“Today’s students are struggling with writing. The rise of the Internet is often blamed for this deficiency. Parents worry that children are cutting and pasting paragraphs from Web sites rather than writing their own. But in patches around the country, teachers say that online technology is now becoming a powerful tool for improving, rather than undermining, students’ writing skills.”
Month: August 2003
Toledo Museum Names New Director
San Diego Museum of Art director Don Bacigalupi has been named director of the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio. Bacigalupi is said to have rejuvenated the San Diego Museum in the four years he has been there.
Kramer Discourses
Art critic Hilton Kramer expounds on the artworld and reflects on his career as an art critic in a series of audio clips… Among the juicier bits: “Critics who refuse to make judgments…are quickly seen to be… either the whores or the eunuchs of their profession. They may elicit our pity or inspire our contempt, but they can never command our respect…”
Why Doesn’t Classical Music Appeal? (Don’t We Get It?)
“While today’s iconoclastic visual artists like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin are hotly debated among art aficionados, in the world of music, contemporary classical composers inhabit a dissonant ghetto all their own. Few people listen to them, few critics review them and few people understand them. Western classical music as a whole makes up only 3.5 percent of the world’s total music market (contemporary works aren’t broken out separately). In 2002, classical-album sales were down 17 percent. Orchestras rarely feature contemporary works.”
Disney Hall – Sounding Good
“Disney Hall will finally open this fall—16 tortured years after the late Lillian Disney, Walt’s widow, instigated the project with a $50 million gift. The ultimate verdict on its acoustics will come from music critics after the gala first concert on Oct. 23. But if the building does sound as good as it looks—and early reports are enthusiastic—it will be a masterpiece, even greater than the spectacular Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, which made Gehry an international star in 1997.”
Internet Providers Protest Recording Industry Tactics
A coalition of 100 internet service providers is protesting against the Recording Industry Association of America’s tactics trying to force ISP’s to turn over names of customers the RIAA suspects of downloading music. The group “contends the RIAA’s enforcement tactics would essentially force its members, such as EarthLink and America Online, to act as the ‘police of the Internet’ for the recording industry’s interests.”
Kirk Varnedoe, 57
Former Museum of Modern Art curator Kirk Varnedoe has died at the age of 57. “Though he was an important historian of modern art from early on, and went on to public prominence as the top curator at the Museum of Modern Art, he never had much of the delicate aesthete about him. Kirk’s athletic, virile manner made him an oddity in the art world, and less than a favorite of a few of its inhabitants. His forceful surface also contradicted the delicately subtle tenor of his work and thought.”
Florida Phil Rescue Plan Abandoned
Supporters of the Florida Philharmonic working to revive the bankrupt orchestra announced they are abandoning their efforts. “The Philharmonic reorganization team, unable to raise enough money to save the symphony, will try instead to purchase the orchestra’s music library in the hope that it will provide the seed for a future Philharmonic in South Florida. But assembling a new orchestra will take more than a music library and may be more difficult than the fundraising effort the group abandoned.”
Do Music Lessons Reduce Your Chances Of Getting Fat?
A new Canadian study reports that “children involved in even low levels of physical activity – including such things as Boy Scouts, music classes or art lessons – have a reduced chance of becoming overweight or obese” – as much as a 43 percent reduction.
San Jose Artists Oppose Funding Idea
San Jose, California arts groups are opposing an offer by the city’s mayor to be funded out of the city’s general budget rather than from a hotel-motel tax (which was sharply down this year. “Once you get into the general fund, you are then competing with police, fire, recreation. And the arts, whether you look at the state or the schools, are always the first to get cut. So if the arts have a dedicated source, like the transient occupancy tax, why would we want to jeopardize that?”