The Pop Culture Explosion There was a time, not so very long ago, when it was possible, even easy, to be conversant in the language of popular culture without a great deal of effort. There was a lot out there, sure, but most Americans could keep up with the steady stream of hit movies, recordings, and books deemed to be the foundation of modern life. "But that foundation is buckling under the sheer weight of all the things that now qualify as pop culture -- and all the new technologies that deliver them to finely calibrated consumer niches. Today the national water cooler bubbles with competing monologues rather than inclusive dialogues... The proliferation has been so fast and so dizzying that even people who study popular culture for a living find it hard to keep up." Boston Globe 10/11/05
Posted: 10/11/2005 6:09 am
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Van Gogh's Other Art Vincent Van Gogh's pen-and-ink drawings are every bit as astonishing and expressive as his famous paintings, yet amazingly, there has never been a major U.S. exhibition of the drawings. That changes this week, when New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art puts 113 Van Gogh drawings on exhibit. The works have been borrowed from various public and private collections, and will likely not be seen in public again anytime soon, due to the relative fragility of pen-and-ink works. The New York Times 10/11/05
Posted: 10/11/2005 5:50 am
Hopefully The Art Will Be Better Than The Cars "The French government wants to turn a disused Renault car factory on an island in the River Seine west of Paris into a major European centre for artists, featuring workshops, homes and galleries, the prime minister said yesterday... The site was to have hosted a prestigious museum to house the collection of one of France's richest men, Francois Pinault, until he pulled out in May, blaming red tape." The Guardian (UK) 10/11/05
Posted: 10/10/2005 9:48 pm
- Previously: Billionaire Cancels Plans For Paris Museum "François Pinault, a billionaire who is France's wealthiest art lover, announced Monday that he was abandoning plans to build a $195 million contemporary art museum on the outskirts of Paris and would instead present part of his vast collection in the Palazzo Grassi, an elegant exhibition space on the Grand Canal in Venice that he recently acquired." The New York Times 05/10/05
Rubens To Head Home? "The most stupendous overmantel in Europe, a sensuous masterpiece by Rubens showing the sleeping Samson sprawled across the lap of his beautiful but treacherous Delilah, may soon be displayed in the room for which it was originally painted. The 17th century painting now lives in London at the National Gallery, which is gathering up loans of Rubens paintings for a major exhibition opening at the end of this month. However, the gallery is considering loaning it back next year to the Rockox House Museum in Antwerp, home of Rubens's friend Nicolaas Rockox." The Guardian (UK) 10/10/05
Posted: 10/10/2005 9:40 pm
Giving A New Meaning to Cubism Britain's Tate Modern museum has unveiled a massive new work of installation art by Turner-winning sculptor Rachel Whiteread consisting of 14,000 identical white boxes. The work, aptly named "Embankment," was commissioned specifically for the Tate's enormous Turbine Hall, which measures 500 feet in length with a 115-foot ceiling. So what do 14,000 white boxes look like? Rather like a bunch of oversized piles of sugar cubes, as it turns out. BBC 10/10/05
Posted: 10/10/2005 9:12 pm
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Great (And Possibly Unfair) Expectations The subtext of the debate surrounding Marin Alsop's appointment to lead the Baltimore Symphony goes well beyond the orchestra's internal politics. At the heart of the issue is the groundbreaking nature of the appointment, and the desperate hope on the part of many that Alsop will blaze a trail for future female conductors to follow. But Peter Dobrin suggests that such hopes may be unfair, both to Alsop and those who will come after her. If a new Brahms recording is any indication, the BSO "is getting neither a master nor an incompetent, neither a revelationist nor charlatan. What if Alsop turns out to be - dare we say it - merely a good conductor? Or a very good conductor?" Philadelphia Inquirer 10/11/05
Posted: 10/11/2005 6:43 am
Houston S.O. Hires Ex-San Antonio Exec "Steven R. Brosvik, the former executive director of the San Antonio Symphony, has been appointed general manager of the Houston Symphony. Brosvik succeeds Matthew VanBesien, who was promoted to executive director and CEO in April after Ann Kennedy resigned from that post. The executive director of the San Antonio Symphony from 2001 through late 2003, Brosvik oversaw the orchestra through the financial struggles than eventually led it to declare bankruptcy." The Houston Symphony has had myriad troubles of its own in the last few years, ranging from the catastrophic flooding of its concert hall and library in 2001 to a bitter musicians' strike in 2003. PlaybillArts (NY) 10/11/05
Posted: 10/11/2005 5:42 am
New Takacs Doesn't Miss A Beat The Takacs Quartet, considered one of the world's best chamber ensembles, has launched its first season without longtime violist Roger Tapping, who left the group this past summer. So how is the Takacs sound faring with new violist Geraldine Walther, late of the San Francisco Symphony? Very well, thank you. "With less than a month's worth of performances under her belt, Walther -- with her warm, honeyed tone, her clarity and confidence -- is already a fit with the group, which sounded remarkably, delicately in balance... There was an incredible airiness to Sunday's performance, with its refined, tremulous atmospherics: It evoked sunlight passing through fog. You could 'see' each refracted ray." San Jose Mercury News 10/11/05
Posted: 10/11/2005 5:27 am
Gergiev In London: A Win-Win Situation When the London Symphony announced that the dynamic Russian conductor Valerie Gergiev had agreed to become its next music director, the reaction from around the music world was uniformly positive. "Snaring the world's most charismatic conductor has made the LSO the envy of the orchestral world. But like most marriages the relationship is based on a shrewd calculation of mutual interests... What the orchestra needed was someone capable of matching and maintaining its marketprofile, not just at its Barbican base but through tours, recordings and media visibility... As for Gergiev, tying a knot with London's best-connected orchestra represents a strategic west European foothold - a grade above his longstanding Rotterdam Philharmonic post but without making more demands on his time." Financial Times (UK) 10/10/05
Posted: 10/10/2005 9:31 pm
Atlanta S.O. Predicts $2 Billion Arts Center Impact Trumpeting the economic impact of the arts has become a tried-and-true promotional technique over the past several years, and this week, the Atlanta Symphony took its turn at self-congratulation, releasing a consultant's report that predicts a $2 billion boost to the Georgia economy upon completion of the orchestra's new $300 million concert hall. "[That] includes $537 million during construction and $1.45 billion during the first 10 years of operation. It should generate $116 million in tax revenues and 2,100 new jobs through 2020, says the report." Birmingham News (Alabama) 10/10/05
Posted: 10/10/2005 8:53 pm
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Should Madison Take Control Of Its PAC? Madison, Wisconsin's new Overture Center for the Performing Arts has been hailed by audiences and critics since opening last year, and the center is expected to operate in the black for the foreseeable future. But long-term financing is enough of a concern that the city's mayor is floating a plan under which Madison would buy the center for $1 and operate it directly, rather than partnering with a development corporation in a refinancing deal which exposes the city to some future financial risk. "Representatives from several Overture Center resident arts groups, including the Madison Ballet, the Madison Repertory Theatre and the Madison Symphony Orchestra, came out strongly against city ownership Monday." Wisconsin State Journal (Madison) 10/11/05
Posted: 10/11/2005 5:36 am
Berlusconi Cuts To Devastate Italian Culture Italy's right-wing government has announced plans to slash arts funding by a whopping €260 million ($312.8 million) per year. The cuts, which are being loudly opposed by Italy's cultural leaders, would fall hardest on the Venice Film Festival, and would also have serious consequences for La Scala and the Venice Biennale, among others. "Workers' organisations and actors' unions in the Italian film industry have called for a strike, to be held on Friday, and they are urging theatres to follow suit." The Guardian (UK) 10/11/05
Posted: 10/10/2005 9:52 pm
Microchips Are A Bigger Tourist Draw Than Cesar Chavez? Tourist attractions targeted at ethnic minorities have become an important factor in the cultural health of many urban centers, especially in those with large immigrant populations. But in San Jose, the center of Silicon Valley, "there is nothing to alert... visitors that they're in the childhood home of Cesar Chavez, the epicenter of a worldwide protest by black Olympic athletes, or a place with one of the nation's highest concentrations of Vietnamese-Americans." Instead, all efforts seem to be focused on drawing attention to the area's famously tech-heavy economy. San Jose Mercury News 10/10/05
Posted: 10/10/2005 8:29 pm
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Vonnegut: The End Is Probably Near Kurt Vonnegut has never been exactly a cheery sort, and at 82, the celebrated author is the very picture of a curmudgeon. "He speaks repeatedly of having finished his life's work and of the surprise of being still alive. And death is coming not just to him; in person and in the slim new volume of his collected recent essays entitled A Man Without a Country, Vonnegut pronounces a requiem for the Earth itself, saying the world is going to come to an end sooner or later, but most probably sooner." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/11/05
Posted: 10/11/2005 6:21 am
Making Amends In Sydney The Sydney Opera House is widely considered to be one of the more stunning feats of architecture ever conceived, but more than three decades after its completion, its creator has yet to see the inside in person. "It's almost 40 years since [architect Jorn] Utzon turned his back on the Opera House, vowing never to set foot in Australia again. In 1966 he was eased off the project, and he was conspicuously absent from the building's gala opening in 1973... [But] for the past decade, Utzon has been involved (by phone and fax) in a six-part, A$70m venue improvement programme for the Opera House." The compromises forced on the project by the Australian government in the 1960s have been reversed, and for the first time, the Opera House will soon be exactly as Utzon first intended. The Guardian (UK) 10/10/05
Posted: 10/10/2005 9:42 pm
A Heartbreaking Salary For Staggering Jobs Dave Eggers has been a polarizing figure from the moment his first book hit the bestseller lists, using his fame as a vehicle to disseminate periodic manifestos on myriad controversial topics, some literary, some not. Now, Eggers is taking up the cause of the shamefully underpaid American schoolteacher. His new 'oral history book' on the subject "makes a compelling case for investment in education to be put in the pockets of the teachers. Pay them, it argues, and their wealth shall trickle down into the community, the economy and the future. It is hard to disagree." The Guardian (UK) 10/11/05
Posted: 10/10/2005 9:35 pm
A Playwright For All Seasons Harold Pinter is 75 this week, and Alastair McCauley says that the playwright's long career has been a gift not only to audiences, but to actors and critics as well. "The pauses in Pinter are like the spaces between people in the paintings of Cezanne, Seurat, or Picasso: expressive, charged, firm. They dramatise the tension between characters... When staging his own plays, he doesn't let his actors into secrets: the mystery is there for them, too. But actors have said he gives them confidence, not least because he knows how vulnerable they can feel." Financial Times (UK) 10/10/05
Posted: 10/10/2005 9:27 pm
The Hardest Fall For more than two decades, violinist Stewart Kitts held a prestigious leadership position in the Florida Orchestra, and was one of the Tampa Bay area's brightest cultural lights. He had come from a musical family, and was in the process of raising three children of his own. But somewhere along the line, Kitts got divorced, began dating a drug addict, and became addicted to crack cocaine himself. Less than two years later, his arrest record reads like that of an inner-city gang member, and he has been officially dismissed from the orchestra following a failed intervention last season. St. Petersburg Times 10/07/05
Posted: 10/10/2005 8:12 pm
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Canadian Province To Have A Stake In Rings In an unprecedented move, the provincial government of Ontario has signed on to become an investor in the massive new musical production of The Lord of the Rings, set to open in Toronto in 2006. "Taking on a role traditionally played by impresarios, idealists and other theatrical gamblers, the provincial government will contribute some $2.5 million of the show's $23 million budget, betting that the production's global appeal will justify a unique, and risky, public-private partnership." The province stands to gain a great deal from a successful run - Toronto will have exclusivity for the show through spring 2007 - and while there is some risk involved, government officials expect the show to turn a $40 million profit. The New York Times 10/11/05
Posted: 10/11/2005 6:02 am
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Enter The Blooker Prize A website that helps authors self-publish their books has created a new literary prize for the best book based on a blog or website. Finalists will be announced next March, and the winner will take home $2000, which, well a modest sum, is more money than most self-publishing authors ever make on their books. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/11/05
Posted: 10/11/2005 6:24 am
Nobel Judge Resigns In Protest "A member of the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize for Literature, has resigned in protest at the choice of last year's winner. Knut Ahnlund said he was stepping down because the 2004 award went to Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek. The Academy member called Jelinek's work 'a mass of text shovelled together without artistic structure'. His attack on Jelinek's books and plays came days before the announcement of the 2005 winner, due on Thursday." BBC 10/11/05
Posted: 10/11/2005 5:46 am
Harry Potter & The Half-Wit Rent-A-Cop "A security guard who tried to sell stolen copies of the latest Harry Potter novel has admitted theft and possessing an imitation gun." The guard, who removed two copies of J.K. Rowling's insanely popular book from a warehouse and later attempted to sell them to British newspapers, still denies ever pointing the gun at a reporter for the tabloid Sun, as the journalist claims. BBC 10/10/05
Posted: 10/10/2005 9:07 pm
Banville Wins '05 Booker John Banville has become the first Irish author since 1963 to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize for literature, in the most closely contested judging the contest has seen in years. Banville's novel, The Sea, just beat out Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, with the chairman of the judging panel casting the decisive vote. "Banville's win was a neat reversal of fortune. In 1989 his novel, The Book Of Evidence, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize but lost out to Ishiguro's The Remains Of The Day." The Herald (Glasgow) 10/11/05
Posted: 10/10/2005 9:04 pm
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What To Do With The CBC? In the wake of the weeks-long CBC lockout, some bold proposals to reform Canada's public broadcasting system are being floated by insiders and outsiders alike. Some observers even want to blow up the CBC and start fresh. But such dramatic changes could create as many problems as theyr solve, and when it comes down to it, Canadians are unlikely to embrace a wholesale change to the country's largest broadcast institution. Toronto Star 10/11/05
Posted: 10/11/2005 6:53 am
This American TV Show? Ira Glass's popular public radio program, This American Life, is getting a tryout as a television show on the cable network Showtime. If it gets picked up, which seems likely, Glass and his crew would produce 10 hourlong episodes while continuing to turn out the radio version, albeit on a reduced schedule. Philadelphia Inquirer 10/11/05
Posted: 10/11/2005 6:39 am
The Year Of The Gay Character (Yes, Again) Gay characters have been prominently featured in Hollywood films for years, of course, but this season, there's a distinctly different angle being played up. Gone are the gay sidekick, the wingman, the effeminate comic relief, and in their place is a slew of complete dramatic characters whose lives and loves are just as much of interest as any heterosexual protagonist. Oh, and did we mention that they're all being played by straight people? New York Post 10/11/05
Posted: 10/11/2005 6:33 am
Hollywood's Pseudo-Intellectualism The movie business just loves tackling "the big issues," especially near Oscar time. Nothing gets a green light faster than a mildly controversial storyline captained by a big-name star going out on a limb to shed light on the horrible scourge of, say, sexual harassment. Or war profiteering. Or physical violence. "Because these movies are Hollywood products, though, they need to navigate between inoffensively pleasing a mainstream audience and actually saying something. What results is a genre of timid films with portentous-sounding themes, works that offer prepackaged schoolroom lessons or canned debates. Hollywood may be drawn to Big Ideas, but it is always more comfortable with sound-bite-size thoughts." The New York Times 10/11/05
Posted: 10/11/2005 5:58 am
Wallace & Gromit Warehouse Goes Up In Smoke A warehouse fire at Britain's acclaimed Aardman Studios (the people behind "Wallace & Gromit") has resulted in the loss of a significant collection of original drawings, sets, and archives relating to some of the UK's most beloved animated characters. "The firm stored most of its past works in the warehouse and the biggest loss was the original Wallace and Gromit storyboards by creator Nick Park." BBC 10/10/05
Posted: 10/10/2005 9:17 pm
But Do They Get Residuals? San Francisco's homeless population has been enjoying a bit of a windfall lately, along with a bit of Hollywood fame and fortune, courtesy of the crew shooting Will Smith's latest movie. The filmmakers have employed some 200 homeless as paid extras in the film, offering them the official L.A. rate in exchange for an easy afternoon's work. San Francisco Chronicle 10/10/05
Posted: 10/10/2005 8:34 pm
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Can A Fresh Face Save ENB From Itself? "All dance companies go through ups and downs, but English National Ballet seems to have spent more time at the bottom of the seesaw than fate or fortune should decree... So if you saw the job of artistic director advertised would you want it? Well, apparently many people did. This is, after all, a big company with an outstanding history, 64 dancers, a full orchestra, £5.5 million in Arts Council funding and the potential to bring quality ballet to audiences around Britain. Enter Wayne Eagling, former Royal Ballet star and the man handed the job of putting English National Ballet back on track." The Times (UK) 10/11/05
Posted: 10/10/2005 10:04 pm
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