How to explain the proliferation of internet sites dedicated to the dissemination of bad art? National Post (Canada)
Month: December 1999
A YEAR IN ARTS
Artswire looks at a year of arts events and news. Artswire Current
SOME HONOR
This year’s Kennedy Center Honors telecast (to be broadcast tonight) is so puffed up with itself, it borders on self parody. The show’s creaky format has outlived the honors bestowed. Washington Post 12/29/99
- And: Too much flash, too little substance. Los Angeles Times 12/29/99
- And: The variety show is dead. Detroit News 12/29/99
IT WORKED FOR LONDON BRIDGE
Richard Branson is considering trying to buy London’s Millennium Dome when 2000 celebrations are done. Variety
COLOR ONLY INSIDE THE LINES (OR ELSE)
In a decade when Singapore has congratulated itself on the flourishing of its arts, times haven’t been so good for those artists who dared say unpopular things. Singapore Straits Times
BODY SLAM ON ARTS
Jesse Ventura explains his position on the arts in an upcoming March Playboy mag interview sequel: The government shouldn’t be funding arts. “if a person wants to be an artist and is struggling financially, then they should support themselves by waiting tables. If you’re going to ask the government to subsidize artists, then you might as well subsidize stock car racers, too,” he adds. New York Daily News
FERRETING OUT
A millennial eve concert in Greenwich starring Simply Red, The Eurythmics, and Bryan Ferry and the London Symphony Orchestra is saved by trained ferrets who pulled electrical sound and lighting cables through tunnels beneath the stage BBC
SUCCESSIVE SPLENDOR
Ten years ago the Alvin Ailey Dance Company was in the red. A decade into Judith Jamison’s direction, now it’s got the largest budget of any modern dance company and popular and critical success. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that Judy is the principal reason that Ailey is one of the few modern-dance companies that’s survived the death of its founder,” says Ailey board president Henry McGee. – New York Magazine
MOVIE MANIA
“Record box office receipts, the best attendance in four decades and one of the most diverse lineups in a long time. Even that prescient kid from The Sixth Sense could not have foreseen the year Hollywood had.” (AP) Detroit News
AN OPEN BOOK
Oregon’s Ashland Shakespeare Festival is one of the biggest regional theater operations in the US – 762 performances of 11 plays at three theaters from February to November. This year’s season was its most successful, with attendance of 374,246 and box office revenues of $9.9 million. Now a judge has ordered the company to open its books to a critic who has characterized the theater as “a medieval kingdom generating record revenues on the backs of nonunion workers.” (AP) Seattle Times