“Unlike other Jewish museums around the country, this one, founded in 1984 and formerly housed in modest quarters on Steuart Street, doesn’t collect objects, have a permanent collection or focus on the Holocaust. It puts on contemporary exhibitions and programs exploring Jewish art and culture from many viewpoints, involving Jewish and non-Jewish artists and audiences.”
Month: June 2008
Behind The Recording Industry’s War On Fans
“Since 2003, labels have filed more than 28,000 lawsuits against individual file sharers. Only one suit has reached trial. Jammie Thomas, a single mother who was ordered by a federal jury in Minnesota last October to pay $222,000, is waiting for the federal court’s decision on her request for a new trial. Despite the RIAA’s efforts, data suggest that demand for pirated content remains strong.”
San Francisco Celebrates A New Contemporary Jewish Museum
“The museum, like its audience, is interested in assimilation, even in the ways in which the larger culture assimilates Jewish ideas and associations. It focuses not on the substance of Judaism, its laws, or history or ritual objects, but on perceptions of them.”
Taming The Edinburgh Fringe
“The age-old battle cries about the Edinburgh Festival Fringe being too risqué (from bestiality to bible bashing, take your pick) have been joined in recent years by growing fears that the once spontaneous has become too commercial.”
Online Learning – But How Do We Protect Our Brand?
“Even as information technology is changing our economy in ways that make exclusive college degrees ever more valuable, it’s also giving institutions like Yale new opportunities to be less exclusive, by educating people at a distance. This creates an ethical dilemma for Yale and its ilk. Hoarding intellectual resources in an era where they can be distributed far and wide at no cost seems selfish and counter to the spirit of higher education. But distributing those resources too far and wide could undermine the exclusivity on which Yale’s fame and fortune are based.”
A Degree In Buffy-ology
“Since it ended, Buffy The Vampire Slayer has spawned enough academic books on the philosophy surrounding the roles of friendship and feminism to fill a 15-foot-wide bookshelf at the college in Arkadelphia.” Now a conference…
Up In Smoke – A Debate Over Smoking Onstage
“Ever since 2003 when New York City banned smoking in enclosed public spaces, theater directors have been walking a thin line between artistic freedom and legal necessity.”
Ground Zero For Theatre? Colorado
“Colorado has 97 theater companies that have produced at least one play in the past 12 months, a statistic that usually engenders such disbelief from outsiders. Only about half present full seasons, but, all told, our theaters produce about 400 works per year, drawing more than 1.5 million patrons and $50 million in revenue.”
Riccardo Muti In America
A self-confessed “simple man, essentially a southern Italian peasant,” the music director-designate of the Chicago Symphony said he didn’t own an iPod and that, until just the other day, thought iPod was the name of a racehorse.
A Matter Of Survival – The Arts In A Digital World
“Countless recent studies have coalesced around the same conclusion: Participation in the performing arts is changing drastically and, in many cases, declining. Fewer people are going to operas, plays and dance performances, according to the federal government’s Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. That decline is even more pronounced among 18- to 24-year-olds.”