Do We Have Too Much Choice? During the last couple of decades, the American economy has undergone a variety revolution. Instead of simply offering mass-market goods, businesses of all sorts increasingly compete to give consumers more personalized products, more varied experiences, and more choice. As the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.” Reason 06/16/05
Posted: 06/20/2005 6:51 pm
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Standing Up For Modernism New York's Museum of Art & Design is planning to reclad and renovate a modernist structure on Columbus Circle to serve as its new home, but the World Monuments Fund is protesting, arguing as part of its new list of endangered architectural sites that "the 1964 building represents a turning point in Modernist design. In an era of growing calls for the preservation of Modernist architecture, the 2006 watch list includes nine 20th-century sites." The New York Times 06/21/05
Posted: 06/21/2005 6:51 am
Warhol Would Probably Think This Was Funny, Actually Works by Auguste Renoir and Andy Warhol failed to sell at a Bonham's of London auction yesterday, but never fear: a star of the 20th century art world made up the difference, with better than $25,000 in sales. The artist in question: Congo the chimpanzee, who completed 400 works of art in the 1950s. The auction house had included the works as something of a private joke, but bidders took it seriously, with an American collector buying the lot for considerably more than the estimated price. Chicago Tribune (AP) 06/21/05
Posted: 06/21/2005 6:32 am
Dismantling Iraq A new book details the cultural history of Iraq and its pillaging. "Conceived as an educational tool and a plea for help, the book offers a history of the region and its art, as well as an account of the devastation that occurred in April 2003, when looters ran rampant through the museum in Baghdad." Los Angeles Times 06/20/05
Posted: 06/20/2005 7:42 pm
Master Builder "The name of Arup rings through postwar architecture like a subsonic rumble. This extraordinary firm has had a largely invisible hand in many of the iconic structures of the past 50 years, from the Sydney Opera House through the Pompidou Centre, James Frazer Stirling's Stuttgart Art Gallery, Norman Foster's Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, right up to the Swiss Re Tower and the London Eye. If you've got a huge or difficult project to sort out, like a bridge or a skyscraper or an airport, Arup is one of the few companies to turn to." The Guardian (UK) 06/20/05
Posted: 06/20/2005 6:30 pm
Contemporary Art Market Tops Out? Have prices for contemporary art peaked, after super-heating in recent months? Art Basel sales suggest they may be... "Younger art was making all the noise. Now, there's a bit of a shift to postwar art. At these price levels, collectors are becoming more conservative." Bloomberg.com 06/20/05
Posted: 06/20/2005 6:07 pm
Chimp Paintings Sell For $25,000 An auction of paintings by Congo the chimpanzee have sold at auction in London for more than $25,000. "Congo, born in 1954, produced about 400 drawings and paintings between ages 2 and 4. He died in 1964 of tuberculosis. The three abstract, tempera paintings were auctioned at Bonhams in London alongside works by impressionist master Renoir and pop art provocateur Andy Warhol. But while Warhol's and Renoir's work didn't sell, bidders lavished attention on Congo's paintings." USAToday 06/20/05
Posted: 06/20/2005 5:58 pm
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More Good News From Alberta For the third year in a row, the Edmonton Symphony has balanced its budget and increased ticket sales. The announcement comes as the orchestra is ending its season under the leadership of new music director Bill Eddins, an appointment which has led to some serious national exposure for the previously troubled ensemble. The 2001-02 season was marred by a bitter strike and the removal of a popular music director, but since then, the ESO has never run a deficit, and sales have been increasing steadily. PlaybillArts 06/21/05
Posted: 06/21/2005 5:54 am
No Need To Fear, Underdog Is Here! As a general rule, principal positions in major symphony orchestras are not filled by complete unknowns. A musician hoping to become principal viola of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, for instance, would generally need to have a) some experience as a principal in a lesser orchestra, or b) a position as a sub-principal in a comparable orchestra in order to have a realistic shot at winning. All of which makes the story of Shannon Farrell not only rare, but downright inspiring to other musicians on the audition circuit. Farrell, the 7th chair section violist of the Louisville Symphony, marched into St. Louis this month hoping to sharpen her skills with a tough audition, and walked away with one of the preeminent orchestral jobs in the U.S. Louisville Courier-Journal 06/21/05
Posted: 06/21/2005 5:17 am
Legal Music Downloading Surges Legal music downloads will soon surpass illegal downloads. "Around 35% of music consumers now download tracks legally via the Internet and the percentage will soon pass the 40% who have pirated music, according to a new survey released Monday by Entertainment Media Research." Yahoo! (Reuters) 06/20/05
Posted: 06/20/2005 7:22 pm
Houston Opera Ponders Cuts Short on money, Houston Grand Opera is considering cutting back on many of its activities next year, including some free performances and broadcasts... Houston Chronicle 06/17/05
Posted: 06/20/2005 7:13 pm
Opera 1, Moths 0 London's Covent Garden has come up with a solution to a costly moth problem. "In a plot that could have come from an opera, males attempt to mate with the false females, but do not succeed. Until the new pheromone traps were pioneered by Exosect, a company with close links to Southampton University, moths were costing the Royal Opera House tens of thousands of pounds a year. The worst affected are ballet dancers' costumes, which get engrained with sweat, clothes moths' favourite taste." The Telegraph (UK) 06/20/05
Posted: 06/20/2005 7:08 pm
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Those Wacky Wikis... Interactivity is the new buzzword of the young, hip, and terminally self-absorbed, and the results are decidedly mixed. The Los Angeles Times recently abandoned traditional editorials in favor of an interactive "wiki-torial" page, which was almost immediately flooded with abuse, spam, and porn come-ons. Other supposedly serious "wiki" pages remain densely clogged with stupidity, and even the original Wikipedia (an encyclopedia written by its readers) is notoriously unreliable. The lesson, says Alex Beam, is that there is still room in the online world for people who are actually skilled at what they do, and sucking up to the masses doesn't actually make them any smarter. Boston Globe 06/21/05
Posted: 06/21/2005 6:15 am
Why No PAC? Because Politicians Are Cultural Idiots. Why has Kansas City's performing arts center stalled at the planning stage? Paul Horsley thinks he knows: the culprit is "the musical illiteracy of Kansas City’s political, economic and even intellectual elite... The malaise embraces more than boardrooms and government offices. It infects the city’s media outlets. A recent radio program devoted to discussing the PAC’s future had not one arts person present. To this panel of bureaucrats and business heads, the center was a structure, a shell designed to generate revenue and make Kansas City look snazzy." Nonetheless, the city appears poised to embrace a watered-down renovation plan which would kill any hope of a new center for classical music in the area. Kansas City Star 06/21/05
Posted: 06/21/2005 5:28 am
Canada Considers Tougher Copyright Canada's government is introducing new copyright legislation that could significantly change online habits. "Dubbed Bill C-60, the proposed legislation is a package of amendments to the Copyright Act. It covers file-sharing, downloading and burning copies of CDs and movies. Under the changes, making a CD for personal use would remain legal. However, a so-called "make available" clause would criminalize putting songs into shared online directories such as Kazaa or BitTorrent." CBC 06/20/05
Posted: 06/20/2005 6:11 pm
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Wordsworth In Cumbria "A new center was opened this month by the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney to offer scholars access to a collection of manuscripts, books and other material that gathers 90 percent of Wordsworth's known papers. The new Jerwood Center, named for the charitable foundation that pledged the first $925,000 of its $5.9 million building costs, represents a victory of architectural innovation and scholarship over those eager to keep England's Lake District free of anything but the most traditional of building designs." The New York Times 06/21/05
Posted: 06/21/2005 6:55 am
Toronto AuthorFest Looks To The New "This year's International Festival of Authors [in Toronto] will be the year of the wunderkind. The preliminary lineup for the country's premier authors festival released yesterday revealed a slate packed with next-generation stars such as Jonathan Safran Foer, Helen Oyeyemi and Diana Evans." Last year, the festival celebrated its 25th anniversary, and this year's lineup represents a conscious effort to move forward with a new generation of writers. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/21/05
Posted: 06/21/2005 6:29 am
Why Are America's School Textbooks So Bad? "At least 21 states, including large and powerful California, Texas and Florida, have committees that decide which books can be used in public schools. The scrubbing and sanitizing that are imposed to satisfy the big states have affected all the commercially produced textbooks. That means that even states without adoption laws end up using the same books as the ones written to please California and Texas. Their decisions have been excoriated by spokespeople for both the right and the left. Their fear of offending any politically connected group means the textbooks they approve are often the dumbest and dullest of the bunch." Chicago Tribune (WaPo) 06/20/05
Posted: 06/20/2005 6:19 pm
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Getting As Good As He Gives The actions of Corporation For Public Broadcasting chairman Kenneth Tomlinson continue to come under fire as further details of his partisan political activites come to light. The latest revelation, that a supposedly independent researcher hired by Tomlinson without the approval of the corporation to investigate supposed liberal bias in PBS's newsmagazine, Now with Bill Moyers, "worked for 20 years at a journalism center founded by the American Conservative Union and a conservative columnist," is being investigated by CPB's inspector general. Meanwhile, one sitting U.S. Senator is openly calling for Tomlinson's resignation. The New York Times 06/21/05
Posted: 06/21/2005 6:58 am
- Is PBS Protesting Too Much? As public broadcasting ramps up its fight against a hostile Congress that recently voted to slash 25% of its government subsidy, some observers say that PBS and NPR are coming dangerously close to crossing a "lobbying line" that could cost them public support. Washington Post 06/21/05
Posted: 06/21/2005 6:55 am
A Bad Year In Tinseltown You can blame poor plotlines, online piracy, those infernal ads, or anything else for it, but the fact remains: fewer people than ever are going to the movies these days. "Compared with last year, box-office receipts have been down every weekend since late February; the last time comparable business was off for such a long span was in 1985. This summer's movie season has been especially brutal. North American theater attendance from early May to June 19 was off nearly 11% from a year ago, tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co. estimated Monday... Although the final accounting for 2005 releases cannot yet be determined, their domestic runs indicate the prospects are decidedly dim." Los Angeles Times 06/21/05
Posted: 06/21/2005 6:40 am
Multifunctional Overdrive? Will the ubiquitous iPod become obsolete in the face of new cell phone technology? At least two companies are hoping so, as they gear up for the release of a major direct-to-phone music service next year. The companies, Napster and Ericsson, say the service will allow users to download music directly to their phones, or to transfer collections back and forth between the phone and a computer. Of course, phones are getting awfully bulky with features these days, what with all the cameras and games and ring tones and videos, and a lot of consumers still seem to want a phone that just makes phone calls, and an MP3 player that just plays music. Wired 06/21/05
Posted: 06/21/2005 6:08 am
Illegal Downloads Don't Come With Popcorn, Either A new series of ads intended to combat online piracy in the UK is taking an interesting approach: encouraging viewers to see more films in the theatre, "the way they are meant to be seen." The hope is that reacquainting viewers with the higher quality of theatrical projection will make them less likely to download bootleg copies of the film made available online. The ads will begin running in theatres as trailers to summer blockbuster movies within a few weeks. BBC 06/21/05
Posted: 06/21/2005 6:03 am
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