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Weekend, July 30-31




Visual Arts

Naked Offer: Museum Offers Free Admission Austria's Leopold Museum made an offer to art lovers Saturday: Show up naked and you get in free. "Scores of naked or scantily clad people wandered the museum, lured by an offer of free entry to The Naked Truth, an exhibition of early 1900s erotic art, if they showed up wearing just a swimsuit - or nothing at all. With a midsummer heatwave sweeping Vienna, the normally reserved museum decided to make the most of its cool, climate-controlled space." The Guardian (UK) 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 11:40 am

Chinese Art Boom Fallows The Economics China's rising prosperity has led to a boom in the market for Chinese art. "The boom has several causes. It is a product of an economy that has grown at more than 8% a year for two decades and also reflects a change in China as it rediscovers a passion for art. But with prices rising and hidden works becoming available, there are fears that a free market in art might be detrimental to China's heritage." The Guardian (UK) 07/30/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 11:37 am

Audio Guides With Some Hollywood Spin Museum audio guides are getting more and more sophisticated. "Changing expectations on the part of gallery-goers primed by a media-saturated society are prompting museums to demand Hollywood-style production values coupled with star power. If you can watch a movie on your phone and tote your entire music library in an iPod, why should your audio guide be any less entertaining?" Los Angeles Times 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 11:24 am

Forging A New Frick New York's "Frick Collection has had difficulty breaking even in recent years - for the coming fiscal year, it projects a deficit of $400,000 - and Anne Poulet has been given the task of shaking up the place. Since her arrival in 2003, the museum has adopted the status of public charity; commissioned a major architectural study for an expansion and refurbishment; acquired three new board members; and reorganized its approach to fund-raising. She wants to make more acquisitions in sculpture and the decorative arts, areas in which she believes the museum has unheralded strengths and the market still offers good value. And she would like to set up a major study center for the history of private collecting in the United States at the Frick Art Reference Library. The library, also in the mansion, is considered one of the best, and most underexploited, resources of its kind." The New York Times 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 7:26 am

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Music

Philly Orchestra And Philly Pops Talk About Combining Forces The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Philadelphia Pops are talking merger. "The orchestra and the Pops are very different kinds of organizations. The orchestra has a much larger budget, listenership and season schedule. Each has its own distinct board and audience. There is some small overlap in musicians. Still, many U.S. orchestras maintain both a serious-repertoire ensemble and a pops series or pops orchestra - most notably, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which also operates the Boston Pops." Philadelphia Inquirer 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 11:08 am

Cuppa Joe With Your CD? One of the hottest new markets for CD's? Your local coffee shop. "The Seattle-based coffee merchant Starbucks, which sold its first Blue Note Records jazz compilation in 1995, is flexing its marketing muscle by providing the very thing that the beleaguered music industry has been so desperate to find: a new outlet where music fans will eagerly spend their money on full-length, full-price CDs." Philadelphia Inquirer 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 8:52 am

Pittsburgh Symphony Deficit: Pops Up, Main Season Down The Pittsburgh Symphony ends its season with a $500,000 deficit. The orchestra's main season suffered from lower ticket sales. "This year, ticket sales for the classical subscription series generated $2.6 million, $400,000 short of projections. By contrast, revenue for the pops series, conducted by Marvin Hamlisch, exceeded the projected $2.65 million in sales by $30,000." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 8:46 am

Classical Music - CD's Still Rule Music downloading is still not the preferred way classical music fans get their music. CD's are more convenient and their sound quality is better. "The 1.3 million downloads of Beethoven at the BBC created a stir among classical music labels and artist managers, who immediately raised a stink about giving professional performances away for free. But this reaction assumes that all the people who downloaded the music would have gone out to buy Beethoven anyway. The downloads have made classical music more accessible to fans of other genres — a trend that emerges as one peruses the growing web of classical music fan blogs. The iPod may not be tolling the eventual death of the disc, it may be ensuring its continued livelihood." Toronto Star 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 8:00 am

Public Library Puts Music Online The recording company Naxos made its catalogue (90,000 recordings) available online for a fee (only for listening, not for downloading). So the Oshawa, Ontario public library bought a subscription, and now library patrons have free access to anything Naxos... Will it hurt the company's sales? Naxos thinks not. Toronto Star 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 7:54 am

The Met: Feeding An Opera Addiction The Metropolitan Opera has put its archives online, and you can now search the records of every production ever performed at the Met. "For countless opera buffs, the database, which includes entries on all performances since the Met's opening in 1883, has already become more than a repository of information," it's an addiction... The New York Times 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 7:14 am

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Arts Issues

How Disney Changed Where You Live "Before Disneyland, with some notable exceptions, a place was what it was — the product of its own history, geography, climate, economic base, social arrangements and technological development. After Disneyland, American places increasingly came to be idealized fictional narratives about place — not real places, but metaplaces." San Antonio Express-News 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 8:16 am

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Theatre

Brazil Is Mad For Musicals "Two distinct but interrelated types of musical theater have won a following here over the decades: traditional imported Broadway musicals and home-grown, often quirky Brazilian musical shows that draw on a variety of sources but add distinctly local twists." Los Angeles Times 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 11:27 am

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Publishing

What Becomes A (Canadian) Classic? Penguin is embarking on a new series of classics featuring Canadian writers. Choosing great Canadian literature is problematic. Who gets in? What is a classic? "The irony is that while Penguin Classics attempts to show that some of our authors, torn and bleeding, have indeed climbed up the rocks where excellence dwells, academic critics have been in a lather over the very notion of "classics." How is it, they ask for one thing, that almost all the writers who, up to this time, have climbed up on the rocks have been Dead White European Males?" Toronto Star 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 7:48 am

Do Used Books Help New Books? Does a strong online used-book market lessen the sales demand for new books? A new study says not: "When used books are substituted for new ones, the seller faces competition from the secondhand market, reducing the price it can set for new books. But there's another effect: the presence of a market for used books makes consumers more willing to buy new books, because they can easily dispose of them later." The New York Times 07/28/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 7:02 am

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Media

Hollywood Slump - The Best Thing That Could Happen? Hollywood is frustrated by this year's movie box office slup. "But what if the slump lingers? That could turn out to be the best thing that's happened to Hollywood in years. Maybe the powers that be would be forced to take chances once again. Studio heads might begin to think smaller and therefore be more willing to risk giving fresh voices with new ideas a chance to express themselves. It's a path that may be fraught with peril, but that's always been how the greatest and most enduring Hollywood movies have come into being. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a Hollywood like the one in the '70s..." Los Angeles Times 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 11:31 am

Online Video A "Modern-day Gold Rush" "With the phenomenal growth of high-speed Internet connections, more and more people are choosing their entertainment, news and sports by clicking a mouse, not a remote. The untapped potential of this market has set off a modern-day gold rush." Philadelphia Inquirer 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 8:50 am

In Cleveland: A Public Broadcasting Partnership Struggles It's been four years since Cleveland's powerhouse public radio station WCPN joined forces with public TV station WVIZ in an attempt to forge a new multimedia empire. But so far the partnership doesn't seem to have worked out well for radio side. "Several radio insiders who have a lot of respect for WCPN lament the deflating of a once-soaring news operation at a station they say is increasingly besieged by hiring freezes, overloaded reporters and lousy morale. 'The feeling was that TV management, which basically took over, didn't understand how public radio was done successfully'." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 8:36 am

Online Films Are Finally Finding An Audience "While movie studios panic over declining theater attendance, Web sites such as Ifilm and Bay Area-based AtomFilms are growing an audience in search of an alternative to Hollywood. TV networks and film production companies in the United States and abroad scan the sites. Film festivals, such as Cinequest of San Jose, now use similar technology to screen movies online. Analysts say the growing Internet film industry is far from changing how mainstream America views movies -- but the business is starting to pay off for filmmakers." San Jose Mercury-News 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 8:08 am

Smiley: Left, Right And Center? Public Broadcasting Debate Misses The Point The current debate about the political balance of public broadcasting is the wrong debate to be having, writes Tavis Smiley. "Why isn't the debate over how public broadcasting can become more inclusive of folk of different ages and national origins, of various ethnic groups, faiths and cultures -- over how it can be used to introduce Americans to new ideas, and to each other? I know that's an incendiary question these days. But if the core of our discussion on the future of public broadcasting is about shifting content in one direction or the other on the political spectrum, the medium is doomed to fiscal and intellectual bankruptcy." Washington Post 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 7:38 am

New Life For The Music Video "The video and MTV have gone their separate ways. Even MTV2, the little-sister channel once devoted solely to videos, has begun a switch to original programming. But rather than shrivel away, videos have taken on an exciting if uncertain life of their own, far away from the mother ship that launched them. They thrive at online music sites, they're sold in record stores, they connect strangers across the Internet. And just this month, speculation was rampant that they might soon be coming to iPods, the hand-held devices that are obsessing an increasingly large segment of the population. For a music industry that has gone through lurching crises in the past few years, as well as for viewers and fans, the proliferation of videos on all kinds of new screens may be one of the quietest changes, but also one of the most profound." The New York Times 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 7:10 am

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Dance

Susan Marshall - On Paying Rent And Making Dance Susan Marshall is one of America's best choreographers. But she can't pay the rent to produce her work. So she asks for money and works leaner. "The plea for funds essential to her company's projected 20th-anniversary season at Dance Theater Workshop next spring tells prospective supporters exactly what their contribution will buy, while it reveals the high cost of making dances: $100 pays for a single day's use of a studio; $1,000 puts a half-dozen dancers into the studio for a day; $10,000 commissions a new (short) dance. Poetic richness coupled with economic poverty - this is the state of dance in America. 'I look at it as a challenge to be embraced.' The financial straits, which clearly dictate working 'smaller, tighter, faster,' as Ms. Marshall puts it, support her present artistic impulses." The New York Times 07/31/05
Posted: 07/31/2005 7:19 am

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