Culture minister Ed Vaizey told a conference of arts professionals that the new plan would include everything from “archaeology to architecture and the built environment, archives, craft, dance, design, digital arts, drama and theatre, film and cinemas, galleries, heritage, libraries, literature, live performance, museums, poetry and the visual arts.”
Month: February 2012
Elgar Manuscript Found In Local Government Storage Closet
“An Edward Elgar manuscript dating back nearly 90 years has been discovered in a council building in Leicestershire. Staff found the musical score while clearing out a storage room at Charnwood Borough Council’s headquarters in Loughborough.”
Dancer-Choreographer Zina Bethune Killed In Road Accident
“Bethune, 66, a former New York City Ballet soloist and the founder of a Los Angeles multimedia dance and theatrical company, was struck by two vehicles and killed shortly after midnight Sunday after she apparently stopped to help an injured animal along Forest Lawn Drive in L.A.”
The Only Problem With ‘Chick Lit’ Is The Name
“The only thing that ‘these books’ really have in common is that they’re written primarily by women and about relationships. Apart from that, they encompass as wide a range as any other genre. [Sophie] Kinsella and Jennifer Weiner, say, have no more in common than do Alan Hollinghurst and Jonathan Franzen.”
Why Do So Many Ticket-Discounting Schemes Discriminate Against Grown-Ups With Day Jobs?
“[If] you work 9 to 5, and aren’t under 26 or over 60, it’s much harder to find affordable ways of seeing a show – even more so when it comes to commercial theatre.”
More Than 400 Stolen Expressionist Artworks Turn Up In Warehouse
“Karel Appel, a leading expressionist, died at 85 in 2006. He never recovered from the loss of a lifetime’s worth of drawings, sketches, notebooks and other works believed to be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.” A logistics company found the trove while cleaning out a recently warehouse.
Just Can’t Appreciate Abstract Art? Try Watching The Shining First
“A newly published study finds people are more likely to be moved and intrigued by abstract paintings if they have just experienced a good scare. This suggests the allure of art may be ‘a byproduct of one’s tendency to be alarmed by such environmental features as novelty, ambiguity, and the fantastic,’ argues lead author Kendall Eskine.”
What Makes Germans Laugh? (Yes, There Is Something)
There’s an old English music hall sketch, “Dinner for One”, that was ubiquitous there in the 1920s and ’30s, was recorded for German television in 1962, and somehow caught on in the ’70s, airing every New Year’s Eve and becoming the most popular program in German history. Philip Oltermann explores what the sketch’s popularity explains about the German sense of humor.
We’re In A Golden Age Of Documentaries (So Why Don’t We Celebrate Them?)
Of the more than 800 feature films released theatrically in America last year, more than 300 were documentaries. (At premiere marketplace festivals like Sundance and Toronto, the ratio is similar.) Yet at the Academy Awards, where the film industry lavishly celebrates itself, all of those films compete for one measly award: best documentary. By comparison, dramatic features get 20 chances for an Oscar.
“Halftime In America – Political Metaphor
Set to music and narrated by the nation’s last living cowboy, “Halftime” has considerably more rhetorical pow than the prosaic platitudes of Obama’s 2011 State of the Union speech: “We’re the nation that puts cars in driveways.” Indeed, Eastwood’s manager couldn’t resist representing the spot as a personal statement from his client: “Chrysler just sponsored what he had to say.”