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Tuesday, May 24




Ideas

When Creativity Rules Daniel Pink believes our social order is about to flip - creative people will have a big advantage over traditional logical thinkers. "In the world envisioned in his recent book, 'A Whole New Mind,' the competitive edge will belong not to the linear, logical, analytical 'left-brain' lawyers and accountants and computer programmers who have long held sway but to the creative, empathic, 'right-brain' artists and caregivers who have traditionally enjoyed less social status, or at least smaller paychecks. It may seem hard to believe, since we are all up to our screen-reddened eyeballs in an Information Age that seems to be all about left-brain dominance, but Pink insists that a ''Conceptual Age" is upon us. Boston Globe 05/23/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 8:32 pm

Who Makes Public Taste In Art? "Once, a museum, a Hollywood studio, a book publisher or an orchestra shaped public conversation about the arts. Today, they respond. Where once there was tastemaking by decree, now there are trends arrived at by consensus. As '50s bohemia morphed into '60s counterculture and then into the rapid absorption by the mainstream of every hot fringe trend, the public challenged the establishment's role in defining quality. In the age of podcasting, peer-to-peer file-sharing and pocket camcorders, everybody's a curator, a critic and a producer, all at the same time." Newsday 05/23/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 6:45 pm

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Visual Arts

American Textile Museum To Sell Its Home, Reduce Hours The American Textile History Museum in Lowell Mass. is reducing hours and selling its building. "The museum, which draws about 50,000 visitors a year and has an annual budget of $2.2 million, originally opened as the Merrimack Valley Textile Museum in North Andover in 1960. It spent about $8 million to renovate a former manufacturing building in Lowell and, after being renamed, opened in the 160,000-square-foot space on Dutton Street. But it didn't raise enough for the move to offset the increased costs. That has forced the museum to draw regularly from its endowment, which has plummeted from $7 million in 1999 to its current $2.8 million." Boston Globe 05/24/05
Posted: 05/24/2005 8:08 am

Cincinnati Museum Plans Big Changes The Cincinnati Art Museum wants to make its biggest renovation and expansion in its 119 years. The museum hasn't raised any money yet, and doesn't have an architect chosen, but "envisions more galleries to show off rare collections. More gathering spaces for more than 270,000 visitors a year. High-tech, multimedia educational facilities. A modern library open to the public. And a virtual museum that is as accessible as the real thing." Cincinnati Enquirer 05/24/05
Posted: 05/24/2005 6:55 am

Corcoran Director Resigns, Museum Quits Gehry Expansion Plan "David C. Levy resigned yesterday as president and director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. The Corcoran's board of trustees, meanwhile, suspended the museum's efforts to build a new wing designed by architect Frank Gehry, for which fundraising largely has stalled." Washington Post 05/24/05
Posted: 05/24/2005 5:22 am

Whitney Has Plan B For Expansion The Whitney may have an alternate plan to propose for its extension, as the museum goes into hearings with New York's Landmarks Preservation Commission. "The original design would require razing the two brownstones that are closest to the Breuer building. The current entrance would be maintained for school groups; the rest of the public would enter through a new 32-foot entrance that would lead through a passageway into a public piazza." The New York Times 05/24/05
Posted: 05/24/2005 5:18 am

Portrait Of An Art Thief Forget that romantic image of the art thief as a cunning, live-by-his-wits rogue. Other misconceptions: "There is a massive amount of fraud involving art and antiquities. It is perpetrated not by opportunist thieves but by organised criminals. There is nothing 'gentlemanly' or 'white-collar' about it - these are dangerous individuals." The Guardian (UK) 05/23/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 8:06 pm

Sheikh Defrauds Qatar Cousin Through Inflated Art Sales Sheikh Saud Al-Thani apparently defrauded the Qatar government for millions of dollars by using "vastly inflated invoices issued by Islamic art dealer Oliver Hoare." The Art Newspaper 05/23/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 7:28 pm

UNESCO Fixes Up Its Showplace Embarrassing, really, that the UN agency responsible for preserving world culture should have let its own shoplace headquarters crumble. Now a long-overdue restoration. "In recent years, large mesh nets have been hung from the façade of UNESCO's main building to catch falling chunks of concrete. Roofs leaked and water damage plagued the basement where archives are stored. The neglected state of the UNESCO complex seems particularly paradoxical given the agency's role as a guardian of the world's cultural heritage. Since 2000, UNESCO has embarked on a campaign to add Modernist monuments to its World Heritage List, which obligates U.N. member states to care for sites in their territories." Los Angeles Times 05/23/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 7:02 pm

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Music

The Sound Of Music (With Emphasis On The Sound) "Some may call it sound design, sound sculpture or sound art, but it's actually music. Bypassing the visual sense, they send their messages and ideas straight to the brain with their aesthetic treatment of sound - and that is surely what music is. What is interesting to observe, though, is that in a world increasingly dominated by the visual, with adverts, text messages and multi-channel TV, sound and music is becoming an alternative and more powerful force, finding a way into our emotional lives and functioning in a way that art does." The Guardian (UK) 05/23/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 8:12 pm

London Symphony Scores Coup By Landing Gergiev Valery Gergiev will succeed Colin Davis as music director of the London Symphony. "Gergiev will join the LSO for an initial three years from January 1 2007, while at the same time retaining his posts as artistic and general director of the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, principal guest conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic." The Guardian (UK) 05/24/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 7:57 pm

Alsop - Woman Conductor On The Edge? "While female conductors are increasingly common among small and midsize symphonies, they have not penetrated the ranks of the world's top orchestras. Marin Alsop will be just the second woman in history to lead Holland's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra when she makes her debut in 2006." Denver Post 05/22/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 7:53 am

Talent And Money - How Do You Sort Out The Artistry? Atsushi Yamada conducts New york City Opera this week in Tokyo. "Mr. Yamada's rise to the podium is a testament to the spirit of artistic entrepreneurship: he helped raise millions of dollars for City Opera's foray to his native land, its first overseas tour in almost 20 years. But it also leads to questions about the role big money plays in the arts, particularly in the cash-desperate world of classical music, and how it influences artistic choices. Mr. Yamada, 41, studied and worked his way onto the City Opera's conducting roster; the company says he is a genuine talent and is well liked at the house, where he is an established presence, having conducted eight performances so far. But he also had the backing of a City Opera board member who was his boss at Sony, a longtime supporter of the opera. The New York Times 05/21/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 5:18 am

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Arts Issues

National Arts Journalism Program To Close At Columbia "After an outstanding 11-year record of advocating for and promoting the cause of arts journalism, the National Arts Journalism Program, the only program in America dedicated to the advocacy of arts journalism, is being closed down at the Columbia School of Journalism." San Francisco Chronicle 05/23/05
Posted: 05/24/2005 5:15 am

  • NAJP Alums Respond To Program Closing Arts journalists who have been fellows of the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia, weigh in on this week's decision to close the program... Straight Up (AJBlogs) 05/24/05
    Posted: 05/24/2005 5:02 am

The Age Of The Self-Producer "Today the phrase "vanity project" is an accusation redolent of bloated ego, absence of talent, ill-used money or clout and contempt for the ethics of merit. Most of all, the phrase implies scorn for the normal artistic filters: all the editors, directors, producers, investors, curators and institutional functionaries who make things happen and bestow prestige. Lurking behind the term is the assumption that the only reason to produce, distribute and market your own creation is that nobody else will do it for you. But in this world of blogs, pocket video cameras, on-demand publishing and instant Internet distribution, dismissing an artistic undertaking for its vanity quotient has become so 20th century." Newsday 05/23/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 7:00 pm

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Theatre

LA's Center Theatre Kills Off Play Development Programs Los Angeles' Center Theatre Group is killing off its programs to develop new plays and playwrights. "Artistic director Michael Ritchie, who took the helm of Los Angeles' flagship theater company in January, is eliminating the Other Voices program for disabled artists — a Taper fixture since 1982 — plus the Latino, Asian American and African American labs established from 1993 to 1995." Los Angeles Times 05/24/05
Posted: 05/24/2005 5:44 am

Chicago's Newest Theatre It's the Drury Lane Water Tower. "The theater auditorium is a cozy midsized house, its 17 rows of seats arranged to suit a gently curved proscenium stage. Sightlines and legroom are excellent, though it's not a wide-open-spaces facility; you're aware of impresario De Santis doing everything he can to maximize the number of seats within a fixed footprint surrounded by other Water Tower Place tenants." Chicago Tribune 05/23/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 8:40 pm

A Challenge For Black British Theatre Two pieces of black British theatre are playing in London's West End. "There are now three generations of Afro-Caribbeans in Britain, a cultural shift that the establishment can no longer afford not to invest in. These new audiences and theatre practitioners have experiences that are meaningful to everyone, not just to specific cultural groups." The Independent (UK) 05/20/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 7:44 am

This Year's Tonys - Triumph Of The Little Guys? It's easy to think that the big musical wins all the Tonys. But sometimes the little guy wins too. "The most intriguing possibility - and the one most discussed by voters who were interviewed for this article - is a showdown between the blockbuster "Spamalot" and another little Off Broadway musical that made its way to the big time: "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee." The New York Times 04/22/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 7:13 am

Dromgoole To Lead Globe In a major surprise, Dominic Dromgoole has been tapped to lead London's Old Globe Theatre. "Dromgoole, who has led the Oxford Stage Company for seven years, will become only the second artistic director of the reconstructed Elizabethan venue when he replaces Mark Rylance at the end of the year. Speaking about his new role yesterday, Mr Dromgoole said that although Shakespeare would remain the core work of the open-air theatre he hoped to present new writing and a wider range of European and British classics." The Independent (UK) 05/21/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 6:36 am

Our Changing Shakespeare The performance of Shakespeare has changed enormously in the past few decades. "Olivier and Gielgud gave to their times a vital new sensibility and naturalness. The skill with which they adapted to changing styles, as well as creating them, was a remarkable feature of both actors. But both had finished with live Shakespeare by the mid-1970s, and so stood apart from the many revisions that followed. Who knows what either would have thought about the three very different Macbeths earlier this year; or what Gielgud would have made of an audience breathing down his neck from three sides, having parked their plastic tumblers on the edge of a tiny studio stage; or how eagerly Olivier would have welcomed the kind of rehearsal in which the Duke of Exeter's opinion can be rated as highly as that of King Henry." The Guardian (UK) 05/22/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 5:29 am

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Publishing

Penguin Birthday Marred By Race Charges Penguin is celebrating 70 years in publishing. "To celebrate the birthday, Penguin is issuing 70 new short titles, or Pocket Penguins, drawn from its back catalogue or new work. Now, unexpectedly, the titles have provoked outrage and surprise because they include work by only two authors who are not white." The Guardian (UK) 05/23/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 8:23 pm

Brit Library Borrowing Declines (Again) Library use is in decline for British public libraries. "Book borrowing fell by a further 5% last year, maintaining a disturbing 20-year trend, official figures showed yesterday. But for the first time in their long decline there was hard evidence that libraries are winning back popularity with the public. An extra 4% of people walked through their doors in 2003-04, giving them a total of 337 million visits." The Guardian (UK) 05/22/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 8:16 pm

Tabloids Beat Libraries For Brits Where do Britons get their information? Not generally from libraries. It's tabloids. Why? A new study says that "this is because the sources the public trusts most, notably public libraries, are closed when it most needs them. The study follows official figures showing that only a tiny number of libraries and other archives are open as long as shops." The Guardian (UK) 05/22/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 8:14 pm

Unpublished Jack Karouac Discovered "Beat Generation, written in the autumn of 1957, the same year as the publication of Kerouac's breakthrough work On the Road, was unearthed in a New Jersey warehouse six months ago. An excerpt will appear in the July issue of Best Life magazine. The play recounts a day in the life of the hard-drinking, drug-fuelled life of Jack Duluoz, Kerouac's alter-ego." The Guardian (UK) 04/22/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 7:36 am

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Media

Canada's South African Connection Traditionally, Canadian partners in movie production have come from the US, France and Britain. But recently, a more active partner has moved onto the scene: South Africa, "described by the folks who shoot there as a cinematographer's dream because of its varied topography, fabulous light and eternal summer." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 05/24/05
Posted: 05/24/2005 7:59 am

A New Model For A Blockbuster Weekend? "Hollywood is hooked on the big opening weekend, but two very wealthy young men would like to break that habit. Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, who timed the market nicely when they sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999, have created 2929 Entertainment, which will make, distribute and show films digitally - that is, without using actual film. And instead of using a theatrical release to build a market for DVD and cable broadcast, 2929 plans to release movies in any format you want to see them, on the same day." The New York Times 05/23/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 8:52 pm

Hollywood - Risk Averse What's a big driver in the movie business? Insurance. "To insiders, especially those involved in the behind-the-scenes decisions of who will be the stars and what movies will be made, insurance connotes a sine qua non reality of the entertainment universe. After all, once the media dressing is stripped away, what is the New Hollywood about other than minimizing risk?" Slate 05/23/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 7:41 pm

Time's Top 100: Frankly, We Don't Give A Damn... Time magazine publishes a list of its critics' all-time top favorite 100 movies "ranging from Charlie Chaplin's "City Lights" (1931) to Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List" (1993) and 2003 computer-animated hit "Finding Nemo." But critics Richard Schickel and Richard Corliss snubbed several classics such as 1939's "Gone with the Wind". Yahoo! (Reuters) 05/23/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 7:33 pm

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Dance

ABT Averts Musicians' Strike American Ballet Theatre avoided a musicians' strike with a new contract that "the union said requires the ballet to use only live musicians and bans so-called virtual orchestras. The union portrayed the deal as a victory in a fight by theater musicians, including those on Broadway, against the use of virtual orchestra machines, which save money over live performers." ABC (AP) 05/24/05
Posted: 05/24/2005 5:25 am

200 Years Of Bournonville It's the 200th anniversary of August Bournonville's birth. Writes Tobi Tobias: "It seems to me that Copenhagen’s ambience is embodied in Bournonville’s ballets: the human scale; the lavishing of attention on details of quotidian life; the idea of “home”—of domesticity—as a haven of warmth, safety, and simple, incorruptible goodness; and a corresponding universe of enchantment that tends to be quaint and whimsical—unthreatening—veering as it does from the imagination’s extremes of passion and violence. To have seen the ballets in their native setting, to have experienced something (if only the traveler’s wonderstruck “something”) of Copenhagen, is to have penetrated a little further into Bournonville’s unique world." Seeing Things (AJBlogs) 05/23/05
Posted: 05/23/2005 8:58 pm

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