Based On A True Story When art takes its inspiration from actual events, where should the line between fact and fiction be allowed to melt away? Do artists have a responsibility to the truth, or do the demands of narrative flow trump historical reality? Dominic Papatola isn't conflicted: "Historians and journalists have their biases, but they're at least working with the filters of balance, objectivity and completeness. Artists — at least when they're making art — don't have those filters, nor should they be expected to. We're complacent — no, we're brainless — if we assume otherwise." St. Paul Pioneer Press 05/01/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 10:11 am
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The Science Of Architecture, The Architecture Of Science Scientists tend to be far more focused on their work than on where they're doing it, but a new generation of labs is embracing the idea that architecture can make for a more productive working environment. "[The new labs] are fun to work in and provocative purely as architecture," but also take the very specific needs of the scientists who will work within them into account. Boston Globe 05/01/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 9:42 am
All Hail Tate Modern! Perhaps no museum has done so much for the popularity of contemporary art as London's Tate Modern. Open for only five years, the museum has racked up an astonishing 22 million visitors, far outdistancing its peers on the international art scene. "Of course, not charging for admission helps, but it has offered more than sensational architecture. And as a result, the Tate has changed the way that Britain sees art, and the way the world sees Britain." The Observer (UK) 05/01/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 9:31 am
Do Art Auctions Sell Women Short? It's an unpleasant fact that artwork by women consistently sells for less money than the work of men, particularly at contemporary art auctions. So are the auctions and those who participate in them biased? The truth is far more complicated, but not terribly comforting... The New York Times 05/01/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 9:14 am
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Winnipeg Symphony Backs Away From The Abyss Two years ago, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra was plunged into crisis and delivered into the hands of the provincial government in a desperate attempt to prevent a complete collapse. To say things have improved is an understatement. "As the WSO's current season closes this evening at Centennial Concert Hall, the 65-player orchestra is enjoying rising attendance, a balanced budget, and guarded optimism about the future. Since a new board took over the WSO last year, fundraising has revived, and a deficit of nearly $3-million has been cut in half. The city and provincial governments have forgiven about $400,000 in loans, and the federal government has tossed in a transition grant of $250,000." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/30/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 10:00 am
If You Build It, They Might Come, For A While Orange County, California (just outside of Los Angeles) has a beautiful new concert hall, and big plans to make use of it. But will the public care enough to keep coming to the hall once the novelty has worn off? "Behind the scenes and off the record, the classical powers that be are worrying and wondering about the outcome... There is a great deal of casual interest in classical music here, but connoisseurship doesn't seem to run deep." Orange County Register 05/01/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 8:06 am
It's Sort Of A Cross Between Electronica and Teddy Ruxpin "Circuit bending started about 10 years ago when a geographically diverse group of basement tinkerers began to experiment with soldering guns and the cast-aside first-generation electronic Christmas gifts of their childhood. They discovered that if you pop the top off anything that has a simple circuit board and makes a sound -- an '80s-era talking doll, for instance -- you can hot-wire it and produce squawks that the manufacturer never had in mind, squawks that in some cases had never before been heard. United by the Internet, circuit benders started sharing notes and trading pointers, and now they're a certified subculture." Washington Post 04/30/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 7:48 am
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Did Hollywood Steal The Crusades? Author James Reston is considering legal action against director Ridley Scott and movie studio 20th Century Fox after concluding that Scott's latest epic, Kingdom of Heaven, is based directly on Reston's 2001 book, Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade. The book was pitched to Scott as a film idea in late 2001, but Scott turned it down, and claims never to have read the book. CBC 04/29/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 9:08 am
Why Can't High Art And Pop Culture Coexist? UK composer Peter Maxwell Davies recently made waves when he accused television's addiction to pop culture of being one of the root causes of the decline of classical music. But the arbitrary setting of "cultural standards" like these drive some in the arts sphere up the wall. "There is as much rubbish passed off as a serious creative endeavour in high art as ever disgraces a TV screen... I like John Keats as much as I like Bob Dylan. I’m fond of cheap Hollywood movies and Matisse – is this allowed? – simultaneously. I can discuss any sept of the Marx clan, from Groucho to Karlo, you care to mention. In a few small areas of art and ideas I am almost, but never quite, an expert. I am also a disgrace, culturally speaking, and proud of it." The Sunday Herald (UK) 05/01/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 8:36 am
Good Money After Bad? Camden, New Jersey is a struggling city, plagued by poverty and violence and haunted by comparisons to thriving Phialdelphia, just across the Delaware River. Back in 1996, the state subsidized the construction of a major performing arts center inside Camden's massive Clear Channel-owned Tweeter Center. But while the for-profit arm of the Tweeter has thrived, the non-profit arts center has been a dismal failure, and some are questioning the massive taxpayer subsidies that continue to be pumped into the project. Newark Star-Ledger 05/01/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 8:27 am
The Other New York When most people think of New York, they're really thinking of Manhattan, and that's fine, since Manhattan is all exciting and trendy and stuff, but the fact is that there's another borough of America's largest metropolis that deserves equal attention, especially from those interested in the arts and culture. Yeah, it's Brooklyn. Yous gadda problem wid dat? Chicago Tribune 05/01/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 8:00 am
Making A Push For Cultural Tourism In Minneapolis "If you've got it, flaunt it. And what Minneapolis has right now is cultural palaces, a whole raft of them, designed by some of the world's leading architects. With about $500 million worth of museums, libraries and theaters nearing completion, the city's arts groups are banding together to launch a national marketing campaign promoting the Minneapolis 'arts explosion'... [Already,] European tour directors are adding Minneapolis to their itineraries, and architecture schools nationwide are making plans for their students to visit the city and its new buildings." Minneapolis Star Tribune 04/30/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 7:07 am
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Scotland's Next Great Composer? Composing is an art that usually requires great practice and refinement before a practitioner can be judged to have reached the upper echelons. But among Scotland's crop of hot young composers is a 28-year-old who is already being compared to composing's elder statesmen. Stuart MacRae is not a relentless self-promoter, but as official composer of the BBC Scottish Symphony, his work is becoming known throughout the UK and beyond. The Scotsman 05/01/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 8:59 am
The Designer Everybody Wants Set and costume design is not exactly the most high-profile part of the theatre world, but those who can do it well are some of the more in-demand individuals working onstage. At the top of this particular game is Santo Loquasto, whose work is so revered in theatre and opera circles that, in a recent week, he had four show openings in three cities in two countries. Toronto Star 04/30/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 7:26 am
A Dream Deferred, Not Necessarily Denied "Henry Villierme was on the fast track to becoming one of the new painting stars emerging from the Bay Area Figurative Group in the late 1950s. He was so promising that he took a first prize at a 1957 art exhibition in Richmond while future famed artists Richard Diebenkorn, Nathan Oliveira and David Park received just honorable mentions. But unlike his contemporaries, Villierme never made that leap to worldwide recognition. Instead, he moved to Southern California to be closer to his wife's family and raised his four children while earning money in different odd jobs." Now, Villierme is enjoying a career renaissance in San Francisco, thanks to his agent son and an enthusiastic gallery owner. San Francisco Chronicle 04/30/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 7:21 am
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The Play That Defined A Nation England is a country awash in culture, with a particularly rich theatre history. Given that fact, you would think it would be difficult to single out one play that best defines the experience of being English throughout history. Not so, says Michael Billington: the two plays that make up William Shakespeare's epic Henry IV contain everything you will ever need to know about being English. The Guardian (UK) 04/30/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 9:36 am
Dark Days For Children's Theatre (Not Necessarily A Bad Thing) Children's theatre is booming in the UK. But all is not sweetness and light, as the new crop of plays and musicals has traded traditional treacle for an increasingly dark and foreboding view of the world, along with "a suspicion of all those who wield power, which for children of course means grown-ups." The kids are, of course, eating it up, but their grown-up chaperones may find more disturbing subtext than they are ready to handle. The New York Times 05/01/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 9:19 am
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Is Literature The Unappreciated Stepchild Of The Arts? Last week in Edmonton, the Grant MacEwan Author's Award was handed out as part of the grand arts festival known as Alberta Scene. But those in attendance could be forgiven for having missed the awards ceremony, competing as it was with an orchestra, a blues show, a cowboy music performance, and several other distractions. It does seem to be a truism that writing is the branch of the arts least likely to draw a crowd, and "every serious writer knows what it's like to read her words to an organizer, her smiling husband, that lost hobo with a crinkly Safeway bag and the other bestselling author on the bill." Edmonton Journal 05/01/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 8:14 am
Seeking The 'Classic' Holmes According to everything we know of the world's most famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes died at the Reichenbach Falls in a desperate struggle with his nemesis, Professor Moriarty. So why are there so many new adventures being written with the great Holmes at their center? The simple answer is that we keep buying them, and the latest writer to step into the post-Arthur Conan Doyle fray, mystery writer Chris Carr, can actually boast of being officially sanctioned by the estate of Holmes's creator, and says that he is determined to return the detective to the world that Doyle created for him. Toronto Star 04/30/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 7:38 am
Who Wants A Free Comic Book? It may seem unbelievable to those of a certain age, but comic books are not terribly popular with today's youth. Still, comics are a $500 million a year industry, with some savvy marketers behind them, and this coming weekend, "for the fourth year in a row, stores across the United States, England, France and other countries will be giving away 2 million comic books" in an effort to get more of us hooked on the increasingly diverse genre. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 04/30/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 7:10 am
Poetry On Demand, Then & Now Remember Dial-A-Poem? That wonderful little phone number with a New York area code that you could call at any time of day and hear rants, songs, and straight poetry from some of the biggest names of the era didn't last too long (it was active, on and off, from 1969 to 1971,) but it lingers in the collective memory of the '60s generation like so many other icons of the time. Now, Dial-A-Poem has been reborn as a web site, archiving all the old content from the phone service, as well as bonus material that never made it on the line. The New York Times 04/30/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 6:51 am
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Ostrow: NPR Was Right To Dump Edwards When National Public Radio unceremoniously dumped longtime Morning Edition host Bob Edwards last year, fans shrieked and critics almost universally blasted the move as unnecessary and insensitive. One year later, Joanne Ostrow is ready to admit she was wrong. "The revamped show wakes up fresher these days. Getting the anchors out of the studio and on location, something Edwards resisted for years, has paid off... The long-perceived East Coast bias is diminished. Arts coverage has grown in depth. The globe-trotting hosts have delivered amazing reportage." And if numbers are your thing, listenership to the program is up 7% since Edwards was sent packing. Denver Post 05/01/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 9:53 am
Horror Grows Up Horror movies aren't supposed to be particularly good. After all, the camp value in a slasher flick is often more of a draw than the thrills and chills. But in the last few years, horror has become an upmarket genre in Hollywood, with high-profile actors and actresses clamoring for a fright pic of their very own. Not only that, there's been a demographic shift in the audience for horror: young women, traditionally used as cheap sexual props and helpless victims in the blood-'n-gore fests of old, are an increasingly enthusiastic percentage of ticketbuyers. The New York Times 04/30/05
Posted: 05/01/2005 6:44 am
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