Pop culture is everywhere. TV is pop culture. Ergo, there’s more and more TV about pop culture. “The extent to which pop culture has become the focus of more and more TV networks is undeniable. It’s the nature of it. Pop culture is the stuff everybody is talking about, and if everybody is talking about it, networks are naturally going to want to find programming that taps into that.”
Month: December 2003
Theatre U
Why should someone go to a university theatre program in Texas rather than work at a proper theatre? Greg Leaming, artistic director of Southern Methodist University’s theatre program says his program can do things other theatres can’t. “There’s no reason why a person can’t decide to go to the theater and say, ‘Let’s go to SMU.’We have the resources to do larger things than professional theaters can afford to tackle these days, and do them well. We just have to keep the bar raised good and high.”
Union Saves Music Program
Oakland Technical High School was going to lose its music program until America’s largest union came up with the money to save it. “The 1.6 million-member Service Employees International Union, which represents school employees and has strong ties in Oakland, donated more than $91,300 to the school at a ceremony last Wednesday in honor of International Human Rights Day. The money pays for the music director position and keeps several music programs afloat for one year, such as the pep squad band, piano classes and a choral program. The donation also sets up a student chorus called Voices of Justice.”
More On Conductor Judging
Last week New York Times critic John Rockwell posed the question: who can better judge a conductor – the audience or the players working for the conductor. Michelle Dulak disagrees with how Rockwell framed his question, as well as how he went about answering it. “There is, of course, a sense in which musicians are self-serving. They aren’t typically looking for comfort or ease, exactly; but they are looking for something, and it may not be exactly what the audience — or rather the critics — want. To read Rockwell, you’d think he was not merely a critic but the director of a critics’ PAC (Political Action Committee).”
American TV’s Longest-Running Shows
What are the 20 longest-running shows on American television? More or less the same as they were last year. Longevity means never having to say goodbye.
What Happened To Korea’s “Age Of Culture?”
When he came to power last February, South Korea’s new President Roh Moo-hyun declared that the 21st Century would be the age of culture and that he would help make it happen. But “like so many other quotes taken from the outspoken chief of nation, the depth of commitment to actually materializing his rhetoric remains questionable, at least after the administration’s unproductive first 10-months of hollow debates, confusions and scarce achievements in cultural policies.”
Iraq’s First Movie In Ten Years
“An arts school dropout is directing Iraq’s first feature-length movie in more than a decade, shooting it with film he “liberated” from Saddam Hussein’s culture ministry during the looting that followed the dictator’s fall.”
Beck’s – Seeing The Future
“A sculptor, a singer, and a painter were shortlisted yesterday for the Beck’s Future Prize. For those who cherish the annual awards as the Where the Wild Things Are corner of the art world, it is some reassurance that Tonico Lemos Auad sculpts cuddly squirrels and lions out of carpet fluff and also draws on bananas; Susan Philipsz records songs and broadcasts them over public address systems; while Hayley Tompkins makes scribbled marks on scraps of school graph paper.”
World’s Most Endangered
This year’s list of 100 most endangered cultural monuments is out. “The 2004 list has some surprises. Antarctica appears for the first time. The polar caps may be melting, but surely protection can be found for Ernest Shackleton’s expedition hut. The hut is infested with microbes. I can testify that the ruins of Ephesus, the ancient pilgrimage city with the Temple of Artemis, now in Turkey, are infested with tourists. I felt like a total pest when I visited that site six years ago. The place was crawling with us. The list also features sites that straddle national boundaries.”
MoMA’s $40 Million Buying Spree
The Museum of Modern Art has bought $40 million worth of art as it builds its new $858 million home. “Most prominent among the acquisitions is “Diver,” a drawing by Jasper Johns that is widely considered to be one of the most important works on paper of the 20th century. The museum said it had also bought several other seminal works by modern masters like Picasso and Francis Bacon.”