Eisenberg: New Tax Law Won't Harm Museums Pablo Eisenberg writes that museums ought to stop whining about losing one of their tax breaks. "Most other charitable gifts don't come with the flexibility and big write-offs available for artworks. What's more, the museum directors dismiss the fact that only about 10 percent of all donations of art are accomplished through fractional giving. And it paints the restrictions on fractional giving as earth-shattering, as though the end of the museum world is about to unfold. What palpable nonsense." Chronicle of Higher Education 10/12/06
Posted: 10/12/2006 5:27 pm
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That YouTube That You Do So Well (Museums Give It A Try) Museums are experimenting with technologies such as YouTube. "Much the same way that MoMA and other contemporary museums added photography and film as artists began working with them, the Internet is becoming an increasingly important creative medium."
Wall Street Journal 10/13/06 Posted: 10/13/2006 8:11 am
Russian Collectors Move In "Buyers for contemporary Russian art were overwhelmingly non-Russian until around five years ago. But no longer. A new class of collectors has appeared, while contemporary galleries are springing up fast in Moscow."
The Art Newspaper 10/13/06 Posted: 10/12/2006 6:28 pm
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Worldwide Music Sales Drop 4 Percent Total sales of recordings in the first half of 2006 fell to $13.7 billion. "Digital sales rose by 106% to $945m, representing 11% of the worldwide recorded music market." The increase wasn't enough to offset the sale of physical formats such as CDs, which fell by 10% under pressure from cheap illegal copies. BBC 10/13/06
Posted: 10/13/2006 6:39 am
Cleveland Institute Prez Resigns David Cerone is stepping down as president of the Cleveland Institiute of Music after 22 years. "As the longest-tenured president in CIM history, Cerone has overseen enormous growth in enrollment and programs and helped balance the budget for 11 consecutive years." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 10/13/06
Posted: 10/13/2006 6:35 am
It's Official: Tower Records Assets Liquidated "The disappearance of Tower's familiar red-and-yellow logo will leave a gaping hole in the landscape of American music retailing. Los Angeles-based Virgin Megastores, which operates 20 Virgin Megastores, now will become the most prominent deep-catalog retailer. One veteran industry observer noted that Tower might have accounted for 40%-50% of some niche-genre labels' business." Yahoo! (Reuters) 10/12/06
Posted: 10/12/2006 7:03 pm
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The Art Of DUMBO "In some ways, the story of artists in DUMBO is a typical New York story: Artists move into a blighted –– or, in this case, largely empty –– neighborhood and lend it some glamour; then real estate values go up, and most of them are priced out. But in other ways, DUMBO has followed an unusual path, since such huge chunks of the neighborhood are owned by Mr. Walentas, who along with his wife takes a strong interest in art." New York Sun 10/13/06
Posted: 10/13/2006 1:20 pm
Orange County Arts Snapshot (Not Encouraging) Orange County just opened a big new concert hall. So things are good for the arts in Southern California, right? Not according to a new study. "Prices are up, attendance is down, fewer schoolkids are getting free exposure to the arts, and Orange County's museums and performing arts presenters are not feeling terribly bullish about the immediate future, according to a study of the O.C. cultural landscape." Los Angeles Times 10/13/06
Posted: 10/13/2006 7:01 am
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Peter Hepple, 79 - Theatre Critic For 56 Years He was a fixture at Stage magazine. "He was a wonderfully eccentric man. Even though he sometimes gave the impression it was a bit of a chore, he went to the theatre more than any of us even. He was unstoppable and indefatigable." The Guardian (UK) 10/13/06
Posted: 10/12/2006 7:55 pm
Insult Dealers, Get Expelled From School: One Man's Roadmap To An Art Career Seattle artist Jesse Edwards is a jerk. "Some of his paintings are garbage but some are great. They're great, but he's intolerable. He heckles the art dealers whenever they talk here. He swaggers when he walks and breaks all rules. He still leaves me obnoxious phone messages. He has no social skills. I'm behind him all the way." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 10/12/06
Posted: 10/12/2006 5:49 pm
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Turkish Pride Over Nobel (Sorta) Orhan Pamuk's Nobel win is the first for a Turkish writer. "This year's prize, then, puts the Turkish government in the awkward position of having to celebrate a writer it only recently tried to put in jail. The Turkish Foreign Ministry issued a lukewarm statement of congratulation, saying in part, 'For years, it was our public's expectation to see a Turkish writer awarded the Nobel literature prize'." New York Sun 10/13/06
Posted: 10/13/2006 8:20 am
Canadian Court Says Newspapers Have To Pay Freelancers "Newspapers and magazines do not have the right to republish articles written by freelancers in electronic databases without the consent of the authors, according to a Supreme Court of Canada ruling released Thursday." CBC 10/12/06
Posted: 10/12/2006 6:25 pm
Important German Manuscript Collection Might Be Liquidated To Pay Castle Bills The Counts of Baden in Germany "are broke and need 70 million euros to fix up their castle." So they propose a "selloff of 3500 of the 4200 medieval manuscripts - many of them of the highest importance -" from the collection in the Badische Landesbibliothek of Karlsruhe. Cronaca 10/12/06
Posted: 10/12/2006 5:39 pm
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Beating Pirates Is A Matter Of Timing? The movie industry keeps looking for ways to beat film piracy. So how about releasing DVDs the same time movies open in theatres? Charge a premium and make movies available before pirates have a chance... BBC 10/13/06
Posted: 10/13/2006 6:46 am
TV's "After-Market" There's a growing "after-market" audience for TV shows that didn't make it because of low ratings but somehow made it to DVD. Trouble is, the TV biz is stuck on this ratings model that requires an audience up-front when shows first air... Christian Science Monitor 10/13/06
Posted: 10/12/2006 8:05 pm
Faith-Based Films (Again) Hollywood is making some big-budget bets on religious movies. "This may be just another step in Hollywood's new dance with the 'faith-based' community, but given that Fox executives estimate that audience at more than 80 million, the rest of Tinseltown is paying close attention." Christian Science Monitor 10/13/06
Posted: 10/12/2006 8:01 pm
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Canada's National Ballet Posts $504,000 Surplus Officials are giving new artistic director Karen Kain much of the credit. "Kain brought new energy to every level of the organization and the results were seen on the stage, in fundraising and at the box office." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/13/06
Posted: 10/13/2006 8:14 am
But Where's The Actual Dance? "The practitioners of the new stuff probably imagine they're making the performance-equivalent of conceptual art--that the dance is as much about dance as it is a dance. Fine, except where's the dance? It's like they're making a sandwich with mostly only bread." Foot in Mouth (AJBlogs) 10/12/06
Posted: 10/12/2006 6:51 pm
Falling For Dance (Or Not) "Dance has retreated to being just plain dance. The big companies, worldwide, are in the doldrums — what’s the last new piece that le tout New York had to go to? Who’s a star as exalted as the Margots and the Mishas? The ground has leveled: We’re reduced to the latest (exhausted) new wavelet at B.A.M., the smorgasbord at the Joyce, A.B.T.’s tired full-evening classics (except when they aren’t), and City Ballet’s 70th or 80th new piece by Peter Martins. And what about that scarily graying audience in those scarily unsold-out theaters?" Is the antidote a cheap dance festival with screaming fans? New York Observer 10/11/06
Posted: 10/12/2006 6:49 pm
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