Netherlands A number of 17th Century paintings worth 10 million euros were stolen from a Dutch museum Sunday. "Up to 20 Dutch paintings and numerous silver items were taken during the Sunday night break-in at Westfries Museum in Hoorn. 'The heart of our collection is gone, including top artworks of national importance'." BBC 01/10/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 4:28 pm
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Prompter As Air Traffic Controller Prompters sometimes take a very active role in an opera performance. "In the prompter's box during performances, she calls out the first few words of every line a second or so before the singer is to sing it, her linguistic repertoire including Italian, German, French, Spanish and Russian. Comparing her job to that of an air traffic controller, she is hyper-alert, keeping track of several performers at once." Newsday 01/11/05
Posted: 01/11/2005 9:41 am
Reviving The Juke Box In The Age Of Internet For a long time, juke boxes have been in decline. But attached to the internet, instead of offering a few hundred selections, juke boxes offer hundreds of thousands. And the choice is reviving the corner juke. With expanded choice, it's not just the big hits that get played. Turns out people aren't as hit driven as we've been led to believe. "A typical CD jukebox generates about $400 a month in revenue. With our product, a jukebox generates an average of $1,000 a month." Chicago Tribune 01/11/05
Posted: 01/11/2005 9:08 am
The Best Music Writing, 2004 Edition What was the best writing about music in 2004? Jason Gross has made a list on Rockcritic.com... Rockcritic.com 01/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 10:41 pm
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California Arts Council Gets New Director The California Arts Council has a new director. Muriel Johnson, is a recently retired chairwoman of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, where she helped direct a budget of about $1.5 billion. She takes over an agency whose budget was slashed last year from $18 million to aboput $1 million. Sacramento Bee 01/11/05
Posted: 01/11/2005 7:17 am
Will Utah Kill Salt Lake's Arts Tax? The state of Utah is considering leveling its sales tax across the state. That concerns arts supporters in Salt Lake City, because a major source of revenue for the arts comes from a special sales tax levy... Deseret News (Utah) 01/10/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 10:43 pm
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Spamalot - This Year's Big Hit? (The Reviews Are In) Sure, the Pythonalia is all there. But it all has undergone a drastic sea change, too -- crossbred with a century's worth of Broadway conventions, and with bits of additional genetic material lifted from Las Vegas and Super Bowl halftime shows, from pop music sound bites and the trans-Atlantic trills of Andrew Lloyd Webber. A wacky hybrid (with Broadway proving to be the dominant strain, especially in the show's second act), it has arrived with such a blindingly bright sheen -- and at the same time with such a sense of the loopily quirky teamwork that made the original Pythons who they were -- that you don't know whether you should sing ''Hail to the Queen,'' ''The Star-Spangled Banner,'' ''Havah Nagilah'' or ''YMCA.'' Chicago Sun-Times 01/11/05
Posted: 01/11/2005 9:01 am
- Spamalot - An "Agreeable" Evening "With book and lyrics by Python co-founder Eric Idle and music by Idle and composer John Du Prez, "Spamalot" hits and misses for much of its first act but ultimately makes it home on sheer comic goodwill. It's nice to be in the hands of comic professionals, and "Spamalot" has a few. I liked it, even when it seemed to be the work of a bunch of highly talented Python fans re-enacting scenes from a cherished film and making up some highly variable songs to go with it." Chicago Tribune
Posted: 01/11/2005 9:00 am
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Book Publishing Sucks! "Book publishing really lies somewhere between art and commerce - in some aspects it is a barely rational industry. While the big four publishers have half the British market, the rest is fragmented into hundreds of small players. Few who have much to do with books make a good living out of it - and this despite the fact that books published in English represent 27 per cent of the world's share of titles! Most authors receive pitiful advances which are rarely earned out. Salaries among staff in publishing houses are notoriously low. And owners of imprints must mostly do it for the love, since it is an endemically unprofitable industry." The Telegraph (UK) 01/09/05
Posted: 01/11/2005 7:34 am
Take Your (Book) Medicine Doctors in one county will be prescribing books for patients. "Those with symptoms of depression, anxiety or eating disorders will be referred to clinics where they will be prescribed books to read alongside support sessions with graduate mental health care workers. The scheme in Devon, which is the first of its kind in the UK, aims to cut waiting lists for more serious cases, reduce over-prescription of drugs and offer some form of treatment for patients who may otherwise receive none." The Observer (UK) 01/09/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 9:44 pm
Goosing Book Sales - Two Authors' Saga A couple of scholars write a book, then watch as it languishes near the bottom of the Amazon sales rankings. How to get it higher? How about visiting Barnes & Noble stores and placing it in more prominent position? Begging producers for interviews? Taping your own readings complete with laugh tracks?.. Chronicle of Higher Education 01/10/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 7:14 pm
Da Vinci Code Fans Endangering Chapel Fans of The Da Vinci Code are endangering the historic Roslyn Chapel in Scotland. So many are visiting that the chapel is showing wear. "The fragile carvings in the 15th-century Midlothian church risk being damaged by people brushing against them and the humidity from their breath." The Daily Record (UK) 01/10/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 4:36 pm
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Canadian Provinces Duke It Out With Film Tax Credits The tax credit game continues. Recently Ontario boosted its tax credit program for film production from 11 percent to 18 percent, trying to lure back business lost to the US. Then Quebec raised the stakes to 20 percent for foreign productions. Now British Columbia's film industry is pressuring the provincial government for similar action. "I was two minutes into the phone call before they said, 'Well, is it possible to shoot the film in Ontario instead of B.C. so that we get the extra percentages?' " The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/11/05
Posted: 01/11/2005 9:16 am
Springer Protests Surprise BBC The tens of thousands of complaints to the BBC over the airing of Jerry Springer, The Opera, has surprised programmers. "We were certainly struck by the scale of the protest, and the e-mails as well as letters and phone calls, but obviously viewers and listeners have an absolute right to make their voices heard. The BBC surprised by the scale of the campaign." BBC 01/11/05
Posted: 01/11/2005 7:28 am
Why Pet Projects Poop Out Why are so many directors' favorite projects failures as movies? "The failure of so many pet projects is more than fluky coincidence. Such films have their own set of problems. Over the years, endless script revisions can drain the life and energy from a movie, which then staggers into the world as if emerging from decades in a dark attic, as withered and creaky as Miss Havisham. And the filmmaker's passion is often so blinding that he forgets to explain to the rest of us why Alexander was so great or Bobby Darin was such an idol in the Spacey household." The New York Times 01/11/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 10:07 pm
Jingle Sell - It's Over "The jingle, as anyone with a television knows, is a vanishing art form. It is too quaint, too corny, too oldschool for our ironic times. Naming your product in a commercial for your product is just tacky, say advertising executives. Modern pitchmen prefer pop songs that create a mood or spark an emotional association or conjure up some sort of vague but potent lifestyle-oriented craving that, if all goes as planned, attaches to a product and translates to a sale. Which leaves the jingle writers scrambling to adapt to a world that has suddenly turned its back on their wares." Boston Globe 01/09/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 7:29 pm
Christian Group Sues BBC Over "Springer" A Christian group is charging the BBC with blasphemy after the broadcaster aired Jerry Springer, The Opera. Christian Voice national director Stephen Green said: "If Jerry Springer - The Opera isn't blasphemous then nothing in Britain is sacred." He said the show was "much worse" than he expected when he saw it and said it portrayed Jesus as a "coprophiliac sexual deviant". A coprophiliac is someone sexually aroused by faeces." BBC 01/10/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 4:24 pm
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Penn Ballet's Nutcracker Holds Steady "Though houses at the Academy of Music ran at 70 percent sold, the same as last year, the number of performances was down by three, and Nutcracker income crucial to the company fell by about 4 percent. Last month, the ballet performed its Tchaikovsky-Balanchine classic 25 times, generating revenue of $1,940,000, down from last year's $2,015,070. About 38,000 paying listener-viewers experienced The Nutcracker this season, down from 40,500 last season." Philadelphia Inquirer 01/11/05
Posted: 01/11/2005 9:30 am
Directors: Ballet World Needs Reform Leaders of some of the world's leading ballet companies have issued a statement calling for reforms - new emphasis on "solid training in basic ballet skills, renewed focus on nurturing choreographers and a coaxing of audiences into accepting contemporary work are vital to the future of ballet. 'There is a crisis about training young dancers. We are all worried about the ballet schools, how to have more of a dialogue. Schools have become like companies - which provides good experience for students, but at the expense of properly completing their training. There are some people who cannot do the mazurka, the czardas, the polonaise'." The Guardian (UK) 01/10/05
Posted: 01/10/2005 7:45 pm
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