AJ Logo Get ArtsJournal in your inbox
for FREE every morning!
HOME > Yesterdays


Friday, April 22




Ideas

Will Digitization Make Libraries Rethink What They Do? So Google is going to digitize vast stores of the world's books. "Most librarians and archivists are ecstatic about the announcement, saying it will likely be remembered as the moment in history when society finally got serious about making knowledge ubiquitous. But some of the same people believe Google’s efforts and others like it will force libraries and librarians to reëxamine their core principles—including their commitment to spreading knowledge freely. Letting a for-profit organization like Google mediate access to library books, after all, could either open up long-hidden reserves of human wisdom or constitute the first step toward the privatization of the world’s literary heritage." MIT Technology Review 04/21/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 6:01 pm

Click here for more Ideas stories...

Visual Arts

Barnes Doubles Admission Price The Barnes Collection is doubling its admission price to $10 in June. "The increase, the Barnes' first since 1995, puts its ticket prices at or below those of other major art institutions in Philadelphia and nationally. The Barnes said the price increase was necessary because of its 'precarious financial situation, inflation, and the rising costs associated with operating our facilities and maintaining the collection'..."
Philadelphia Inquirer 04/22/05
Posted: 04/22/2005 8:47 am

Bellevue Museum To Reopen With Crafts The museum world was shocked when the Bellevue Art Museum (in a suburb of Seattle) suddenly closed two years ago, only a couple of years after it had opened a fancy new Steven Holl building. Now the museum has reconsidered its mission and is reopening as a crafts museum. Will it work? Seattle Post-Intelligencer 04/22/05
Posted: 04/22/2005 7:41 am

Candidate Pulls Out Of Getty Director Search The leading candidate to replace Deborah Gribbon as director of the Getty Museum has said he doesn't want the job. William Griswold has been the museum's acting director. "The news has been the talk of the Los Angeles art world, as well as among Getty staff members, who would not speak for attribution. Mr. Griswold also declined to comment." The New York Times 04/22/05
Posted: 04/22/2005 6:57 am

Click here for more Visual Arts stories...

Music

Just Where Does Sex Belong In Classical Music? "You could say that classical music has sex on the brain, which, as D H Lawrence said, is a very bad place to have it. Bad or not, it makes for something jarringly out of tune with current notions of sexiness. How on earth can you combine the sublimated, secret yearnings of Brahms's chamber music with the up-front sexiness of, say, Bond? The short answer is, you can't. They belong to different worlds. It would be like adding lip gloss to the Mona Lisa." The Telegraph (UK) 04/21/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 9:27 pm

ENO's Mixed Bag Paul Daniel is leaving as music director of the English National Opera. "It has been eight years of musical and theatrical striving, and the results have ranged from epoch-making highs to disappointing lows. He bows out of ENO conducting the final opera of Wagner's Ring, a gesture that should be climactically valedictory, but instead seems oddly flat, having been, on the whole, a critical flop." The Guardian (UK) 04/21/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 9:14 pm

Turning Around The Met The Metropolitan Opera has been struggling. "As the 2004-5 season enters the homestretch, the Met’s box office has been running at roughly 10 per cent lower than it did before 9/11, when more than 90 percent of the hall’s 3,800 seats were regularly filled. Although nothing short of Armageddon would keep local opera fans away, many out-of-towners for whom a visit to New York used to be unthinkable without a pilgrimage to Broadway and 65th Street have apparently found that they can lead a perfectly happy life by spending the same amount of money on, say, a beach in the Caribbean. Even at a time when the dollar is down, going to the Met remains an expensive habit; once broken, it’s easily kicked." But there's reason for hope... New York Observer 04/20/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 8:27 pm

Click here for more Music stories...

Arts Issues

Brian Eno On A Definition Of Culture: "Culture is everything we don't have to do. Eating is necessary, but cuisine is culture. Clothes must be worn, but couture is culture. Haircuts and Shakespeare and early Saxon burial poetry all pose some kind of unnecessary order, he said, that we accept because it stimulates our most distinctive faculty. Imagination is the only thing we're really good at. What we're doing [when we're engaging with cultural objects] is exercising that part of our mind that makes it possible to imagine things being ordered differently, and most importantly, to imagine what's in other people's minds. . . . If something is possible in art, it's thinkable in life." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/22/05
Posted: 04/22/2005 8:13 am

Tour This "Touring a work internationally can transform the artists, allow the work to evolve, build a profile, develop a larger audience, validate companies in the eyes of their home audience, recoup their investment, or just keep everyone employed." But "touring can also be a killer, psychologically and financially." Sydney Morning Herald 04/22/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 9:45 pm

Click here for more Arts Issues stories...

People

Miami City Archaeologist Fired Miami's city archaeologist says she was fired because she wasn't accomodating enough to developers. "What she encountered, she says, was a bureaucracy that thwarted its own preservation rules in order to make developers happy. 'They did not understand that having an archaeologist on staff meant that if a development was going to destroy a significant archaeological site, I may object to it or, at the very least, try to get a developer to preserve part of the site'." Miami New Times 04/21/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 5:52 pm

Click here for more People stories...

Theatre

Your Ad To Play Here "Product placement and endorsement deals have long been staples in television shows, movies and radio programs and even, more recently, on video games. But they have been rare on Broadway. Now, advertisers, casting about for new ways to attract increasingly distracted consumers, have turned their attention to the theater world. And producers, always looking for extra cash to offset rising costs, are receptive." The New York Times 04/22/05
Posted: 04/22/2005 7:03 am

Click here for more Theatre stories...

Publishing

Oprah To Publish Books Oprah has decided to launch a series of hardback books spun off from stories from her magazine. "The deal with Oxmoor reflects continued audience growth for Ms. Winfrey and her feel-good message directed mainly at women. Ratings for her daily talk show are the highest they've been in years. The May issue of the magazine, which will mark the its fifth anniversary, will be packed with 200-plus pages of ads--a record for the title." Crain's New York Business 04/20/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 8:50 pm

Why E.E. Cummings Matters "In the long revolt against inherited forms that has by now become the narrative of 20th-century poetry in English, no poet was more flamboyant or more recognizable in his iconoclasm than E.E. Cummings. By erasing the sacred left margin, breaking down words into syllables and letters, employing eccentric punctuation, and indulging in all kinds of print-based shenanigans, Cummings brought into question some of our basic assumptions about poetry, grammar, sign, and language itself, and he also succeeded in giving many a typesetter a headache. That said, determining Cummings' influence and his present stature in the poetry world calls for a more measured view." Slate 04/21/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 7:39 pm

Where To Sit In The British Library? Finding a seat in the British Library is getting difficult. "It had always been the case that the British Library kept users down to manageable levels through a series of polite, but formidable, barriers. You were interviewed, and had to demonstrate a need to use the library. A reader's ticket was, one understood, a scholar's privilege, not a citizen's right. Above all, the BL was at pains to keep at bay London University's 100,000 students. But, in the last few months, undergraduates have suddenly been made very welcome. Word of mouth means more are streaming in every day. Why is the British Library now Liberty Hall? Bums on seats is mission statement 2005. And, if there are more bums than seats, it's hard luck for the seat-less." The Guardian (UK) 04/20/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 7:27 pm

Oprah - Please Help Us! A group of prominent writers has written to Oprah Winfrey imploring her to retart her book club of contemporary fiction. "There's a widely-held belief that the landscape of literary fiction is now a gloomy place. Book Club members stopped buying new fiction, and this changed the face of American publishing," said the letter, which was signed by 158 authors. Yahoo! (Reuters) 04/21/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 5:56 pm

The Pope J-P Insta-Biography Hits Shelves "What is billed as "the first biography" to tell Pope John Paul II's full story hits bookshelves on Thursday, less than two weeks after his funeral and with the new pontiff just moving in to his old apartments. The book is one of what will undoubtedly grow to form a pile of profiles on offer in book stores - the latest instant response to the death of a public figure." BBC 04/21/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 5:47 pm

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

Click here for more Publishing stories...

Media

New Beat For Corporation For Public Broadcasting "Typically one of the quietest bureaucracies in Washington, the quasi-governmental Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been unusually active in recent weeks. CPB this month appointed a pair of veteran journalists to review public TV and radio programming for evidence of bias, the first time in CPB's 38-year history that it has established such positions. PBS officials were unaware that the corporation intended to review its news and public affairs programs, such as "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and "Frontline," until the appointments were publicly announced." Washington Post 04/22/05
Posted: 04/22/2005 7:47 am

Hollywood Goes To Africa Has Hollywood discovered Africa? "Africa is almost as much of a 'dark continent' for moviegoers today as in the past. There's a grim irony in this, at a time when headlines about western Sudan are crying out to the world for attention, just as events in Somalia did a dozen years ago. It takes catastrophe of huge proportions to focus American minds on African issues." Christian Science Monitor 04/21/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 9:38 pm

Click here for more Media stories...

Dance

New York's Sad Dance Season Robert Gottlieb looks back at a season of dance that didn't add up to much. "Large talent, of course, can’t be legislated into existence, and it’s not the fault of the Rhodens and O’Days and Kudelkas and Greenbergs that they don’t have it. But let’s not be deceived by the culture’s machinery of publicity and self-promotion or by our ardent longing for the real thing. That we have so few first-rate choreographers today is a sad fact; better to accept it than to lie to ourselves." New York Observer 04/20/05
Posted: 04/21/2005 8:02 pm

Click here for more Dance stories...


Home | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy
Copyright ©
2002 ArtsJournal. All Rights Reserved