Movies seem worse than ever this summer. “It’s been a year when flicks about talking fish, a freak horse and an ancient Disney ride have rocked the box office, and unbearable lovers Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez have been only slightly less lethal than unstoppable killers Freddy and Jason.” So here are 50 ways to improve things…
Month: August 2003
John Coplans, 83
John Coplans, a founder and former editor of Artforum magazine, who was also a painter, critic, curator, museum director and “finally a photographer of discomfiting images of his own aging body,” has died at the age of 83.
Ft. Lauderdale’s New Museum Chief
“The new chief of the Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, is Irvin Lippman, 55, a man credited with doubling the annual budget and raising attendance at the Columbus, Ohio, art museum over the past eight years.”
Time To Politicize
Politicl theatre has made a big comeback at the Edinburgh Fringe. “A lot of this much-vaunted new political theatre has, admittedly, suffered from the problems that administered a lethal injection to the genre 20 years ago. Way, way too much of it has been designed solely to massage the lazy prejudices of its audiences. One more routine about how Americans are all obese imbeciles, and I think my head might have burst; one more person howling at some smugly inactive audience that “children are dying, children are dying”, and I might have lapsed into a coma. But from this sea of predictable, knee-jerk tedium, two stunning (and very different) new voices have risen.”
An Arts Town Success Story
Not so long ago, the city of Somerville, Mass. was “dilapidated, a place where artists got harassed; they certainly didn’t hold court at major intersections or thrash about in the street like dying fish. Over the past 20 years or so, the stigma of living in Somerville has been reduced, if not completely removed. Whatever the general explanation, most folks credit local artists — and, on a larger scale, the visible integration of art into the community by the Somerville Arts Council (SAC) — for helping to revitalize the city and improve its residents’ quality of life. The SAC is much more than a funnel for state grants. It’s a relatively high-profile, community-based collective that not only produces independent cultural programming all year long, but works to draw out the artistic strengths of its community. Which makes Somerville a kind of local-arts-scene success story, a city in which the influence of art isn’t merely discernable, but recognized for helping improve the town’s very tenor.”
World’s Languages Are Disappearing
Ninety percent of the world’s languages are expected to die out within a generation. “The social status of a language is the most accurate way of predicting whether it will survive, argue researchers in a paper appearing in the journal Nature. They also suggest that active intervention to boost the status of rare and endangered languages can save them.”
BBC To Broadcast Play Live
The BBC will broadcast a performance of Richard II live from London’s Globe Theatre. “It is thought to be the first live screening of a theatre play: while operas and concerts are often broadcast live, the theatrical community is far less willing to let in the cameras.”
Math’s Great Challenge
It’s the greatest unsolved problem in mathematics. Will it ever be solved? “With a pedigree linking many of the greatest names in the field, the Riemann Hypothesis runs like a river through vast swaths of seemingly distinct mathematical territory. Andrew Wiles himself has compared a proof of this proposition to what it meant for the 18th century when a solution to the longitude problem was found. With longitude licked, explorers could navigate freely around the physical world; so too, if Riemann is resolved, mathematicians will be able to navigate more fluidly across their domain. Its import extends into areas as diverse as number theory, geometry, logic, probability theory and even quantum physics.”
San Antonio Symphony – Take The Year Off
A San Antonio mayor’s task force is recommending that the San Antonio Symphony take a year off to get its finances straight. “Mayor Ed Garza said he would urge the council to heed the task force’s recommendation that next year’s $339,500 city grant for the symphony be given instead to the oversight committee, which would hire an expert in transforming arts organizations.”
Bay Area Early Music Fest Canceled
Cal Performances has dropped its biennial early-music festival, the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition, scheduled for next summer, citing lack of funds and a weak economy. “Begun in 1990, the festival produced 15 to 35 concerts every other year featuring early-music artists from around the world. The cost of producing it ranged from $250,000 to $750,000.”