Google - Promise Or Threat? "On the one hand, Google is cool. On the other hand, Google has the potential to destroy the publishing industry, the newspaper business, high street retailing and our privacy. Not that it will necessarily do any of these things, but for the first time, considered soberly, these things are technologically possible." London Review of Books 01/26/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 6:12 pm
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Peru Not Happy With Yale Exhibit "By any conventional measure, Yale's exhibition about Machu Picchu would seem a windfall for Peru. As one of the most ambitious shows about the Inca ever presented in the United States, drawing over a million visitors while traveling to half a dozen cities and back again, it has riveted eyes on Peru's leading tourist attraction. Yet instead of cementing an international partnership, the exhibition... has brought a low ebb in the university's relations with Peru. At issue are a large group of artifacts that form the core of the show, excavated at Machu Picchu in a historic dig by a Yale explorer in 1912. The government of Peru wants all of those objects back." The New York Times 02/01/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 5:39 am
Museum Visitors Trips, Shatters Chinese Vases At the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, "an unfortunate visitor tripped over his shoelace and fell on to three Qing dynasty vases, shattering them. The vases had been placed - rather optimistically, perhaps - on a windowsill on a staircase." The Guardian (UK) 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 4:22 pm
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It's The Venue, Stupid "Classical music is defined, in part, by where it's played. If it's at Avery Fisher Hall, it's probably classical; if it's at CBGB, it's probably not." And while it might take more than a dingy club setting and a fully stocked bar to convince some audiences to give classical a try, an increasing number of young classical performers seem to believe that it really is the forbidding stodginess of concert halls that separates them from rock stars. "The studied formality of the concert hall is increasingly unfamiliar to today's audience, not to mention ticket prices that can put off even diehard music lovers... In a club setting, people aren't under the same social constraints as in a recital hall." The New York Times 02/01/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 5:41 am
Andante.com Goes Dark Five years after launching an ambitious mix of online music news, cultural coverage, and digital audio, the web site Andante.com has closed up shop. "The site's mission was to be no less than the leading classical music site on the Internet—and the leading source for digital classical recordings, a position that was up for grabs in the pre-iTunes era." Andante was bought by a French record label in 2003, and its demise followed an announcement from the label that it could no longer afford to support the site. PlaybillArts 02/01/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 5:24 am
Plymouth Officials Condemn Springer City elders in Plymouth, England have joined forces to condemn a production of Jerry Springer, The Opera. "The show has been at the centre of a storm of protest since the BBC broadcast a televised version in January last year. The corporation received a record 63,000 complaints. In light of the controversy, the show's national tour was postponed. Only last week, Springer's producers blamed continuing protests by Christian groups, and by the British National Party, for poor ticket sales in the run-up to the now-revived tour." The Guardian (UK) 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 4:20 pm
Showing Opera Video Sparks Parent Demands To Fire Colorado Teacher A teacher in Colorado shows part of a video of Gounod's Faust from a 33-year-old series titled "Who's Afraid of Opera?" to about 260 first-, second- and third-graders. That set off a firestorm of controversy that has led to an investigation of the incident by school officials and a demand by some parents that the teacher be fired. Denver Post 01/29/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 4:16 pm
Louisville Symphony, Musicians Head To Arbitration The Louisville Symphony and its musicians have decided to go to mediation over their contract . But management warns that "forestalling bankruptcy would involve 'a complete rethinking of our relationship with the musicians, as well as the contract and the operating model for the orchestra'."
Louisville Courier-Journal 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 3:49 pm
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Welsh Assembly To Clash Over Arts Funding The Culture Minister of Wales has proposed to change the way the Welsh Assembly funds the arts, taking the task of funding of the six largest arts organizations away from the Welsh Arts Council and letting the assembly fund them directly. "But opposition parties claim this breaches the principle of 'arms-length' funding of the arts - separating the politicians who hold the purse strings from the artists who receive the money - and could lead to political interference. They plan to use Wednesday's assembly debate to vote through an amendment which would force a public review and consultation process." BBC 02/01/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 5:09 am
KC PAC Falls Short Again An interim fundraising campaign for Kansas City's proposed new performing arts center has fallen well short of its $45 million goal, and backers aren't sure whether they will have enough cash on hand to begin construction in the fall as originally planned. The center has been a long time in the planning process, and debates have sprung up over everything from its cost (somewhere north of $330 million) to its proposed downtown location. Kansas City Star 02/01/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 5:02 am
Proposed UK Visa Changes Could Hurt Arts The UK government wants to "change the system whereby arts companies can enter Britain on a joint visa. This could force every member of a visiting group to apply individually for work permits - and be charged more to do so. The proposals could be disastrous for the arts, said Tim Hawkins, producer of the Edinburgh Fringe's renowned Aurora Nova festival of foreign performance. 'We bring about 200-300 foreign performers to the UK each year. If we had to do an individual application for each, it would be a nightmare'." The Guardian (UK) 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 5:05 pm
Welsh Arts Funding Reform Plan To Be Postponed Welsh culture minister Alun Pugh is being forced to postpone plans to directly fund his country's six large arts organizations, taking the process away from the Welsh Arts Council. "There’s a great deal of party political mischief-making going on at the moment. They (the other parties) enjoy giving the government a bloody nose when they can get the arithmetic." ICWales 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 3:59 pm
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Fo Faces Milan Voters In Mayoral Quest Nobel-prize-winning playwright Dario Fo casts his vote in his attempt to be elected mayor of Milan. "The 79-year-old satirist, who has never before held public office, arrived with his actor wife Franca Rame to cast his vote at one of 124 polling stations open across the city. Repeating his campaign slogan: 'I am not a moderate,' the centre-left candidate said he was hopeful of winning the primary against three other candidates." The Guardian (UK) 01/30/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 4:34 pm
Still Licking Oprah Wounds, Frey Cancels Dallas Appearance After getting beat up on Oprah last week, disgraced author James Frey has begun postponing public appearances... Dallas Morning News 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 4:03 pm
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Evita Revival In London Andrew Lloyd Webber is reviving "Evita" in London. "It was a huge success when it was first staged in 1978 but has not been seen in London for more than 20 years. Argentine singer and actress Elena Roger will take the lead role in the new production when it opens at London's Adelphi Theatre in June." BBC 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 5:38 pm
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Prestiwhointhewhatnow? It's rare that a new word can be coined, popularized, and made an official part of the language through the efforts of a single individual. But that hasn't stopped Professor James Vanden Bosch of Michigan's Calvin College from pursuing a one-man crusade to get his favorite made-up word - presticogitation - into the Oxford English Dictionary. Vanden Bosch has actually done a remarkably good job of convincing his studnts over the years to use the word in their writing, but the folks at OED are a much tougher sell. Chicago Tribune 02/01/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 6:00 am
Frey Dropped By Agent James Frey's literary agent has dropped him in the wake of the scandal over his fictionalized memoir. The agent, Kassie Evashevski, also acknowledged that Frey inquired into the possibility of publishing A Million Little Pieces as a novel rather than a non-fiction work, but she says that the reason he gave was his desire to spare his family any embarrassment, and that he never admitted that large chunks of the book weren't true. The New York Times 02/01/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 5:53 am
Why Frey's Memoir Lies Matter "Addicts and alcoholics are desperate vulnerable people; if you're going to offer them a way out, you'd better be certain it works. But how can you be, if you haven't walked the path? The reader reviews for Frey's book on Amazon contain this nugget: 'I've been to four funerals in the last 12 months. One of them was a guy who dropped out of AA/NA after reading Frey's crap - before it had been exposed as a fraud. He decided to follow Frey's advice ... He lasted about three months before he got high again. He was dead two months after that'." The Guardian (UK) 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 4:32 pm
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Academy Awards Still A Tough Scene For Women "You know it's a bad year for women when none of the best picture nominees even features one in a lead performance. Both Good Night, and Good Luck and Munich present almost entirely hermetically sealed male universes, while Brokeback Mountain, Capote and Crash feature women as ignored wives and gal pals... [Historically,] only 7% of the 250 top-grossing films were made with female directors. No woman has ever won the best director Oscar; only three have been nominated." Los Angeles Times 02/01/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 6:43 am
Can They Order Viewers To Watch It? The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is ordering Canada's commercial broadcasters to increase their investment in homemade drama from an average of 3.3% of gross revenues to 6% over a five-year period. "Similarly, the CRTC is now requiring the networks, through marketing and scheduling, to boost the viewing of English-language drama programming so that by 2008-2009, Canadian productions will enjoy at least 16.5 per cent of the networks' total drama viewership." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/01/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 6:07 am
When Is A Producer Not A Producer? A minor uproar has broken out in Hollywood over new rules imposed on who can and cannot receive an Oscar in the production category. At issue is the old industry habit of giving producer credits to far more people than actually do serious production work on a given film. "The ad-hoc nature of moviemaking on the margins can lead to some hurt feelings or worse, and the situation is now compounded by growing fussiness about credits among those who grant awards, including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences." The New York Times 02/01/06
Posted: 02/01/2006 5:50 am
What It All Means Beyond Oscar Are there any, shall we say, larger societal meanings behind what movies snap up Oscar nominations? You know there had to be: "To some, Oscar night - and the movies it celebrates - has become a Rorschach test for a self-absorbed industry out of touch with mainstream tastes. Other culture watchers, though, insist that the cinematic tribute reflects, and even guides, America's collective direction and values. As that debate rages on, at least one larger trend is evident in nominations of recent years, including this one: From biopics to message films, audiences and creators alike seem to be drawn to "reality"-based movies - both in content and technique." Christian Science Monitor 02/01/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 3:45 pm
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Oakland Ballet Shuts Down "The Oakland Ballet said Tuesday that it is closing after four decades because of an ongoing ticket slump and the loss of its venue." San Francisco Chronicle (AP) 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 6:47 pm
Think Dance Down Under It's nice to be appreciated at home, but Australian dance would like some attention in the US too. So at the recent Arts Presenters conference in New York, Australian dancers made their case. And it has paid off... Sydney Morning Herald 01/31/06
Posted: 01/31/2006 4:48 pm
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