How About A Pope For The Rest of Us? "For those of us who came to Manhattan precisely because you're guaranteed never to meet anyone who has read the Left Behind series, America's much-celebrated spiritual revival can have its trying moments." But even the jaded and secular Tina Brown has to admit that Catholicism has made itself look awfully alluring over the weeks since the death of Pope John Paul II. But the election of Cardinal Ratzinger has sent what remains of the 'religious left' scurrying right back into hiding. "Secularists, humanists and quiet worshipers of an unpoliticized God have felt beleaguered, frustrated and unfairly disrespected. There's no energy on the non-zealot side of the cultural debate. There's no Voltaire, no Clarence Darrow, not even a Lenny Bruce to balance the stifling, censorious religiosity." Washington Post 04/21/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 6:30 am
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MCA/Denver Gets Closer To A New Home The Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver has raised $7 million of the $12-to-$15 million it needs for construction of its proposed new home. The museum is hoping to break ground for the 26,000-square foot building later this year, but must still do some additional fundraising before construction can begin. In particular, MCA/D is still looking for a lead donor to step up with $5 million. Rocky Mountain News 04/21/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 6:09 am
Saatchi Sells Off Iconic Work Charles Saatchi has sold Marc Quinn's Self, a cast of the artist's head in nine pints of his own frozen blood, one of the works most fiercely emblematic of Britart. The Guardian (UK) 04/21/05
Posted: 04/20/2005 10:21 pm
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A Frightening Diagnosis The Utah Symphony & Opera is in trouble; on this point, everyone agrees. But what's wrong with the organization? Bad leadership? Subpar marketing? Poor programming choices? Eric Snider thinks it might be something far more simple: no one really cares. "When you’re trying to convince someone that a particular city is nice, it’s always the artsy things you mention. 'My heavens, Salt Lake City is a fine city!' you’d say. 'It has some great museums, and a world-class symphony!' And it’s true, we have those things, but do you ever go to them? No. (Neither do I, but we’re talking about you here, not me.) Instead, those things languish on the outskirts of profitability, kept alive by generous donations and by the few people who actually patronize them." Salt Lake City Weekly 04/21/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 5:30 am
Do Opera Companies Need Quality Control? Opera companies have been taking great pains in recent years to play up their commitment to new works, with world premieres given the type of publicity usually reserved for pop stars. But increasingly, it seems to Norman Lebrecht that the new operas to be performed at many top houses are chosen not based on quality, but on the drawing power of the composer, or even the performers who want to sing a certain part. "This is no way to run an artistic institution which depends on public goodwill and corporate support. But such is the chaos enveloping new operas that the commissioning process has fallen prey to external pressures." La Scena Musicale 04/21/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 5:20 am
British Recording Industry Tallies Illegal Downlod Losses The British recording industry has lost hundreds of millions to illegal downloading in the past two years. "The British Phonographic Industry said record labels lost £376m last year - up nearly £100m on the £278m they lost the year before - in the music business's first attempt to quantify the financial cost of illegal downloads. A two-year study by research group TNS showed that music fans would have spent £1.5bn on recorded music between 2002-2004, but because of downloads spent only £858m." The Guardian (UK) 04/21/05
Posted: 04/20/2005 10:18 pm
Covent Garden To Offer Cut-Rate Tickets The Royal Opera House is putting low-cost tickets on sale for students to "tackle the common complaint of high ticket prices. The Covent Garden venue has signed a deal with currency firm Travelex to offer tickets online to students, at least 24 hours prior to each show. " BBC 04/20/05
Posted: 04/20/2005 6:25 pm
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NEA Scales Back Plans For Traveling Exhibition "The National Endowment for the Arts has scaled back a new initiative to send the best of American culture around the country and is starting with only a tour of visual arts. Earlier plans included dance and music components." President Bush had asked Congress to approve $18 million for the "American Masterpieces" project, but legislators only appropriated $2 million, necessitating the cuts. Washington Post 04/21/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 6:34 am
The Arts Of Politics Politicians are in a bind when it comes to talking about the arts. "Say nothing about the arts, and you outrage influential metropolitan liberals and buffet socialists, whose cocktail-party cri de coeur is the under-funding of their cultural playgrounds. Say too much, and you force diehards in the shires to join with chavs and "neets" to protest at taxpayers' money going to fancypants bollocks that ought to pay for itself." The Telegraph (UK) 04/20/05
Posted: 04/20/2005 10:41 pm
If I Ran The Arts... How would you fix government support for culture in the UK if you ran the government? Fifty arts luminaries make their cases... The Guardian (UK) 04/21/05
Posted: 04/20/2005 10:24 pm
NEA Awards $61 Million In Grants The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded $61 million in grants. "Just over $40 million of that amount will fund 64 grants to state and regional partnerships. The state partnerships provide support for state arts agencies' basic plans to address local priorities, as well as funding arts education and local Challenge America initiatives. The regional partnerships provide basic support for regional arts organizations' plans and for regional touring initiatives." Back Stage 04/20/05
Posted: 04/20/2005 6:07 pm
Candidate Turns Down Baltic Center The Baltic Center for contemporary arts has had a rough few years, with two directors quitting in quick succession. This weekend the Baltic thought it had hired a new director, but then he turned down the job... The Independent (UK) 04/18/05
Posted: 04/20/2005 5:53 pm
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Government Seeks BioTerror Charges Against Kurtz "A colleague of an artist whose possession of bacteria sparked a terrorism investigation was questioned Tuesday before a federal grand jury and said the government seems intent on expanding its criminal case against Steven Kurtz." Kurtz was arrested last year on suspicion of bioterrorism. The Times-Leader (Pennsylvania) (AP) 04/20/05
Posted: 04/20/2005 5:39 pm
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Lilly Prize Awarded "Poet C.K. Williams, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and many other honors, has been named this year's recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, for which he will be awarded $100,000." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (AP) 04/21/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 6:04 am
Poetry "Watchdog Website Shuts Down "This week the poetry world is atwitter over the closing down of an Internet site that for the last year dedicated itself to exposing what it calls fraud among the small circle of poetry contests that frequently offer publishing contracts as prizes. Alan Cordle, a research librarian who lives in Portland, Ore., has managed the Web site, www.foetry.com, anonymously since its inception a little more a year ago. He called his site the "American poetry watchdog" and aimed to expose the national poetry contests that he said "are often large-scale fraud operations" in which judges select their friends and students as winners." The New York Times 04/21/05
Posted: 04/20/2005 10:31 pm
Is Papyrus "Breakthrough" Credible? Last weekend London's Independent newspaper published a story telling of a major brakthrough in deciphering a trove of ancient texts. The story smells fishy to other papyrus researchers. "As of right now, the rest of the papyrological community is waiting to hear Dirk Obbink at Oxford either back up for disavow the claims made in the article. At the very best, the Independent's reporters are covering some kind of new imaging breakthrough in an extremely hyperbolic fashion. And at the worst, they're trying to make a major story out of 20-year-old news." ArsTechnica 04/20/05
Posted: 04/20/2005 6:01 pm
Da Vinci Code Named British Book Of The Year The Da Vinci Code has been named book of the year at the British Book Awards. "Former US president Bill Clinton won best biography for his memoirs, and actress Hancock was named author of the year for The Two Of Us: My Life With John Thaw. " BBC 04/20/05
Posted: 04/20/2005 5:27 pm
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Is There Anything Not Being Added to A Cell Phone? Several techno-savvy companies are banding together to explore the possibility of combining FM radio and cell phone technology to entice a new generation of consumers to re-embrace radio. "The technology would combine the traditional over-the-air FM broadcast -- through a receiver included in the phone -- with text and graphics displayed on the phone's screen. Those text-and-graphics images could be coordinated with the broadcast -- to display the title of a song and the name of the artist, for example -- or provide information such as concert schedules, allow the user to buy ring tones from the artist or participate in radio station contests." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 04/21/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 6:23 am
Leave Cable Out Of The Decency Debate Much of the raging debate over broadcast indecency centers on programs airing on cable networks, which are not regulated by the FCC, since their programming is not distributed over the public airwaves. So why exactly do politicians and bureaucrats think they have any right to interfere with what we watch on channels that use no public resources, accept no public subsidy, and for which the public voluntarily pays on a month-to-month basis? Rocky Mountain News 04/20/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 6:14 am
Cannes Includes Iraqi Film "An Iraqi film will compete at the Cannes Film Festival for the first time, vying for the top prize against veteran directors and past winners such as Gus Van Sant. The United States accounts for four of the 20 movies (from 13 countries) selected to compete at the festival." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (AP) 04/21/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 6:03 am
Content Control: Not Just For Creators Anymore The controversy over "cleaned-up" DVD copies of Hollywood blockbusters - stripped of nude scenes, foul language, and references to homosexuality by specialty companies - continues to churn, but is it possible that everyone is missing the central truth about such doctored DVDs? "Control is shifting from the studios to the masses. One argument in favor of the sanitizers suggests that, if the government can't dictate what people watch in the privacy of their own home, then the Directors Guild can't, either... Just as unauthorized music remixes became the rage in nightclubs a generation ago, now movie re-edits are becoming cheaper and easier to do. And there's no going back." Denver Post 04/21/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 5:45 am
Finding Nemo Accuser Convicted Of Fraud A French children's book author who claimed Disney's Finding Nemo copied a fish of his creation has been convicted of fraud and ordered to pay damages. BBC 04/20/05
Posted: 04/20/2005 5:24 pm
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European Dance Takes An Elitist Turn A European festival of new dance shows a distinct experimental bent. "Europe, it would seem, there is a greater willingness to explore the outer reaches of conceptualism and politicization, layered with history and fraught with context. Theorizing aside, the dance was extremely elitist, for all its bows to popular dance (hip-hop) and political immediacy. This followed in the grand tradition of provocative European avant-gardism, influential and obscure. Work like this flourishes in a climate of still-generous public subsidies (at least from an American perspective) and a sympathetic dance intelligentsia, unmindful of such tawdry considerations as potential box-office appeal." The New York Times 04/21/05
Posted: 04/20/2005 6:59 pm
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