Tuesday, January 31
Carey: Out! Snooty Arts "What Good Are the Arts?" is an intensely argued polemic against the intellectually supercilious, the snooty rich and the worship of high culture as a secular religion for the spiritually refined and socially heartless. Modern art," writes James Carey, "has become synonymous with money, fashion, celebrity and sensationalism, at any rate in the mind of the man on the Clapham omnibus." Contemporary painting, opera, ballet, most poetry and theater are all removed from the life of ordinary people, being part of a cult available largely to the wealthy and mandarin, where only the elect may worship. Meanwhile, "mass art" -- daytime drama, pop music, Hollywood filmmaking -- is commonly dismissed as mere entertainment for shallow and stupid proles. Washington Post 01/29/06
Posted: 01/30/2006 6:41 pm
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In NYC - An Uninspired Conventioneer A huge planned expansion of New York City's Javits Convention Center isn't urban architecture at its most inspired. Partly it reflects the failure of large government projects. "Although Richard Rogers's design is more promising than, say, the defunct Jets stadium proposal ever was, it reflects a narrow view of how cities grow. For the time being, bold urban planning remains a chimera here." The New York Times 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 6:40 am
African American Museum To Have A Home On national Mall A new African American history museum will be built on a site in the capitol's Mall. "The five-acre site has belonged to the government since 1791 and was endorsed by both the major plans for downtown Washington, the L'Enfant Plan of 1791 and the McMillian Plan of 1901, as an suitable place for a building. It was considered as a location for the State Department and the World War II memorial." Washington Post 01/30/06
Posted: 01/30/2006 5:56 pm
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Bringing Opera To The Marines (Thanks To The NEA) "Opera is the latest joint venture between the NEA and the Department of Defense. The endowment first brought Shakespeare to 18 military bases in 2004. Last year, famous authors helped troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan write their stories. Bringing opera to 39 military bases around the country was even more adventurous, but NEA staff members have been pleased by the response. People had to be turned away from performances at Fort Carson, Colo., and Picatinny Arsenal in Wharton, N.J." The Plain Dealer (AP) 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 7:37 am
Chief Exec Out At Fort Worth Orchestra Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra president Katherine Akos has left the orchestra a year before her contract was to expire. Why? "The orchestra matured and so many great things happened at a speed that outpaced the internal infrastructure in the organization. They're having some growing pains, and it's unfortunate when people get caught up in it." Dallas Morning News 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 7:24 am
An Orchestra Comes Back To Life In Edmonton Four years ago, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra was "desperately in need of intensive care, after a five-week strike and a series of administrative setbacks put the orchestra (whose current budget is around $7-million) nearly $900,000 in the hole in one season. It had no music director and no great prospects for finding one. The ESO itself is having a pretty good time these days. It has an energetic new leader, ticket sales are hitting record levels, and a string of balanced budgets has tamed a once-fearsome accumulated deficit." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 6:59 am
SF Symphony, Musicians Agree On Contract The San Francisco Symphony and its musicians have reached an agreement on a new contract. "The 103 musicians have been working without a contract since Nov. 26. Last week the musicians threatened to call off the China tour -- the orchestra's first ever to the mainland -- but by week's end there had been enough progress that they agreed to let the tour go forward as planned." San Francisco Chronicle 01/30/06
Posted: 01/30/2006 5:44 pm
Famed Boys Choir To Get The Boot? This week, the renowned Boys Choir of Harlem might lose its home. "After occupying space in a public school on Madison Avenue and 127th Street rent-free for the last 13 years, the nonprofit is facing eviction Tuesday unless its leaders and city officials come up with a last-minute resolution. The situation has angered and alarmed parents who say their children have thrived in the program, and has deeply upset the young choralists, who have taken to the streets with signs protesting the looming displacement." Los Angeles Times 01/30/06
Posted: 01/30/2006 5:41 pm
Can Orchestras Survive The 21st Century? UK orchestras are debating their own survival. "We are at the tail end of a very, very long cycle of decline. This is really the critical point of whether they can engage with new technologies and make new technologies work for the art that they present - or whether they go out of business." BBC 01/28/06
Posted: 01/30/2006 3:48 pm
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Welsh Artists - Guaranteed Rights Of Expression? Wales' culture minister has proposed a plan to give artists a legally guaranteed right to freedom of expression. But critics say its a bizarre suggestion: "There are all sorts of practical difficulties. How do you define an artist? Many of us may lay claim to the title. How far would the right to freedom of expression extend? Could a playwright commissioned by BBC Wales to write a TV play insist it is broadcast even when the BBC doesn't want to show it?" Western mail (Wales 01/28/06
Posted: 01/30/2006 6:10 pm
- Welsh Proposal To Directly Fund Arts Draws Protests From Artists Welsh Culture Minister Alun Pugh's proposal to fund the country's major arts organizations directly, cutting the Welsh Arts Council out of the process has artists screaming. "The Welsh arts world is in uproar over Mr Pugh's proposals, fearing that by ending the 'arm's- length' funding principle they would politicise culture and lead to an undesirable two-tier system." Western Mail (Wales) 01/28/06
Posted: 01/30/2006 6:02 pm
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Wendy Wasserstein's Legacy "In a sense, Wasserstein made Broadway safe for feminism, in a wave of women dramatists (Beth Henley, Marsha Norman, Tina Howe) who cracked the male-dominated repertoire of Broadway and regional theater in the 1980s. Ms. Wasserstein's penchant for writing appealing romantic comedies made her work more commercially viable than that of most of her peers. And while clearly expressing a belief in equal rights, she was just as focused on depicting a post-feminist ambivalence many women in her audiences shared." Seattle Times 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 7:06 am
Nam June Paik's TV World "Paik's career spanned half a century, three continents and several art mediums, ranging through music, theater and found-object art. He once built his own robot. But his chief means of expression was television, which he approached with a winning combination of visionary wildness, technological savvy and high entertainment values. His work could be kitschy, visually dazzling and profound, sometimes all at once, and was often irresistibly funny and high-spirited." The New York Times 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 6:47 am
Remembering Wendy Wasserstein "Although it was always laced with comedy, her work was also imbued with an abiding sadness, a cleareyed understanding that independence can beget loneliness, that rigorous ideals and raised consciousnesses are not always good company at the dinner table. But she shared her compassion among a wide array of characters, those who settled and those who continued to search." The New York Times 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 6:33 am
Barenboim Out Of Hospital Daniel Barenboim has been released from the hospital in Berlin. The Staatsoper opera house said Barenboim had been suffering from "a disturbance of his sense of balance," which doctors were able to treat. Washington Post (AP) 01/30/06
Posted: 01/30/2006 5:54 pm
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New York Theatres Take On George Bush A theme on New York stages, these days? Bush-bashing. "I used to get booed (in Las Vegas) two or three years ago when I made a George Bush joke. Now they laugh and nobody boos because things have changed." Backstage (Reuters) 01/30/06
Posted: 01/30/2006 6:46 pm
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The Bard Parlor Game Shakespeare fans' favorite parlor game seems to be trying to prove (or disprove) who the Bard really was (or wasn't). "Neurologists tell us that our brains are hard-wired to find patterns and causation – even when they're not there. At different levels of scholarship and skill, these books reshape new research and old chestnuts to draw their cases. But they show us nothing definitive." And is it really that important, anyway? Dallas Morning News 01/29/06
Posted: 01/30/2006 6:05 pm
One Terrific Book... (Sorry About The Lies) Okay, so everybody's piling on James Frey for his sins. But "amid the quite legitimate furor over author James Frey's fibs and flourishes, amid the high-decibel debates about the murky rules of memoir and the primacy of fact, one fact has been routinely overlooked: The guy can write."
Chicago Tribune 01/29/06
Posted: 01/30/2006 5:37 pm
Today's Publishing - The MIA Editors Where were James Frey's editors? Where are the editors, period? "Publishing has become the land of the nonreturned phone call. Editors are either in a pre-sales conference, a sales conference, a post-sales conference, or at the Frankfurt Book Fair. They have no time for editing. Greater pressure on book publishers may come, in fact, from literary journalists, if they decide to emulate the Smoking Gun instead of turning out puffy author profiles." Philadelphia Inquirer 01/28/06
Posted: 01/30/2006 5:34 pm
Publisher Pulls Book Before Publication (Kids' Book Similar To Another) After discovering that renowned children’s-book author and publisher Harriet Ziefert’s latest book, A Snake Is Totally Tail, is strikingly similar to Judi Barrett’s 1983 book of the same name, publisher Blue Apple has announced that it will not be releasing the version authored by Ziefert, originally set for release in April.
BookStandard 01/30/06
Posted: 01/30/2006 5:28 pm
Publishers: We Don't Check Facts On What We Publish "Unlike journalists, publishers have never seen it as their purview to verify that the information in nonfiction books is true. Editors and publishers say the profit-margins in publishing don't allow for hiring fact-checkers. Instead, they rely on authors to be honest, and on their legal staffs to avoid libels suits. But now there is a growing chorus both inside and outside the industry calling for publishers to take more steps to validate the authenticity of works that are marketed as nonfiction." Wall Street Journal 01/30/06
Posted: 01/30/2006 5:19 pm
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Oscar Nominations Are In Here's a complete list... Los Angeles Times 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 7:14 am
Hollywood's Political Squeeze Why can't Hollywood make politically relevant movies? Well, it can. "In the past six months, the movie business has offered an astounding outpouring of provocative, socially relevant films, some of which will be among today's Oscar nominees. But while these films have all enjoyed plaudits from film critics, the response from op-ed writers, bloggers and columnists has been, with rare exception, somewhere between scorn and disgust." Los Angeles Times 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 6:51 am
The New Film Schools Are Trade Schools "Rather than a breeding ground for auteurs, film school — and there are now some 114 colleges that offer a major in film studies, according to the College Board — has become a path to a professional career in Hollywood, a foot in the door and a place to make connections. With the announcements of this year's Oscar nominations due Tuesday morning, U.S.C. boasts on its Web site that at least one alumnus has been nominated for an Academy Award every year since 1973." The New York Times 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 6:35 am
"Bubble" dual DVD/Theatre Release Called Success Steven Soderbergh's "Bubble" played to tiny box office on its opening weekend. "While the film's box-office performance was modest because major theater chains refused to run it, the film's backers declared victory for their release strategy. We are very happy with the results so far of this first day-and-date release." The film's release was controversial because it opened in theatres as it was released n DVD. Yahoo! (AP) 01/30/06
Posted: 01/30/2006 6:25 pm
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More Bad News For Troubled Washington Ballet Rebecca Wright, director of the company's school, has died. "Wright's death falls especially hard on the institution because she had directed the school only since September 2004. Wright, 58, was the first successor to founder Mary Day, who had run the school for 60 years. Wright had been brought on to continue Day's tradition of nationally recognized excellence, said Artistic Director Septime Webre, but she barely got a chance." Washington Post 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 8:16 am
Grants For Live Music The American Music Center has made grants to 24 New York and New Jersey dance companies to support live music accompaniment. The Live Music for Dance program has made more than 400 grants, totaling $4.75 million, over the last two decades. PlaybillArts 01/30/06
Posted: 01/30/2006 6:20 pm
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