The Paradox Of Artistic Jerks Creativity is much revered, and yet, so often, it seems, the individuals responsible for creative genius disappoint when viewed as human beings. "Art seems to require an inviolable freedom to seek the good of the artifact, without either overt or covert messages being forced into it. And history demonstrates that it is simply a statement of fact (to paraphrase Aquinas) that rectitude of the appetites is not a prerequisite for the ability to make beautiful objects. Thus our poisoner with his exquisite prose style. Or Picasso brutalizing the women in his life. Or the legion of artists and scientists who drank or drugged themselves to death." Dallas Morning News 06/26/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 9:08 am
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Art That Won't Leave You Alone Video art is hot right now, and collectors are eager to purchase innovative pieces. But what do you do with art that practically requires a major installation space and that, in many cases, never shuts up? It's an increasingly real problem for collectors, not mention their unsuspecting houseguests... The New York Times 06/26/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 9:23 am
How Not To Memorialize A Tragedy How do you build a memorial to a tragedy? How can you properly commemorate human deaths while also creating something enticing enough to draw spectators? New York is struggling with this problem at Ground Zero, of course, and Christopher Knight has spotted a textbook example of what not to do: Berlin's new Holocaust memorial. "Your mind knows that the place is supposed to confuse and disorient. It creates a theatrical sense of slowly enveloping claustrophobia and entrapment, meant to parallel the rising tide of Nazism 70 years ago. But you never feel it in your body. Walking among the tombstone-like shafts, there is no sense of threat. Menace is absent. Absurdity begins to loom." Los Angeles Times 06/25/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 7:13 am
Creating An African-American Building Baltimore's new Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture was a long time coming, and organizers struggled to insure that their vision would stand out from the crowd. "The architects' challenge was to create a building that fits into the urban context but stands out enough to convey how unusual it is. They responded with a boldly modern building that makes the most of its tight but prominent site. Then they imbued the building with layers of meaning that help tell what's inside. The design doesn't make literal references to African architecture. Its strength lies in the use of architectural symbolism - through colors, forms and materials - to create a building that avoids cliches but is undeniably African-American in spirit." Baltimore Sun 06/25/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 6:51 am
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LA Phil Ticket Sales Stay Strong Orchestras are declining? Don't tell it to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which is continuing to ride a wave of popularity that got a major boost with the opening of the spectacular new Disney Hall. For the second year in a row, the Phil sold more than 97% of its available seats for the season, up from 60% capacity in its huge old home across the street. Los Angeles Times 06/26/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 9:04 am
Rebirth In Silicon Valley When the San Jose Symphony folded back in 2002, a new orchestra, Symphony Silicon Valley, quickly rose in its place. But the new ensemble was nothing like the full-scale professional operation that the old one was, even though many of the musicians were the same. These days, though, the new orchestra seems to be coming of age, and a recent grant from the San Jose Symphony Foundation should go a long way towards solidifying Symphony Silicon Valley's position in the community. San Jose Mercury News 06/26/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 8:16 am
Twisting History To Suit A Good Storyline Musicologist Joseph Horowitz has made plenty of waves with his new book which traces what he sees as the decline and fall of classical music in the U.S., and why that decline was inevitable. But Greg Sandow isn't wholly convinced by Horowitz's story, well-told though it may be: "Is this really history, the way a real historian would write it? Or has Mr. Horowitz instead staged a passionate morality play, in which he uses history as his casting office, providing him with heroes and villains?... This book is best understood not as analysis or history but as a cri du coeur." The New York Times 06/25/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 7:50 am
Keeping Classical Music "Special" It seems absurd to think, in this age of endless entertainment choice, that classical music is truly falling off the map, as so many self-styled experts claim. The real problem may actually be the opposite: "the challenge for classical music ahead is not that people constantly fired upon by the mass-marketing budgets of commercial music won't know how to relate to Brahms and Ravel. The danger, rather, is unexpected: that there is so much classical music around in this golden age of choice that it is ceasing to be special." So what's the solution? Try a little personal connection, and give your customers a sense that they're truly important to you. Philadelphia Inquirer 06/26/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 7:47 am
- Is The Orchestral Sky Actually Falling? "All over the Western world, the alarm is sounding that classical music is in trouble. Orchestra subscription sales are dropping widely, in some cases by as much as two percentage points a year. Ensembles are not balancing their budgets. Audiences are getting older; young people are turned off by classical music... So, at least, goes the refrain. Is it true that people don't want classical music anymore? Or is it just a question of how to give it to them? And is it even possible - heresy of heresies - that they are being given too much of it?" The New York Times 06/25/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 7:45 am
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Too Many Words, Not Enough Action Scotland's Cultural Commission released a 500-page report this week underlining the importance of the arts in everyday life. But do such bureaucratic examinations miss the point? "No committee ever wrote a book, no strategy composed a symphony and no review created a work of art. [The] report fails to make its central case – that only the proposed Culture Scotland, a membership organisation owned and governed by councils for heritage and creative industries, plus representatives of business, education, and the voluntary sector, is the vehicle to deliver cultural rights." Sunday Herald (Glasgow) 06/26/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 8:49 am
Napa Arts Caught In A Catch-22 California's Napa Valley has seen an artistic renaissance over the past five years, with multiple venues undergoing extensive renovations to bring them up to snuff for high-level performing arts groups. But post-renovation, many of the area's arts organizations are finding themselves priced out of the venues, which must charge high rents in order to break even. Napa Valley Register (CA) 06/26/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 8:43 am
Has Kansas City PAC's Fate Been Decided? Kansas City music critic Paul Horsley touched a nerve last week when he penned a column blasting the city's political elite for being culturally clueless and watering down an ambitious plan to build a massive new performing arts center. Some Kansas Citians were offended at the suggestion that they could use a little more height in their brows, but most of the reader response was vociferously positive. Still, Horsley says that no matter how many arts fans protest the scaled-back PAC plan, his sources indicate that the decision to scrap the original project has already been made behind closed doors. Kansas City Star 06/26/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 8:40 am
Pataki: No Controversial Art Allowed At Ground Zero One day after a New York tabloid published an inflammatory screed against what it called the anti-American art being displayed by two future museum tenants of Ground Zero, New York Governor George Pataki warned that he would not tolerate any art that could offend families of 9/11 victims being displayed on the site. "While saying that he respected artistic expression, Mr. Pataki invoked the solemnity of past battlegrounds in promising to preserve the hallowed ground in Lower Manhattan and ensure that no one will come away feeling offended by the reborn site... Mr. Pataki's demand, which was denounced by several arts groups and Democrats as a violation of free speech, is the latest episode in a series of public disputes and flash points for the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan." The New York Times 06/25/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 7:36 am
- An Odd Target Holland Cotter finds all the bluster about controversial art at New York's Drawing Center to be quite the tempest in a teapot. "In fact, the Drawing Center is noted for its rigorous formal, as opposed to ideological, mission. Since its founding in 1977, it has focused on two things: presenting museum-style shows of traditional drawing, whether in the hands of Rembrandt or Agnes Martin or 19th-century Shakers; and expanding, largely through contemporary art, the definition on what 'drawing' as a medium is." The New York Times 06/25/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 7:30 am
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The Evolving Producer Whatever happened to the Broadway producer, the networking genius who could bring together the right author, the right composer, and the right director to create a great show? These days, most Broadway hits are corporate concoctions, based on Disney movies or the rock bands of yesteryear, and there doesn't seem to be much room for the old-school masters. A new fellowship program is aiming to train the producers of tomorrow, but no one seems quite certain of what that job will entail. The New York Times 06/26/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 9:34 am
Puppets To Go Need a puppet? Or a whole show? Head for Brooklyn's new New York Puppet Library, "an unusual joint venture inside the landmark Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza." The library is the brainchild of the Puppeteers Cooperative, and is basically a bartering arrangement, under which the cooperative gets rent-free space to store their creations, and the public can come right in and borrow a puppet or two for a party, a political demonstration, or anything else they can think up. ABC News (AP) 06/25/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 7:03 am
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The Great Governor-General's Book Hunt Canada's Governor-General's arts awards are some of the most prestigious in the country, and the literary awards in particular are most coveted. But when the current Governor-General, Adrienne Clarkson, took office, she was shocked to discover that the official residence's library was missing an alarming number of award-winning titles, thanks in part to the sticky fingers of some of her predecessors. Clarkson and her husband made it their personal mission to rectify the problem, and as Clarkson prepares to leave office, the residence once again has the only complete collection of Governor-General Award recipients. Toronto Star 06/25/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 7:58 am
Harry's Kids Grow Up The sixth Harry Potter book will hit shelves this fall, and doubtless it will sell millions of copies. But it's been seven years since Harry first burst upon the scene, and the legions of devoted young readers that made him such a phenomenon are seven years older as well - many of them heading off the college, in fact. So how do you keep your newly adult audience interested in what is, after all, a children's book series? You can age the hero, of course, but subtly increasing the complexity of the storyline will help, too. And you can always count on good old-fashioned reader loyalty... Los Angeles Times 06/25/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 7:27 am
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The New Hollywood Right The rules of media-politic have been clear for some time: talk radio belongs to conservatives, Hollywood belongs to liberals. But a new generation of conservative filmmakers is determined to change the equation, and they've been joined by an increasingly vocal group of Hollywood stars whose political leanings veered right after 9/11. The New York Times 06/26/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 9:27 am
If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em (Finally!) After years of trying to beat file-sharers into the ground, the music industry appears to be shifting strategies. Rather than focusing on money lost to pirates, the industry is now focusing on creating new revenue streams from new technologies such as peer-to-peer file-trading networks. Of course, this is exactly what many observers had been saying the industry should do from the beginning, but it may be that the years spent fighting online piracy have created a need for music peddlers to find a way for music sales to coexist with the free transfer of concert tapes and unlicensed material. Wired 06/26/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 9:17 am
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Denmark's Dance Master "Stepping back in time is an experience much more available to actors and musicians than it is to dancers, most of whose history lacks a written literature and has vanished, step by step, into the mists of fading memory. Except in Denmark. There, the 19th-century ballets of August Bournonville are part of daily dancing life... When Bournonville retired in 1877, his half-century dominance of Danish ballet threatened to diminish slowly. We can thank one of his dancers, Hans Beck, who documented the step designs in the early 1890s, for giving succeeding generations the basis for preserving Bournonville's training program and, with it, the means to dance his ballets properly." Toronto Star 06/25/05
Posted: 06/26/2005 8:06 am
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