Kramer: Gates Are A "Defacement" Of Central Park Hilton Kramer hates the Christo Gates. "My own view is that the gates are nothing less than an unforgivable defacement of a public treasure, and everyone responsible for promoting it—including our publicity-seeking Mayor—should be held accountable, not only for supporting bad taste but for violating public trust. What has to be understood about this whole affair is that it’s not only an assault on nature, but also the wanton desecration of a precious work of art." New York Observer 02/23/05
Posted: 02/23/2005 6:45 pm
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Labor Board: St. Louis Strike Is Illegal Following the collapse of mediated negotiations to end an 8-week-old work stoppage by its musicians, the St. Louis Symphony has obtained a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board declaring that the musicians are engaged in an illegal strike. The charge stems from the failure of the musicians' attorney to file the correct paperwork with the NLRB before the expiration of their last contract. The musicians, for their part, admit that they never filed the necessary papers (the attorney claims that he did it on purpose,) but have held fast to the view that they are not on strike at all, and that the SLSO management has locked them out. St. Louis Post-Dispatch 02/24/05
Posted: 02/24/2005 4:56 am
It's Tough All Over The Buffalo Philharmonic is consolidating several 2005 performances to balance its budget after losing more than $700,000 in anticipated public funding. The money was to have come from New York's Erie County, which includes Buffalo, but a budget crunch forced the county to trim its own expenses, leaving the Philharmonic several hundred thousand dollars short of a balanced season. WGRZ-TV (Buffalo) 02/24/05
Posted: 02/24/2005 2:12 am
Bad News? Really? Quick, Hide It! It was nearly three years ago that the Utah Symphony and Utah Opera merged their operations, supposedly in order to pool their resources and make both groups more financially secure. But last summer, during contract negotiations, the merged organization's musicians became suspicious about ballooning deficits, and requested an independent audit of the Symphony/Opera's finances. The results of that audit are now in, but the company is refusing to share the information with its full board, despite indications that the audit placed the organization near bankruptcy. Deseret News (Salt Lake City) 02/24/05
Posted: 02/24/2005 1:41 am
SF Opera In The Black (After Major Deficits) After two years of big deficits, the San Francisco Opera has finished its most recent fiscal year in the black with a tiny surplus of $27,000 on an operating budget of $54.6 million. "The result, contained in a recently concluded financial audit, marks a striking step forward after consecutive budget deficits of $7.7 million and $4. 4 million." San Francisco Chronicle 02/21/05
Posted: 02/23/2005 6:19 pm
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America, Land Of TV Hypocrites Outwardly, Hollywood and the TV networks which incessantly cover its every move are wringing their hands over this year's Oscar host, comedian Chris Rock, practically begging the star not to step over the line of good taste and subject the broadcast to sanction from the newly activist FCC. In reality, of course, everyone involved with the awards show is thrilled to pieces that Rock is hosting, since it allows the show to be promoted to jaded viewers as spontaneous and potentially rule-breaking, when in fact, it will be as scripted and sanitized as ever. It's just one more bit of evidence that Americans love to watch the same supposedly indecent programming they later fight to have removed from the airwaves. The New York Times 02/27/05
Posted: 02/24/2005 2:39 am
And The Award For Best Minor League Arts Town Goes To... Naples, Florida, according to a new book purporting to rank the top 100 arts metros in the country. Naples is tops in the category of cities with a population of less than 30,000. The city's beautiful Philharmonic Center for the Arts appears to have been the major factor in the strong ranking... Southwest Florida News-Press 02/24/05
Posted: 02/24/2005 2:04 am
What's In A Name? A Lot Of Cash For The Arts. Philadelphia Mayor John Street is urging state officials to sell off the naming rights for the city's convention center to generate a sizable new revenue stream. The mayor's plan is for the estimated $3-$5 million per year to be earmarked for specific arts groups serving the metro area. Philadelphia Inquirer 02/24/05
Posted: 02/24/2005 1:48 am
Scratch This - A "Safe" Place For New Work? BAC's Scratch nights offer new experimental productions. Jerry Spring the Opera went the Scratch route. But "the defining cliche of Scratch culture is that, in it, artists are offered "a safe space to fail". But a safe space isn't the kind of "risk-taking" environment that Scratch proponents espouse, of course: it's the reverse, a neutralised zone in which (necessarily) risk-averse organisations can release beta-versions of new products without exposing themselves commercially." The Guardian (UK) 02/24/05
Posted: 02/23/2005 6:55 pm
Canada's Arts Spending Plan How did the arts fare in this week's proposed Canadian budget? There is one arts initiative, but it's big. "Ottawa announced it would spend $688 million on its Tomorrow Starts Today program - $172 million a year for five years. Tomorrow Starts Today is a Canadian Heritage Ministry scheme to help develop the arts in Canada. It supports a variety of other arts groups, including the Canada Council, which receives $25 million annually from the program." CBC 02/23/05
Posted: 02/23/2005 5:42 pm
Culture Minister Defends UK Arts Funding: It's Up 60 Percent In Six Years UK cultural luminaries have been bitterly complaining about a funding freeze in cultural funding proposed by the government. But Culture Minister Tessa Jowell has "strongly defended the Government's record of increasing spending on the arts by 60 per cent in the past six years. 'You would have to be living in a parallel universe to say that is going back to the bad old days. It's just a denial of reality'." The Independent (UK) 02/23/05
Posted: 02/23/2005 5:18 pm
Miami Performing Arts Center Asks For Ideas, Projects The troubled Miami Performing Arts Center is wending itse way towards completion. But what will go in it? Well, the Cleveland Orchestra, for one. And now the MPAC has announced a program asking "local performing artists to submit ideas for development, minor funding and perhaps eventual performance in the PAC's 2006-07 opening season. The $412 million center, with symphony hall, ballet opera house and performance theater, is set to open in October 2006." Miami Herald 02/22/05
Posted: 02/23/2005 5:09 pm
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Thompson Book Sales Spike Hunter S. Thompson's suicide is sparking a noticable resurgence of interest in his work. The author's best-known book, "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, was No. 15 on Amazon.com as of Wednesday and publisher Vintage Books has ordered a 'significant' reprinting." The Globe & Mail (AP) 02/24/05
Posted: 02/24/2005 2:30 am
Stratford Festival Founder Dies Tom Patterson, the founder of Canada's Stratford Festival, as died. He was 84. "Without Tom Patterson, there would be no Stratford Festival of Canada. His was an extraordinary vision at an extraordinary time." CBC 02/23/05
Posted: 02/23/2005 5:52 pm
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Dressing Room Magic Every theatrical performance begins and ends in the dressing room, with the dresser as the only truth-teller in a profession grounded in fantasy and illusion. The dressing room is a place that can set the tone for a production... The Telegraph (UK) 02/24/05
Posted: 02/23/2005 7:07 pm
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Tell-All Book Riles Mormon Church "The daughter of one of Mormonism's most prominent religious scholars has accused her father of sexually abusing her as a child in a forthcoming memoir that is shining an unwelcome spotlight on the practices and beliefs of the much-scrutinized but protectively private Mormon religious community... The Mormon Church issued a statement condemning the book, calling it 'seriously flawed in the way it depicts the church, its members and teachings.' [The author] and her publisher have said she has received e-mail messages containing death threats. In addition, Mormons around the country have participated in an e-mail campaign against the book." The New York Times 02/24/05
Posted: 02/24/2005 2:36 am
Random House To Offer Mobile Phone Content Random House has invested in a company that distributes content to wireless phones. So will books be offered? "This is the first step, and we will probably see a lot of other content from Random House and Bertelsmann being offered to mobile users. One hurdle, however, is the confining nature of the mobile interface, which does not lend itself to reading books, for example. But this will probably be a lot more compelling when they start offering content from the Bertelsmann channels." Yahoo! (Newsfactor) 02/22/05
Posted: 02/23/2005 6:26 pm
Lost Shelley Letters To Be Sold "A newly discovered set of letters written by the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley are to go on sale after being found in a trunk at a house in London. The correspondence, written by Shelley and his friend and biographer Thomas Jefferson Hogg, was destined for a car boot sale before being identified." BBC 02/23/05
Posted: 02/23/2005 6:03 pm
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Can An African Daily Show Be Far Behind? They may not have the AIDS drugs they need, they may not have potable water in many small villages, and they may be beset by dictators, wars, and economic blight, but all is not so bleak in Africa. As of this month, Africa has its very own MTV. The New York Times 02/24/05
Posted: 02/24/2005 2:43 am
The Awards Shows - Does Anybody Care? Awards shows are becoming big TV ratings losers. "The Grammys, broadcast this month on CBS, attracted roughly 19 million viewers, a 28 percent decline from last year. Even the Oscars have been steadily dropping in viewership. The 1998 telecast, when "Titanic" won 11 awards, was the last big success, with more than 87 million viewers in the United States. Last year about 43.5 million watched." The New York Times 02/24/05
Posted: 02/23/2005 7:14 pm
Will Broadcast Indecency Bill Be Fixed Before It Becomes Law? The broadcast decency bill overwhelmingly passed by Congress last week contains hefty fines for individual performers judged to engage in indecency. But this provision might go away when the Senate and the House reconcile their bills. Performers' unions are strongly opposed to the bill: "These fines are for any American, not just creative artists and broadcasters. Radio callers, politicians, virtually any individual is potentially subject to these outsized fines. While most speak about this subject as it relates to 'Hollywood,' John Q. Public has as much at risk as do our members." Back Stage 02/23/05
Posted: 02/23/2005 5:58 pm
Go To The Movies, See An Ad (and Another, And...) More ads are showing up in movie theatres - "what might be called ad creep. According to the Cinema Advertising Council, $356m was spent on cinema ads in 2003, an increase of nearly 40% on the year before and way above the growth rates in the rest of the advertising industry." BBC 02/23/05
Posted: 02/23/2005 5:38 pm
Court: FCC Anti-Piracy Rule Oversteps Authority Saying the FCC overstepped its authority, "a U.S. appeals panel on Tuesday challenged new federal rules requiring certain video devices to have technology to prevent copying digital television programs and distributing them over the Internet." ABCNews.com (AP) 02/23/05
Posted: 02/23/2005 5:29 pm
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The Dance Is In The Details The choreography of Christopher Wheeldon has turned a lot of heads in recent years, but it isn't necessarily the grand scope of his vision that separates him from the pack. "What Wheeldon tunes in to, rather, are the little mysteries of human expression. How a series of steps colored by the right inflection of feeling can change the temperature of a ballet. How wistfulness, trepidation and heartache are communicated with a look and a gesture and, perhaps, a particularly expressive arch of the foot." Washington Post 02/24/05
Posted: 02/24/2005 2:54 am
A Pol Pot Story. In Dance. Good art can illuminate the human condition. But can dance do justice to the killings fields of Pol Pot's horrible regime? "There were 300 musicians and dancers in the royal palace and only 30 came back. They survived by hiding their identities - they told Pol Pot's cadres that they were seamstresses or pedicab drivers." The Guardian (UK) 02/24/05
Posted: 02/23/2005 7:00 pm
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