“True to its founding fathers, George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein, New York City Ballet remains the foremost creative ballet troupe in the world. No other classical dance company presents as many new works. One reason is the number of ballets produced by the Diamond Project festivals in the last 10 years with 6 to 12 choreographers commissioned at a time. More important, the company has developed choreographers within its ranks.” The New York Times 01/08/02
Author: Douglas McLennan
BUILDING A DANCE COMPANY
“Over the last 15 years, fed by the elegant choreography of its artistic director José Mateo’s Ballet Theater has cultivated a distinctive ballet style, a critically acclaimed repertory of original work, a school and 20-member company. With performances of this season’s Nutcracker, which ended on Sunday, the troupe has opened this erudite Cambridge’s first home for professional ballet.” The New York Times 01/01/02
Issues: January 2002
Thursday January 31
ART & MORALITY: Recently, a Canadian critic blasted a production of Richard Strauss’s Salome, and seemed to be as upset with the content of the opera as with the director’s vision. The controversy brings up an interesting conumdrum for critics: since art doesn’t exist in a vacuum, shouldn’t critics be allowed to dislike art that offends modern sensibilities? “You can’t just denounce a play because you dislike its characters and are disappointed that they aren’t being punished for their crimes. Or can you?” The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 01/31/02
HOW ARTISTS MAKE A LIVING: The Urban Institute has announced plans to study the support structure for artists in nine major American cities. According to the Institute, there has never been a scientific investigation into what types and amounts of support are available to assist artists, and the information found in the study will be used to compile a national database for artist use. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 01/31/02
SLOW TALKING: Does the ease of e-mail and instant messaging and cell phones degrade our ability to communicate eloquently? “I have witnessed a manifest decline in the grammar, literary style, and civility of communication. People are less likely these days to stroll down the hall or across campus to converse. Our conversations, thought patterns, and institutional clockspeed are increasingly shaped to fit the imperatives of technology. It is time to consider the possibility that—for the most part—communication ought to be somewhat slower, more difficult, and more expensive than it is now.” Utne Reader 01/30/02
Wednesday January 30
NEW NEA CHIEF DEAD: Michael Hammond, who became the chairman of America’s National Endowment for the Arts only a week ago, was found dead in Washington Tuesday. “Hammond, 69, a composer and former dean of Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, had told his staff on Monday that he was sick, and stayed home that day. Monday night he attended a dinner and cocktail party at the Shakespeare Theatre but left halfway through. When Hammond didn’t show up for meetings Tuesday morning, several members of the staff went to the house he had borrowed in the American University Park neighborhood. When no one answered the door, they called the police.” Washington Post 01/30/02
- ACCOMPLISHED ADVOCATE: “He was still in the process of charting a course for the federal arts agency. But he had made it known that getting children interested in the arts early in life and building a wider audience for the arts among the general public were among his top interests.” Dallas Morning News 01/30/02
LANGUAGE OF ART AND SCIENCE: Science, like art, helps explain the world around us. And yet the language of science, the words used to explain it, are often not easy to understand. Likewise, art has not often helped us to learn about science. But there are signs that art is taking new interest in expressions of science. National Post (Canada) 01/30/02
ARTS LOSSES SINCE 9-11: The numbers are starting to come in for arts losses since September 11. “Nearly $30 million was lost between September 11 and October 31, based on 419 responses from arts groups in the five New York City boroughs. Box office income at the reporting institutions was down $11.6 million in that period, and they received $3 million less than anticipated from foundations.” Village Voice 01/29/02
BETTING ON BELFAST: What city will be chosen Europe’s Capital of Culture for 2008? Of the 13 cities in the running, Belfast is the oddsmakers’ favorite “because of its venues, the reputation of its council, but above all because Prime Minister Tony Blair stands most to gain politically by selecting it.” The Guardian (UK) 01/30/02
ARGENTINE CRISIS HITS THE ARTS: “Argentina’s artists and institutions learned long ago to live with small budgets. During the last few years the State has barely been able to keep its museums open, with most of the shows underwritten by foreign institutions, embassies and corporate sponsors. But devaluation and its concomitant loss of revenue, along with decreased consumption, seems certain to affect the privatised utilities’ support of the arts.” The Art Newspaper 01/30/02
Tuesday January 29
THE LINCOLN CENTRE MESS: “Lincoln Center is a community in deep distress, riven by conflict over a grandiose $1 billion redevelopment plan that was supposed to repair its deteriorating buildings and bring the cultural jewel of New York into the twenty-first century. But instead of uniting the center’s constituent arts organizations behind a common goal, the project has pitted them against one another in open warfare more reminiscent of the shoot-out at the OK Corral than of a night at the opera.” New York Magazine 01/28/02
SO NO ARRESTING SALLY MANN, GOT IT? “Massachusetts’ highest court has overturned the child pornography conviction of an art student who photographed a 15-year-old girl with her breasts exposed. The Supreme Judicial Court said Monday that John C. Bean, who was taking courses at the Worcester Art Museum, ‘had no lascivious intent’ and the pictures were ‘neither obscene nor pornographic.’ A judge had sentenced Bean to six months’ probation on a charge of ‘posing a child in the nude.’ Bean also faced having to register as a sex offender.” Nando Times (AP) 01/28/02
Monday January 28
ARTIST SUES CATHOLICS: A California artist is suing the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and its president for $100 million for comments the group made in protesting an art exhibition in Napa. The Catholic League had protested Catalan artist Antoni Miralda’s exhibit of the pope, some nuns and Fidel Castro defecating. Catholic League president derided the exhibit and asked: “Now I get it: To show his appreciation of Mother Earth, Miralda had to show the pope and nuns defecating. But why couldn’t he have chosen the Lone Ranger and Tonto instead? Or better yet, just Tonto and a few of his Indian buddies?” Jon Howard, a part Cherokee artist who lives in Santa Rosa is suing, claiming the remarks were libelous. San Francisco Chronicle 01/25/02
- Previously: PROTESTING A DEFECATING POPE: An exhibition at the Copia Museum in California features “defecating ceramic figurines of the pope, nuns and angels.” Catholic groups are protesting. The museum says the figures are “caganers” or “figurines are part of Spain’s Catalonian peasant tradition dating back to the 18th century.” But a Catholic spokesman says: “When it’s degrading, everybody knows it except the spin doctors who run the museums.” Nando Times (AP) 01/06/02
IS OXFORD FALLING BEHIND? Oxford is one of the world’s great universities. It is “a byword for Britain’s ancient scholarly traditions and still one of the country’s best-known cultural symbols, finds itself having to prove that it has an equally meaningful future – or else risk the fate described by a onetime professor of economics here, of ‘sliding gradually into mediocrity’. Unthinkable as it might once have been, too, Oxford has seen its academic reputation successfully challenged by other British institutions of higher learning that, until recently, were not even considered fully fledged universities.” Chronicle of Higher Education 01/25/02
Sunday January 27
ARTISTIC OUTPOURING: “Immediately after Sept. 11, thousands of people in New York and around the world set out to capture the meaning of those events through artistic expression. In the intervening months, thousands more have joined the effort, resulting in what may turn out to be the largest creative response in history to a single day’s event. Poetry, prose, dance, architecture, photography, soundscapes, TV, popular music, theatre, comic books, film, painting and sculpture: They have all grappled with the attacks and their aftermath, in the process provoking questions about the nature of art, its practical usefulness, and the legitimacy of artistic aspirations by non-artists.” But while such art may be therapeutic, is it good? “With art that is made in response to an immediate situation, it is rare that that kind of work is able to go beyond commemorating or documenting in the most straightforward manner.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/26/02
- RUSH TO MEMORY: Why rush to produce memorials for the events of September 11? There are so many proposals and ideas. “This is partly because America’s hurry-up, need-it-now culture can’t spare the time to let consensus develop organically. We’re too impatient to let historical perspective determine what is sufficiently important to cast in bronze. Still we insist on public memorials, even though interest-group politics complicates the process considerably. No public monument can satisfy everyone, but today, it seems, it’s difficult for a monument to satisfy anyone.” Philadelphia Inquirer 01/27/02
GAY FUND PLAYS IT STRAIGHT: Colorado Springs is not exactly a tolerant place for gays and lesbians (the city is famous for an anti-gay rights initiative passed in the early 1990s). But today Colorado Springs is home to the Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado, which “since its inception in 1997 has become part of the fourth-largest foundation in Colorado. It has awarded more than $7.3 million, including $2.9 million to arts and culture organizations.” The fund has an agenda – it “provides money only to nongay-specific organizations and productions.” Denver Post 01/27/02
THE GREAT VANILLA MIDDLE: How’s this for a definition of the middle class – “pacific, tolerant, secular, preferring prudence and profits to glory, conscious of itself as a group and, crucially, inward-looking to the point of neurosis.” A new book charts how “throughout the 19th century, this minority – just 12 per cent of western populations – grew in influence until it ruled cultural and political life. ‘The lower orders can feel but not speak, the aristocracy can speak but has nothing to say; only the bourgeoisie interpret and express the national will,’ the French critic Emile Faguet wrote in 1890. What was it like to belong to this elite?” Financial Times 01/25/02
Friday January 25
MARKERS: What is an appropriate memorial for the destruction of the World Trade Center? New York is full of memorials to other tragedies. “Those commemorating large-scale tragedy assume an astonishing variety of forms, from a 148-foot Doric column to a pocketful of blackened dimes and nickels. But each embodies the notion that even the most appalling catastrophe is part of a living continuum.” The New York Times 01/25/02
- INSTA-ART: A flood of new artwork coming out responds to the events of September 11. But “can good art can really be summoned up on demand like that, even in response to cataclysm?” Some of the best, most enduring artistic responses to tragedy haven’t appeared until years after the events. Public Arts 01/24/02
MADE TO ORDER: This year’s Adelaide Festival is showing films. But unlike most festivals that collect up films to showcase, Adelaide has commissioned artists to make movies just for the festival. The Age (Melbourne) 01/25/02
Thursday January 24
AT THE MERCY OF THE DONOR LIST: The collapse of Houston-based Enron Corporation has sent shock waves through Wall Street and Washington, and launched a whole new slew of late-night TV jokes. But the wholesale disappearance of such a massive company is having a potentially devastating effect on Houston’s already shaky arts scene. Replacing a donor who regularly drops tens of thousands of dollars on local ballets, symphonies, and playhouses is a herculean task. Andante 01/24/02
HELPING MANHATTAN ARTISTS: The Andy Warhol Foundation has given $600,000 to help artists in Lower Manhattan. “The grants of $15,000 to $25,000 will go to 29 small to midsize visual arts organizations in Lower Manhattan that have financial hardships. ‘We really feel strongly that these groups are just vital to the city’.” The New York Times 01/24/02
Wednesday January 23
TAKING A NATIONAL VIEW: The Scottish Arts Council’s new chairman has a reputation for being tough. He’s set himself a big task. “The arts council must match the significance of the circumstances. It’s got to take a national view, to lift its head from administrative purposes and say: ‘Look what can we do to push Scotland on’. It has to make far more impact, so it’s got to be riskier as well.” The Scotsman 01/23/02
Monday January 21
ENGLISH AS AN ENCROACHING LANGUAGE: English is turning up more and more in German speech and writing. “The unhostile takeover of English in trade journals, at conventions and in scientists’ and economists’ ‘speechlessness’ with regard to German have fostered a dilution of democratic discourse.” Will the Germans follow the French and set up a national council to “protect” German from the encroachment of English? Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 01/21/02
Sunday January 20
OBVIOUSLY A SOCIALIST-ELITIST PLOT: “As American schools struggle to beef up test scores and lift attendance and graduation rates, millions of dollars are being spent to send squadrons of unlikely heroes — musicians, dancers, poets and painters — into classrooms. Minnesota is helping to lead this massive educational experiment, even as critics point out that no concrete evidence supports this approach as either cost-effective or beneficial to children.” Minneapolis Star Tribune 01/20/02
RANKING THE EGGHEADS: A new book purports to examine the top intellectuals in America, quantifying their importance largely by how widespread their reputation is. A high number of Lexis-Nexis hits counts for more than a substantive idea, making for a predictably controversial list. Is Dinesh D’Souza washed up? Was Lionel Trilling overrated? And what the hell is Sidney Blumenthal doing anywhere near a list of intellectuals? The New York Times 01/19/02 (one-time registration required for access)
Friday January 18
REINSTATING AN OLD ART FORM: Soviet communists, in their zeal to stamp out religious influences, stripped their nation’s churches. Almost the first things to go were the bells: they were melted down to make power cables and tractor parts. Now, with a resurgence of religion, there’s a demand for replacements. So Russian metal-workers are trying to relearn the old art of casting bells. The Moscow Times (AP) 01/18/02
Thursday January 17
BAD SIGN FOR THE THEATRE? “In a new survey of 1,002 adults ages 18 and older, the Gallup Organization found that the overwhelming majority of Americans prefer home-based activities to a night on the town. In fact, only 10 percent said they’d go out.” Christian Science Monitor 01/16/02
THE AESTHETICS OF ART: Artists tend to be repelled by aesthetics, for a number of reasons. Many are suspicious that too much analyzing of their art will harm their creativity; it will encourage them to develop their rational ego at the expense of their creative unconscious. Or they suspect that aesthetic analysis will have no effect on them, that thinking about art in this way is simply useless. Aesthetics-online 01/02
Wednesday January 16
GERMANY’S CULTURAL STATESMAN: “The Goethe Institute is responsible for Germany’s cultural policies on the international front. And lately the institute has not enjoyed many opportunities for relaxed cheerfulness – though perhaps this is about to change” as a new president is chosen. “The job of president of the Goethe Institute has the cachet of statesmanship – after all, this most prestigious instrument of Germany’s foreign cultural policy has roughly 3,500 employees in 128 cultural institutes in 76 countries, and the presidency is an internationally visible position. But it is also an almost volunteer position, which is why other candidates of retirement age, who prefer better remuneration in their declining years, have indicated their lack of interest.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 01/16/02
NY CUTTING BACK CULTURAL SPENDING: New York’s cultural institutions are preparing for big cutbacks in funding from the city. City departments have been asked to plan for budget cutbacks of 25 percent. “Since no one wants to go back to the days when they didn’t paint the bridges, cultural projects will be at the bottom of the list. And when they get to the bottom of the list, there’s going to be nothing left.” The New York Times 01/16/02
WHO WILL HEAD NYT SUNDAY ARTS? Who will succeed John Rockwell as editor of the New York Times Sunday arts section? “Since last month, the name of Kurt Andersen has landed on lists of those believed to have spoken with [executive editor] Howell Raines about the job. But Andersen — former editor of New York magazine, co-founder of Inside.com and host of an arts program on National Public Radio — said he’s had no talks and doesn’t want the job.” Raines is believed to want the section to take on more popular culture. New York Daily News 01/15/02
- Previously: NYT CHANGING ARTS COVERAGE? New York Times Arts & Leisure editor John Rockwell has announced he’s stepping down from the job. Rockwell says Howell Raines, the Times new editor, wants to change the paper’s cultural coverage. “I found out Howell Raines wanted to take this section in a new direction – which, I might add, is perfectly within his rights as executive editor. Howell wants to take it more in a populist direction, more popular culture’.” New York Observer 12/19/01
Tuesday January 15
MAYOR LEAVES ART TO CRITICS: New York’s Jewish Museum is opening a show in March that looks at the growing artistic use of symbols from the Nazi era. But while religious leaders are bound to protest, don’t look for coercion from the city’s new mayor Unlike previous mayor Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg plans to stay out of debates over art: “I am opposed to government censorship of any kind. I don’t think the government should be in the business of telling museums what is art or what they should exhibit.” The New York Times 01/14/02
THE EDUCATION PRESIDENT: That’s what George Bush wants to be. “This year’s reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is widely regarded as the most ambitious federal overhaul of public schools since the 1960s. States will now test all students annually from third to eighth grade, while launching a federally guided drive for universal literacy among schoolchildren. Perhaps more strikingly, a political party that once called for the abolition of the Education Department has radically enhanced the federal presence in public schools. After repeating the mantra of local control and states’ rights for a generation, the GOP now intrudes on both. What has happened?” The Nation 01/14/02
REDUCED FOR NOISE: The Sydney Fringe Festival begins this week. There are 73 events in the 16-day program, “yet this year’s Fringe has suffered a massive budget set-back” because the “noise police” have clamped down on one of the more popular large events. Sydney Morning Herald 01/15/02
Monday January 14
WE LOVE L.A.: While many arts groups across America have had tough times since September 11 (falling attendance, donations and revenues, causing layoffs and a scaling back of activity) Los Angeles arts groups seem to have done fine. “Their income for 2001 may be flat or down slightly, but top officials say they know of no layoffs at major Southern California cultural organizations and only a few cancellations in this year’s schedules.” Los Angeles Times 01/14/02
EDUCATION SPENDING CONTINUES TO RISE: As the economy has slowed in the US, so has spending on higher education. A survey of states says that appropriations for higher education are up this year by 4.6 percent, the “smallest such increase in five years.” Still, adjusted for inflation, state spending on higher education rose by 2.7 percent going into 2001-2. Chronicle of Higher Education 01/14/02
Friday January 11
THE WHY’S WHY OF SMART: Even people who made the “top intellectual” list are skeptical about it. After all, why consider Thomas Friedman but not Maureen Dowd? Why say you don’t count novelists (who have an iffy claim on intellectual status anyway) if you then include Toni Morrison and Aldous Huxley? The New Republic 12/31/01
- WHAT’S IT TAKE? “Let us now stipulate that it is a goddamned outrage that [your name here] and/or [your friends’ names here] were not included, and that [your enemies’ names here] were. Restitution can and must be sought in the courts.” Slate 01/07/02
- Previously: WHO’S WHO OF SMART: A new book attempts to determine who America’s leading intellectuals are by counting media mentions. Dumb methodology but great fun. “The top public intellectual by media mentions in the last five years turns out to be Henry Kissinger, followed by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Sidney Blumenthal comes in seventh, which of course undermines the entire enterprise.” New York Observer 01/02/02
Thursday January 10
CANADA’S FAILING ARTS: A Canada Council report studying Canada’s largest arts institutions comes to a depressing conclusion: “that the big arts groups have reached the limits of their growth in a society that increasingly can find no more public nor private money to pay for them.” Attendance is static or falling, public funding has dropped, and private fundraising hasn’t kept up. “Do we need the debt-laden Toronto Symphony? Should we tell the Stratford Festival that, with a $2-million surplus to its credit, it no longer requires public subsidy? Will the National Ballet still be worthy of the name when it has only 35 dancers and never tours?” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/10/02
ARTS CLUB RAIDED: New York’s venerable 104-year-old National Arts Club was raided by police last Friday. Police “arrived at the crack of dawn with a search warrant and orders to raid the club’s administrative offices as part of an investigation into possible grand larceny and tax evasion. The club has been rocked by controversies in recent years, and some members fear that “some of the club’s sizable art collection, which the 1997 audit said had an appraised value of $4.9 million, could be sacrificed to pay for the club’s legal bills.” New York Observer 01/09/02
CAUGHT IN THE CULTURE WAR: Performance artist William Pope.L was one of two artists whose grants from the National Endowment for the Arts were held up by the then acting head of the NEA last month. Though money was later approved for a production of Tony Kushner’s Kabul play was later approved, Pope.L’s grant has not been released. Says the artist: “The NEA has an institutional responsibility not to bring besmirchment to or blacken, if I may, their character by valuing work that can possibly bring criticism on them. But in limiting themselves, they encourage a particular way of looking at American culture, don’t they?” Village Voice 01/09/02
Wednesday January 9
DECLINE IN ARTS FUNDING FROM UK LOTTERY? The arts’ tremendous building boom in the UK in the past seven years has been largely the result of big slugs of cash from the National Lottery. But the lottery’s take in the past six months is down five percent, falling to £668 million for the half year, down from £708 million in a similar period the year before. The arts stand to get about 16 percent of the total, and this is the third year in a row that lottery revenues are declining. The Art Newspaper 01/08/02
TRYING FOR A RETURN TO BEAUTY AND LIGHT: It’s a tough time for newspaper columnists. There is a lingering sense that to write about anything but the aftereffects of September 11 would be disrespectful, or at least ignorant of current priorities, and yet life has moved on, and many writers are desperate to return to the days when, if they felt like sitting down at the keyboard and banging out 1200 words on narrative form, they could do so. But how to ignore the daily barrage of war news? The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 01/09/02
Monday January 7
ADELAIDE MAKEOVER: Having purged Peter Sellars as director of this year’s Adelaide Festival, the festival has revealed a new lineup that keeps some of the Sellars fare and adds new performers. Still at the heart of the festival is John Adams’ El Nino directed by Sellars. The Age (Melbourne) 01/07/02
Sunday January 6
PROTECTING IDEAS TO DEATH: “Lawrence Lessig’s passionate new book, ‘The Future of Ideas, argues that America’s concern with protecting intellectual property has become an oppressive obsession. ”The distinctive feature of modern American copyright law,’ he writes, ‘is its almost limitless bloating.’ As Lessig sees it, a system originally designed to provide incentives for innovation has increasingly become a weapon for attacking cutting-edge creativity. Why, Lessig asks, does American law increasingly protect the interests of the old guard over those of the vanguard?” The New York Times 01/06/02
THE IDEA OF GENIUS: “Do any artists deserve a transcendent label? At one time such questions would have seemed somewhat strange. Philosophers have argued about how to define genius, not about whether it exists. But challenges to the idea’s validity have become commonplace in recent years. Genius has been judged to be little more than a product of good marketing or good politicking.” The New York Times 01/05/02
CHANGE OF VENUE: In the past decade new performing arts venues have sprung up all over Atlanta. But some have not lived up to their extravagant ambitions. “Now, facing serious deficits, an unforgiving economy and a loss of creative leadership, two of the biggest halls are confronting their greatest challenges. The question is not whether they can survive, but whether, in a newly competitive market, the venues can continue to be as experimental in their programming.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution 01/06/02
OF INTELLIGENCE AND MORALITY: A new book looks at the politics of intelligent people. “It is now a commonplace – but for all that still unnerving – that it was very often not merely the stupid but the highly intelligent who gave their support to the Hitlers and the Stalins of the last century. Anyone in search of an explanation for this fact might therefore think it better to look not to the quality of mind of these devotees but rather to their character, their moral psychology. This is an intricate, treacherous field of inquiry, and one for which we have no particularly powerful philosophical idiom: since at least the 18th century, philosophers have given over the matter to novelists, and the older vocabularies – of corruptibility, of akrasia, or weakness of will – no longer have broad intellectual resonance.” The New York Times 01/06/02
ART TO THE RESCUE: Like many charities, the New York Times’ Neediest Cases Fund has seen contributions decline since September 11. So the paper has decided to hold an auction of art to try to make up the shortfall. Artists donating work include Ross Bleckner, Louise Bourgeois, Larry Clark, Chuck Close, Gregory Crewdson, Jenny Holzer, William Kentridge, Sol LeWitt, Shirin Nashat, Nam June Paik, Doug and Cindy Sherman, Mike Starn and Christopher Wool. The Roy Lichtenstein Foundation has also contributed a painting by the late Pop artist.” The New York Times 01/05/02
Friday January 4
THE FUTURIST’S TOMORROW: “The future is coming up faster than ever, and it will not be long now before we drive our even bigger cars, fitted with instant e-mail communications, from the high-rise office built behind the façade of a fine old structure — façadism will be the architectural style of the era — to our exurban homes decorated with the odd Old Master leased by the year from the local museum in a curators’ brainwave we will call Rent-a-Rembrandt.” Or so says Faith Popcorn, who has something of an impressive record with such predictions. National Post (Canada) 01/04/02
Thursday January 3
LINCOLN CENTER SUFFERS MORE HITS: Lincoln Center’s controversial $1.2 billion refurbishment plans got a double hit Wednesday when new New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg “suggested that the project would have to be delayed” and that the city might have difficulty in following through with a promised $240 million contribution. Meanwhile, Lincoln Center’s interim executive director said she was leaving to head Philadelphia’s new Kimmel Performing Arts Center. The New York Times 01/03/02
HELPING ARTISTS, NOT CORPORATIONS: There are countless organizations devoted to funding art, and millions of dollars are spent every year by philanthropists doing their part to bring new works to the world. But most of the available cash comes in the form of grants that can only be applied for by incorporated non-profits, leaving independent artists out in the cold. But in Pennsylvania, a familiar foundation has begun devoting a good-sized chunk of change to helping out the proverbial “starving artist.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 01/03/02
Wednesday January 2
OLYMPICS CULTURAL CHIEF RESIGNS: The director of the Athens Cultural Olympics has resigned. The cultural event is to be held in conjunction with the 2004 Athens Olympics. “The resignation was the newest head-on blow to the 2004 Games organizers, who had been dogged by infighting, bureaucracy and delays. The International Olympic Committee has repeatedly warned Athens to quicken its work if it wants to host good Games. The Cultural Olympics, initially envisioned as similar to the ancient Greek poetry and art contests that were held along with sports competitions in Ancient Olympia, were one of Greece’s strong points in winning the bid for the 2004 Games.” Andante (Xinhua) 01/02/02
GOING FORWARD: Most novels are told in the past tense. But great art, great thinking happens in the present dreaming of the future. That’s really the essence of modernism – using the past to build a future rather than declaring the past and future as cause-and-effect. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/02/02
THIS YEAR’s CULTURAL CAPITALS: In promoting culture, the European Union has been choosing a “Cultural Capital” each year. The idea promotes the arts in those chosen cities and has spurred greater investment in the arts. “For 2002, there are two Cultural Capitals, both small, historic cities: Salamanca, in western-central Spain, and Brugge, near the coast of Belgium.” Chicago Tribune 01/01/02
Media: January 2002
Friday February 1
SEE KOREAN: Since 1967, Korea has had a film quota that requires local theaters to screen Korean films at least 146 days a year. The local film industry has been doing well, so now the government wants to drastically reduce the quota. Filmmakers are protesting. Korea Herald 02/01/02
BBC RADIO AT RECORD LISTENERSHIP: BBC Radio listenership is up, beating out all commercial radio stations. “The number of people listening to BBC Radio each week has risen by 300,000 since September, taking the total to 32.7 million – a record since new monitoring methods were introduced in 1999.” BBC 02/01/02
Thursday January 31
POOH FIGHT: Disney has helped turn Winnie the Pooh into a merchandising juggernaut. But the family of the literary agent who “bought the rights to Pooh from author AA Milne in 1929, have filed a suit to terminate Disney’s licence and to claim damages for ‘hundreds of millions’ of dollars.” The Guardian (UK) 01/30/02
THE BATTLE FOR WNYC: When New York public radio station WNYC lost its FM tower on the World Trade Center, its classical music programming got compressed to late night hours on its sister AM band. Now that FM is up and broadcasting again, the classical music hasn’t expanded to its former proportions again. Changes at the station signal a rift between WNYC’s ambitious corporate-style managers and more traditional staff. New York Observer 01/30/02
Wednesday January 30
LACK OF DIVERSITY: A new report chides the television industry once again for its white-maleness. “The report, which examined the 40 most popular series of the 2000-2001 season, reported that about 80% of drama and comedy episodes—or 663 of the 826 installments—were directed by white males. Black males directed 27 episodes, or about 3% of the total, while Latino males directed 15 episodes, or about 2%. Asian American males directed nine episodes. White females directed 87—or 11%—of the episodes.” Los Angeles Times 01/30/02
ARGENTINA – THE FUTURE IN FILM: Could anyone have predicted the collapse of Argentina? Bankers maybe. Also filmmakers: “The 1990s were a very false period. There was a lot of money around in a country that wasn’t growing. This feeling of menace that was coming was very clear many years ago. All these films are of course related to the situation.” The Guardian (UK) 01/30/02
VOTING WITH YOUR FEET: The ultimate, definitive criticism of a movie is simple and direct, and it’s available to anyone. Get up and walk out; if it’s really bad, demand your money back. People do it all the time. Well, some of the time. “The movie doesn’t even have to be a bomb. The films people leave the most are frequently also the most admired.” Los Angeles Times 01/30/02
Tuesday January 29
BAFTA NOMINEES: The British Bafta Award nominations are out. Nominated for best fim are: The Lord Of The Rings and Moulin Rouge (each picked up 12 nominations), the French-language hit Amelie, A Beautiful Mind, the animated adventure Shrek. Winners are announced Feruary 24. BBC 01/29/02
HOW TO WIN AN OSCAR: “It is Oscar season, when the great and the good of California’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gather, ponder the relative merits of the year’s best actors and films, and finally, amid great fanfare and weird interpretative dance numbers, give the Oscar to someone else.” So, if making a great film doesn’t get it done, what rules must be followed to take home the little gold man? Hmmm, where to begin? National Post (Daily Telegraph) 01/28/02
Monday January 28
HARD STUFF/HARD DECISIONS: “Last month, NBC began accepting ads for Smirnoff vodka, marking the first time such ads are appearing on broadcast networks since the programmers adopted a voluntary ban on the products shortly after the Second World War. Almost immediately after NBC’s announcement, an avalanche of attacks came crashing down onto NBC’s peacock tail, sending the billion-dollar network into a fetal position.” But the policy about hard liquor ads and TV is deeply conflicted… The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/28/02
Sunday January 27
DANGEROUS TO BE SO BIG? Clear Channel Communications now has its fingers in more and more of the average American’s entertainment choices. The company “garnered relatively little attention as it evolved during the 1990s from a family owned San Antonio radio chain into an international conglomerate that is now the size of NBC. Today it is the nation’s largest radio owner, and a world leader in outdoor advertising. And it is the largest promoter and presenter of live entertainment on the planet; CCE promotes and/or produces 26,000 events a year, drawing 62 million people to its 135 theaters, arenas, and amphitheaters around the globe, the company says.” Boston Globe 01/27/02
THE OSCAR SECRETS: Want to win an Oscar? Here’s how: “We all know that the Oscars bear scant relation to the merits of the films in question. So what do they bear relation to? In order to answer this question, we processed the winners and losers of the past 20 years into a computer and asked it to come up with a set of rules as to how you win an Oscar.” Some hints – it helps to be disabled and have a rousing end to your film. The Telegraph (UK) 01/26/02
Friday January 25
PRODUCE THIS: Movies and TV shows seem to be overrun with various types of ‘producers’ in some form or another. “Who are these people? What do they do? Do they get paid? Why do they need so many of them? These are legitimate questions. For while there are thousands of people roaming the streets of Los Angeles claiming to be producers, it takes more than a business card and an ugly sports jacket to truly merit the title. Moreover, even real producers carry less weight now that a few giant companies have swallowed Hollywood.” Los Angeles Times 01/24/02
THE SAD SACKS AT THE GOLDEN GLOBES: Why does anyone care about the Golden Globe Awards. They’re voted by the foreign press – “which is comprised of 80 journalists about whom movie folk could not care less during the other 11 months of the year. I have lived in Hollywood; I have seen the foreign press, and a more motley consortium of lumpy, hard-boiled, cocktail-happy flacks you could never meet. Agents, publicists and stars, do their best to avoid them (except during awards season), meeting them only in strictly supervised round-table interviews, chuckling behind their backs at their softball questions.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/25/02
TALK ABOUT REALITY: A Russian “reality TV” program shows a dozen young men and women living together in a single apartment. Cameras record their every action, and one-way mirrors let passers-by in the street watch as well. And it continues, regardless of the fact that the channel which used to broadcast it has been shut down. Moscow Times 01/24/02
Thursday January 24
MINORITY RECRUITING: Two years ago the major American TV networks came under fire for their lack of minority actors on programs. Now the networks are hosting “talent workshops” in an effort to recruit more minority actors. Critics say it’s about time: “We expect to see real change in the new shows, or else we’re going to have a real problem. The new shows will be announced in May, and we see it as a make or break time for the networks.” Toronto Star 01/23/02
Wednesday January 23
AMÉLIE OVERTAKES LA CAGE: “Amélie, the little French movie that could, has broken a longstanding record to become the highest-grossing French-language film to be released in the United States. Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s whimsical tale has grossed $20.9 million, breaking the previous record, $20.4 million, held by La Cage Aux Folles since 1979. Last week Amélie crossed the $100 million mark for worldwide box-office receipts.” New York Post 01/23/02
BRITISH FILM INDUSTRY SAGS: According to the British Film Commission, “British film production dropped sharply in 2001, largely because of the threat of a strike by members of the U.S. film actors’ union; overall Britain’s film industry was worth about $602-million last year, compared with $1.1-billion in 2000.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/22/02
AUSSIE ASSAULT: With Australian movie folk cleaning up awards at the Golden Globes this week, “the Aussie assault was the main topic of conversation at the Globes’ after parties and on entertainment shows this morning.” The Age (Melbourne) 01/23/02
- AUSSIE HOTBED: Everyone’s talking about the film talent coming from Down Under right now. Says Steven Spielberg: “Australia has produced the most amazing new wave of talent since, probably, Britain in the 1940s.” The Age (Melbourne) 01/23/02
MORE THAN EVER, ART IS GROUNDED IN SCIENCE: “Increasingly, science, math and technology have emerged as serious themes in creative endeavors such as the current film A Beautiful Mind, recent plays such as Proof, Copenhagen, Arcadia and Q.E.D., the novels of writers Richard Powers and Andrea Barrett, and the visual artwork of Eduardo Kac. You cannot hope to understand contemporary life without a hard look at the ways that science and technology have overhauled every aspect of material existence.” Chicago Tribune 01/20/02
THE BBC AND ARTS: The BBC has come under fire recently for its arts programming. Some charge the corporation is lessening its commitment to the arts and plans to “ghettoize” the arts on the BBC’s new digital service. But BBC head Greg Dyke denies the charges: “Arts programmes would continue to take up a minimum of 230 hours a year across BBC One and BBC Two, he said, instead of being shifted to new digital channel BBC Four when it launches in March.” BBC 01/23/02
- SIGNAL TO NOISE: Has the BBC been reducing the quality of its digital audio bitrate signal? The music hasn’t been as crisp… Gramophone 01/23/02
Tuesday January 22
NOT MUCH OF A STRIKE, THEN, IS IT? The UK film industry is reeling from the effects of an actors’ strike that has been going on since December. Or is it? Despite calls for British actors to refuse all work until a settlement is reached, the union has allowed some studios to cross the picket line and sign individual deals with stars so current big-budget Hollywood productions are not halted. BBC 01/22/02
RECORD YEAR FOR AUSTRALIAN MOVIES: The Australian movie business did well last year. “Australian box office takings leapt to a record $812 million from $689.5 million in 2000. However, the news for locally made films was not entirely positive, with their market share slipping marginally from 7.9 to 7.8 per cent in 2001.” Sydney Morning Herald 01/22/02
Monday January 21
MOULIN ROUGE/BEAUTIFUL MIND BIG WINNERS AT GLOBES: Golden Globes, as chosen by the Hollywood foreign press, are given out. Best movies awards go to A Beautiful Mind and Moulin Rouge, which can be considered front-runners for the Academy Awards. Los Angeles Times 01/21/02
- COMING OUT PARTY: For many, the frivolity seemed to mark a psychic turning point for the industry. Hollywood was not only buffeted by the terrorist attacks, but also a slowdown in production due in part to a flood of activity in the first part of 2001 spurred by the threat of strikes. “The Hollywood movie business was completely stalled out for very good reason after 9/11. Now that there’s becoming enough distance between that tragic event and today, people are feeling very eager to work. Los Angeles Times 01/21/02
- TEDIOUS EXERCISE: The “59th Annual Golden Globe Awards, which anointed Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind as the flick to beat at the Oscars in March, was about as tedious as the longest Academy Award show. Ever.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution 01/21/02
SUNDANCE FINISHES STRONG: Expectations were definitely not high for this year’s Sundance Festival. But then, “the dark and innovative films that made up much of this year’s roster began to create a stir, and suddenly the odor of infirmity drifted away. Movies were selling left and right last week for more money than anyone would have predicted before the festival began on Jan. 10.” The New York Times 01/21/02
- THE MOST-HATED FILM AT SUNDANCE: Director Gus Van Sant used to be an art-film director. Then, after a breakout hit, he wasn’t. At this year’s Sundance he was back in high-art form again. “His feature Gerry may be one of the most hated movies in American film-festival history.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/21/02
Sunday January 20
AND THE WINNER IS… “Personal Velocity, a movie trilogy about three women confronted with momentous life crises, won the Sundance Film Festival’s grand jury prize Saturday, taking top dramatic honors at the 11-day independent cinema showcase. Sundance jurors gave the documentary grand jury prize to Daughter From Danang, which follows an Amerasian child of a Vietnamese woman and U.S. soldier who searches for her natural mother years after she was adopted by an American woman.” Nando Times (AP) 01/19/02
- SUNDANCE DOOR OPENS A LITTLE WIDER: The Sundance Film Festival is arguably the most successful showcase of independent film in the U.S. But for an event that purports to give voice to those normally shunned by major studios, Sundance has a fairly spotty record when it comes to screeing films by racial minorities. This year, however, the tide may be turning. Washington Post 01/19/02
LET’S HEAR IT FOR VOLTRON! “Japanese film has probably never been as popular internationally as it is right now. Its popularity, though, is not grounded in live action films, but in the animated features and television series that have come to be known as anime. It has been estimated that anime now account for 60 percent of Japanese film production.” The New York Times 01/20/02 (one-time registration required for access)
Friday January 18
THE GLORIES OF NEPOTISM: How do you get a job of have a movie made in Hollywood? You gotta know someone. “In fact, Hollywood happens to be one of the more democratic places to make it, so eager are they for the next big thing, so willing to believe that you could be It, or you, or you. It’s standard practice in L.A. that no phone call goes unreturned (even if it means rolling calls, deliberately returning them when they know you’ll be out), because everybody could end up working with anybody at any time.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/18/02
Thursday January 17
GOING TO PRAGUE: Where are all the movies going? To Prague. “A multi-million-dollar film industry has made Prague, the Czech capital, a European moviemaking mecca, second only to London. Since the fall of communism 11 years ago, hundreds of foreign productions have come here to take advantage of its extraordinarily low costs, highly skilled technicians, and stunning locations.” Christian Science Monitor 01/16/02
Wednesday January 16
THE DECLINE OF DISNEY? “After a renaissance in the mid-80s and for much of the 90s, Disney has been sliding. Its movie business is scoring fewer hits, attendance at theme parks has been disappointing of late. The company had its fingers severely burnt online and was forced to close an ambitious internet portal early last year and dissolved what was a separate new-media division.” The Guardian (UK) 01/15/02
Tuesday January 15
CLAIMS FOR FLOP INSURANCE: Banks financing Hollywood movies are going to court to try to collect on insurance claims worth more than $1 billion for movies that were flops. “Hundreds of cases are stacked up on both sides of the Atlantic, as London’s insurance market resists paying out on a slew of cinematic turkeys. Banks had lent money for productions with “shortfall insurance” – “policies that pay up if a film fails to make its projected revenue within (typically) two to three years.” Financial Times 01/14/02
CLOUDS AT SUNDANCE: The Sundance Festival is in full bloom, and there’s lots of good fare. But “the combination of several factors has shaped feelings about the festival beyond this. There is the important anniversary for an event that has visibly altered the shape of filmmaking, and there is the residue of the slumping economy. Though Main Street was a scramble of visitors dashing from one party to the next, as it was last year, a bit of a cloud hangs over the festival.” The New York Times 01/15/02
- A SERIOUS FOCUS: The opening festivities at Sundance this year have been dominated by films with extremely sober subjects. One focuses on the murder of Matthew Shephard, beaten to death in Wyoming because he was gay. Another, a documentary, examines the brutal dragging death of James Byrd in Jasper, Texas. Throw in a dark comedy about a sorority girl in love with a handicapped discus-thrower, and the festival is looking awfully edgy, even for independent film. Dallas Morning News 01/15/02 (one-time registration required for access)
SCORE ONE FOR THE CLASSICS: Okay, so country music may not exactly be Mozart. But in Nashville, and indeed across much of America, country is as classic as it gets, and “regular folks” are as loyal to it as opera fans. So when a legendary Nashville AM station (flagship of the Grand Ole Opry) announced it would be moving to a talk format, the listeners revolted. None of this, of course, is unusual in an age of huge broadcasting conglomerates. What is unusual is that the effort worked, and WSM will stay country, and stay unique in a sea of generic radio blather. Nashville Tennessean 01/15/02
RIPPING OFF EGYPTIAN MOVIES: Video piracy isn’t only a problem for American movies. Egyptian filmmakers estimate they lose $15 million in revenues a year due to video pirates. “Pirates manage to get a copy of a movie as soon as it is released, either on video cassette (mostly from Saudi Arabia) or on imported laser discs, sometimes recording them from the cinemas directly using a camcorder. These are then duplicated and distributed to the 2,000-odd video rental stores and clubs that specialize in selling pirated cassettes.” Middle East Times 01/11/02
INDEPENDENT FROM WHAT, EXACTLY? “Independent film companies Intermedia and Spyglass Entertainment Group on Monday announced a merger agreement that will form one of the world’s largest independent film companies. The merger is expected to be completed by the end of February.” Dallas Morning News (AP) 01/15/02 (one-time registration required for access)
Monday January 14
TAX BREAKS FOR HOLLYWOOD: California governor Gray Davis proposes tax breaks for movie companies shooting their productions in California. “Hollywood’s unions have pushed for years for state and federal incentives to fight runaway production. Canada’s weak dollar, combined with government incentives, make shooting there about 25% cheaper. Roughly one in four U.S.-developed productions shoot in foreign countries, mostly Canada. Los Angeles Times 01/13/02
Sunday January 13
THE RE/SELF-EDITED MOVIE: Fans are editing commercial movies on their own computers. A new artform, as some claim? Nope. “Digital technology may make it easier to appropriate and reinterpret existing art. But the tendency itself, the urge to do so, is a psychologically crucial element of contemporary thinking, and has more to do with zeitgeist than with technology. Quite simply, reappropriation is what we do these days, in high art and mass media: It’s part of postmodernity.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/12/02
GETTING TO THE THEATRE ON TIME: It has a script, then it doesn’t have a script. It has a $20 million budget, then it has a $6 million budget… how do movies ever get made? Here’s the chronicle of one movie-making experience. The Guardian (UK) 01/12/02
Friday January 11
DIGITAL IS YESTERDAY’S NEWS: The past two years, “digital” was the word at the Sundance Festival. “But the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, which opens here Thursday, looks to be relatively free of new-tech buzz. Press releases trumpeting the latest digital video innovations – a fax-jamming feature of Sundances past – have slowed to a trickle, and the Sundance press office seems to be barely keeping track of which films are digital and which aren’t.” Wired 01/10/02
PLAY ME AGAIN SAM: Now there’s no need for old actors to die on screen when they die in real life – they can just be digitized and live forever. The practice is growing in movies and in TV commercials. “With technology being where it is, hearse-loads of dead people could get in on the act. Computer graphics imaging (CGI) can create very convincing replicas of specific human beings. At the same time speech generation software replicates voices so successfully that to our merely human ears the sound is an exact duplicate.” Sydney Morning Herald 01/11/02
UNFRIENDLY? A Canadian conservation officer shut down an expensive film shoot in the Canadian Rockies for an American TV commercial this week because the crew didn’t have a required $57 permit. The incident has become very public and critics are charging that the government isn’t being helpful enough in helping American productions that want to film in Canada. “It’s just bad public relations. It’s an embarrassment to the Alberta tourism and film industry.” National Post 01/11/02
Thursday January 10
BACKING AWAY FROM THE FAMILY: Family-friendly programs been a centerpiece of TV programming since day one. But no more, at least not at NBC. “We don’t see them as really the kinds of shows that are in our wheelhouse,” says the network’s west coast president. As for those successful family shows on Fox and ABC, “They don’t have the upscale demos that we want that would allow us to keep them on the air.” Nando Times 01/09/02
Wednesday January 9
SAGGING SPIRITS: “Hollywood’s actors union, The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) has announced plans to re-run its hotly disputed presidential contest. Former Little House on the Prairie star Melissa Gilbert was elected president last November by a large majority over rival actress Valerie Harper, who starred in Rhoda. However it has since emerged that the vote violated the union’s constitution.” BBC 01/09/02
Tuesday January 8
BUILDING A CULTURAL INFRASTRUCTURE: The Canadian government wants to invest in the “construction of a Canadian cultural infrastructure on the web.” But how to build it? “This is the medium that will be the chief means to reach people now in the 13-17 age group.” One group of multimedia artists thinks they have the answer. Toronto Star 01/07/02
JUST WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS: “Leni Riefenstahl, who produced masterful propaganda films for the Nazis, plans her first movie release in nearly 50 years to coincide with her 100th birthday this summer. Impressions Under Water, a 45-minute film about the underwater world of the Indian Ocean, is the result of dives between 1974 and 2000, Riefenstahl told Germany’s Die Welt newspaper in a rare interview.” Toronto Star (AP) 01/08/02
Monday January 7
DVD’S ARE HOT: “The number of films sold on DVD more than doubled last year, to more than 37 million, according to industry figures. Almost 2.4 million DVD players were also bought in the past year, 550,000 of them in the run-up to Christmas, the British Video Association (BVA) says.” BBC 01/06/02
DIGITAL RADIO: Will people pay for radio? Apparently: Digital radio is hot. “Since its national debut in mid- November, XM Satellite Radio has sold 25,000 to 30,000 subscriptions to its new national radio service, XM Radio. In the same period, consumer electronics stores sold nearly an equal number of the specialized radios necessary to receive the signals, making national satellite radio one of the fastest-growing new products the audio industry has seen in years.” The New York Times 01/07/02
BEST FILM OF 2001: The National Society of Film Critics voted Mulholland Drive as the best movie of 2001. “Robert Altman’s satirical Gosford Park came in second as best picture, while the fantasy hit The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was third.” Nando Times (AP) 01/06/02
SELF-CENSORSHIP IN SPADES: Don’t like a scene in a movie you’d like to watch at home? Three companies in Utah “have developed technology that allows DVDs to be manipulated and cleaned up.” You can edit out that offensive sex scene or clean up the violence. “Wouldn’t it have been easier, perhaps, to skip the movie? Why not say to young Jimmy, ‘Son, The Matrix is too violent. We’re not going to buy that DVD for you. But here, have this Lassie movie instead. Now, let’s go get some hot cocoa.” San Francisco Chronicle 01/06/02
THE VALUES THING: The White House is encouraging filmmakers to make movies with “American values.” But “what would a film bursting with ‘American values’ actually look like? Probably what the president and his advisors had in mind are films that celebrate patriotism or wholesome attributes such as family togetherness, self-sacrifice and courage under fire. But are any of these upright virtues inherently American?” Los Angeles Times 01/06/02
FEEDING ON ITSELF: The FBI’s famous internet surveillance program has become inspiration for a group of new-media artists. “In a collaborative art project called, creatively enough, Carnivore, Flash guru Joshua Davis and digital artist Mark Napier, along with other artists, have crafted programs that create audiovisual representations of data traffic that’s observed and hijacked from a local area network.” Wired 01/06/02
Sunday January 6 RINGS PICKS UP FIRST AWARDS: The American Film Institute kicks off the awards season by naming the best of the big and little screens Saturday night. AFI decides Lord of the Rings is the best movie of 2001. Chicago Sun-Times 01/06/02
- WHAT WAS THE YEAR’S BEST MOVIE? There seems to be no consensus “best movie” of the year among American film critics. Here’s a list of critics’ Top 10 lists for 2001. Chicago Tribune 01/06/02
SUNDANCE TURNS 20: “Sundance used to be shorthand for artistic legitimacy, a way for filmmakers to place themselves firmly outside the corrupt commercial imperatives of the studio system. Then the studios jumped atop the bandwagon. As the Sundance Institute celebrates its 20th anniversary with the start of its annual film festival on Thursday, organizers are grappling with how to maintain the fest’s indie appeal and credibility, while accepting the fact that the 10-day event has been co-opted by many of the major studios as just another way to grab attention for a movie.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/05/02
THE CAMERA LIES: When Michael Jackson appeared on a TV special last fall, producers thought he looked too white compared to his brothers, so they “color corrected” him on the screen. Then they thought Whitney Houston looked too skinny, so they added a little weight to her in post-production. “Over the past two decades, the advent of digital technology and the increasing sophistication of CGI (computer graphics interface) software has radically transformed production of everything from feature films and television shows to music videos and advertising spots. Now, virtually anything is possible. ‘If you can think it or dream it, you can do it’.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/05/02
Friday January 4
SAVE OUR SHOWS: A lifeguard frustrated that TV networks canceled some of his favorite shows has started a website (www.SaveThatShow.com) to allow viewers to vote for retaining their favorites. “The site allows viewers to voice their opinions about their favourite shows, before they’re yanked off the air, by using an on-line form. The poll results and suggestions for change are also sent to network executives by e-mail on a monthly basis (although he has yet to hear back from anyone).” Toronto Star 01/04/02
Thursday January 3
REVISIONISTS UNDER ATTACK: “The real Mao Tse-tung hounded critics to death. But in the latest version of history according to China’s state film industry, Mao treasures free speech and criticism of his regime.” Like most state films featuring such blatant revisionist history, the movie bombed in China. But the widow of an American journalist portrayed in the film is furious over the inaccuracies, and is creating quite a stir. Cleveland Plain Dealer (AP) 01/03/02
GETTING BACK TO WORK: “Afghan filmmakers are shooting their first movie in 10 years following the fall of the Taleban regime. The film, The Speculator, is being specially made for screening on Afghan television because the station is short of material.” BBC 01/03/02
Wednesday January 2
RECORD MOVIE YEAR: The movie industry ended 2001 with its best year ever. “Movie-ticket sales for 2001 will total an estimated $8.35 billion by the end of New Year’s Eve, up from last year’s record of $7.7 billion, according to box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. Factoring in an estimated 4 percent rise in average ticket prices, admissions were up about 5 percent, the first increase since 1998.” Nando Times (AP) 01/01/02
THE END OF CLASSICAL RADIO: When Miami classical radio station WTMI was sold last year for $100 million, it was inevitable the classical format was doomed, no matter what the new owners said. Classical can’t hope to produce the kind of revenues a $100 million purchase demands. Sure enough, this week the station abandoned classical for dance music. Miami Herald 01/01/02
BALKING AT THE BONUSES: Fans of DVD’s have been attracted to the new format in part because of “bonus” material often included on the discs – interviews with cast and crew, and behind-the-scenes scenes. But the “extra material could start to disappear thanks to escalating costs and demands by talent and guilds. Studios are balking at new fees for script use and star participation, even as overall DVD sales surge and consumers embrace “special edition” packages.” Toronto Star 01/01/02
UNDERSTANDING NIELSEN: The Nielsen Company has a new leader. In the US, “from a commercial and perhaps even cultural perspective, few enterprises may be more influential, and less understood, than Nielsen, which provides the television ratings that networks and media buyers rely upon to negotiate advertising rates. Beyond governing more than $50 billion in annual spending on TV ads, the information serves as a cultural touchstone, a tool people use to gauge the prevailing public mood and tastes.” Los Angeles Times 01/02/02
BBC SURGES: For the first time, the BBC1 TV channel has scored higher ratings for the year than chief competitior ITV1. “Ratings show BBC One with an audience share of 26.8% compared to 26.7% for ITV1.” BBC 01/01/02
Publishing: January 2002
Thursday January 31
STICKING TO THE TRAIL: How to have a successful career as a writer? Novelist/playwright Michael Frayn says: “The only advice that I could think of giving to a young writer is to write the same thing over and over again, changing things very slightly and going on delivering it until people accept it. Very simply, people want reliability and continuity in a writer. If you buy cornflakes you want cornflakes.” The Guardian (UK) 01/31/02
ANTI-THEFT: After the rash of high profile authors recently caught plagiarizing, one critic wonders how to stop plagiarism. Shame, that’s how. Letting authors make financial settlements with those they have stolen from doesn’t help the reader. Slate 01/30/02
THE OFFICIAL POET “The official poet laureate, appointed by the British royal family for over 300 years and rewarded with a ‘butt of canary wine, to be paid annually,’ is an object of mild scorn for literary skeptics and antimonarchists alike. But at a time when published opinion is much regulated by professional spin doctors, this institution can be used to promote a reexamination of the role played by poets and poetry in public life.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 01/31/02
MAKE IT STOP: “Another complaint against Stephen Ambrose has emerged. This one dates back to 1970, when fellow historian Cornelius Ryan accused him of a ‘rather graceless falsification’ in Ambrose’s book, The Supreme Commander. The allegations were first reported Tuesday on Forbes.com.” The Plain Dealer (AP) 01/31/02
SOME VERY UNPOETIC SOUR GRAPES: “Winning the coveted T.S. Eliot Prize last week has confirmed Anne Carson’s status as one of the most celebrated and controversial of contemporary poets. Soon after the prize was announced, Carson, who teaches classics at McGill University in Montreal, was denounced in Britain’s Guardian newspaper by eminent poetry critic Robert Potts for writing ‘doggerel’ that mixes ‘an occasional (and occasionally cliched) lyricism, some fashionable philosophizing and an almost artless grafting-on of academic materials.'” National Post (Canada) 01/31/02
Wednesday January 30
STEPHEN KING SAYS NO MORE NOVELS: Stephen King has a new novel coming out. So what? He publishes so many books in a year that he even made up a pseudonym so publishers could handle the overflow. So it may be his last. “You get to a point where you … basically recycle stuff,” he says. “I’ve seen it in my own work. People when they read Buick Eight are going to think Christine. It’s about a car that’s not normal, OK?” A couple more projects, “Then that’s it. I’m done. Done writing books.” CNN 01/29/02
Tuesday January 29
LITERARY NOMINATIONS: The National Book Critics Circle announces its award nominees. Heading up the fiction list is Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. Other nominees include WG Sebald’s Austerlitz, Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto, Colson Whitehead’s John Henry Days, and Alice Munro’s Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. Evidently Franzen’s dustup with Oprah earlier this winter hasn’t hurt The Corrections. The book already won the National Book Award, and sales have almost reached the 1 million mark – an impressive number for a work of literary fiction. Nando Times (AP) 01/28/02
PLAGIARISM AND TECHNOLOGY: In the last month, two prominent American historians have faced charges of plagiarism, and lately, it seems that not a month goes by without some well-known author or other standing accused. It’s not that the problem of plagiarism has become appreciably more widespread than it used to be – it’s that new computer programs can compare texts far more efficiently than ever before. San Francisco Chronicle 01/29/02
STANDARDS OF FAIRNESS: A new copyright law has been passed in Germany that mandates that publishers must pay freelance writers a “fair” compensation that is “standard in the trade.” The big question is how this will be enacted. What is fair? and if “standard” practice is unreasonably low, will it be fair? Perhaps predictably, publishers are unhappy with the new law. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 01/29/02
PIPPI LONGSTOCKING CREATOR DIES: Astrid Lindgren, the Swedish writer whose ‘Pippi Longstocking’ books won the hearts of children and adults the world over, has died at her home in Stockholm at the age of 94. “Lindgren’s works were translated into dozens of languages, ranging from Azerbaijani to Zulu, and sold more than 130 million copies worldwide.” Dallas Morning News (AP) 01/28/02 (one-time registration required for access)
Monday January 28
LISTEN UP: MP3 books are becoming popular – whole books can be downloaded onto tiny devices that can be reloaded over and over again. The format is especially popular with “with commuters, foreign students learning English and the visually impaired.” The Independent (UK) 01/26/02
IT’S NOT PLAGIARISM, IT’S A TRIBUTE: Olaf Olafsson is “vice chairman of Time Warner Digital Media, father of the Sony PlayStation and an acclaimed novelist.” But his latest book contains numerous passages stolen word for word from “the late, great Bay Area food writer M.F.K. Fisher.” Contacted about the copying, Olafsson says what he did wasn’t copy but pay “tribute.” He says that “readers familiar with Fisher, who died in 1992, will recognize the borrowed passages and understand he’s paying homage.” Siliconvalley.com 01/27/02
HOW/WHY TO READ: Who needs a book to tell them how to read? “Professorial how-to-read books have always struck me as eminently avoidable, in part because such lamentations are wearisome, even if not altogether untrue. If the lay reader knows enough to know that she needs to pick up a book on reading, why must her self-knowledge be met with a harangue against philistinism? Besides, all criticism teaches us how to read; literary essays instruct best when they are not overtly instructive. Or so I thought.” The New York Times 01/27/02
THE AUTHOR, NOT THE PERSON: Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis canceled his book tour last week. Last year it was revealed that Ellis had lied about having served in Vietnam during the war, and Ellis was sure to be questioned about this on the tour. In Seattle, there have also been objections to Ellis speaking at an author series at the Seattle Public Library. But hosts of the event have decided to go ahead with the appearance in February. “It seemed to us that Ellis’ personal life – what he did or didn’t do as a teacher – really has nothing to do with the scholarship that went into his books about Jefferson and the founding brothers.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer 01/28/02
Sunday January 27
RENOVATING OUT THE LIBRARY EXPERIENCE: The New York Public Library of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center has a great collection. It recently reopened after an extensive renovation. “But — a sign of the times? — the research division is no longer a pleasurable place in which to read a book or listen to a recording.” The New York Times 01/27/02
Friday January 25
CALL IT BURNSDAY: Today’s the birthday of Scottish poet Robert Burns (he’d be 243), and in his home, “Fuelled by haggis and whisky, revellers recite Rabbie’s verses in celebration of his life, work and love of Scotland.” Find out how much you know about Scottish writers (including at least one of the awful ones). The Guardian (UK) 01/25/02
THE BEST BOOK REVIEW? “The Times Literary Supplement – known universally as the TLS – is a hundred years old this month. From its first densely printed, eight-page edition of Jan. 17, 1902, to its special bumper 48-page centenary issue currently on newsstands, it has carved out a unique position in the world of papers and journals as the reviewer of all that is best and most important in new books, from novels and poetry to academic studies and biographies.” Los Angeles Times 01/24/02
E-TEXTS: University presses and libraries at 12 American universities have teamed up on an e-publishing plan for scholarly books. ” The hope is that university presses in the consortium might one day offer all of their books in electronic form in a version that could be linked to a joint online library catalog that the group already operates. It could quickly become be a sizable collection: The university presses publish about 1,000 new books each year.” Chronicle of Higher Education 01/24/02
TRANSLATING THE UNTRANSLATABLE: The poet Czeslaw Milosz once wrote that “exile is the worst fate that may befall a poet, since poetry cannot live without its roots in native speech,” and another poet, Robert Frost, wrote that “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” Still, translators continue trying to wrestle the poetry of one language into another, and sometimes bring it off. The Economist 01/24/02
Thursday January 24
WHO’S “BORROWING” FROM WHOM? The issue of plagiarism is more complex than black-and-white. “On the one hand, formal rules against plagiarism grow ever more abundant and ever more stringent (even if no more original), and Op-Ed columnists wax furious in their condemnation of plagiarism by public officials. On the other hand, many Op-Ed columns are written by individuals other than the one whose name appears on the byline, and for that matter many newspaper stories are more-or-less verbatim versions of press releases sent out by political organizations, trade associations, or other interest groups.” The Idler 01/23/02
AND THIS AFFECTS LAW ENFORCEMENT HOW? Okay, follow closely: The police department of Penryn, Pennsylvania, is boycotting this year’s YMCA triathlon, refusing to direct traffic and stand around looking important. Why? The YMCA apparently reads Harry Potter books to children. So? Well, the wee wizard is all satanic and stuff, y’know. Nando Times (AP) 01/24/02
Wednesday January 23
BLACK HOLES: “Six months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that publishers don’t own the rights to online freelance articles. The publishers have responded by purging freelance articles – sometimes entire newspaper archives – from online databases. Almost 20 years’ worth of newspaper history, a vital source of information for those studying history, politics, society, the media, and other subjects, is shot through with more holes than a block of Swiss cheese. Scholars worry that they might find holes in their research. No one in academe seems to know how many articles, and which ones, are missing from the databases. After all, online databases, with their ethereal form, aren’t like broadsheets of newsprint – you can’t open them like you would a morning paper and see the holes cut out.” Chronicle of Higher Education 01/21/02
GOODWIN CHARGED WITH COPYING: Now it’s historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s turn to be accused of plagiarism. A letter to The Weekly Standard (the publication which revealed historian Stephen Ambrose’s plagiarism two weeks ago) pointed out that “Goodwin’s The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys borrowed with insufficient attribution from three earlier works by other authors.” The magazine’s “examination of the works in question confirmed the correspondent’s allegation.” The Weekly Standard 01/28/02
- BY WAY OF EXPLANATION: ”All that really happened was she sent me a letter saying not all the passages that relied on her work had been as fully footnoted as she would have liked,” said Goodwin. ”I agreed with her.” A monetary settlement was paid. Boston Globe 01/22/02
- WHAT’S THE STANDARD? “Goodwin has not only committed plagiarism, but lied about whether it was plagiarism (and, incidentally, paid hush money to one of the people she plagiarized).” Slate 01/22/02
- A SIMPLE TRUTH: Whew – it’s tough to defend those who “borrowed” the words of others without the proper credit. But the principle stands: “If you didn’t write it, you need to put quote marks around it. It really is that simple.” MobyLives 01/22/02
THE TRADITION OF POETRY IN ARABIA: “Poets from all over Arabia would recite their poems in front of judges. Each year the festival’s winning poem would be transcribed in golden letters and hung on the door of Ka’bah in Mecca for the whole year. It was like the Nobel Prize of ancient Arabia. In every Arab country every day, poets appear on television, on the radio, or in the newspaper. Every single newspaper in the Arab world every day has poetry. Poetry is the essence of Arab culture.” Humanities January-February 2002
NOVELS – AND NOVELISTS – BURIED IN THE PAST: What’s happened to our novelists lately? They’re so busy robbing the grave, as it were – writing about characters from the past, instead of focusing on our present world. And the problem seems to be worst of all in Australia. The Age (Melbourne) 01/21/02
Tuesday January 22
CANADIAN WINS ELIOT PRIZE: “Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson has been named the winner of the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry for 2001. Ms Carson’s ‘poignant’ and ‘unique’ collection The Beauty of the Husband was the best work of new poetry published in the UK and Ireland last year, a panel of poets has decided.” BBC 01/21/02
KIDS’ CORNER: “The story of an orphan living under a bridge in 12th century Korea won top honors in children’s literature Monday from the American Library Association. “A Single Shard,” by Linda Sue Park, won the Newbery Medal, awarded annually to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children… David Wiesner, illustrator and author of “The Three Pigs,” won the Randolph Caldecott Medal, awarded each year to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.” Orlando Sentinel 01/21/02
THE CLASSICS, ONLINE: “Project Gutenberg, named after the inventor of the printing press, Johann Gutenberg, is an online, worldwide database of books in electronic form – and it’s free. Since 1971, volunteers have transposed or scanned more than 4000 books on to the US site.” The Age (Melbourne) 01/22/02
- SPEAKING OF GUTENBERG: Not much is known about the life of the man who invented the printing press. “It is unclear exactly when Gutenberg was born, how he was schooled or whether he married. The date of his death, 1468, is known only from an uncorroborated note casually scribbled by an acquaintance on a printed book’s flyleaf. The circumstances under which he arrived at his two most important ideas – the notion of movable type itself and the hand-mould technology needed for the rapid mass-casting of the letters – have gone unrecorded.” Financial Times 01/22/02
HOW TO CREATE AWKWARDNESS: Few things in life are as deadly as a close friend’s book recommendation. The enjoyment of literature is an intensely personal activity, and one person’s life-changing page-turner may be another’s deadly bore. And the walls of friendship come tumbling down… National Post (Canada) 01/22/02
Monday January 21
STUCK IN THE PAST: Why are so many of Australia’s best contemporary novels set in the past? It’s the rare story that reflects life that is familiar to us today. Is it that “we’re not the most powerful nation on earth and so do not find, like the Americans do, power and significance dwelling in our most ordinary things?” The Age (Melbourne) 01/21/02
SO WHAT’S A LITTLE PLAGIARISM…: Historian Stephen Ambrose may be scorned for his plagiarism revealed in the past few weeks. But in his hometown of New Orleans, few seem to care. The Times-Picayune wrote in an editorial Jan. 11: “He has been ‘a great friend to this community … No one wants to see Mr. Ambrose’s numerous achievements diminished by the present allegations.” Others wonder: “So what if he plagiarized? Everyone plagiarizes to some extent. He has raised awareness of history among a whole new population of Americans.” Nando Times (AP) 01/21/02
Sunday January 20
TO CATCH A PLAGIARIST: Why did it take so long for historian-plagiarist Stephen Ambrose to get caught? More importantly, why did it take a conservative magazine editor to expose the wrongdoing of one of right-wing America’s biggest intellectual apologists? “Could it be that the left is too indifferent to American military history to bother catching one of its best-selling mythologizers with his pants down? Or does resentment of blockbuster book sales cut across party lines, afflicting conservatism’s detractors and its supporters alike with touching bipartisanship?” San Francisco Chronicle 01/19/02
THE WORST SEX EVER: “Writing a sex scene with authenticity of emotion is the literary equivalent to the struggle visual artists have in painting hands and feet. As with the act itself, performance anxiety can lead to overwriting in an author who is trying too hard, or limpness in a writer unable to rise above self-consciousness.” Herein, the best examples of such literary impotence, as judged by a panel of Canadian publishers, and featuring such gems as “Ride my stallion, Morag.” The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 01/19/02
Friday January 18
MORE AMBROSE: Yet another book has been added to the Stephen Ambrose plagiarism list. “Despite Ambrose’s continued dominance of the bestseller lists, 2002 is shaping up as a year to forget for America’s favorite celebrity historian. He apologized immediately for not putting quotation marks around the purloined Wild Blue passages; since then, as the other five books have been identified one or two at a time, he generally has declined to comment.” Forbes.com 01/17/02
- CAREER EFFECT? Some book world people doubt that publicity about Ambrose’s plagiarism, though embarrassing for Ambrose, would hurt sales of his bestselling history books. Indeed, it “might actually end up boosting sales by attracting more attention to his books. In any case, the best-selling historian will remain a hot literary property. ‘Any agent or publisher would be glad to grab him’.” Forbes.com 01/11/02
PLAGIARISM, CHINESE EDITION: Wang Mingming, an elite professor at Beijing University, and credited in China with reviving interest in sociology, has been “accused of using parts of a 1987 edition of Cultural Anthropology, a widely used textbook by William A. Haviland of the University of Vermont, in his own 1998 book. Wang translated Haviland’s book into Chinese in 1987 with his permission. The official Xinhua News Agency says Wang has been stripped of his teaching posts.” Nando Times (AP) 01/17/02
S’BETTER TO LOOK GOOD? “Why are so many people paying hard-earned cash for books they can barely begin to understand? Part of the answer, surely, is vanity. A Hawking or Greene sitting on the coffee table–preferably with a few pages conspicuously bent back at the corners–sends a powerful message to visiting friends, prospective dates, and (above all) to oneself, that an intellect is present in the house. Whether or not you read them, possession alone looks good. Intellectual vanity is as potent a force as the sartorial variety.” Los Angeles Times 01/13/02
MAKING RARE BOOKS ACCESSIBLE: “Octavo Corp. and its staff of eight have revolutionized the conservation and accessibility of rare books, using technology in the service of history. This month they’re starting work on the most famous book in the U.S., the Library of Congress’ pristine copy of the Gutenberg Bible. Through a combination of hardware – lights, cameras, and a lot of servers – and software, the company produces digital reproductions of rare books, which it then sells to consumers.” SFWeekly 01/17/02
Thursday January 17
ART OF THE NOVEL: There’s been a rash of novels lately in which writers have found the inspiration for their story, or their characters, in famous (or not-so-famous) paintings. “For a writer, an intriguing picture hot-wires the storytelling engine. Before committing word one to paper, you already know the time, place and setting. You not only see what your main character looks like, you know her class.” Washington Post 01/17/02
CHILDERS ON AMBROSE: Historian Thomas Childers speaks out on Stephen Ambrose’s plagiarism of his work: “I was surprised and disappointed. I was bewildered, at first, as to how he would have the chutzpah to do this. He didn’t have to do this, and I wasn’t flattered. My wife, Kristin, was angry enough for the both of us.” But Childers decided to say nothing: “Do I really want to be the scholarly guy rapping the famous guy on the knuckles in a schoolmarmish way?” Philadelphia Inquirer 01/16/02
- GETTING IT VERY WRONG: World War II vets aren’t as upset about the copying as they are about all the mistakes about the war in Ambrose’s books. “The real problem is that Ambrose gets key things about World War II wrong all by himself. That Ambrose, America’s most popular war historian, has published eight books in five years is seen by them as not so much an excuse for the alleged errors as the reason.” Philadelphia Inquirer 01/15/02
NOBELIST CAMILO CELA, 85: “Spanish writer Camilo Jose Cela, winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize for literature, has died in Madrid from respiratory and coronary failure. With his first novel, published in 1946, Cela became a leader of a straightforward style of writing, called tremendismo, which clashed with the lyricism that had characterised writers of the previous generation in Spain.” BBC 01/17/02
Wednesday January 16
WHY STEALING’S ALWAYS BAD: Historian Stephen Ambrose has been caught plagiarizing in at least four of his books. This is a very serious offense, so it’s off to the penalty box for him. The media has made a big deal of this, but historians haven’t condemned him with the vehemence one would expect. Why? Several reasons, but “a comparison of the Ambrose and Monaghan books found that, despite picking up sentences here and there, Ambrose wasn’t wedded to Monaghan’s work. He had synthesized material from many sources and was producing his own version of Custer’s life.” Chicago Tribune 01/16/02
THE PROBLEM BEQUEST: A small library in Massachusetts gets a million-dollar bequest from a letter carrier who died in 1940 to buy books. But the library is stuffed full and has no room to put any new volumes. What it really needs is to expand – but should the terms of the bequest be broken? National Post (AP) 01/16/02
Tuesday January 15
STARTING OVER: “In late September, Phyllis Grann shocked the book world by announcing she would leave Penguin Putnam, the $750 million publishing empire she assembled over 25 years and could not have dominated more completely if her name were on the building. Most executives with her career would have simply retired. She was the first woman CEO in publishing, and the head of an imprint that’s reputed to be 50 percent more profitable than any of its peers. Instead of bowing out, however, Grann trotted out F. Scott Fitzgerald’s crack about American lives’ having no second acts, vowed to have one of her own, then sat back to watch the frenzy of speculation about her next move.” Then she joined Random House. New York Magazine 01/14/02
LARKIN’S MONEY GOES TO CHURCH: Poet Philip Larkin, who “declined the poet laureateship a year before he died in 1985, remains best known for his reverently agnostic poem Churchgoing. He also said: ‘The Bible is a load of balls of course – but very beautiful’.” So his friends and fans were amused recently when £1 million of his legacy was willed to the Church of England. The Guardian (UK) 01/12/02
Monday January 14
WHY PLAGIARISM MATTERS: The charges of plagiarism are mounting against historian Stephen Ambrose. ” Ambrose’s patriots can’t fall back on the factory defense anymore: Two of the cases occurred when Ambrose was an obscure professor, before he became Stephen Ambrose Industries. Ambrose is more defiant than apologetic. Ambrose’s assertion that he’s not a thief is ludicrous. One plagiarism is careless. Two is a pattern. Four, five, or more is pathology. You can bet that historians jealous of Ambrose (that is, all historians) are this minute combing the rest of his corpus for more evidence of sticky fingers.” Slate 01/11/02
AND THE BOOK BUSINESS IS INTELLECTUAL, RIGHT? Lest anyone forget, the book business is run by individuals – people who can be as petty, self-serving, obtuse and wrong-headed as the rest of us. MobyLives nominates 2001’s most misguided figures. MobyLives 01/14/02
WHAT’S LEFT OVER: Most books at some point get remaindered. “The common misconception is that remainders are ‘bad’ books. Some may be, but the reality is almost every author – Booker and Giller winners, and names like Atwood and Urquhart – have titles that have been thrown into the bins. And they’re the gems that voracious readers eagerly forage for.Remainders are an important part of our business, accounting for at least 10 per cent of overall sales ” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/11/02
A LESSON IN HUMILITY: “To write The Best Book Ever Written is not a ridiculous aspiration. Ridiculous would be to aspire to write a ‘flawed, two-dimensional and structurally awkward’ novel. ‘Pretentious twaddle’ is not the kind of star to which a wagon can be very usefully hitched. Mid-list leaves something to be desired as a career goal. There is much to be gained by setting out to write The Best Book Ever Written, not the least of which is that once every millennium, somebody might actually do it. However, as commendable as it is to aim high, and as useful a motivator as unreasonable ambition may prove to be, the kind of literary pride that makes writers think that readers will drop everything to read them is rarely helpful once a book is published. For all but the rare exceptions, publication is a crash course in humility.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/11/02
Sunday January 13
THE WANDERING PRIZE: “In the starry firmament of literary prizes, from the distant twinkling of Somerset Maugham to the intergalactic majesty of Orange, to the autumn brilliance of Booker, Whitbread is the wandering planet: wreathed in vapour, beyond radio contact and thrillingly weird, the object of fascinated annual terrestrial speculation.” The Observer (UK) 01/13/02
PUTTING MARK TWAIN IN HIS PLACE: Was Mark Twain America’s greatest writer? Ken Burns’ new documentary forces the question. “Here’s a guy who wrote such classics as Tom Sawyer, such politically charged novels as Pudd’nhead Wilson and such eye-opening travelogues as The Innocents Abroad. He also had the kind of grand tragedies in his personal life that we expect from great writers: losing loved ones at a young age, going broke by investing in one silly invention after another, struggling with clinical depression. But there’s a problem in putting Twain at the head of the class. He was funny. Too funny.” Minneapolis Star Tribune 01/13/02
Friday January 11
AMBROSE – TOO PROLIFIC TO BE ORIGINAL? As accusations about plagiarism mount against popular historian/author Stephen Ambrose, checking out Ambrose’s books has become a cottage industry. He’s written a lot of books – too many too quickly, say some critics, to be reliable. “In seven years, Ambrose has published nine books of history, plus the eighth edition of a co-authored survey of American foreign policy. In the last two years alone, he’s published four books, including The Wild Blue and Nothing Like It in the World. Many of his books have become bestsellers.” Washington Post 01/11/02
THE HALLMARK POET: Poet Maya Angelou has a new job – writing greeting cards for Hallmark. “If I’m America’s poet, or one of them, then I want to be in people’s hands. All people’s hands, people who would never buy a book.” Some samples? “Life is a glorious banquet, a limitless and delicious buffet.” Or how about: “The wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy, the wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.” USAToday 01/10/02
BOOKS ON THE HALF SHELL: You see them everywhere now, these little half-efforts meant to be taken in during a pedicure or while in a holding pattern over Providence, from The One Minute Manager (111 pages, $20) to Who Moved My Cheese? – 77 glorious pages for $19.95. There is also the very successful Penguin Lives series, which allows the reader to congratulate him- or herself on having read a biography of Woodrow Wilson when in reality the mark has absorbed a lovely, but brief, essay by Louis Auchincloss and paid $20 for the privilege.” Boston Globe 01/10/02
AND ‘TWAS EVER THUS: James Boswell, perhaps the best-known-ever biographer, was “a rash and impulsive soul, easily foxed, fuzzy-brained, vastly bipolar and a martyr to booze, gambling and rabid fornication.” On a winter evening in 1774, he noted in his diary, “Much intoxicated. Found myself bouncing down an almost perpendicular stone stair. Could not stop but when I came to the bottom of it, fell with a good deal of violence, which sobered me much.” So he went home to write. The Irish Times 01/08/02
Thursday January 10
THOSE OTHER SHOES KEEP DROPPING: Poor Stephen Ambrose. People keep accusing him of lifting material from other sources for his own books, but not giving credit. Charges three and four complain that his book, “Citizen Soldier, and Part 3 of his Richard Nixon trilogy, contain passages similar to those in other texts.” Ambrose was reported to be unsure whether any of his other books – he’s published more than 20 – have similar problems. Washington Post 01/10/02
- Previously: MORE AMBROSE ALLEGATIONS: “A second book by best-selling historian Stephen Ambrose is being cited for having material that was allegedly copied from another text. Forbes.com is reporting that Ambrose’s Crazy Horse and Custer contains sections similar to Jay Monaghan’s Custer. A representative for Ambrose said Tuesday there would be no immediate comment. Anchor Books, which publishes the paperback edition of Crazy Horse and Custer, also declined immediate comment.” Philadelphia Inquirer (AP) 01/09/02
NY’S DISAPPEARING BOOKSTORES: What’s happening to Manhattan’s independent book stores? They’re closing, that’s what. “Whatever the factors—rent spikes, chain domination, reading-allergic citizenry, publishers’ high price tags—it was hard for a bookstore lover not to notice all the closings in 2001.” Village Voice 01/09/02
IN THE CROSSHAIRS: “Biography is not a pretty business, and biographers, by and large, are a devious, unscrupulous bunch. I would not trust any of us, were I unlucky enough to be the hunted rather than the hunter.” The Age (Melbourne) 01/10/02
Wednesday January 9
LIBRARIANS TO THE RESCUE: Publisher HarperCollins was ready to pulp Michael Moore’s new book for its criticisms of George Bush (among other things) and never release it. But a librarian heard about Moore’s plight and rallied other librarians to the cause, and now the book is finally getting into stores. Salon 01/07/02
MOVEABLE SLUSH PILE: Publishers are inundated with thousands of manuscripts each year. Of those, only a few ever see their way into print. More and more the onus on filtering out manuscripts is falling not on publishers but on agents. “Formerly, writers toiled in garrets and sent their work to publishers, who eventually gave the thumbs up or down. As publishers’ resources have shrunk and been redirected, they have abdicated that crucial gatekeeper’s task to others: agents, mainly, a small number of award judges, and manuscript assessment services.” Sydney Morning Herald 01/09/02
HECK, JUST READ ‘EM ALL: Last year, the Chicago Public Library initiated a campaign to get everyone in the city (a good percentage of them, anyway) to read the same book over the same summer in order to promote reading and literature in general. The book was Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. Now, it’s time to select a book for the second year of the program, and public response could not be more enthusiastic. And therein lies the problem – no one can agree on one book. Chicago Tribune 01/09/02
MORE AMBROSE ALLEGATIONS: “A second book by best-selling historian Stephen Ambrose is being cited for having material that was allegedly copied from another text. Forbes.com is reporting that Ambrose’s Crazy Horse and Custer contains sections similar to Jay Monaghan’s Custer. A representative for Ambrose said Tuesday there would be no immediate comment. Anchor Books, which publishes the paperback edition of Crazy Horse and Custer, also declined immediate comment.” Philadelphia Inquirer (AP) 01/09/02
Tuesday January 8
A SUBJECTIVE CRIME: Plagiarism has always been hard to define, and the case of Stephen Ambrose emphasizes the point. Ambrose reprinted unattributed passages from another book in his latest tome, for which he has apologized. But the New York Times reprinted nearly verbatim the allegations against Ambrose from the magazine they first appeared in, also without attribution. Is that plagiarism? Does context matter? And for good measure, is Ambrose’s apology and promise to correct later editions even remotely enough to make things right? Philadelphia Inquirer 01/08/02
NEWSFLASH – PEOPLE LIKE THEIR BOOKS TO INCLUDE PAPER: It would be nice to say that it seemed like a good idea at the time, but in truth, the “e-books” phenomenon has been one of the economic downturn’s most predictable casualties. Dozens of companies, from global publishers to internet-based startups, leaped into the e-book fray a couple of years ago, with all the usual pronouncements about how the new tehnology would change everything about the way we read. These days, the small companies are gone, the big ones are downsizing, and e-books are considered a vast money pit. Publishers Weekly 01/07/02
THE SLUR THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME: “Regardless of spelling, pronunciation, or intention, arguably no word in the American lexicon conjures more incendiary emotion and history than ‘nigger.’ Considered so barbed and venomous it is widely referred to as ‘the n-word,’ in many corners uttering its two syllables aloud is tantamount to yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. Still, it’s the only title Randall Kennedy considered for his latest book. Both informative and infuriating, ‘Nigger’ is an anatomy of an epithet, which, through four centuries, has lost none of its potency to enrage and fuel fierce debate.” Boston Globe 01/08/02
Monday January 7
AMBROSE ADMITS COPYING WORK: Over the weekend Stephen Ambrose admitted lifting passages from Thomas Childers’ book for his best-selling history of World War II The Wild Blue. “I made a mistake for which I am sorry. It will be corrected in future editions of the book.” The New York Times 01/06/02
- DID HISTORIAN AMBROSE STEAL SOMEONE ELSE’S WORK? Stephen Ambrose is “perhaps America’s most popular historian and one of its most prolific.” His most recent book, climbing the New York Times’ Bestseller list, focuses on a B-24 crew in World War II. Weedkly Standard columnist Fred Barnes contends Ambrose copied passages of the book from a 1995 book by Thomas Childers. Weekly Standard 01/04/02
- THE CASE AGAINST AMBROSE: “In an interview, Professor Childers, who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, said he, too, had concluded that Mr. Ambrose borrowed excessively. ‘I felt sort of disappointed,’ he said.” The New York Times 01/05/02
Sunday January 6
CLUES TO THE FRENCH MIND: A French poll listing of the 50 greatest books of the 20th Century says some important things about the French. First, about half of the books on the list aren’t French. Second – none of the English books were written before World War II. And there are no important contemporary American authors represented. “They still have a rather Francophone understanding of English and American literature. As nothing, of course, to American and British parochialism in respect of foreign literature. But also I detect a kind of eagerness to be part of a wider world. Many French people think that France must engage more fully with the outside world: they are alarmed that the Anglophone world is leaving them behind. This world of hundreds of millions of English speakers seems in its unstoppable immensity to them to be consigning France to a sort of museum culture.” The Guardian (UK) 01/05/02
Friday January 4SURPRISE WHITBREAD WINNER: “Patrick Neate has won the Whitbread novel award with his second book, Twelve Bar Blues, beating strong favourite Ian McEwan. The surprise winner receives £5,000 in prize money and goes on to compete for the Whitbread Book of the Year – worth £25,000 – alongside the other Whitbread winners and the winner of the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year.” BBC 01/04/02
- NEATE SURPRISE: “When my book was published it did not make the barest ripple on the surface of the nation’s literature, so to win an award beating Ian McEwan and Helen Dunmore is just absurd.” BBC 01/04/02
BULLISH ON PUBLISHING: The Dow Jones might have had an off year in 2001 (the index fell 7.1 percent), but publishing companies did well with their stock prices. The Publishers Weekly index tracking stock prices of 22 publishing companies rose by 10.3 percent. Book manufacturers and book retailers had a very strong year while e-publishing struggled. Publishers Weekly 01/02/02
POETIC PALLOR: What’s going on with the American Academy of Poets? Last fall it laid off employees and fired William Wadsworth, its longtime director. “During Wadsworth’s 12-year tenure, the Academy launched an array of new programs: National Poetry Month; the Poetry Book Club; a Web site; and the Online Poetry Classroom, which encourages poetry education in secondary schools. Wadsworth also oversaw the addition of five awards to the Academy’s distinguished series, as well as the establishment of the Atlas/Greenwall Fund, which provides support to noncommercial poetry publishers. Under Wadsworth’s leadership the Academy’s annual income increased from $400,000 to $3 million, and its total assets grew from $2 million to $10 million.” Poets & Writers 01/02
Thursday January 3
MUGGLES GOT NO SENSE OF HUMOR: Time was when a cultural phenomenon knew it had hit the big time when a parody showed up in Mad Magazine. These days, the modern equivalent seems to be when some aspiring satirist finds his/her work shot down in court, or declined by publishers fearful of the wrath of their corporate peers. A Harry Potter parody is the latest victim of the publishing/merchandising brand-protection conspiracy, and its author is not happy. The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 01/02/02
COWBOY COUPLETS: It gets lonely out there on the prairie, ridin’ the range with nothin’ but the tumbleweed and the herd to keep you company on those long, cold, Midwest nights. At least we assume it does: how else to explain the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, going on this month in Elko, Nevada? “Started 18 years ago, the annual event, which now lasts a week, is attended by more than 8,000 people. The schedule features workshops, exhibitions, panel discussions, films, and performances by some of today’s finest cowboy poets, musicians, and craftsmen.” Christian Science Monitor 01/02/02
Wednesday January 2
SAVING BOOKS: The Library of Congress has begun plans to de-acidify a million books in its collection. “More than 150 years ago, papermakers started using chemicals that made their product acidic and thus more susceptible to decay.” The Library has a “plan to de-cidify about 8.5 million of the library’s 18.7 million books, a move that is intended to add hundreds of years to the life of the books.” The New York Times 01/01/02
PUBLISHING THE ARTWORLD: As the artworld gets more complex, sprawling and difficult to sort through, a tiny magazine called Border Crossings produced in central Canada makes a pretty good guide. “Writers in Border Crossings accomplish, better than most, the critic’s most difficult task: communicating art ideas to non-artists and artists alike, explaining what matters to the first group without boring or appalling the second. For the most part, they avoid artspeak, the private language that disfigures many magazines.” National Post 01/02/02
Visual: January 2002
Thursday January 31
YA GOTTA BELIEVE IN IT, AT LEAST: The director of London’s Institute for Contemporary Art – a hotbed of conceptual art – has called for the sacking of the organization’s chairman of the board. A few weeks ago, chairman Ivan Massow derided current conceptual art and many of the artists who practice it as a waste of time. The Guardian (UK) 01/30/02
- Previously: APPARENTLY HE DOESN’T LIKE CONCEPTUAL ART: Ivan Massow, chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, says the British art world is “in danger of disappearing up its own arse … led by cultural tsars such as the Tate’s Sir Nicholas Serota, who dominate the scene from their crystal Kremlins. Most concept art I see now is pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat that I wouldn’t accept even as a gift.” The Guardian (UK) 01/17/02
IF YOU CAN’T BEAT ‘EM… “In a move which sees traditional business capitulate to the new economy, US online auctioneer eBay says it is collaborating with the venerable UK firm of Sotheby’s. The two will work together in the online environment, hoping to put more expensive art on eBay and drive more customers to Sotheby’s.” BBC 01/31/02
QUESTIONING NATIONHOOD: The new chairman of the National Museum of Victoria in Melbourne suggests the “National” designation be taken out of the museum’s name. “Why should the National Gallery of Victoria say it is the national gallery when it isn’t? It’s the Melbourne Gallery. We have the MCG, Melbourne Park, the Victorian Arts Centre, and they all make sense.” The Age (Melbourne) 01/31/02
EXPANSION PLANS IN PHILLY: “The Philadelphia Museum of Art, which ran out of exhibition space in the mid-1970s, is finally ready to expand. It announced yesterday that it had hired a nationally known museum designer to convert a landmark art deco building on Pennsylvania Avenue into galleries and offices… The renovations will take about two to three years and cost $25 million, museum director Anne d’Harnoncourt said.” Philadelphia Inquirer 01/31/02
LEAVING FILM BEHIND? Is New York’s Museum of Modern Art getting out of its commitment to the art of film? “Employees at MoMA say that the museum’s film department—created by its founder, Alfred Barr, in 1935, and unparalleled in its role elevating film to an art form and the director to the status of an auteur—is being dealt a terrible blow in the name of museum progress.” New York Observer 01/30/02
POMPIDOU AT 25: “The Pompidou Centre, one of France’s most celebrated cultural and tourist attractions, still has the power to shock 25 years after it first opened its doors. But opinion is divided as to whether it is, or ever was, at the forefront of the country’s artistic scene.” BBC 01/31/02
Wednesday January 30
REBUKING THE LOUVRE: French culture minister Catherine Tasca has publicly rebuked Henri Loyrette, the new director of the Louvre. Loyrette had earlier lamented that “budget restrictions required the museum to close one-quarter of its galleries every day because of a shortage of security guards.” Tasca accused Loyrette of lack of discipline and grandstanding. “Tasca’s reprimand has stunned many of France’s cultural leaders, not only because bureaucratic power struggles rarely go public here.” The New York Times 01/30/02
- STATUES IN THE LOUVRE: “France and Nigeria have come to an agreement over the provenance of three statues on display at the Louvre museum in Paris. The three 1,500-year-old terracotta figures, known as the Nok statues, were uncovered during a mining operation in Nigeria in the 1990s. Nigeria has agreed to allow the statues to remain in Paris on a 25-year renewable basis in return for France’s admission that they are undisputedly the property of Nigeria.” BBC 01/30/02
ANCIENT DIVIDE: A prominent New York antiquities dealer has gone on trial charged with dealing in ancient objects said to have been smuggled out of Egypt in the early 1990s in violation of Egyptian law. “The case, seen by many as a test of the American government’s resolve on stolen antiquities, has divided the art world. It has sent a chill through antiquities dealers who fear more aggressive policing in an area where proof of provenance can be hard to come by, and it has greatly cheered archaeologists who hope that such prosecutions will help cool the illicit antiquities trade.” The New York Times 01/30/02
REPATRIATING KOREAN ART: Most of the controversy over plundered art and artifacts centers on Western nations as the culprits. “But the story of Japan’s plunder of Asia and in particular of Korea, where the worst abuses occurred, remains relatively unexplored. While conspiracy theories of hidden troves of gold looted by the Japanese abound, there has been little serious research into the issue of stolen art and artifacts.” Time 02/04/02
Tuesday January 29
TURNING AGAINST TURNER: It’s not often that Turner seascapes come up for auction, and the market for Turners right now is brisk. So why did JMW Turner’s spectacular seascape Sheerness as Seen from the Nore fail to find a buyer at Christie’s in New York on Friday? “It is entirely psychological,” said one dealer. “It is absurd because it is still the same picture but people feel that if it has been offered around then there must be something wrong with it.” The Telegraph (UK) 01/29/02
NEW BUILDING = NEW ART: “The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is deep into a massive building boom, with 11 major capital projects in the works… Because the university has a policy that calls for each major construction project to be accompanied by a major artwork, that means an art binge, too. And that… meant finding a curator for what is growing into an important collection of public art, one that already includes major works by the likes of Picasso and Calder.” Boston Globe 01/29/02
JUSTICE MAY BE BLIND BUT NOT ASHCROFT: Washington’s Justice Department building has a Great Hall where department events and ceremonies are held. The grand room is decorated in Art Deco style, and the walls feature great figures in history. Also two enormous partially nude statues – “on the left, the female figure represents the Spirit of Justice; the male on the right is the Majesty of Law.” But it seems that Attorney General John Ashcroft, known as a “strongly religious and conservative man” is embarrassed by the statues, so the department has ordered the statues be covered up with draperies installed last week “at a cost of just over $8,000.” ABCNews.com 01/28/02
AT LEAST YOU KNOW WHAT IT’LL SELL FOR: The artist commissioned by the People’s Republic of China to design the nation’s new currency notes hesitated to accept the assignment, perhaps suspecting that the populace might not be thrilled with yet another slew of Mao Tse-Tung portraits in their wallets. He was right: the new bills are getting panned left and right, on artistic, political, and aesthetic grounds. Washington Post 01/29/02
KEEPING ALICE IN WONDERLAND: “The British government has extended a temporary export ban on a set of rare photographs of the little girl who inspired Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. An unidentified collector from the United States paid more than $4.2 million for letters, manuscripts and photos at a Sotheby’s auction last June.” CBC ArtsCanada 01/28/02
Monday January 28
MAKING THE SMITHSONIAN SMALL: Milo Beach, former director of the Freer Gallery, joins the growing chorus of those who believe that Smithsonian chief Lawrence Small has ruined the Smithsonian: “Judging from recent words and deeds, the present administration of the institution views the life of the mind with astonishing indifference. The secretary, for example, spoke to the assembled staff of the National Museum of American History and left the distinct impression with many that the day of curiosity-driven research was over at the Smithsonian.” Washington Post 01/27/02
FRENCH MUSEUMS SUFFERING: Last year was a disaster for Parisian museums. After September 11, attendance dropped by as much as 30 percent. Aggressive security scared off some visitors, and strikes at some museums meant that even if you did try to visit a gallery, it might be closed. “At the Louvre, visitor numbers for 2001 have fallen to 5.2 million compared to 6.1 million in 2000, down by 13.9%. This includes all the visitors admitted for free during the strikes. If only the paying visitors are compared, numbers are down by almost 25%.” The Art Newspaper 01/25/02
FASHION COURT: One of America’s top visual arts critics turns his studied eye on sports teams’ uniforms. The top? New York Yankees, of course (Peter Plagens is a New Yorker, after all). At the bottom? The Houston Rockets, who have not only the worst uniforms but the worst logo… Newsweek 01/25/02
Sunday January 27
THE WEIGHT OF EXPECTATION: When it opened 25 years ago, Paris’ Pompidou Centre was meant to stem a sense of decline in French art. But while the building has been an undeniable success in other ways, the Pompidou “did nothing to reverse that decline. For all its architectural radicalism, it has not infused new energy into French culture. Visitors come to see its outstanding collection of classic modern art – the art of Picasso, Braque and Matisse – or for temporary exhibitions on the same subject. Almost without exception, what is of interest had been created before 1971. The contribution of the Pompidou Centre, and indeed Paris, to art since that date has been minimal.” The Telegraph (UK) 01/26/02
WHAT ROCKWELL MEANS TO THE GUGGENHEIM (OR IS IT THE OTHER WAY AROUND?): “Until very recently, any art insider would have found the notion of the Guggenheim playing host to a Rockwell show laughable and absurd. Founded as the Museum of Non-Objective Art, the museum promoted abstract art – art that depicts no object – and opposed everything Rockwell stood for.” But he brings in the crowds and “it was a win-win situation, so the Guggenheim sold its soul and signed onto the exhibition tour, and in so doing ratcheted up Rockwell’s reputation and legitimized a show other museums might have regarded as a dangerously kitschy gamble.” Baltimore Sun 01/27/02
BUILDING MONOPOLY: “Should 15 or 20 starchitects be designing all the world’s great buildings? What does it mean if every city has its Gehry, its Koolhaas, its Calatrava?” Everyone seems to want them – “starchitects, those celebrity designers whose buildings are as recognizable as a corporate logo or an Armani suit. Everyone from museum presidents to real estate developers is signing them up–in part because they are world-class talents, but also because they get publicity, change images, sell office space, draw crowds and maybe even improve a university’s pool of applicants.” Chicago Tribune 01/27/02
RUSH TO MEMORY: Why rush to produce memorials for the events of September 11? There are so many proposals and ideas. “This is partly because America’s hurry-up, need-it-now culture can’t spare the time to let consensus develop organically. We’re too impatient to let historical perspective determine what is sufficiently important to cast in bronze. Still we insist on public memorials, even though interest-group politics complicates the process considerably. No public monument can satisfy everyone, but today, it seems, it’s difficult for a monument to satisfy anyone.” Philadelphia Inquirer 01/27/02
Friday January 25
POLLOCK’S MATHEMATICAL APPEAL: A mathematician contends that Jackson Pollock’s drip painting appeals to the logic “not in art but in mathematics, specifically in chaos theory and its offspring, fractal geometry. Fractals may seem haphazard at first glance, yet each one is composed of a single geometric pattern repeated thousands of times at different magnifications, like Russian dolls nested within one another. In Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, as in nature, certain patterns are repeated again and again at various levels of magnification.” The Age (Melbourne) 01/25/02
BANKING ON ART: The venerable Scottish bank Fleming’s has been sold to American banker Chase Manhattan. “The question is: apart from the bank and the trusts, what would become of the Fleming art collection – the largest and most important collection of Scottish art outside Scotland?” The Scotsman 01/25/02
CLEOPATRA GETS A MAKE-OVER: A new exhibition at Chicago’s Field Museum “goes a long way toward rehabilitating the most famous woman who ever lived. In the attempt to separate history from myth, Egyptologists, art historians, and other antiquarians now see [Cleopatra] as a fine stateswoman, a strong queen, and an ingenious politician.” Christian Science Monitor 01/25/02
Thursday January 24
PAINTINGS DESTROYED IN FIRE: Paintings by Gauguin, Rembrandt and Tintoretto worth millions of pounds have been destroyed in a fire at the home of an art collector in Croatia. Evidently the art was not insured because the owner “wanted to stop thieves from finding out about them.” Ananova 01/15/02
THE SMITHSONIAN PROBLEM: In the weeks after September 11, attendance at the Smithsonian museums plunged 40-45 percent as tourists stayed away from Washington. Over the week between Christmas and New Year’s visitor numbers bounced back up, leading to hope that things were getting back to normal. But January has busted again – the second week of January numbers were down 55 percent. “Life at the Smithsonian, said Lawrence Small [the Smithsonian’s secretary], is “a dramatically different situation” than last summer, when an attendance record seemed likely.” Washington Post 01/23/02
CONTEMPORARY ART THAT HAS TO BE REINVENTED: Documenta is one of the most anticipated forums for contemporary art. This year’s edition is supposed to open in Kassel, Germany in May, but even now it’s difficult to get a sense of what exactly will open. “It is certainly true that the Documenta has to be reinvented every time. It does not exist in the sense of an institution that can by definition guarantee continuity. Inevitably, curators believe they have to come up with a completely new idea rather than merely gathering all the art world’s current representatives together in Kassel.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 01/24/02
CRITIC’S ART COLLECTION TO BE SOLD: “The private collection of David Sylvester, who helped to create the reputation of artists such as Francis Bacon, is predicted to fetch at least £1m at a Sotheby’s auction next month.” The Guardian (UK) 01/23/02
QUITE A GLASSY NEIGHBORHOOD: A new exhibition of glasswork taking place in a park in one of Chicago’s more dubious neighborhoods is drawing record numbers of visitors and comparisons to the city’s ‘Cows on Parade’ project a few years back. “But the cows, for all their charm, were a public relations stunt, a gimmick to draw the tourists. [Artist Dale] Chihuly is a serious artist and the Conservatory is a serious educational installation. Both hoped their show would draw viewers but no one expected it to touch Chicagoans in the way it has.” Chicago Tribune 01/24/02
Wednesday January 23
CHAGALL IN KANSAS: “A painting believed to be a Marc Chagall work stolen last year from the Jewish Museum in New York City turned up at a postal installation in Topeka, Kansas.” Nando Times (AP) 01/22/02
NOTHING BEATS PARIS: London’s Royal Academy show of art from Paris is a big cliche – but a good one. “There they all are: the artists, the models, the romances and mistresses, the Moulin Rouge and Montparnasse, the demitasse and demimonde, the feuds, the fads, the philosophes. Paris and culture — or modern culture at least — go together like Gauloise and a Gallic shrug. Paradoxically, it was probably because 19th-century France was so obstinately old-fashioned that it became a magnet for modernity.” The Times (UK) 01/23/02
DOES NOT PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS: Because artists are often highly individualistic people, artistic collaborations are generally fragile constructions. When, on top of that, the collaboration is national as well as personal, chances are someone will be unhappy about it. That’s what happened to the shared Czech-Slovak pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year. Central Europe Review 01/22/02
Tuesday January 22
PARIS ON THE WANE? A new show in London examines the place of art in Paris. “Perhaps it is the problem of Paris – too many echoes, too many connections, too much art and history. Maybe this is why Paris is no longer, in 2002, capital of the arts. ‘Why did Paris decline?’ is the big, unanswerable question of the exhibition.” The Guardian (UK) 01/22/02
- FADED PARIS: Since national schools of art faded away into globalization, Paris has lost its claims to be central to the world of art. “Paris has surrendered – not without a fight – to New York and possibly even London. Whenever I travel to Paris I have the feeling that I am entering a museum city, a place not only replete with magnificent museums, but a city whose very appearance has been turned into an exhibit. It is difficult to take a photograph of Paris and not produce a visual cliche.” Financial Times 01/22/02
- CLEANING UP THE CLUTTER: Is there too much advertising in Paris – those unsightly signs and billboards disfigure otherwise handsome neighborhoods. Now there’s an initiative to clean up some of the visual clutter. The Art Newspaper 01/22/02
TRUCK ON: Artist Ben Long has adopted the back ends of dirty trucks as his medium of choice. “Under his skilled hand, graphic images of people, animals and objects appear in the grime on trucks parked over weekends at New Covent Garden Market, which Mr Long, 23, has turned into his open-air ‘studio’.” London Evening Standard 01/22/02
TAUBMAN APPEALS: Former Sotheby’s chairman Alfred Taubman, convicted in December of price-fixing, has filed a motion for a retrial, saying the case against him was presented unfairly. Among other things, Taubman says the government was “wrongly allowed to read a quotation at trial from Adam Smith to the effect that higher prices invariably result when people in the same trade meet.” The Art Newspaper 01/22/02
Monday January 21
REMMING UP: “For years, Rem Koolhaas was famous as an innovative architect who’d built almost nothing but had written the fabulous cult book “Delirious New York.” When he won architecture’s top prize, the Pritzker, in 2000, he still had almost no projects in the United States. But now, look out. Koolhaas’s unorthodox architecture is invading America, starting with the launch last October of a Guggenheim branch in Las Vegas.” Newsweek 01/28/02
GUNS INTO ART: Since the civil war in Mozambique ended 10 years ago, some 200,000 guns, grenades and rocket-launchers have been turned into the government, which has in turn given many of them over to artists. The artists have been making sculptures out of the weapons… The Art Newspaper 01/19/02
MOVIE THEATRE ART: In the 1980s, when theatre entrepreneur Garth Drabinsky ran the Cineplex Odeon movie theatre company, he took the unusual step of commissioning 52 large-scale works of art for some of the 2000 theatres the company operated in North America. Now Cineplex has gone bankrupt and the art has been removed; some of it has been sold, and the rest… Toronto Star 01/20/02
Sunday January 20
TRYING TO SAVE THE SOUTH BANK: “What is wrong with the South Bank? For some people, it is a question of the nature of a large slice of central London. Sixties concrete architecture and flawed, confused planning have combined to blight what ought to be one of the most vibrant parts of the city.” Now, with the center’s director recently resigned, the challenge to complete (and correct) one of the UK’s most ambitious cultural projects is greater than ever. The Observer 01/20/02
- SCORE ONE FOR THE LITTLE GUYS: “According to one of Britain’s most respected planners, provincial England is now teaching London a lesson in how to take big, prestige projects of international stature from the drawing board to reality. Sir Peter Hall, northern born and resident of London, says that while the capital is good at talking big, its ability to match cities like Manchester and Birmingham – or the new partnership of Newcastle and Gateshead – with new stadiums, concert halls, art galleries, and bold architecture, leaves much to be desired.” The Guardian (UK) 01/18/02
REARRANGING THE DECK CHAIRS: “Long unwilling to recognize that dwindling art supplies threaten their very survival in the long run, auction houses behave like politicians seeking re-election in uncertain times.” And while the situation is becoming dire enough that even the biggest houses are making cuts and trimming staff, the whole exercise has the reek of a too-little-too-late fiasco. International Herald-Tribune (Paris) 01/19/02
GIOTTO AL FRESCO: One of the world’s most beautiful and innovative Renaissance-era frescoes is nearly ready to be reopened to the public. Giotto’s famous masterpiece in Padua’s Scrovegni chapel has been undergoing a painstaking restoration for nearly a quarter century, a project which included the passage of new air pollution laws to protect the chamber, and brought together 14th-century artistry and 21st-century technology. BBC 01/20/02
FIGHTING FOR RESPECT: “In terms of worldwide prestige and exposure, there’s no denying it. People have been looking to Los Angeles as an alternative art center for at least a decade.” So why is it the same old crop of East Coast cities that still hog the spotlight? Washington Post 01/20/02
WHAT HAPPENED TO PARIS? Devoted Francophiles would deny it, of course, but it’s been several decades since Paris lived up to its reputation as a capital of the art world. A new exhibition in London reviews the great days of Parisian art in the first half of the 20th century, but such retrospectives make the absence of a similar legacy in any period since the 1960s intriguing. After centuries of producing some of the world’s best cutting-edge art, why has Paris now relinquished its enviable place in the world of art? The Guardian (UK) 01/19/02
- NOTHING HAPPENED, PARIS IS FINE: “Those who dread dark days ahead on the American cultural front owe themselves a visit home [to Paris.] This season, several events should serve to reinforce Franco-American ties, especially those stretching between Paris and New York.” The New York Times 01/20/02 (one-time registration required for access)
A FLAWED CONCEPT? You know the row over conceptual art is getting serious when a major gallery chief faces calls for his resignation (and his head) after taking a few shots at purveyors of the controversial style. Specifically, Ivan Massow, head man at the UK’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, declared most conceptual art to be “pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat… It is the product of over-indulged, middle class (barely concealed behind mockney accents), bloated egos who patronise real people with fake understanding.” BBC 01/18/02
CHICAGO’S NEW MASTERPIECE: “Chicago is revered as a city of masterpieces by the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, but its design reputation rests in many ways on a foundation of first-rate second-tier buildings — thoughtfully conceived, carefully detailed structures that bring real quality to the cityscape even if they do not regularly elicit ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs.’ The latest in this line of quietly distinguished performers is the UBS Tower, which is named for its prime tenant, the Union Bank of Switzerland, and it is downtown’s first multitenant skyscraper in a decade.” Chicago Tribune 01/20/02
PUTTING IT ON PAPER: “From interlocking, tubular towers to a building with holes already built into it, about 50 architects and artists are now displaying their visions of how to rebuild the decimated World Trade Center site.” Some of the designs are serious architectural proposals, some are whimsical futuristic designs, and some may even catch the attention of New York officials who will eventually decide what will rise in place of the Twin Towers. Nando Times (AP) 01/18/02
Friday January 18
THE PROBLEM WITH BEING LITERAL: The New York Fire Department has announced it will consider “new options” for a memorial to September 11, after the department was criticized for planning to depict three firemen raising the American flag at Ground Zero in a statue. A famous AP picture of the flag-raising showed three white firefighters, but the department planned a statue with one white, one black and one latino firefighter. Washington Post 01/18/02
- Previously: CONTROVERSIAL MEMORIAL: A plan to erect a bronze statue of three firemen raising a flag at Ground Zero in front of a Brooklyn firehouse has sparked controversy. The statue is based on an iconic Associated Press photo widely reproduced after September 11, but the artist has changed the firefighters from being all white to one white, one black and one latino. Some critics don’t like the tampering with the image. ”The problem with realist sculpture is that it narrows options and interpretations. The power of that photograph wasn’t in the three firefighters, but in the flag. To change the firefighters’ races puts that issue to the forefront, replacing the flag.” Boston Globe 01/16/02
BUT WE WERE ALWAYS FREE… The British Museum is having to reduce hours and lay off workers. “A large number of its greatest treasures closed to the public for most of the day in a bid to recoup some of its £5m deficit. Already 23 of its galleries, including the mausoleum of Halikarnassos, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and its most important Indian collection, are only open for 3 hours a day.” The BMA has long had free admission, but while museums who had been charging were recently “given £28m by the government to compensate for the introduction of free admission, the British Museum and the others who stuck by the principle of free admission claim they have been given nothing. Curators are furious that they have been punished for taking a stand the government later endorsed.” The Guardian (UK) 01/17/02
THE MUSEUM WITH NO ART: The National Gallery of Victoria closed two years ago for a major redevelopment. It won’t reopen permanently again for two more years. But as an Australia Day treat, the public will be allowed inside to see what’s been done so far and what’s still to be done. There’s no art, but… The Age (Melbourne) 01/18/02
UZBEKISTAN PAINTINGS RECOVERED: Five stolen paintings from the Tashkent Museum, worth $2 million, have been recovered by police in Uzbekistan. “The paintings were stolen in October from the Tashkent Fine Arts Museum by thieves who hid in the museum during the day and took the artwork after it had closed. A security guard on duty that night committed suicide after the theft.” Nando Times (AP) 01/17/02
THE STUCK STELE: Sixty years ago “Italian invaders” removed a 1,700-year-old stone stele regarded as a national monument, from Ethiopia. It has sat in a piazza in Rome ever since. The Ethiopians have long wanted it back, and in 1997 Italy agreed to return it. Four years later it still hasn’t, and Italy’s deputy culture minister objects to its return. The Ethiopians, who consider the stele’s return a national issue, are unhappy. “The Ethiopian people’s patience … is being tested to the limit and it’s wearing thin. Ethiopia wants the agreement implemented.” Yahoo! (AP) 01/17/02
- THE TIP OF A POLITICALLY-CHARGED ICEBERG: The Elgin marbles and the Ethiopian obelisk are in the news, but they’re only a tiny fraction of the museum pieces at stake. If artIfacts were routinely sent back to their country of origin, most Western museums would be stripped. Are those pieces legitimate art, the property of the possessor? Or are they plunder? And does it matter when the work was taken in the first place? Tough questions. So far, no comfortable answers. BBC 01/18/02
- Previously: MP’s BACK MARBLES’ RETURN TO GREECE: A group of 90 British members of parliament have formed a group to put pressure on the British Museum to return the Parthenon Marbles to Greece in time for the 2004 Athens Olympics. The Guardian (UK) 01/16/02
Thursday January 17
MP’s BACK MARBLES’ RETURN TO GREECE: A group of 90 British members of parliament have formed a group to put pressure on the British Museum to return the Parthenon Marbles to Greece in time for the 2004 Athens Olympics. The Guardian (UK) 01/16/02
SMITHSONIAN CHIEF BACK IN THE HOT SEAT: “Lawrence Small, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution criticized for leading the museum into a new era of commercialization and corporate sponsorship, was attacked by a group of 170 scholars, authors and academics yesterday. In an open letter to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who is the chancellor of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, the group contended that Small was ‘unwilling or unable to carry out the mission of the Smithsonian, or to safeguard its integrity’.” Washington Post 01/17/02
APPARENTLY HE DOESN’T LIKE CONCEPTUAL ART: Ivan Massow, chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, says the British art world is “in danger of disappearing up its own arse … led by cultural tsars such as the Tate’s Sir Nicholas Serota, who dominate the scene from their crystal Kremlins. Most concept art I see now is pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat that I wouldn’t accept even as a gift.” The Guardian (UK) 01/17/02
NEW DE YOUNG MUSEUM APPROVED: San Francisco officials have finally given permission to the de Young Museum to build a new museum in Golden Gate Park. “The latest lingering controversy had been over the building’s proposed design – especially the inclusion of a 144-foot tower that will house classrooms, a library, an artists’ studio and observation deck.” San Francisco Chronicle 01/16/02
BLAME THE ARCHITECTS: The city of Toronto almost had Rem Koolhaas and Santiago Calatrava, two of the hottest architects working today, building buildings in the city. But stewards of the projects managed to chase the pair off their respective projects… what’s it take to get a good project built here? The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/16/02
GALLERY WANNABES: Traditionally, galleries have sold artists’ fresh contemporary work. Auction houses handled resales. “In the past, a clearly defined set of rules governed the activities of both operations but, in the last five years, those traditional boundaries have been blurred as auction moves ever closer to being a primary market in itself.” The Art Newspaper 01/14/02
Wednesday January 16
FBI VISITS MUSEUM: Houston’s Art Car Museum recently got a visit from the FBI: “They said they had several reports of anti-American activity going on here and wanted to see the exhibit. The museum was running a show called Secret Wars, which contains many anti-war statements that were commissioned before September 11.” A museum docent gave them a tour: “I asked them if they were familiar with the artists and what the role of art was at a critical time like this. They were more interested in where the artists were from. They were taking some notes. They were pointing out things that they thought were negative.” Later, “a spokesman for the FBI in Houston, says the visit was a routine follow-up on a call ‘from someone who said there was some material or artwork that was of a threatening nature to the President’.” The Progressive 01/02
BRITISH MUSEUM WOES: The British Museum is in financial difficulty and will have to cut its staff. “The museum also revealed yesterday that it has cut opening hours for almost a third of its 100 galleries. Staff were told at a mass meeting that the museum must make 15 per cent savings on its £45 million budget because of inadequate Government grants and a fall in tourism numbers following last year’s foot and mouth outbreak and the September 11 terrorist attacks. The museum is the country’s most popular attraction with 4.6 million visitors last year and the cuts are likely to embarrass the Government. The Telegraph (UK) 01/16/02
- BMA TO GREECE – NO RETURNS, NO DEPOSITS: The director of the British Museum flatly turns down any idea of loaning the Parthenon Marbles to Greece, or returning them. He considers the BMA as a “world museum” and says the museum “saved” the marbles from destruction by taking them. “The British Museum transcends national boundaries; it has never been a museum of British culture, it is a museum of the world, and its purpose is to display the works of mankind of all periods and of all places. The idea of cultural restitution is the anathema of this principle.” The Guardian (UK) 01/15/02
- Previously: V&A DIRECTOR URGES DEAL ON PARTHENON MARBLES: Mark Jones, the new director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, has broken ranks and urged the British Museum to work out a deal with Greece for custody of the Parthenon Marbles. “It is not necessarily a case of transferred ownership or of giving the Marbles back for good, but when people believe things are really important, as the Greeks and the British Museum do in this case, that is actually a good thing. Apathy is our great enemy.” The Observer (UK) 01/13/02
THE ART OF RETURNS: “The difficulty investors in art have had in bettering the stock market largely explains why there have been few institutional art investors at a time when the amount of funds under professional investment management across The United States and Europe has, over the 1990s, more than doubled to $40 trillion. Does that mean art is an unwise investment for the private individual? Not necessarily.” The Art Newspaper 01/15/02
CONTROVERSIAL MEMORIAL: A plan to erect a bronze statue of three firemen raising a flag at Ground Zero in front of a Brooklyn firehouse has sparked controversy. The statue is based on an iconic Associated Press photo widely reproduced after September 11, but the artist has changed the firefighters from being all white to one white, one black and one latino. Some critics don’t like the tampering with the image. ”The problem with realist sculpture is that it narrows options and interpretations. The power of that photograph wasn’t in the three firefighters, but in the flag. To change the firefighters’ races puts that issue to the forefront, replacing the flag.” Boston Globe 01/16/02
GRAVES BEHIND GRAVES: A conservator at the Seattle Art Museum notices a tear in the backing of a Morris Graves painting he was cleaning. Exploring, he finds another completed Graves painting on the back of the canvas he had been cleaning. Seattle Times 01/16/02
Tuesday January 15
BIOLOGY, NOT AESTHETICS: Why do some works of art seem to have universal appeal? Are they just that much better than other art? Maybe not. “A flowering scientific movement suggests that art appreciation and production starts in the brain, not the heart. All visual art, from execution to perception, are functions of the visual brain.” That art which we most respond to may trigger some physiological truth. San Diego Union-Tribune (AP) 01/14/02
V&A DIRECTOR URGES DEAL ON PARTHENON MARBLES: Mark Jones, the new director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, has broken ranks and urged the British Museum to work out a deal with Greece for custody of the Parthenon Marbles. “It is not necessarily a case of transferred ownership or of giving the Marbles back for good, but when people believe things are really important, as the Greeks and the British Museum do in this case, that is actually a good thing. Apathy is our great enemy.” The Observer (UK) 01/13/02
- FINDERS KEEPERS: “The director of the British Museum has turned down calls for a return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece… A £29m museum is under construction in Athens for their return. The 56 sculpted friezes were sent to the British Museum after their removal from Greece during Ottoman Turkish rule.” BBC 01/15/02
REMBRANDT FOR SALE: A Rembrandt painting – the most valuable ever on the market, is going to be offered for sale at this year’s Maastricht Art Fair. Minerva is said to be worth about £40 million, and will be displayed at a booth at the fair. “The painting, once owned by the Swedish inventor of the Electrolux vacuum cleaner and then by Baron Bich, the Bic ballpoint pen magnate, is one of only two other historic scenes by Rembrandt held in private collections – both the others are in Britain.” The Observer (UK) 01/13/02
Monday January 14
CHANGE OF BID: The auction house’s have had a rough year. But rougher times may be ahead. “In what shape and size auction houses will survive is anybody’s guess. But change they must. In a nutshell, quantity isn’t there any more to feed their vast bodies. Art supplies are all too visibly running thin, making the auction business barely profitable.” International Herald Tribune 01/13/02
RETURN OF SURREALISM: It never really went away, but since September 11, surrealism seems to be gaining new steam. “What’s interesting is that once again, contemporary art has been ahead of the curve. In an age when plans and agendas rule, the Surrealist idea of truly allowing oneself to discover, to travel into the imagination without a preordained route, is a reminder of how exhilarating freedom can be.” New York Times Magazine 01/13/02
LEADING LONDON GALLERY CLOSING: Saying that “you no longer need an expensive gallery” to sell art, the owner of London’s Alex Reid & Lefevre, London’s leading gallery of Impressionist art, is closing the gallery. “The gallery was one of the last of the great Post-War art dealerships with direct links back to the post-Impressionists. It was founded in 1926 by the Glaswegian Alex Reid, a friend of Van Gogh who introduced his work to this country, and to his main rival the London dealer Lefevre. The closure of Alex Reid & Lefevre is a major blow to the London trade lamented by both auctioneers and dealers alike.” The Art Newspaper 01/11/02
Sunday January 13
THE MAXIMUM MINIMAL MEMORIAL: What should a memorial for the World Trade Center be? “I have a guess. A memorial, as part of a mixed-use project, will in some way turn out to look Minimalist. Minimalism, of all improbable art movements of the last 50 years, having become the unofficial language of memorial art. What used to be men on horses with thrusting swords has morphed more or less into plain walls and boxes. Once considered the most obstinate kind of modernism, Minimalism has gradually, almost sub rosa, made its way into the public’s heart. And now those bare walls are blank slates onto which we project our deepest commonly held feelings.” The New York Times 01/13/02
OUTSIDE IN: The term “outsider art” has always been problematic. It encompasses so many different styles and genres, and it conveys the tinge of condescension. “The larger outsider art’s audience grows, the more vehemently people within the field object to the term outsider, and the more complaints we hear about the very idea of such a category.” The New York Times 01/13/02
LOOKING FOR ART IN MILWAUKEE: The Milwaukee Art Museum has a handsome new building. But it’s been criticized for the thinness of the art inside. The museum is trying to hire a new curator for contemporary art, but has been unsuccessful. “By waiting on the hire, however, the museum opens itself up to a more general criticism commonly made of museums that go through costly, attention-getting expansions. Museums with great new buildings, destinations unto themselves, often fail to keep art the priority. And that is like false advertising, like a pretty Tiffany’s box with Kmart merchandise inside.” Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 01/13/02
Friday January 11
SAVING VENICE: Venice is being destroyed by annual floods. Now, after a decade of legislative wrangling, the Italian government has approved a plan to control the flow of water from the Adriatic Sea into the lagoon of Venice. As presented, the plan would plan will cost nearly $2 billion. The Art Newspaper 01/10/02
YEP, THAT WOULD MAKE YOU SUSPICIOUS: The Chicago Art Institute took a major hit on the investment of its endowment recently. Two events alerted the museum something was wrong. “One was a visit last autumn from FBI agents seeking information on museum dealings with Integral Investment. The other was an October letter in which Integral Investment told investors that, due to a steep fall in markets after September 11th, the liquidation value of one product, the Integral Hedging fund, would probably ‘reflect a loss of over 90%’.” The Economist 01/03/02
- Previously: ART INSTITUTE ALLEGES FRAUD: The Chicago Art Institute has accused a Dallas financial firm of maybe defrauding the museum of millions of dollars. “As much as $43 million in museum endowment funds placed with the firm appear to be at risk, the Art Institute said. One fund containing $23 million from the museum is said to have lost as much as 90 percent of its value, according to the complaint.” The firm promised “protection from any plunge in financial markets.” Chicago Tribune 12/11/01
ANCIENT MODERNISTS: Scientists define “modern” behavior in humans as being able to make art and be capable of abstract thought. “The theory up until now has been that modern human behavior started only around 40,000 years ago,” However, engraved bits of stone “found in a cave and dated at 77,000 years suggest ancient humans in Africa developed complex behavior and abstract thought thousands of years earlier than the famed cave painters of Europe. ABC (AP) 01/10/02
HIDDEN MONEY COMES TO LIGHT: “A painting by French Impressionist Claude Monet will be shown to the public on Friday for the first time in more than a century. Prairie de Limetz is being auctioned by Christie’s next month and is expected to fetch up to £3m [$4.33m].” BBC 01/11/02
Thursday January 10
WORLD’S LARGEST ANTIQUITIES MUSEUM? “Egypt opened an international design competition Wednesday for a new antiquities museum which Minister of Culture claimed would be the world’s largest and would be built near the pyramids. The $350 million, high-tech museum will sit on 480,000 square meters (576,000 yards) and house all 150,000 artifacts that are now crammed in the existing Egyptian Museum.” CNN (AP) 01/09/02
FEWER VISITORS=LOWER SALES: “According to a 1999 survey of 1,800 museums by the American Association of Museums, revenue from gift shops and publications accounted on average for 25.5 percent of earned income (general admissions is the next highest source, at 19.8 percent) and 7.1 percent of gross income, a figure that also includes philanthropic gifts, sponsorships and government grants.” Now that attendance at museums is down, sales at giftshops are too. The New York Times 01/10/02
TURNING DOWN ART FOR ITS OWN GOOD: A rare exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum opening this March presents “four centuries of Italian sculpture in terracotta – fired modelling clay – with loans from museums around the world, many leaving their countries for the first time. It includes works by some of the most famous names of the Italian renaissance, including Ghiberti, Donatello, and Verrocchio.” But the V&A turned down the loan of a rare Canova offered by a museum in Venice because of the risk of its destruction. The Guardian (UK) 01/09/02
MODERN PROBLEMS IN IRELAND: It’s not been a good year for the Irish Museum of Modern Art. First, the museum’s director was fired – he sued, won $520,000 and got to keep his job. Then when his contract was up, the board hired Brian Kennedy from Australia’s National Gallery. Board members resigned and Kennedy turned down the job. “Now that the dust has started to settle, the problems seem self-evident: a director who overstayed his welcome, a voice for change that rubbed people the wrong way and an institution still struggling to create a relevant role for itself and to forge links with Irish artists.” The New York Times 01/09/02
Wednesday January 9
EURO A DUD AS ART: The introduction of the Euro is intended to do wonders for the economy of Europe. But how about the banknotes as art? “Universally derided as characterless and dull, the seven multicoloured denominations have been described by Italy’s La Stampa newspaper as ‘a bit pale and jaundiced with an unexpressive, slightly anemic appearance.’ Britain’s The Guardian delivered a similarly withering critique, calling it a ‘superbland, superbanal design aimed at offending no one.’ It’s another instance of the lowest common denominator taking over the world.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/078/02
MORE RAVES FOR THE FOLK MUSEUM: The new American Folk Art Museum is perhaps “New York’s finest new building since Wright’s Guggenheim,” writes Martin Filler. “Its intelligent equipoise between architectural excitement and genuine attentiveness to the works of art that it displays is exemplary, as is its equally appropriate balance between physical grandeur and spiritual intimacy. I do not doubt that this physically small but conceptually colossal structure will become a new paradigm for museum design as we enter an era very different from the one that Bilbao so perfectly epitomized.” The New Republic 01/07/02
- A TRIUMPHANT LEAP: The museum cost a modest $22 million. “Its facade, covered in 63 dull bronze panels, is forbidding. Once inside, though, this austerity is replaced by spaces that slowly unfold as one explores. Admittedly, the museum is not big, but the changes in scale make it feel much bigger than it is.” Financial Times 01/09/02
- Previously: JUST FOLKS: The new American Folk Art Museum in New York celebrates the unsung art of plain folks. Who are folks? “Folk are vitiated citizens. They belong to communities at odds with society. They may be set apart on religious principle, like the Shakers; by clannishness, like the nineteenth-century Pennsylvania Germans, who are a special focus of the Esmerian collection; as the result of ostracism, like racial minorities; or because of poverty or other ill fortune. Folk status may crystallize around objects that were once ordinary products of cottage industries but have since become obsolete—exotically old-fashioned.” The New Yorker 01/07/02
THE GREAT MUSEUM DIRECTOR SEARCH: Madrid’s Prado and Paris’s d’Orsay Museum both have new directors (and both arrive in clouds of controversy). Meanwhile, London’s National Gallery is scouring the earth for a new leader (one obstacle to hiring an American is that directors’ salaries in the US tend to be “two to three times” what they are in the UK). The Art Newspaper 01/08/02
OLD GOLD: “Russian scholars from the State Hermitage Museum have concluded that a discovery of Scythian gold in a Siberian grave last summer is the earliest of its kind ever found and that it predates Greek influence. The find is leading to a change in how scholars view the supposed barbaric, nomadic tribes that once roamed the Eurasian steppes.” The gold is in the form of extremely sophisticated works of art, mostly representations of the animals which roamed the Eurasian steppe. The New York Times 01/09/02 (one-time registration required for access)
ART THAT DIVIDES: The Binational Mural Project is making a portion of the US/Mexico border into art. “The 2-mile-long mural, on the U.S. side of the border wall, involved the work of close to 2,000 volunteers over three years. In its scale and dedication it ranks with the AIDS Memorial Quilt as one of the country’s most significant and ambitious community-involved public art works of the past 20 years.” San Francisco Chronicle 01/08/02
Tuesday January 8
SOTHEBY’S FOR SALE? Speculation is increasing that Sotheby’s is for sale. “It is widely expected that the 257-year-old auction house will go on the block following the conviction on December 5 of Alfred Taubman, the former chairman and controlling shareholder, on price-fixing charges.” Top contenders? Bernard Arnault, owner of No. 3 auction house Phillips, and E-bay, the online auctioneer. Not surprisingly, given Sotheby’s woes and lack of profitability, “no candidates have publicly shouted their interest.” Financial Times 01/08/02
TWICE AS MANY GO WHEN IT’S FREE: Museum attendance has doubled in the UK since museum admission was made free last month. “The biggest rise was at the Victoria & Albert in London, where a combination of the free entry and the opening of its spectacular British galleries led to a fourfold increase in visitors. A total of 174,249 people passed through its portals in the run-up to Christmas, traditionally a fallow period for museums and galleries.” The Guardian (UK) 01/07/02
TOUCHY SUBJECT: When it comes to restoring Nazi-appropriated art to its rightful owners, many of the world’s top museums have been forced to confront the delicate fact that not every claim has equal merit, and some museums and collectors appear to be trying to turn the situation to their own advantage. Latest case in point: two UK galleries are disputing Polish and Ukrainian claims on a collection of Dürer masterpieces that were looted by the Nazis, then returned and resold by the original owners. BBC 01/08/02
OOPS: “Dealer Guy Morrison astounded the art world at Sotheby’s on 29 November when he bid a phenomenal £9.4 million – £2 million over the published auction estimate – to win Sir Joshua Reynolds’s celebrated portrait of Omai, the young Tahitian ‘noble savage’ brought to England by Captain Cook in 1774.” But it turns out Morrison spent £2 million more than his client had authorized, and two months later the painting is still sitting at Sotheby’s. London Evening Standard 01/07/02
OF ART AND MERCHANDISE: The US Supreme Court has refused to hear a case in which artist Gary Saderup was told to pay heirs of the Three Stooges for drawing their likenesses T-shirts. “Now Saderup must pay the $75,000 he made from the products to the heirs and cover their legal fees. The court said Saderup’s renditions of three unsmiling stooges, including two with their eyes open wide, were merchandise, not art.” Nando Times (AP) 01/07/02
REALLY BENT PROPELLER: Alexander Calder’s sculpture dug out of the ruins of the World Trade Center has been hauled to a storage yard beneath the New Jersey Turnpike. “Those who have seen the tangled pile of steel beneath the turnpike find themselves strangely moved by the horror that has been fused into each piece.” Washington Post 01/07/02
JUST FOLKS: The new American Folk Art Museum in New York celebrates the unsung art of plain folks. Who are folks? “Folk are vitiated citizens. They belong to communities at odds with society. They may be set apart on religious principle, like the Shakers; by clannishness, like the nineteenth-century Pennsylvania Germans, who are a special focus of the Esmerian collection; as the result of ostracism, like racial minorities; or because of poverty or other ill fortune. Folk status may crystallize around objects that were once ordinary products of cottage industries but have since become obsolete—exotically old-fashioned.” The New Yorker 01/07/02
THE FACTORY AS BEAUTIFUL ARCHITECTURE: Volkswagon’s new plant in the center of Dresden is an amazing feat of design – on par with the Tate Modern and Bilbao Guggenheim, says one critic. “This futuristic German motown blossoms in a new park in Dresden’s Strasburger Platz. Here, for the first time, perhaps, since Matteo Trucco’s charismatic Fiat car plant in Turin, built in the 1920s with a race-track on its roof, is a large factory designed to enhance a European city centre. By any standards, the Glaeserne Manufaktur is an impressive achievement, proof that heavy industry – 21st- century style – can be a part of our cities and something to celebrate.” The Guardian (UK) 01/07/02
ART OF TRAITORS: Anthony Blunt was one of England’s most notorious spies. He was “a diligent, cool-headed traitor for two decades, yet this was the smaller part of his life. His overt expertise was in French art and architecture. He was (legally) recruited first by the Warburg Institute in London, then moved to its rival the Courtauld, where he eventually became director.” The New Yorker 01/07/02
Monday January 7
AFGHAN DOCTOR DOCTORED PAINTINGS TO SAVE THEM: An Afghan physician spent months last year doctoring paintings in Afghanistan’s National Gallery, trying to save them from being destroyed by the Taliban. “With a paintbrush and watercolors, Asefi saved more than 100 paintings from destruction by the puritanical regime, which decreed that any art depicting human or animal images was un-Islamic. He drew colorful bouquets of flowers to hide women’s heads, blended pedestrians seamlessly into gray cityscapes, and made horses vanish into brown mountain landscapes.” Philadelphia Inquirer 01/06/02
PROTESTING A DEFECATING POPE: An exhibition at the Copia Museum in California features “defecating ceramic figurines of the pope, nuns and angels.” Catholic groups are protesting. The museum says the figures are “caganers” or “figurines are part of Spain’s Catalonian peasant tradition dating back to the 18th century.” But a Catholic spokesman says: “When it’s degrading, everybody knows it except the spin doctors who run the museums.” Nando Times (AP) 01/06/02
A MAYOR WHO CARED ABOUT BUILDINGS: Outgoing Cleveland mayor Michael White is passionate about architecture. “He presided over one of the biggest building booms in Cleveland’s history, and will certainly be judged on the physical legacy he leaves behind. So how well did he wield the mayoral T-square? There’s no question that Cleveland looks far better than it did in 1990, and the mayor deserves much of the credit. In many ways, the city has been transformed.” The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 01/06/02
THE BBC’S MISSING ART: Hundreds of artworks are missing from the offices of the BBC. The Corporation wants them back. “No doubt many paintings and artefacts have found their way into people’s homes for the good reason that there was nowhere else for them to go when offices were refurbished.” So an amnesty is being offered. BBC 01/06/02
BACK TO PAINTING: After years of artworld conceptualizing, there are more and more signs that painting is “in” again. Or at least in with the “in” crowd. “Painting is familiar as an old road map. We have been acquainted with its images since earliest childhood. We know how to read them. Its vocabulary seems so immediate it almost runs in our blood. And perhaps it is precisely because painting holds this basic power that, at a time when the art world isn’t quite sure which way it’s going, we can turn to this medium to provide a way ahead.” The Times (UK) 01/07/02
VARNEDOE LEAVES MOMA: Kirk Varnedoe has been chief curator of the Museum of Modern Art’s department of painting and sculpture since 1988. But as MOMA prepares for a major expansion, Varnedoe is leaving the museum to go to Princeton. “Many people regard me as a raging postmodernist, says Mr. Varnedoe, who has also been accused of an emphatic bias against contemporary theory. ‘I’m more of a pragmatist than anything else, a Darwinist, I suppose, as opposed to having a teleological vision of a great race of isolated geniuses who pass the baton on to one another’.” The New York Times 01/06/02
Sunday January 6
POLAROID’S HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY: The Polaroid Corporation went bankrupt last fall, and photgraphy enthusiasts are wondering about what will become of the company’s extensive collection of photographs. “The collection, amassed over six decades, is a window on American culture, an invaluable tool for anyone tracking the evolution of photography, and a medley of photography’s biggest names.” Los Angeles Times 01/06/02
BUT HE SAID 15 MINUTES: Fifteen years after he died, Andy Warhol is more popular than ever. Prices for his work have soared, and there are numerous new projects having to do with his work. “Such prices prove that Warhol, 15 years after his death in 1987, has become the hottest commodity on the contemporary-art market. Warhol exhibitions are touring the globe. A retrospective of 82 works, co-organized last year by the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and the U.S. Department of State, is appearing in Eastern Europe, making Warhol the first contemporary American artist ever shown in such countries as Kazakhstan and Latvia. Last year the Warhol Museum organized 39 exhibitions and loans—as many shows as in the three previous years together. What’s more, Warhol’s huge catalogue of films is being restored, and many are being screened for a new generation from Pittsburgh to London.” ARTNews 01/02
Friday January 4
EUROPE’S BOLDEST CULTURAL PROJECT SINCE BILBAO? “One of France’s richest men unveiled plans for a modern art museum that promises to be Europe’s boldest cultural project since Bilbao’s Guggenheim and London’s Tate Modern. Francois Pinault, whose collection includes 1,000 works by such masters as Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Amedeo Modigliani, and Joan Miró, picked Japanese architectural legend Tadao Ando to design the museum, describing the trapezoid building as ‘a spacecraft suspended on the River Seine’.” The Christian Science Monitor 01/04/02
SLASHED PAINTING RETURNS: A Barnett Newman painting slashed by a vandal in Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum four years ago has been restored and rehung. “To the untutored eye, it is nearly impossible to tell that the 8-by-18-foot dark-blue painting, with a thin light-blue stripe, or zip, as the artist called this signature element, on the right and a broader, more dominant whitish zip to the left, had been repeatedly slashed with a small knife. The damage by Gerard Jan van Bladeren — a frustrated artist who told authorities he didn’t hate all art, just abstract art and realism — left conservators with one of the biggest challenges of their profession: how to repair, seamlessly, a large-format, basically monochromatic canvas.” The New York Times 01/04/02
UNTITLED IMAGINATION: “These days, artists seem to have about two choices when it comes to titles: Either you refuse to christen your work at all – except as ‘Untitled,’ the artistic equivalent of ‘John Doe’ – or you name it so obscurely, the title barely hints at anything the work’s about.” Washington Post 01/04/01
Thursday January 3
PROTECTING THE TAJ MAHAL: As India and Pakistan threaten war with one another, “Indian officials are working on plans to camouflage the white marble monument, should it accidentally come under fire from Pakistani fighter jets.” Yahoo (Reuters) 01/02/02
AFGHANISTAN PLEDGES TO REBUILD BUDDHAS: The new government of Afghanistan says its will restore the giant Bamiyan Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban last year. “The restoration of the Buddhas is one of our top priorities, along with the revival of the media and broadcasting sector.” Times of India (AFP) 01/02/02
BUILDING ENVY: What’s wrong with the new wave of museum-building? Hilton Kramer writes: “When you add up all these millions and millions of dollars for new museum construction and come to realize that not a dime of it will be devoted to acquiring first-rate works of art for the museums’ expanded exhibition space, you have a vivid sense of the twisted priorities that now govern museums–and not only in this country, of course.” New York Observer 01/02/02
TOON STRESS: There are two magazines forever being purchased by folks who insist they “buy it for the articles,” when in fact they intend to look only at the pictures. The one of the two you haven’t thought of yet is the New Yorker, which for decades has been home to America’s finest cartooning. The process of selecting the toons is exclusive, stressful in the extreme, and a bit over-serious for such a light medium. But to the thousands who submit entries every year, it couldn’t be more worth it. Chicago Tribune 01/03/02
AN OILY REPUTATION: Jan Van Eyck was famous for a long time for being the inventor of oil paint back in the 15th Century. “Van Eyck’s secret became notorious, say the chroniclers, and the paintings he made with it dazzled all who saw them. He passed the formula on to a handful of Flemish followers but they guarded it closely. Stories that explain great historical transformations are as popular today as they were in the 16th century, but the legend of Van Eyck is, sadly, not true. It was accepted as such for a long time, until conservationists found much earlier traces of oil painting.” The Guardian (UK) 01/01/02
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS (HAPPILY) UNKNOWN: “Successful, of course, is not synonymous with famous. For famous, you might choose a name such as Riopelle, Thomson, Carr, Pratt or Colville. But Eric Dennis Waugh has likely sold more canvases than all of them — combined. In fact, he’s sold more paintings, by far, than anyone else in Canada (and in most other countries as well). Eric Dennis who? Exactly.” The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 01/03/02
Wednesday January 2
MUSEUMS RESIST WWII LOOT CLAIMS: Twelve major international museums (including New York’s Metropolitan) are resisting claims on two dozen Durer drawings, which were looted by the Nazis in World War II. The drawings were recovered by American troops after the war and turned over to Prince George Lubomirski, who then sold them. The claims center around whether the drawings were returned to their rightful owners. The Art Newspaper 01/01/02
WORLD’S LARGEST ART: An Australian artist by the name of Ando has created the largest artwork in the world, a 4.3-million-square-metre big image of Eldee Man. The work, recently unveiled in time for Australia’s Year of the Outback, depicts a smiling stockman in scored earth on the Mundi Mundi plains of New South Wales.” National Post 01/01/02
MAKING SENSE OF ART: “Two obstacles face those who hope to enjoy art without spending every waking moment contemplating it. One obstacle is overabundance. Every spring an army of talent breaks out of the art schools and tries to break into art, making the art world a terrifying microcosm of the global population crisis… The other obstacle is that much of what happens in any given year, including 2001, strikes most people as crazy.” For 20 years, a Canadian magazine has been helping art fans cut through the clutter. National Post (Canada) 01/03/02
Theatre: January 2002
Friday February 1
IT’S THE SERVICE CHARGE THAT GETS YOU: Another show on Broadway is joining The Producers in offering tickets for $240 a seat. But it’s not a musical – “the lead producer of The Crucible, said yesterday that 30 prime orchestra seats a night would be available at $240 apiece, a price that includes the tickets’ new $200 face value plus a $40 commission charge. The New York Times 02/01/02
MY FAIR HEADLOCK: A Broadway show based on the life of a real person? Sure, lots of them. But, a politician? Well, yes, it’s been done. But, I mean, this one’s about Jesse Ventura. Jesse Ventura, the former wrestler who’s governor of Minnesota? Yeah, him; and it’s a musical. Um… I think that will be a first. Baltimore Sun (AP) 01/31/02
Thursday January 31
NEW L.A. THEATRE: Actor Kirk Douglas and his wife Anne have donated $2.5 million to help build a new theatre. “The interior of the Culver Theater, a former cinema that opened in 1947, would be overhauled to create a flexible space with about 400 seats and a smaller upstairs facility that would seat 100. The exterior of the building, which has been designated a historic landmark, would be preserved as provided under city ordinance. The building will be named the Kirk Douglas Theatre. The point of the theater is to give young talent a chance to develop. Los Angeles Times 01/30/02
Wednesday January 30
DIRECTION FOR DIRECTORS: Britain’s first university graduate degree in theatre directing has finally come into being. “Besides access to mentors from an ‘attachment’ or ‘anchor’ theatre or touring company, each student will have links to one of six leading drama schools and the benefits of the highly-regarded arts and drama teaching at Birkbeck.” The Guardian (UK) 01/29/02
RESCUING LONG WHARF: Gordon Edelstein’s appointment as new director of New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre “is seen among theater insiders as a much-needed lift for Long Wharf, which has been experiencing decreased revenue, declining subscriptions and mixed notices. It is difficult to interpret whether the slide is because of the recession, the shock of Sept. 11, a reaction of the loss of [previous director] Doug Hughes’ leadership, or programming.” Hartford Courant 01/30/02
NOISES ON: The hit musical in London right now is Umoja, a survey of South African culture and history. A big part of the show is the drumming. Fast. Furious. Loud. Mostly loud, so loud that neighbors are complaining and officials are threatening fines. The producers, who may have to pay for insulating the theater, argue that “In all fairness, you don’t buy a flat in the West End and not expect some level of music and noise – this is the entertainment capital of the world.” BBC 01/30/02
Tuesday January 29
DITCHING ROYALTY: London’s Royal National Theatre is quietly dropping the “royal” designation from its official name. “‘We can’t recall the last time a member of the royal family came here for an official visit. The sort of people who need to be attracted to the National Theatre don’t, quite frankly, give a stuff about whether it is royal or not.” The Observer (UK) 01/27/02
SHARING THE RISK AND REWARDS: “Some of the biggest names in UK theatre including Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Fry are appealing to wealthy stage fans to back a new company that will share the risk of putting on costly stage productions. Theatreshare, headed by Fry and allied with Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group, hopes to become a major player in the West End.” BBC 01/29/02
LONG WHARF’S NEW DIRECTOR: New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre has hired Gordon Edelstein to be its new artistic director. Edelstein is currently director of Seattle’s A Contemporary Theatre, where he’s credited with reviving the company’s artistic and financial fortunes. Seattle Times 01/28/02
Monday January 28
THE BROADWAY AUDIENCE: Who goes to Broadway shows? White (81 percent) college-educated (75 percent) women (63 percent) over 40 from out of town (47 percent) with an average annual income of $93,000. New York Daily News 01/28/02
ALMEIDA’S SURPRISE CHOICE: It was widely assumed that, for its next artistic director, London’s fashionable Almeida Theatre would “go for one of the young Turks of British theatre or perhaps continue the tradition of getting actors to run the place.” Instead, the theatre chose Michael Attenborough. He hadn’t even applied for the job. The Telegraph (UK) 01/28/02
Sunday January 27
THE GREYING OF BROADWAY: This season Broadway stages are populated with senior citizens. “The aging of Broadway is a serious matter, and many theater people say that its impact on their industry, and the new stage generation, is crucial. Some say the presence of so many theater veterans is an exciting chance for Broadway giants to display their wares to those who know them and those who don’t. But other people in the theater see it as a symptom of what they consider major problems: the age of the theater audience, the inability to attract and keep young, innovative playwrights, and the unwillingness of Broadway to take a chance on anything but the familiar.” The New York Times 01/27/02
IN SEARCH OF RISK: For the past 12 years, the Almeida Theatre in north London has been a hotbed of critical acclaim. Now Jonathan Kent, its artistic director, is leaving. Why? He believes that “to do good work you must be ‘frightened’. What does he mean? ‘I was watching a TV programme that maintained that some people have a ‘risk chromosome’. Perhaps I have one. The Almeida has been based upon taking impossible and absurd challenges.’ (Example of risk chromosome at work: against the advice of the board, Kent and Ian McDiarmid undertook to raise a £1 million in one week to stage Richard II and Coriolanus.They did it).” The Observer (UK) 01/27/02
THEATRE WOES IN ANOTHER STRATFORD: The town of Stratford, Connecticut had expensive million-dollar dreams for its Shakespeare theatre But “renovations for the theater were halted in midsummer 2000 when it was clear there was no more money and workers walked off the job, leaving rolls of carpet in the lobby and boxes of new seats in the balcony.” Now “the state doesn’t want the white elephant. (You get the impression talking to state officials privately that the state just wishes the theater would just go away.) And the town, which has financial problems of its own, isn’t exactly eager either. It certainly doesn’t want to be in the theater-management business.” Hartford Courant 01/27/02
TAKEOUT BARD: If you can order pizzas and Chinese food to be delivered, why not Shakespeare? A small company of actors in New York has started a business delivering The dozen or so actors “offer Bard specials that can be ordered a la carte and performed in your home. Prices start at $50.” New York Post 01/27/02
Friday January 25
SUPER-SIZE IT? When planning a new show for New York, one of the first things a producer must ask is – how big a show should it be? “In some ways this is always the question a producer asks in trying to balance the art and commerce of putting on a show. But over the last few seasons, with more musicals crowding into the pipeline, musical-friendly theaters in short supply and Broadway economics more daunting than ever, the conventional wisdom regarding what size show belongs in what size theater has been challenged as never before.” The New York Times 01/25/02
Thursday January 24
ANOTHER NON-UNION SHOW: Former Supreme Mary Wilson is the latest big name to sign on to a touring non-union Broadway show. “Wilson is about to hit the road in a revival of Sophisticated Ladies, the Duke Ellington revue that won several Tonys in 1981.” The show is eschewing union performers in favor of cheaper cast members. Actors Equity is trying to fight the proliferation of such touring companies. New York Post 01/23/02
THE UNLIKELY HIT: “Three childhood friends from Cleveland — Hank Unger and two brothers, Matthew and Michael Rego — have pulled off the unlikely feat of mounting a new Broadway musical while in their early 30’s. Moreover, the company has done so with a show that few would have ever dreamed of being a critical and popular hit: a low-budget musical with a surreal subject — an evil conglomerate that controls a city’s bathrooms — written by an unknown writer and composer, and with a title that makes a lot of prospective audience members wince.” The New York Times 01/24/02
Tuesday January 22
SO MUCH FOR THE 21st CENTURY: Theatre Basel has just opened a new theatre – one its artistic director proudly proclaimed on opening night is a “theatre for the 21st Century. “The audience, not sure it had heard correctly, was sitting on wobbly seats in a gray, cold and uncharismatic concrete house with two galleries and cheap chipboard walls. To get in, people had crossed a foyer as charming as a baggage-claim office and clambered up small wooden stairways to narrow gallery passages squeezed between red concrete walls and the glass facade of the building, all the while feeling like uninvited guests in the proverbial can of sardines. If this was the theater of the 21st century, you would not want to see any theater again in this century. Or else the artistic director was telling tall tales.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 01/22/02
Monday January 21
DENVER THEATRE IN DANGER OF CLOSING: The Denver Civic Theatre will be out of business by the end of this season if it doesn’t get a slug of new cash. Business has died since September 11. “Before Sept. 11, our revenues were growing 20-30 percent per production. We were budgeted for a 25 percent gain over last year, but right now we are running 50-60 percent behind. We’ve done about four times as much marketing, our reviews have been excellent, and we still finished about about $100,000 behind in ticket sales.” Denver Post 01/21/02
SHAKESPEARE SENSIBILITIES: Are “ethnic sensibilities” hindering American theatres from producing some Shakespeare plays? That’s what one theatre company manager told the annual conference of the Shakespeare Theatre Association of America last week. The group includes more than 70 companies of the 130 to 150 that use the name of Shakespeare in their title. Chicago Sun-Times 01/21/02
Friday January 18
CLASSIC MUSICALS DOMINATE OLIVIERS: The Olivier Awards, British theatre’s most prestigious awards, have named this years nominees. The list is dominated by revivals of classic musical theatre. “The revival of Kiss Me, Kate got nine nominations, while My Fair Lady was given eight, including one best actress nod for former TV soap star Martine McCutcheon.” BBC 01/18/02
PRICE OF SUCCESS: Four of Boston’s best small theatres have been served notice by the actors union Actors Equity – no more union actors without proper union contracts. The theatres have been hiring union actors on “guest” contracts which pay less than regular contracts. But the union says now that the theatres are more established and routinely hiring union players, they have to pay the full rate. ”We didn’t object to them using this contract while they were getting off the ground. But as the companies grew in quality, size, and stature, Equity started grousing, as did some local performers and producers.” Boston Globe 01/18/02
Thursday January 17
END OF THE ROAD: The announcement that Cats would close in London signals the curtain on Andrew Lloyd Webber. “Like a gambler who has enjoyed a fabulous winning streak in a casino, then seen his luck turn, he is now down to his last chip: The Phantom of the Opera. What a comedown for the man who, during the heyday of his career, had as many as five musicals running simultaneously in London’s West End and almost as many on Broadway.” The Age (Telegraph) 01/17/02
DISNEY IN AUSTRALIA: Disney has announced it is getting in to big musical theatre production in Australia, producing The Lion King and Aida. “The news is a much-needed boost for the musical theatre genre, battered by a string of early closures and cancellations, including the 1970s musical Hair last year, and Sunset Boulevard and the $10 million Pan in recent times.” The Age (Melbourne) 01/17/02
Wednesday January 16
ARTS COUNCIL TO RSC – STAY ON BUDGET: The Royal Shakespeare Company is to get £50 million from the Arts Council of England to develop a new “theatre village.” The RSC has to raise another £50 million to fund the project, and the Arts Council says it won’t contribute anything more if the costs rise about the £100 million budget. BBC 01/16/02
ASSISTING TO THE TOP: Want to succeed in the theatre as a director? Then first it helps to be an assistant director. But what, exactly does an assistant director do? Despite the feeling of some that “they just sit there nursing a sort of parallel production in their mind, it can involve everything from researching historical background to rehearsing the understudies – or sitting quietly in the corner getting bored.” The Independent (UK) 01/13/02
Tuesday January 15
NINE LIVES AND THEN SOME: The second-highest grossing musical of all time will end its record run in London this spring after 21 years and nearly 9000 performances. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats has never been popular with critics, but audiences have gravitated to it consistently wherever it has opened. The Broadway production of the show closed in 2000 after an 18-year run. BBC 01/15/02
Monday January 14
STARLIGHT DIMS: After 7,406 performances in 18 years, Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Starlight Express closed in London. Lloyd-Webber’s whose long-running shows have been closing one by one in the pasty year in London and New York, says he’d like to take Express on the road. BBC 01/13/02
- A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TOURISTS: “Like the characters and plot, the over-amplified songs are forgettable, with Richard Stilgoe’s often inane lyrics adding to their synthetic feel. Yet Lloyd Webber’s something-for-everyone score, which ranges from pop and blues to country and gospel, the triumph-over-adversity story, and bravura pyrotechnics proved to be an unbeatable tourist-friendly combination.” The Times (UK) 01/14/02
GOODBYE FANTASTICKS: After 17,162 performances, The Fantasticks closes in New York, the longest-running play in the city. The show was a career starter for many actors in its 42-year life. The New York Times 01/14/02
THE PROBLEM WITH REALISM: When theater people claim something is “realistic,” what do they mean? Maybe the conclusion is simply that realism has become a hopelessly slippery term since it was invented in 19th-century France to define works more concerned with showing the world as it is than as it should be.” The New York Times 01/13/02
Sunday January 13
THINKING SMALL: A rash of new one-person and small-cast shows is taking over America’s theatres. “The attraction for one-person shows is obvious. Financially, they’re cheap. Less payroll, less housing, less wine and cheese at the cast party. And when fiscal times are tight, the push for these shows can be seductive, especially if they can be marketed in some new way. But with the number of one-person or tiny-cast shows proliferating, one wonders if anyone is thinking big anymore. Is anyone thinking even moderately? Or have we just created a new type of boutique theater that might amuse or distract – but hardly excite – us?” Hartford Courant 01/13/02
THE BEST THEATRE JOB IN BRITAIN: “Three things have made the Almeida the most exciting theatre in Britain. First, an eclectically international programme: everything from Molière and Marivaux to Brecht and Neil LaBute. Second, top-level casting that has given us Ralph Fiennes in Hamlet and Ivanov, Kevin Spacey in The Iceman Cometh and Juliette Binoche in Naked. Third, a territorial expansion that has seen the Almeida colonise the Hackney Empire, the old Gainsborough film studios and even a converted bus depot in King’s Cross.” Now it’s all Michael Attenborough’s to run. The Guardian (UK) 01/12/02
Friday January 11
ATTENBOROUGH TO ALMEIDA: Michael Attenborough, one of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s guiding lights over the past decade, has been appointed artistic director of the Almeida theatre in north London. “The choice shocked the theatrical world, being another blow to the Royal Shakespeare Company as it goes through one of the biggest upheavals in its history.” The Guardian (UK) 01/11/02
WHY THEATRE IS NOT AN ESSENTIAL ART FORM: In the distant past it was, and theatre appealed to all classes of people. “It was only in the eighteenth century that the preferences of the middle class, which is to say middlebrow taste, began to dominate the theater. These preferences not only obliterated the distinctions between high tragedy and low comedy, between the sacred and the profane, but proscribed any effort to combine the two, as Shakespeare and his contemporaries did so successfully in a previous age.” The New Republic 12/31/01
NEW BROADWAY DIGS? A group of Broadway producers is looking into converting an old multiplex movie theatre into “at least one commercial 499-seat off-Broadway theater, some smaller performance spaces, a rehearsal studio and administrative offices.” New York Post 01/11/02
Thursday January 10
TEAR IT DOWN: The Royal Shakespeare Company has been harshly criticized for saying it will tear down its theatre in Stratford-upon Avon. But some British MP’s are loudly encouraging the demolition, deriding it as a “monstrous carbuncle. Pull it down – it’s a hideous building. I’ve only ever been in the gods there and I’ve ended up seeing about a third of the play.” The Guardian (UK) 01/09/02
(SAD) PORTRAIT OF THE CRITIC: English film critic Kenneth Tynan was the country’s “most gifted theater critic since Hazlitt.” Now his diaries have been published, and “alas–and damn it!–the Tynan diaries leave us with the overwhelming sense of a life helplessly adrift and all purpose spent in a no-man’s land where absolutely nothing is at stake. This forlorn, furiously name-dropping, occasionally sadomasochistic record of the years 1971 to 1980–held back from publication by his widow, Kathleen, and now released by his eldest daughter, Tracy–shock and sadden us in the miserable picture he presents of himself ‘snarling, retching and wanking’ into the abyss.” New York Observer 01/09/02
THE THEATRE SURVIVAL GAME: Berlin is facing budget cuts, and support for some of the city’s cultural institutions is going to decline. “Which theaters will the incoming culture minister from the Party of Democratic Socialism, the successor party to East Germany’s ruling communists, close down? The list of candidates is long, cuts in cultural funding make the need evident, and people are placing bets all over town. For now, only one thing is certain: The Friedrichstadtpalast revue theater will survive.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 01/10/02
Wednesday January 9
FANTASTICK FINISH: After a stunning 42-year run, New York’s longest-running musical is closing. The Fantasticks is arguably the most successful musical of the 20th century, and the closing took the theatre community somewhat unaware. “During its…run it has been made into a television special and a feature film, employed actors who went on to win Tonys, Emmys and Oscars, and had its melodies recorded by the likes of Harry Belafonte and Barbra Streisand.” The New York Times 01/09/02 (one-time registration required for access)
Tuesday January 8
BUT MOM! EVERYBODY’S GETTING ONE! The Royal Shakespeare Company is making waves with its plans to demolish its historic 1930s-style home and replace it with a much larger and more elaborate performance complex. This week, the scheme will face government scrutiny. “The company’s plans to redevelop in Stratford while pulling out altogether from its London home at the Barbican complex have sparked controversy.” BBC 01/08/02
Monday January 7
OF POLITICS AND THEATRE: “For most of the 20th century, especially after the Un-American Activities Committee hearings, American theater – apart from Miller – has not been very politically engaged. Which is why it’s remarkable that today we have two very politically oriented playwrights in August Wilson, with his panoramic cycle of the 20th century black experience, and the emerging Tony Kushner.” New York Post 01/06/02
TOUGHER TIMES DOWNTOWN: While plenty of attention (and help) has been offered to Broadway theatre, downtown theatre (closer to the World Trade Center) has been having a tougher time. “One response has been the formation of Downtown NYC, a coalition of theater owners, dance and theater companies, producers, art galleries, restaurants and other small businesses.” The New York Times 01/06/02
END OF A LONG RUN: The Fantasticks didn’t figure to make it through the season when it opened back in 1960. “When The Fantasticks closes Sunday after 17,162 performances in New York, it will have outlived any other show in American theater history. The show has had more than 12,000 different productions in the U.S. and more than 700 productions in 67 other countries.” New York Post 01/07/02
Sunday January 6
BROADWAY DOWN: Broadway ended 2001 with ticket sales down by $22 million and selling 500,000 fewer tickets. “Broadway theaters recorded $373,128,667 in sales for the season starting in June. That represents 6,473,223 tickets sold. The equivalent figures for 2000 were $395,311,555 and 6,981,071 tickets.” New York Daily News 01/03/02
Friday January 4
LONDON THEATRE’S BIG CHEESE: Who’s the biggest cheese in London theatre? Andrew Lloyd-Webber tops The Stage magazine’s annual poll. “The musical maestro and West End venue owner heads the list for the second year running. Despite a slow year for Lloyd Webber productions, his company Really Useful Group is seen as a hugely powerful influence and his reputation extends worldwide.” Director Peter Hall just makes the Top 20 list at No. 20. The Guardian (UK) 01/03/02
MAKING THE PITCH FOR $480: How well are those $480 tickets to the Broadway production of The Producers doing? Well enough that Inner Circle, the company selling the tickets, is trying to interest other Broadway hits in bumping up their prices too. “While box-office reports indicate that the Inner Circle has done well with the $480 tickets, none of the other shows have yet decided to offer similar tickets through the company.” The New York Times 01/04/02
HIGHEST-PAID BRITISH ACTRESS IN HISTORY: Who’s the highest-paid British actress of all time? Now it’s Jane Leeves, who has signed a £20 million contract for a new season of the US sitcom Frasier as the “semi-psychic physiotherapist Daphne Moon – earning more than triple the fees of Britain’s highest-paid Hollywood actress, Catherine Zeta Jones.” The Guardian (UK) 01/01/02
GUTHRIE FLOODS: Minneapolis’s famous Guthrie Theater has been forced to close for repairs after a water main break flooded the theater’s offices and backstage area. The damage is expected to be repaired by the end of the month, but a number of design drawings, archive material, and other bits of Guthrie history were destroyed. The Guthrie is planning to move to a controversial new riverfront complex in 2005. Minneapolis Star Tribune 01/04/02
WARNED OFF: Those warning notices theatres post in their lobbies often seem so arbitrary or unnecessary. The New Yorker offers a list of lobby notices it would like to see: “WARNING: During this afternoon’s performance, there will be a chatty women’s group from Great Neck seated directly behind you.” The New Yorker 12/31/02
Thursday January 3
OUR BEST PLAYWRIGHT? Okay, he’s a little late, but John Heilpern writes that Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul is the “best play of the past ten years.” “His new play is a magnificent achievement on every challenging,deeply compassionate level. It confirms Mr. Kushner’s place—if confirmation has been needed – as our leading playwright, to whom attention will always gladly be paid.” New York Observer 01/02/02
TEARING DOWN THE ROYAL SHAKESPEARE? The problems with the Royal Shakespeare Company’s theatre in Stratford-on-Avon are well known. It’s not a pleasant place to perform in or to see a play. “As part of a £100 million ($145.4 million) capital project, the company wants to demolish the theater and replace it with one designed by the Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat.” And that’s brought howls of protest. The New York Times 01/03/02
Wednesday January 2
ILIAD MEETS HIGH-TECH: “UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television launches a retelling of Homer’s The Iliad that incorporates online community, video feeds, digitally projected images, an interactive floor show, and, oh yes, actors. The idea is to make one of The Iliad’s primary themes – hero Achilles’ constantly shifting allegiances to the Greeks and the Trojans – a metaphor for how 21st century people find their lives shaped by technology and media.” Wired 10/02/02
TOP BILLING: “Sorting out the billing for a play is an archaic and labyrinthine business, the rules of which are understood only by a very few: but basically, the more famous you are, the more you can hog the advertising and the light bulbs. What all actors hope for is to get their name above the title of the play on the poster. ” The Guardian (UK) 01/02/02
People: January 2002
Thursday January 31
AMERICAN TRUMPETER BEATEN BY SPANISH POLICE: American trumpeter Rodney Mack, currently living in Spain and serving as principal trumpet of the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, was viciously beaten by a gang of out-of-uniform Spanish police two weeks ago. The officers did not identify themselves to Mack, who thought he was being mugged, and offered up the explanation that they thought he was a car thief who had been seen in the area. Mack’s injuries are preventing him from performing with the BSO on its current tour of the U.S., and he is preparing a lawsuit against the police. The New York Times 01/31/02
MAKE IT STOP: “Another complaint against Stephen Ambrose has emerged. This one dates back to 1970, when fellow historian Cornelius Ryan accused him of a ‘rather graceless falsification’ in Ambrose’s book, The Supreme Commander. The allegations were first reported Tuesday on Forbes.com.” The Plain Dealer (AP) 01/31/02
SOME VERY UNPOETIC SOUR GRAPES: “Winning the coveted T.S. Eliot Prize last week has confirmed Anne Carson’s status as one of the most celebrated and controversial of contemporary poets. Soon after the prize was announced, Carson, who teaches classics at McGill University in Montreal, was denounced in Britain’s Guardian newspaper by eminent poetry critic Robert Potts for writing ‘doggerel’ that mixes ‘an occasional (and occasionally cliched) lyricism, some fashionable philosophizing and an almost artless grafting-on of academic materials.'” National Post (Canada) 01/31/02
Wednesday January 30
GREAT WRITERS WHO AREN’T NICE GUYS: He’s been called a reactionary, an Islamophobe, a racist, and an intellectual neo-colonialist. And last year V. S. Naipaul won the Nobel Prize. Regardless of the epithets, he demonstrates “a fecundity, an originality, and an extraordinary technical daring that have been insufficiently recognized, partly because Naipaul is so readable. His work exemplifies the art that conceals art, and he is one of the greatest living craftsmen of English prose, perhaps the very greatest.” Atlantic Monthly 02/02
Tuesday January 29
LONG WHARF’S NEW DIRECTOR: New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre has hired Gordon Edelstein to be its new artistic director. Edelstein is currently director of Seattle’s A Contemporary Theatre, where he’s credited with reviving the company’s artistic and financial fortunes. Seattle Times 01/28/02
PARALYSIS CAN’T DERAIL CONDUCTOR: Mario Miragliotta was a promising conductor who had recently finished his term as music director of the Santa Barbara Symphony and had been appointed assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, when he got into a car accident last June that left him paralysed, unable to move his hands or legs. Determined to overcome the injuries, he’s been working daily to get back on the podium, and he’s got a concert coming up… Los Angeles Daily News 01/28/02
Monday January 28
PIPPI LONGSTOCKING CREATOR, 94: Popular children’s writer Astrid Lindgren, creator of the braided, free-thinking Pippi Longstocking, has died at age 94. “Lindgren wrote more than 100 works, including novels, short stories, plays, song books and poetry.” Nando Times (AP) 01/28/02
THE AUTHOR, NOT THE PERSON: Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis canceled his book tour last week. Last year it was revealed that Ellis had lied about having served in Vietnam during the war, and Ellis was sure to be questioned about this on the tour. In Seattle, there have also been objections to Ellis speaking at an author series at the Seattle Public Library. But hosts of the event have decided to go ahead with the appearance in February. “It seemed to us that Ellis’ personal life – what he did or didn’t do as a teacher – really has nothing to do with the scholarship that went into his books about Jefferson and the founding brothers.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer 01/28/02
Tuesday January 22
PEGGY LEE DIES: “Soulful singing legend Peggy Lee has died of a heart attack at the age of 81… Lee is best known for her rendition of Fever and in 1969 she won a Grammy award for best contemporary female vocal performance for the hit Is That All There Is?” BBC 01/22/02
TAUBMAN APPEALS: Former Sotheby’s chairman Alfred Taubman, convicted in December of price-fixing, has filed a motion for a retrial, saying the case against him was presented unfairly. Among other things, Taubman says the government was “wrongly allowed to read a quotation at trial from Adam Smith to the effect that higher prices invariably result when people in the same trade meet.” The Art Newspaper 01/22/02
RETHINKING HINDEMITH: Few composers have had their reputations endure harsher cultural mood swings than Paul Hindemith. Rejected by academics in the mid-20th century after he rejected the atonalism of Schönberg, his music has never regained any real traction in the concert hall, even as other “accessible” composers like Shostakovich and Britten have been vindicated and popularized. What is it about Hindemith’s music that doesn’t interest today’s music programmers? Commentary 01/02
Monday January 21
IT IS BETTER TO SOUND GOOD…(BUT DON’T LET THAT STOP THE MARKETING): Magdalena Kozena is 28, and “the blue-eyed, blonde Czech mezzo-soprano is the classical recording industry’s latest hot property. But does Kozena owe her success to her looks?” The Guardian (UK) 01/21/02
- SOUND BEFORE LOOKS? “A tall and willowy 28-year-old, Kozená is a delightful girl with a crisp sense of humour and – sorry, chaps – a nice new French boyfriend. More important, she is blessed with an impressive vocal technique and a clean, warm and alluring mezzo-soprano that reaches, in the modern style of Anne Sofie von Otter, Ann Murray and Susan Graham, into soprano rather than contralto territory.” The Telegraph (UK) 01/21/02
Thursday January 17
NOBELIST CAMILO CELA, 85: “Spanish writer Camilo Jose Cela, winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize for literature, has died in Madrid from respiratory and coronary failure. With his first novel, published in 1946, Cela became a leader of a straightforward style of writing, called tremendismo, which clashed with the lyricism that had characterised writers of the previous generation in Spain.” BBC 01/17/02
Wednesday January 16
MUSIC MEDICI: “Alberto Vilar has become the biggest benefactor in the history of classical music. Whatever the critics make of his philanthropic style, it has endeared him to many of the world’s top directors, conductors, and singers, not to mention the managers who must pay them. He has few other cultural interests (he hates movies) and – unlike the Medicis – isn’t interested in expanding the repertory; he doesn’t commission new work and has no soft spot for small, struggling companies.” New York Magazine 01/14/02
CHAILLY LEAVING CONCERTGEBOUW: Riccardo Chailly, who’s been chief conductor of Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra since 1988, is leaving the orchestra to head up the Leipzig Opera in Germany, in 2005. Philadelphia Inquirer (AP) 01/16/02
Monday January 15
LARKIN’S MONEY GOES TO CHURCH: Poet Philip Larkin, who “declined the poet laureateship a year before he died in 1985, remains best known for his reverently agnostic poem Churchgoing. He also said: ‘The Bible is a load of balls of course – but very beautiful’.” So his friends and fans were amused recently when £1 million of his legacy was willed to the Church of England. The Guardian (UK) 01/12/02
DEMME (NO, THE OTHER ONE) COLLAPSES ON THE COURT: “Ted Demme, a film and television director whose credits include the movie Blow, collapsed and died while playing basketball. He was 38.” Washington Post (AP) 01/15/02
Friday January 11
LYNCH LEADS CANNES THIS YEAR: Director David Lynch will be president of the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, which runs this year from May 15 to 26. Lynch won the top prize at Cannes in 1990 for Wild At Heart, and the best director award last year for Mulholland Drive. Nando Times (AP) 01/11/02
Wednesday January 9
MORE AMBROSE ALLEGATIONS: “A second book by best-selling historian Stephen Ambrose is being cited for having material that was allegedly copied from another text. Forbes.com is reporting that Ambrose’s Crazy Horse and Custer contains sections similar to Jay Monaghan’s Custer. A representative for Ambrose said Tuesday there would be no immediate comment. Anchor Books, which publishes the paperback edition of Crazy Horse and Custer, also declined immediate comment.” Philadelphia Inquirer (AP) 01/09/02
Tuesday January 8
THE DIVA OF LINCOLN CENTER: Beverly Sills has always been a diva. But heading up Lincoln Center is proving to be a rougher playground than the opera stage was. Why does she stay? “Sills long ago grew accustomed to being the center of attention, the cynosure of a colorful and melodramatic whirl. But when her vehicle was a real opera, there were flowers and shouts of ‘Brava!’ at the curtain call. When she finally leaves the soap opera at Lincoln Center, that may not be the case, and some of the people around her think that she is only now coming to painful terms with that.” The New York Times 01/06/02
ART OF TRAITORS: Anthony Blunt was one of England’s most notorious spies. He was “a diligent, cool-headed traitor for two decades, yet this was the smaller part of his life. His overt expertise was in French art and architecture. He was (legally) recruited first by the Warburg Institute in London, then moved to its rival the Courtauld, where he eventually became director.” The New Yorker 01/07/02
JUST WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS: “Leni Riefenstahl, who produced masterful propaganda films for the Nazis, plans her first movie release in nearly 50 years to coincide with her 100th birthday this summer. Impressions Under Water, a 45-minute film about the underwater world of the Indian Ocean, is the result of dives between 1974 and 2000, Riefenstahl told Germany’s Die Welt newspaper in a rare interview.” Toronto Star (AP) 01/08/02
Monday January 7
THE SELLING OF RENEE: Soprano Renee Fleming is said to have the most beautiful voice on stage today. “Though singing may be a private orgy, it is also a business, and if Fleming has become America’s sweetheart it is because, behind her soft smile, she so shrewdly understands the country’s values: the need to balance pleasure and profit, self-expression and the ambitious manoeuvrings of a career.” The Observer (UK) 01/06/02
VARNEDOE LEAVES MOMA: Kirk Varnedoe has been chief curator of the Museum of Modern Art’s department of painting and sculpture since 1988. But as MOMA prepares for a major expansion, Varnedoe is leaving the museum to go to Princeton. “Many people regard me as a raging postmodernist, says Mr. Varnedoe, who has also been accused of an emphatic bias against contemporary theory. ‘I’m more of a pragmatist than anything else, a Darwinist, I suppose, as opposed to having a teleological vision of a great race of isolated geniuses who pass the baton on to one another’.” The New York Times 01/06/02
Friday January 4
KERNIS AT THE TOP: Composer Aaron Jay Kernis has been winning all the music world’s top prizes for composers, including the Grawemeyer and the Pulitzer. He’s also getting some of the most prominent commissions by major orchestras. “He’s capable of irony and wit, but won’t take cover behind those qualities. There’s a lot of passion to his writing, and what ties his disparate pieces together are the grand gestures, the way he’ll go for a big romantic statement.” Christian Science Monitor 01/04/02
PETER HEMMINGS, 67, L.A. OPERA’S FOUNDING DIRECTOR: “With a budget of just $6.4 million, Hemmings launched Music Center Opera (later renamed Los Angeles Opera), mounting five productions in a first season that immediately made the operatic world take notice. By the time he retired in 2000 to return to his native England, Hemmings had left behind a company with a $22-million budget and an eight-opera season of more than 50 performances, most of them selling out.” Los Angeles Times 01/04/02
Thursday January 3
WHO’S WHO OF SMART: A new book attempts to determine who America’s leading intellectuals are by counting media mentions. Dumb methodology but great fun. “The top public intellectual by media mentions in the last five years turns out to be Henry Kissinger, followed by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Sidney Blumenthal comes in seventh, which of course undermines the entire enterprise.” New York Observer 01/02/02
SANDERLING TO STEP DOWN: Conductor Kurt Sanderling is turning 90, and he’s decided to retire from the podium after 70 years on stage. “Musicians are rueing his departure, while admiring its dignified restraint.” Why do so many other artists have difficulty knowing when it’s time to quit? The Telegraph (UK) 01/03/02
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS (HAPPILY) UNKNOWN: “Successful, of course, is not synonymous with famous. For famous, you might choose a name such as Riopelle, Thomson, Carr, Pratt or Colville. But Eric Dennis Waugh has likely sold more canvases than all of them — combined. In fact, he’s sold more paintings, by far, than anyone else in Canada (and in most other countries as well). Eric Dennis who? Exactly.” The Globe & Mail (Toronto) 01/03/02
Wednesday January 2
MESSING WITH THE POPE: Last month the acting head of the National Endowment for the Arts turned back two grants; one – for a production of Tony Kushner’s Kabul play eventually was approved, but the other, for a retrospective of conceptual artist William Pope, was not. Pope’s work is hard to categorize. “Combining performance, installation and sculpture, it is formally exacting but improvisational, politically pointed but comedic. Social inequality and consumerism are among his targets, and although his work deals intensively with the issue of race, it upsets preconceptions of what ‘black art’ should be.” The New York Times 01/01/02
Music: January 2002
JANUARY 2002
Thursday January 31
STAYING THE NEW MUSIC COURSE: Nearly every American orchestra pays regular lip service to the concept of contemporary music, and occasionally even performs some in public. Very few orchestras, however, ever really make a lasting commitment to advancing the music of living composers. But in Los Angeles, the L.A. Philharmonic’s New Music Group is 21 years old and going strong. “The New Music Group has survived changing administrations and budget crises, and in the process it has become part of what defines the feisty spirit of the Philharmonic.” Los Angeles Times 01/31/02
AMERICAN TRUMPETER BEATEN BY SPANISH POLICE: American trumpeter Rodney Mack, currently living in Spain and serving as principal trumpet of the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, was viciously beaten by a gang of out-of-uniform Spanish police two weeks ago. The officers did not identify themselves to Mack, who thought he was being mugged, and offered up the explanation that they thought he was a car thief who had been seen in the area. Mack’s injuries are preventing him from performing with the BSO on its current tour of the U.S., and he is preparing a lawsuit against the police. The New York Times 01/31/02
L.A. OPERA LIGHTLY TAPS THE BRAKES: Los Angeles Opera has been ambitiously scaling up its productions, and the company has announced numerous new initiatives and plans in the past few years. Now, with the announcement of next year’s season, some of those plans have been scaled back as part of the artsworld’s generally sobering reassessment of risks. Los Angeles Times 01/30/02
CRUSADING FOR MENDELSSOHN: Mendelssohn is certainly a solid member of the classical music canon. And yet, two scholars, say – he is underappreciated for his accomplishments. The pair have been cataloging and recording what they say are “hundreds of unpublished or rediscovered pieces,” and they’re pushing scholarship on the composer. The New York Times 01/31/02
DOTCOM MUSIC MELTDOWN SPURS BBC: Online e-music ventures have poured millions of dollars into trying to create viable businesses. But GMN.com one of the most established, shut down last week, out of money, and its owners are looking for a buyer. Interestingly, as the dotcom meltdown continues, the BBC has rediscovered a commitment to broadcasting culture. It’s about time, writes Norman Lebrecht. The Telegraph (UK) 01/31/02
Wednesday January 30
JERSEY JUICE: The New Jersey Symphony is not one of America’s ‘Big Five’. It does not even rank among the top 20 US orchestras. Its musicians survive on 36-week contracts. And yet, the New Jersey Symphony plays with more heart and soul – and scarcely less finesse – than better-known counterparts in Boston, New York and nearby Philadelphia. It gives the lie to so many US cultural stereotypes – that nothing of artistic note happens outside metropolitan centres, that American audiences are dwindling, that American orchestras are stuck in a conservative, union-regulated rut.” Financial Times 01/30/02
Tuesday January 29
THE BILLIONAIRE MUSIC LOVER: Music philanthropist Alberto Vilar has given away more than $200 million to operas and orchestras: the Metropolitan Opera in New York; the Kennedy Center in Washington; the Kirov in St. Petersburg, Russia; the Berlin Philharmonic; Covent Garden in London. “But those groups really owe their bigger budgets to Vilar’s father, who wouldn’t let his son study music when he was a boy in Cuba. Instead, the son went on to make a fortune in business.” Nando Times (AP) 01/28/02
AND YOU THOUGHT THIS STUFF ONLY HAPPENED IN ALABAMA: The Catholic hierarchy in Naples, Italy is taking a cursory shot at the city’s leftist government, denying permits for the use of several of Naples’s historic churches for concerts. Among the well-regarded guest musicians who may be left out in the cold is La Scala director Riccardo Muti. The local monsignor is questioning “whether performing artists should be chosen “mainly for their showmanship and social acceptance rather than for their personal commitment in bearing witness to the values of the Gospel.” Andante 01/28/02
PARALYSIS CAN’T DERAIL CONDUCTOR: Mario Miragliotta was a promising conductor who had recently finished his term as music director of the Santa Barbara Symphony and had been appointed assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, when he got into a car accident last June that left him paralysed, unable to move his hands or legs. Determined to overcome the injuries, he’s been working daily to get back on the podium, and he’s got a concert coming up… Los Angeles Daily News 01/28/02
Monday January 28
REPORTS OF MY DEATH… So some orchestras are struggling in the business of survival of late. And some may even go out of business. But the orchestra is hardly dying as an institution, writes David Patrick Stearns. There is too much evidence to the contrary. Besides, “those orchestras will survive, because the public, more unconsciously than consciously, knows that when its opera company and symphony orchestra go away, the only thing left in many cities will be congested strip roads, plastic burger signs, abandoned bowling alleys and cable TV.” Andante 01/27/02
DR. DOHNANYI’S MIRACLE CURE: When Christoph von Dohnanyi became music director of the Cleveland Orchestra 20 years ago, it was drifting and in trouble. Now Dohnanyi is leaving the orchestra in prime shape. “During a period when most American orchestras, facing declining subscriber bases and aging audiences, responded with timid artistic leadership that demoralized musicians and just made matters worse, the Cleveland Orchestra under Mr. Dohnanyi attracted new subscribers and saw the average age of its audience steadily decline.” What’s his secret? The New York Times 01/28/02
THE ONLINE ORCHESTRA: “All the evidence, anecdotal and otherwise, suggests that the virtual box office is changing the way orchestras do business.” American orchestras are selling more and more of their tickets online – the Chicago Symphony, for one, has seen e-sales double or triple each year in the past four seasons. Andante 01/27/02
CANNIBALIZING THE MUSIC BIZ: The music recording industry is weak right now, and the very structure of the business is changing. Recording companies are cutting artists from their rosters, and musicians, sensing weakness, are trying to get more control and better deals for themselves: “After years of being taken advantage of by the large recording companies, we realize we do have some power. We are doing it because now is the time.” The New York Times 01/28/02
Sunday January 27
FAITH-BASED SALES: Last year wasn’t great for recorded music sales – unless you play Christian music. “Overall, music industry sales declined to 762.8 million, from 785.1 million in 2000.” But “Christian music sold 49.9 million albums, up 12 percent from 2000, according to SoundScan, which tracks music sales for the industry. Country, jazz, soundtracks and New Age music recorded gains, while alternative, classical, Latin, metal, R&B and rap were flat or declined.” Baltimore Sun (AP) 01/27/02
ART & POLITICS: National Post music critic Tamara Bernstein objects to what she considers anti-semitic aspects of a current Canadian Opera production of Salome. Another critic protests Bernstein’s proposed remedy: “Even the greatest admirer of Salome (which I am certainly not) would never call it a morally uplifting work, but it is undeniably an operatic masterpiece. Yet if it offends some people’s sensibilities, suggests Bernstein, then that is enough reason to ban – or ‘mothball’ – it. This seems to me a profoundly dangerous position to adopt. In any case, bias is always in the eye of the perceiver, and one person’s bias is another’s even-handedness.” The Guardian (UK) 01/26/02
BACK TO THE PIANO: Another post-9/11 effect – piano sales are up, as people spend more time at home. “Some Seattle piano dealers have seen a 30 percent jump in the number of pianos they have sold in the past three months compared with the same period a year ago.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer 01/24/02
DOWN IN BIG D: The Dallas Symphony, which has been on an artistic and financial updraft in the past decade, is, like many arts companies, feeling a drop in business since September 11. “If you add a drop in contributions, the DSO is down about half a million dollars from where it expected to be at this point in the season. That’s not a big percentage of the orchestra’s nearly $23 million budget, but it definitely hurts.” Dallas Morning News 01/27/02
Friday January 25
MATTER OF MORALITY? National Post music critic Tamara Bernstein responds to Atom Egoyan’s objections of her review of Salome: “The underlying issue here – and it goes beyond Mr. Egoyan’s production of Salome – is that it’s time the sleepy world of classical music acknowledged that in addition to being beautiful, opera is political – sometimes in very nasty ways. It’s time we stopped pretending that just because a work is aesthetically ‘great’ it is automatically morally neutral – or superior.” National Post (Canada) 01/25/02
- Previously: FIGHT! FIGHT! It’s not often these days that a true artistic brawl breaks out on the pages of a North American newspaper. But Canadian critic Tamara Bernstein, never one to pull her punches, picked one with opera director Atom Egoyan recently, and Egoyan has taken the bait, firing off a furious response to Bernstein’s charges of anti-Semitism and brutality in his production of Salome. Better yet, the paper is promising a Bernstein response yet to come. National Post (Canada) 01/24/02
- SHOULD SALOME BE SANITIZED? Richard Strauss’s Salome has never been an easy-to-swallow opera. It has been panned constantly since its debut nearly a century ago for being vulgar, anti-Semitic, and just generally shocking. A new Canadian production is drawing particularly nasty fire from one local critic: “I left the Hummingbird Centre in a rage after Friday night’s opening, feeling violated as both a woman and a Jew.” National Post (Canada) 01/21/02
FOLKLIFE: There are more venues for folk music in New England than ever before – hundreds of them – and more musicians making a living performing. ”The folk world allows a person to be a professional musician without dealing with the mainstream music industry. That doesn’t mean that everyone decides to go that path, but the opportunity is there if you want it.” Boston Globe 01/25/02
ROYAL COMEBACK: The Royal Opera House at Covent Garden has been in decline for years, and tales of its mismanagement and often ill-considered offerings offered more drama than what went on the stage. But the Royal Opera appears to be back on track. “Indeed, the year-end London critics’ reports last month were, as one the few dissenters put it, ‘an epidemic of enthusiasm’.” Los Angeles Times 01/25/02
CONCERT-A-WEEK: The BBC says its new arts TV channel will broadcast at least one classical music concert a week, as well as coverage of opera and world music. Gramophone 01/24/02
WELSH MILLENNIUM CENTRE: Despite comparisons to the Millennium Dome debacle, work will soon start on a giant new opera house and arts centre on Cardiff Bay. Budget – £104m ($147M). “It is expected to open by late 2004 and will spearhead Cardiff’s campaign to win the title of European capital of culture in 2008.” The Guardian (UK) 01/24/02
Thursday January 24
FIGHT! FIGHT! It’s not often these days that a true artistic brawl breaks out on the pages of a North American newspaper. But Canadian critic Tamara Bernstein, never one to pull her punches, picked one with opera director Atom Egoyan recently, and Egoyan has taken the bait, firing off a furious response to Bernstein’s charges of anti-Semitism and brutality in his production of Salome. Better yet, the paper is promising a Bernstein response yet to come. National Post (Canada) 01/24/02
- SHOULD SALOME BE SANITIZED? Richard Strauss’s Salome has never been an easy-to-swallow opera. It has been panned constantly since its debut nearly a century ago for being vulgar, anti-Semitic, and just generally shocking. A new Canadian production is drawing particularly nasty fire from one local critic: “I left the Hummingbird Centre in a rage after Friday night’s opening, feeling violated as both a woman and a Jew.” National Post (Canada) 01/21/02
BOHEME ON BROADWAY: The movie Moulin Rouge is a wacky take on a modern musical form. Now the movie’s director Baz Luhrmann wants to bring the opera La Boheme to Broadway later this year. “We’re bringing it back to the audience for whom it was written. Opera was like the television of the time, created for everyone to experience, from the simple street sweeper to the King of Naples. So it seems a natural for it to play on Broadway. We’re bringing it back to its popular roots.” New York Post 01/23/02
A NEW IDEA IN PIANOS: After 16 years of working on his ideas, Australian Ron Overs has designed and manufactured a new piano. “He developed the new action on computer. ‘On my computer screen I had a hammer that strikes the string, and a key. ‘Now,’ I thought, ‘I’m going to draw the intermediate lever. I’m not even going to consider what’s been done before. I’m going to reposition the levers so that we reduce energy loss’.” Sydney Morning Herald 01/24/02
OH, GOOD, ANOTHER DELAY: “The recording industry’s suit against Internet song-swapping service Napster was put on hold for a month after requests from both sides while they seek a possible settlement… Napster chief executive Konrad Hilbers said he’s confident the legal downtime will lead to an accord with the labels.” Wired 01/23/02
- DO THESE PEOPLE LIKE BEING SUED? “An Australian multimedia company has purchased and restarted KaZaa, the Internet file-sharing program that’s being sued for being the new Napster.” It’s reportedly logging about 2 new users per second. Nando Times (AP) 01/23/02
Wednesday January 23
YOU’RE LEAVING THE CONCERTGEBOUW???: Why would Riccardo Chailly give up conducting one of the top five orchestras in the world to go to a lesser band? “For a conductor to abandon a top mount voluntarily for a lesser one is without precedent in 150 years of podium history. Conductors are creatures of hunger and habit. Once they reach the top, they cling on for life. So the shock that Chailly sprang was felt not just in Holland, where it made the front pages, but in the nervous system of an already nervous concert industry. It was the equivalent to George W Bush becoming governor of Nebraska, or Bill Gates quitting Microsoft to run Aeroflot.” The Telegraph (UK) 01/23/02
THE MAN WHO’S RESCUING THE TORONTO SYMPHONY: The Toronto Symphony has been scrambling the past few months to keep out of bankruptcy. Yesterday, the man who has been leading the salvage operation – Bob Rae – was elected chairman of the orchestra. Rae has some heavy credentials – he used to be premiere of the province of Ontario, a job that was probably easier than the one he’s taken on now. National Post (Canada) 01/23/02
ST. LOUIS CUTS SEASON: Musicians of the financially troubled St. Louis Symphony have agreed to take cuts in their season. The agreement “cuts 10 weeks from the playing season but keeps salaries at a level competitive with peer ensembles.” What programs the orchestra will cut will be announced later this week. St. Louis Post-Dispatch 01/22/02
SONG RECITALS FOR THE CAPTION-IMPAIRED: Opera companies have used supertitles for several years now, and the captioning of operatic lyrics are popular. So why not use the system for song recitals? As it turns out, there are several reasons… The New York Times 01/23/02
Tuesday January 22
REBUILDING IN TORONTO: There hasn’t been much new news on the Toronto Symphony front lately, largely because the organization has been huddling in conference, trying to figure a way to reinvent itself in the wake of last year’s financial catastrophe. Now, with the TSO’s future still in doubt, and many of its musicians rumored to be looking elsewhere for jobs, a revamped board will attempt to salvage what is left of one of North America’s great orchestras. Toronto Star 01/22/02
LAMENTING CARNEGIE JAZZ: So Carnegie Hall has decided to fold its jazz band. Will it make any difference? “Such active bands are the seedbeds of jazz composition, and they’re getting rarer. Jazz composition is needed these days; for one of its big faucets to be shut off is a shame.” The New York Times 01/22/02
CONTAIN YOUR EXCITEMENT: John Lennon is preparing to release a brand new set of songs. Yeah, we know he’s dead. But fortunately, Linda Polley of Fargo, North Dakota is very much alive, and is apparently quite adept at channeling the former Beatle. “Since 1999, Polley claims, John has been stopping by her trailer in Fargo to deliver his latest offering from “the heaven sessions” — more than 50 songs in all — so she may record them on her electric keyboard and spread them to the world in an effort to save both the sinful masses and the chaotic ‘Afterlife.'” National Post (Canada) 01/22/02
PEGGY LEE DIES: “Soulful singing legend Peggy Lee has died of a heart attack at the age of 81… Lee is best known for her rendition of Fever and in 1969 she won a Grammy award for best contemporary female vocal performance for the hit Is That All There Is?” BBC 01/22/02
RETHINKING HINDEMITH: Few composers have had their reputations endure harsher cultural mood swings than Paul Hindemith. Rejected by academics in the mid-20th century after he rejected the atonalism of Schönberg, his music has never regained any real traction in the concert hall, even as other “accessible” composers like Shostakovich and Britten have been vindicated and popularized. What is it about Hindemith’s music that doesn’t interest today’s music programmers? Commentary 01/02
Monday January 21
PLAYING THEIR WAY OUT? The San Jose Symphony, which stopped operations late last year, is trying to make a comeback. Musicians agreed to give up unpaid wages ($2.5 million) they were owed, and the orchestra plans to play benefit concerts to raise money for itself. “The musicians, who average about $25,000 for 190 performances and rehearsals a year, have been scrambling to teach more private lessons and play in other orchestras.” Philadelphia Inquirer (AP) 01/21/02
LA SCALA OPENS IN NEW TEMPORARY HOME: A first performance (of Rigoletto) by La Scala in the company’s new temporary quarters is judged a success. “In Europe’s second-largest auditorium after the Opera Bastille, the Arcimboldi theatre is a jewel-case of metal, glass and precious woods and has been described as a cross between a conference centre and the Palais des Festivals in Cannes.” The Guardian (UK) 01/21/02
WORRIED MUSIC INDUSTRY MEETS: The international music industry is meeting in Cannes this week to talk business. Things aren’t good. Global sales of recordings are down 10% after poor figures in the world’s two biggest markets – the US and Japan. “The music industry needs to re-invent itself. By 2005, we will be looking at a very different music industry than today.” BBC 01/21/02
IT IS BETTER TO SOUND GOOD…(BUT DON’T LET THAT STOP THE MARKETING): Magdalena Kozena is 28, and “the blue-eyed, blonde Czech mezzo-soprano is the classical recording industry’s latest hot property. But does Kozena owe her success to her looks?” The Guardian (UK) 01/21/02
- SOUND BEFORE LOOKS? “A tall and willowy 28-year-old, Kozená is a delightful girl with a crisp sense of humour and – sorry, chaps – a nice new French boyfriend. More important, she is blessed with an impressive vocal technique and a clean, warm and alluring mezzo-soprano that reaches, in the modern style of Anne Sofie von Otter, Ann Murray and Susan Graham, into soprano rather than contralto territory.” The Telegraph (UK) 01/21/02
Sunday January 20
WHAT’S IN A CHORUS? Financial concerns aside, for one of America’s top 25 orchestras to disband its decades-old chorus, as the Baltimore Symphony is doing, is a controversial and wide-ranging decision. A full-size chorus is more than a convenience – it’s a community of volunteers more committed to classical music, and to their own orchestra, than the vast majority of subscribers that symphony organizations try so hard to bring in. Baltimore Sun 01/20/02
HISTORY OF A BACKSTAGE FRACAS: Just what the heck is going on in Edmonton, anyway? Since when do fired conductors start their own competing orchestras? And what kind of musicians are prepared to follow such a heretic? The answers are the stuff of bad TV dramas and David Mamet plays. Edmonton Journal 01/20/02
- EDMONTON ULTIMATUM: “The lawyer who raised $4 million to form a new orchestra says he will give the money to the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra board instead – on one condition.” The condition is that if the musicians of the ESO don’t like the way the board is spending the money, they will have the right to fire the board members. If the ESO agrees (which seems unlikely,) the arrangement would be unprecedented in the history of North American orchestras. CBC 01/18/02
LA SCALA’S TEMPORARY DIGS: “Milan’s famous opera company, La Scala, has inaugurated a new theatre to replace its legendary venue, which is closed for renovations. [The performance] was sold out, and the performers, under the direction of conductor Riccardo Muti, were given a rousing six-minute applause and half-a-dozen curtain calls. But some fans were unhappy with the new theatre, which is located in an old industrial area in the outskirts of Milan.” BBC 01/20/02
TENOR’S NIGHTMARE: It’s the kind of scenario that causes performers to wake up screaming at night: for whatever reason, a singer suddenly loses his ability to sing, on stage, with thousands in attendance. It happened this week in Toronto to legendary Canadian tenor Ben Heppner, who was forced to halt a recital halfway through when he could not stop his voice from cracking repeatedly. Toronto Star 01/18/02
GEEK SQUAD 1, WRITER’S CRAMP 0: The worst part of being a composer, hands down, is the endless hours spent scratching out scores and parts for cranky musicians with dubious eyesight who are forever claiming that nothing is legible, or spaced right, or has the page turns in the right place. So what, other than a dungeon full of enslaved copyists, can make the drudgery easier? Why, a couple of British computer geeks, of course! Los Angeles Times 01/19/02
Friday January 18
SPACE IS FINE BUT THE SCHEDULE STINKS: Six years ago Atlanta Opera moved into the roomy Fox Theatre. “While the 4,514-seat movie palace has accommodated the opera’s booming audience – a 167 percent increase in six years – problems in booking advance dates have limited the company’s artistic growth,” so the company is moving out. Atlanta Journal-Constitution 01/17/02
SOME PEOPLE REALLY ARE TONE DEAF: There’s even a technical name for the problem: amusia. Usually, it’s the result of head injury, or an illness. But some people are just born that way. All Things Considered (NPR) 01/16/02
- Previously: UNDERSTANDING PERFECTION: Scientists are trying to determine why some people have perfect pitch – the ability to identify notes without other reference notes. “Based on the evidence so far, most scientists believe that genes do play at least a subtle role, perhaps by keeping a developmental ‘window’ open wider and longer during early childhood, when note-naming ability generally takes shape. Still, some experts argue the quest for an absolute pitch gene is akin to searching for a gene for speaking French; it doesn’t exist.” San Francisco Chronicle 01/15/02
SCARING THEM OFF WITH MOZART: A southeast English rail line thinks it has a solution to a vandalism problem – classical music. “It seems the tunes aren’t too popular with potential vandals: the move follows a trial at First Great Eastern’s Harold Wood station which saw a reduction in damage when the music was played.” Gramophone 01/17/02
IS ALL MUSIC THE SAME? “Especially in post-modern times where categories are being redefined, it is easy for many to assert that a tango, a rock tune, and a Beethoven symphony are all the same except perhaps for the musical parameters that define the style. This can have its positive as well as negative ramifications. The positive perhaps being that all types of music are understood as having similar importance, the negative that everything is considered in many ways as being the same.” NewMusicBox 01/02
Thursday January 17
SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY GETS ITS $100 MILLION – AND THEN SOME: Qualcomm Inc. founder Irwin Jacobs and his wife, Joan were going to give the San Diego Symphony $100 million, but at the last minute kicked in another $20 million. It’s the largest gift ever to a symphony orchestra. “The additional money is to go to the symphony’s operating funds – $2 million a year for the next 10 years. Thus, the symphony will get $7 million a year over the next 10 years, with $5 million each year going into an endowment. The Jacobses have also pledged $50 million to be paid upon their deaths.” Orange County Register 01/16/02
FIRING THE CHORUS: The Baltimore Symphony has announced it will cut loose its volunteer chorus, after 32 years of service. “We have a very good chorus, but it is not a world-class chorus. And it couldn’t be one because we don’t support it as we should. To fix the problem would be expensive.” Baltimore Sun 01/16/02
NEW OPERA HOUSE FOR TORONTO? It looks like Toronto may finally get its new opera house after years of trying. The Toronto Star reports that the Province of Ontario’s premiere has approved “a deal under which the federal government would contribute $25 million to the project and the province, in lieu of matching funds, would contribute the land for the opera house. The city would contribute zoning and air rights worth about $5 million.” Toronto Star 01/17/02
BACK TO WORK IN WINNIPEG: After a month’s lockout, musicians of the Winnipeg Symphony have agreed to a new contract. “The musicians will not receive a raise in the first year of the deal, nor will they be paid for the four weeks they were locked out. They will get a three per cent raise in the second year of the contract, and five per cent in the third.” CBC 01/16/02
CARNEGIE DROPS JAZZ BAND: Carnegie Hall’s new leader has eliminated the institution’s resident jazz band from the schedule. “The Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, which had its first concert in the fall of 1992, grew out of Carnegie Hall’s 100th anniversary celebrations. ‘We’re reallocating the resources to a different part of jazz programming. There are a lot of different jazz groups out there,” and if Carnegie Hall had to support one jazz band, it would be unable to present other artists.” The New York Times 01/17/02
Wednesday January 16
UNDERSTANDING PERFECTION: Scientists are trying to determine why some people have perfect pitch – the ability to identify notes without other reference notes. “Based on the evidence so far, most scientists believe that genes do play at least a subtle role, perhaps by keeping a developmental ‘window’ open wider and longer during early childhood, when note-naming ability generally takes shape. Still, some experts argue the quest for an absolute pitch gene is akin to searching for a gene for speaking French; it doesn’t exist.” San Francisco Chronicle 01/15/02
- Previously: BIOLOGY, NOT AESTHETICS: Why do some works of art seem to have universal appeal? Are they just that much better than other art? Maybe not. “A flowering scientific movement suggests that art appreciation and production starts in the brain, not the heart. All visual art, from execution to perception, are functions of the visual brain.” That art which we most respond to may trigger some physiological truth. San Diego Union-Tribune (AP) 01/14/02
THE YOUNG CONDUCTORS: A new crop of young conductors is making a mark on the world stage. Still in their 20s, they’re getting big jobs early. “So Philippe Jordan, at 27, has the world at his feet.” Still, “the marketing of young conductors is only problematic when they’re sold as something they’re not – as great interpreters. Age and experience may be out of fashion, but they remain essential ingredients of a wise reading of a masterpiece.” Financial Times 01/16/02
MUSIC TO THE PEOPLE: Digital music and file sharing isn’t just about making copies and getting music for free – it is changing the music industry in a fundamental way. “The advent of new and accessible technologies has made the independent route much more possible. The 1960s aesthetic which caused some theatre practitioners to abandon the stage for the street, and visual artists to seek an audience outside formal galleries, has now visited popular music in a much more radical way than it did back then. The possibilities the Internet and related technologies offer to bypass major record labels and give the artist direct access to a potentially mass audience have changed the music industry forever.” Irish Times 01/15/02
CHAILLY LEAVING CONCERTGEBOUW: Riccardo Chailly, who’s been chief conductor of Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra since 1988, is leaving the orchestra to head up the Leipzig Opera in Germany, in 2005. Philadelphia Inquirer (AP) 01/16/02
MUSIC MEDICI: “Alberto Vilar has become the biggest benefactor in the history of classical music. Whatever the critics make of his philanthropic style, it has endeared him to many of the world’s top directors, conductors, and singers, not to mention the managers who must pay them. He has few other cultural interests (he hates movies) and – unlike the Medicis – isn’t interested in expanding the repertory; he doesn’t commission new work and has no soft spot for small, struggling companies.” New York Magazine 01/14/02
Tuesday January 15
THE NY PHIL’S BRAVURA MARKETING: Last week the New York Philharmonic served up a lavish lunch at Lincoln Center for about 200 journalists and supporters. “The cost? Well, probably more than the five London orchestras spent on public relations during the entire 20th century.” So “why is America’s oldest and most glamorous orchestra going to such trouble to butter up the press? It would be fun at this point to point to a sordid sex scandal, or at least a juicy bit of corruption. Don’t get excited: the closets seem to be puritanically bare. But the reasons behind the Philharmonic’s charm offensive are revealing in other ways.” The Times (UK) 01/15/02
OPERA’S IRON MAN: “As of last week (and he keeps track), [Placido Domingo] had given 3,045 performances, not even including those as a conductor. He will turn 61 on Monday and already has commitments through 2005. He has sung 118 complete opera roles. He holds the record for opening nights at the Metropolitan Opera: 19 as of this season. (Enrico Caruso is in second place with 17.)” Now he’s released a set of the entire Verdi repertoire for tenor, an amazing feat by itself. The New York Times 01/15/02
HOPE FOR THE DYING? Okay, so 2001 was a terrible year for the classical recording industry. The worst, in fact. “Still, if one looks hard enough, some promising signs can be gleaned from the cards dealt to recorded classical music, both in the major and independent sectors. Having survived the Tower debacle — in which the cash-strapped retailer demanded drastically extended payment terms from most of its independent accounts — a distributor like Harmonia Mundi might actually end up stronger, having now culled back its inventory and overhauled its retail sales/stock process. Universal Classics Group — a key industry barometer — finished the year not only with a bevy of crossover hits but also with the highest number of top-selling “straight” classical offerings, according to Billboard.” Andante 01/15/02
SCORE ONE FOR THE CLASSICS: Okay, so country music may not exactly be Mozart. But in Nashville, and indeed across much of America, country is as classic as it gets, and “regular folks” are as loyal to it as opera fans. So when a legendary Nashville AM station (flagship of the Grand Ole Opry) announced it would be moving to a talk format, the listeners revolted. None of this, of course, is unusual in an age of huge broadcasting conglomerates. What is unusual is that the effort worked, and WSM will stay country, and stay unique in a sea of generic radio blather. Nashville Tennessean 01/15/02
Monday January 14
RIGHT OF WAY: The BBC has made a costly mistake. The corporation filmed an expensive version of Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors that was set to air Christmas eve – “until it was found at the last minute that no one had checked who owned the copyright, and the programme had to be pulled.” Seems an American company owns the film rights, and the company is not inclined to grant permission for another version. The Observer 01/13/02
WHY DOESN’T LONDON HAVE A GOOD CONCERT HALL? “London’s lack of a world-class concert hall is beginning to get embarrassing. It is arguable that London has lacked this prime requisite of a world city ever since the 2,500-seat Queen’s Hall, on Regent Street, was destroyed in the Blitz, and that the Festival Hall, for all its democratic public spaces, never quite made up for that. Which raises the question: if we started from scratch now, rather than tinkering around with the variously flawed big halls at our disposal, could we do better?” Sunday Times (UK) 01/13/02
VICTIM OF MONEY: The Welsh National Opera is one of the UK’s finest. Except recently. “WNO’s management appears to have conceded power to the accountants, allowing the company to be run not according to its highest artistic standards – which Wales should be roaringly proud of – but the logic of the balance sheet. In this brave new world, why not make 10 per cent of the chorus redundant too? Why not forget about anything except the safe box-office bets of the Mozart-to-Puccini repertory? Why bother subsidising opera at all when raggedy companies from Eastern Europe can go through the motions at half the price and a quarter of the quality?” The Telegraph (UK) 01/14/02
WHERE ARE TODAY’S COMPOSERS? Why, at the start of the 21st Century, are our “mainstream musical tastes are still stuck so completely back then, in the 19th century. Not that there’s anything wrong with listening to Wagner or Chopin, or even Mendelsson. But it is strange – isn’t it? – that an absolute majority of the music performed by all the American symphony orchestras this season will be by just four guys. Four guys who were all composing music during the same hundred-year period that ended more than a hundred years ago: Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky. Who are our Brahmses and Tchaikovskys, the historically important composers of this time? Why don’t we know their music? Why don’t we even know their names?” Public Arts (Studio 360) 01/11/02
EDMONTON MUSICIANS SUPPORT FIRED CONDUCTOR: Musicians of the Edmonton Symphony are supporting their former music director’s plans to form a rival orchestra. “We, the musicians of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, express overwhelming support of our music director, Grzegorz Nowak, and express dismay with the way the Edmonton Symphony Society board has handled his termination.” CBC 01/12/02
- Previously: FIRED CONDUCTOR STARTS RIVAL ORCHESTRA: Conductor Grzegorz Nowak was told this week that his contract as music director of the Edmonton Symphony wouldn’t be renewed. The next day he announced he’d put together a group of supporters and will start a new orchestra in the city. The plans are ambitious: “an immediate 45 per cent increase in concerts, a growth in orchestra size from 56 players to 93, a near-doubling in musicians’ salaries over six years, and annual recordings and/or tours beginning in 2002.” The new orchestra “would be based on a quite different attitude,” says Nowak. “The new orchestra would put musicians’ concerns first and would present more concerts with higher-paid musicians.” Edmonton Journal 01/10/02
THE NOT SO ROYAL OPERA: Those year-end wrapups found London critics in a generous mood about Covent Garden. One critic wonders why: “To suggest that the Royal Opera is yet consistently punching its weight as a top-flight international company, with top-flight new productions to match, is putting far more emphasis on hope than on experience.” The Guardian (UK) 01/12/02
Sunday January 13
ART VERSUS INTERPRETATION: Is an opera production a “work of art?” “Missionaries for opera keep touting it as the greatest art form, simply because it supposedly subsumes so many others. Drama and music and painting, maybe even sculpture and dance: top that, if you can. Actually, the essence of opera, even for Richard Wagner, who dreamed of an ‘artwork of the future’ based on just this model, remained what it had been since Monteverdi: drama embedded in music. In a classic Platonic sense, this constitutes the work (in more fashionable parlance, ‘the text’). On the other hand, a performance, along with its physical trappings, falls under the heading of interpretation, commonly held to be a creative function of the second order, though it does not have to be.” The New York Times 01/13/02
SCHOOL-BORN JAZZ: Jazz musicians used to learn their craft on the road, playing gigs. Not anymore – more jazz musicians come from colleges and music schools. “During the past half century or so, an academic approach to the music has gradually become far more prominent. By the end of the century, there were hundreds of thousands of youth ensembles ranging from big bands to small combos. And the activities were not limited to the United States.” Los Angeles Times 01/13/02
LOOKING FOR CLUES: The Atlanta Symphony is beginning the process of trying to build a new concert hall. The budget will be about $200 million. Philadelphia’s Kimmel Hall is the most recent concert hall to open – it offers a list of do’s and don’ts for Atlantans. Atlanta Journal-Constitution 01/13/02
IN PRAISE OF THE WALKOUT: Walking out of a performance is pretty rare these days. Some audience members walked out of a recent Dallas Opera performance of Wozzek. Usually, “audiences are more passive, or at least more polite, than they used to be. It’s hard to play a piano concerto anymore and not get a standing ovation. ‘I sometimes wish more people would walk out. At least it would show some passion’.” Dallas Morning News 01/13/02
Friday January 11
SAN JOSE SYMPHONY MIS-USED DONATIONS: As the now-suspended San Jose Symphony struggled to survive in the past year, the orchestra improperly used more than $1.7 million that had been donated for a new concert hall and education center to pay operating expenses. “The diversion of the donations, and a further disclosure that $77,000 of youth symphony money was used to pay general symphony expenses, could provoke a legal inquiry from the office of the California attorney general.” San Jose Mercury News 01/11/02
FIRED CONDUCTOR STARTS RIVAL ORCHESTRA: Conductor Grzegorz Nowak was told this week that his contract as music director of the Edmonton Symphony wouldn’t be renewed. The next day he announced he’d put together a group of supporters and will start a new orchestra in the city. The plans are ambitious: “an immediate 45 per cent increase in concerts, a growth in orchestra size from 56 players to 93, a near-doubling in musicians’ salaries over six years, and annual recordings and/or tours beginning in 2002.” The new orchestra “would be based on a quite different attitude,” says Nowak. “The new orchestra would put musicians’ concerns first and would present more concerts with higher-paid musicians.” Edmonton Journal 01/10/02
- PROGRESS IN WINNIPEG LOCKOUT: Musicians of the Winnipeg Symphony, locked out by the orchestra in a salary dispute since before Christmas, have agreed to an arbitration of the dispute. CBC 01/10/02
AMERICA’S GREATEST LIVING COMPOSER? Who is America’s greatest living composer? Here’s a vote for John Adams: “Adams is the most consistently serious of them all – eclipsing trend-setters such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass, edging out older types like Ned Rorem, and dwarfing the semi- tonal postmodernist brigade. An Adams premiere is an international event. Unlike Reich and Glass, he is still evolving. In contrast to retro-Puccinians like Mark Adamo and Jake Heggie, his best works withstand repeated hearing. He has enough ideas – and craftsmanship – to sustain interest from beginning to end: in short forms or long, his music inspires confidence. Most important of all, it remains pleasurable to the senses.” Financial Times 01/11/02
AN ODD WORLD: BBC3’s World Music Awards are an odd enterprise. “Radio 3 goes down some pretty obscure byways in its remit to educate and inform, whether playing archive field recordings, laptop improv or extracts from Broadway shows that closed after four nights. It’s good to hear music you would never dream of buying, and radio can contextualise unfamiliar music. But some listeners worry that the BBC Awards are too preoccupied with what my local store calls ‘phat global beats’. Dissenters see it as a cult cul-de-sac for people with ‘funny trousers’.” The Guardian (UK) 01/11/02
Thursday January 10
SAN DIEGO GIFT: The San Diego Symphony, which once went bankrupt and is perpetually in financial difficulty, is in line for a major gift – perhaps the largest-ever individual gift to an American symphony orchestra. “The money – thought by some in San Diego’s arts community to be as much as $100 million – eventually could place the organization’s endowment near the top 10 of U.S. orchestras and bring unprecedented stability to the 92-year-old institution.” San Diego Union 01/09/02
- CSO AVOIDS FINANCIAL CRISIS: The Colorado Symphony says it has headed off a $700,000 deficit by cutting salary increases and increasing giving from its board. But the orchestra warns that its financial security still isn’t assured. Denver Post 01/10/02
AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS: “In a night dominated by the new generation of soul music, Alicia Keys, Destiny’s Child and the late singer Aaliyah each won two American Music Awards on Wednesday. Michael Jackson, the subject of a behind-the-scenes tussle between music’s two biggest awards shows, accepted an Artist of the Century award. He didn’t perform, though.” MSNBC 01/10/02
SOUNDS LIKE THE PLOT OF A C&W BALLAD: In Nashville, four of the bigger country labels shut down. Country music giant Gaylord Entertainment has been losing money at the rate of about two million a week. And now, they’re talking about dumping the Grand Old Opry. The New York Times 01/10/02
DOOMSDAY SCENARIO (OR THE SKY IS FALLING?): A panel of recording-company executives at a conference on the future of the music business depicted an industry in dire shape. “A major-label album needs to sell at least half a million copies to break even and only 10 percent of albums ever recoup their investment. Marketing and promotion costs are high: good placement in retail stores can cost up to $250,000, and promoting a single Top 10 hit to radio stations can cost millions.” Besides that, digital copying is ruining sales, and how are musicians ever going to make a living? The New York Times 01/10/02
DON’T GET TOO SECURE: Recorded music is being distributed in a variety of ways these days. People are still buying CD’s, and consumers don’t seem to mind waiting a few days for delivery from online stores. “That could change if people begin receiving albums that won’t play in certain stereo devices” because recording companies encrypt them not to play in certain devices to deter piracy. Wired 01/09/02
SCOTTISH OPERA SUSPENSIONS: Six employees of the Scottish Opera have been suspended pending police investigations into illegal drug use. The Times (UK) 01/09/02
Wednesday January 9
SAME OLD TIRED IDEAS: The Toronto Symphony, having just (barely) staved off bankruptcy a few months ago, is trying to broaden its appeal by offering pops concerts. But “two fake palm trees, the billboard-sized words ‘Club Swing,’ two lounge tables and a dreary raconteur who reels off showbiz names just don’t work on this stage in this venue. And asking the TSO to metamorphose into a red-hot swing orchestra is asking for a manned spaceflight to Mars this year. Playing the nostalgia card at this stage cannot be considered wise.” Toronto Star 01/08/02
WRONG ABOUT WALTON? It’s the 100th anniversary of composer William Walton’s birth. There not being a lot of great English composers, Walton is regularly trotted out as one of the very best. “To suggest, as I am about to do, that Walton is not worth the candle of retrospection is to risk the wrath of friends and the scorn of patriots. Walton was a talented composer. He was also, in objective terms, an archetypal English failure whose shortcomings cry out for critical examination. When a king walks down Centenary Lane clad in nothing but local adulation, there must surely be one voice in the throng to draw attention to his immodesty.” The Telegraph (UK) 01/09/02
FIRST IMPRESSIONS: When the New York Philharmonic announced that its next music director would be septuagenarian stick-waver Lorin Maazel, an instant range of opinion was established, with most local critics panning the selection, and the notoriously choosy Philharmonic musicians reportedly thrilled with the decision. The NY Phil has released its tentative schedule for Maazel’s first season, and the repertoire, soloists, and overall programming are anything but daring, even as they constitute an impressive list. But perhaps traditionalism is just what the Phil needs. Andante 01/09/02
- IN THE BLACK AND IN TRANSITION: Calling the Philharmonic “an institution in transition,” the New York Phil’s chairman announced that the company is operating with a balanced budget, and is going ahead with plans to renovate its Lincoln Center home, at a cost of some $325 million. Possible improvements include a rebuilding of the stage and elimination of hundreds of seats in Avery Fisher Hall. The New York Times 01/09/02 (one-time registration required for access)
DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH FOR REFORM: “Legislation to force music industry reforms ranging from limits on artists’ contracts to bolstering consumer access to digital music is unlikely to pass Congress this year, a top Democrat said Tuesday. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said he supported some reforms but did not expect Congress to take action as long as the House remained under Republican control. Conyers’ assessment was likely to disappoint Internet music companies and recording artists who have called on Congress to reform what they see as a musical landscape unfairly dominated by the five major recording companies.” Wired 01/08/02
ROCK ON…(NOT PAINT, NOT WRITE): Why do pop stars think their modest talents translate to other arts? Worse, why do we have to endure them? “Obviously, what rock stars choose to do behind closed doors is their own business, but few can resist sharing, and the fact that they are household names means there will always be a publisher or gallery prepared to indulge them.” The Guardian (UK) 01/08/02
Tuesday January 8
WEAK SALES=BLAME INTERNET: Sales of recorded music slipped last year, and predictably, the recording industry is blaming the internet and digital copying. “The Australian music industry, which does not release its yearly sales figures until later this month, said Internet piracy had substantially affected the local market and was estimated to cost it $70 million a year.” Sydney Morning Herald 01/08/02
HOW THEATRES GREW UP: A study of Venice’s La Fenice Opera House gives some idea of the evolution of theatres adapting to social customs. “During the 18th century, the theater was one of the most important meeting places in public life. In the boxes and the camerini allocated to them – Marcel Proust described these as ‘small living rooms minus their fourth walls’ – people ate meals, made love and hatched intrigues before, during and after the performances.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 01/07/02
SAM I AM (WAS): Once, Sam the Record Man was Canada’s leading retailer of music recordings. But the chain is bankrupt and its assets sold off. “In the classical department, the sound system pumps out cheerful Viennese music, but there’s little cheer in the air. Rather, there’s a sense of quiet desperation – a subdued hush of people making the best of a bad situation.” The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/07/02
THE FUTURE OF MUSIC? BRING YOUR OWN LOBBYIST: “When about 200 music executives, artists and lawyers gathered at Georgetown University, the topics on the conference agenda were lofty enough: What new business models may emerge? How are other countries handling things? Should unions be involved? The one common note, however, at the second Future of Music conference was that everyone from record labels to Napster will be lobbying Congress more furiously than ever. Napster wants cheap music to distribute; the recording industry plans to ask for tougher, even draconian copyright laws; civil libertarians want to gut existing ones.” Wired 01/08/02
THE MYSTERY OF THE COUNTERTENOR: It’s been a long time now since countertenors were regarded as oddities. These days “they are positively mainstream, and two singers in the category have now become front-ranking stars with big recording contracts and even bigger box-office pull. One is the bespectacled German Andreas Scholl, who represents the Deller tradition of pure, ethereal cathedral-choir beauty of tone; the other, who performs repertory that Deller could never have dreamed of essaying, is the all-American David Daniels.” Recently, Daniels “watched with fascination as a micro-camera probed his throat. What he discovered is that he is the unwitting owner of an infantile epiglottis, an unusual condition of the flap that hangs protectively over our vocal cords.” The Telegraph (UK) 01/08/02
UNEQUAL RIGHTS: “A US state senator has taken the first steps to try and overturn a Californian law which ties recording artists to contracts longer than artists in other fields. Under current US law, record companies have a special exemption allowing them to sue musicians and singers for albums not produced over the course of seven-year contracts.” BBC 01/08/02
Monday January 7
BRITAIN’S TOP SINGERS: Who are Britain’s top ten opera singers? A poll of English singers ranks Bryn Terfel on top. The Independent (UK) 01/07/02
THE SELLING OF RENEE: Soprano Renee Fleming is said to have the most beautiful voice on stage today. “Though singing may be a private orgy, it is also a business, and if Fleming has become America’s sweetheart it is because, behind her soft smile, she so shrewdly understands the country’s values: the need to balance pleasure and profit, self-expression and the ambitious manoeuvrings of a career.” The Observer (UK) 01/06/02
Sunday January 6
GRAMMY NOMINEES: The Grammy Award nominees are announced. Conductor Pierre Boulez leads classical nominations with six. A complete list of nominations is here. The awards ceremony is February 27 in LA . Los Angeles Times 01/04/02
- A GOOD YEAR: Job well done, writes one critic about this year’s selection of nominees. “There haven’t been many times over the last four decades when it has been possible to put the words ‘job well done’ and ‘Grammy Award nominations’ in the same sentence, but this is one.” Los Angeles Times 01/05/02
- SIGN OF CLASSICAL CHANGE: The most-honored classical release this year – a live performance of Berlioz’s opera The Trojans, nominated for for best classical, opera and best engineered recording, was not produced by a commercial recording company, but by the London Symphony Orchestra.” Los Angeles Times 01/05/02
ANOTHER OPERA HOUSE FOR BERLIN? Does Berlin need a fourth opera house? There is a proposal to build one, devoted to music theatre written since 1945. The design is sleek – like a space ship, and the project is creating a sensation. But “there are a few problems. Berlin, which can no longer afford to maintain its three existing opera houses, is probably the European capital least likely to want to pay for another. The national government has already categorically said it will not provide money for the project; Germany already has some 80 opera houses.” Andante 01/04/02
WRESTLING WITH THE PIANO: A man decides that learning to play the piano is his passion, and embarks on a long journey to get better at it. “There may well be a psychoanalytical explanation for this wanting to lose oneself in a private realm of musical expression. Neurologists may one day find the answer in combinations of peptides and amino acids; in the metabolic affinities between specific neurons. They may also be able to explain to me why my musical memory is so dysfunctional and why my brain is so inadequately wired to my fingers. All this may one day become clear. Until then I shall stumble on, feeling that the act of playing the piano each day does in some way settle the mind and the spirit. Even five minutes in the morning feels as though it has altered the chemistry of the brain in some indefinable way. Something has been nourished. I feel ready – or readier – for the day.” The Guardian (UK) 01/05/02
A PLEA FOR BACK TO BASICS: Why must opera directors muck up perfectly good classic operas? “The curse of the megalomaniac producer is not confined to Britain. In fact we get off quite lightly. It is now almost impossible to see a classic opera in Germany in a reasonably traditional production. There must be a new ‘Konzept’, good or bad makes no difference.” The Telegraph (UK) 01/05/02
MUSICAL WONDER: The Wannamaker organ at the downtown Lord & Taylor store in Philadelphia may be “the largest and most complex musical instrument ever constructed.” First played in 1911, the instrument’s only had four official players. “On the atrium’s south wall, stretching from the second floor upward to a height of 21 metres, can be found most of the more than 28,000 pipes housed in the remarkable, 530-tonne instrument.” Toronto Star 01/05/02
Friday January 4
WILL OPERA SURVIVE? Gerard Mortier wonders about the future of opera: “For years now, like vampires, we so-called managers and artistic directors have been sucking fresh blood from film and theater directing to secure a little more eternity for opera. I have taken great delight in doing so. The experience was an important one – it brought about refreshing new interpretations of works. In the meantime, however, this process has itself become clichéd, possibly even a pure publicity reflex. Will it be possible to keep opera from becoming a dead language and gradually disappearing from our so-called educational canon, just as Latin and Greek are vanishing from our classrooms?” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 01/04/02
- UNIDENTIFIED FUNKY OPERAHOUSE: Berlin already has three opera houses, and is struggling to support them. So does the financially troubled city really need a fourth, particularly of the wildly unconventional style being proposed by a contemporary music group? Probably not, but the new-age design and unusual programming potential have some music aficionados excited. That said, funding will be a problem, as the opera house is expected to come with a €51 million price tag. Andante 01/04/02
CYBER-ATTACKING THE VIENNA PHIL: William Osborne has been attacking the Vienna Philharmonic for its closed membership policies that have barred women and minorities. “The Vienna Philharmonic continues to discriminate, but due to cleverly managed tokenism and an effective public relations campaign, protest against the orchestra and the institutions that support it, such as Carnegie Hall, have become difficult. On the other hand, change is slowly becoming apparent.” Osborne-Conant.org 01/01/02
- Previously: CYBERGRASS VS. GENDER BIAS: The Vienna Philharmonic is one of the world’s great orchestras. Also one of the few to retain a distinctive sound that is theirs alone. Trouble is, they don’t believe in women musicians in their midst. The international campaign taking on the VPO’s sexist discrimination has been fertilized on the internet in a real cyber-grass roots effort that has exerted considerable pressure on the orchestra to change its ways. (be sure to take the musical gender test part way through the story). MSNBC 01/20/00
CROSSING THE LINE: The problem with crossover music (the blending of classical with popular forms) may be that so much of it uses the moniker of “classical” to reinforce old elitist stereotypes of the superiority of high art music. “But is there any scale on which [Charlotte] Church could possibly be measured a greater, more valuable artist or musician than soul goddess [Aretha] Franklin? And is every Boston Pops concert automatically inferior to any performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra?” Boston Herald 01/03/01
US ALBUM SALES TAKE A DIVE: “Album sales in the US dropped by almost 3% in 2001 – the first year for a decade that has seen a decline. CD-copying, internet swapping, a weak economy and other popular forms of entertainment such as DVDs and video games have been blamed… A recent industry study found that half of those questioned had downloaded music from the internet in the last month, and 70% of those had burnt songs onto CD.” BBC 01/04/02
GRASS ROOTS: American roots music (called “Americana” by some) is find a swell of new fans. “Americans want to hear the hybrid blends of folk, blues, country, rockabilly, and regional sounds (zydeco, Cajun, native American) known as roots music, Americana, or its punk-edged cousin, alternative country. Theories regarding Americana’s popularity abound – though it must be noted that most of its practitioners disapprove of ‘genre-fying’ music at all.” Christian Science Monitor 01/03/02
KERNIS AT THE TOP: Composer Aaron Jay Kernis has been winning all the music world’s top prizes for composers, including the Grawemeyer and the Pulitzer. He’s also getting some of the most prominent commissions by major orchestras. “He’s capable of irony and wit, but won’t take cover behind those qualities. There’s a lot of passion to his writing, and what ties his disparate pieces together are the grand gestures, the way he’ll go for a big romantic statement.” Christian Science Monitor 01/04/02
PETER HEMMINGS, 67, L.A. OPERA’S FOUNDING DIRECTOR: “With a budget of just $6.4 million, Hemmings launched Music Center Opera (later renamed Los Angeles Opera), mounting five productions in a first season that immediately made the operatic world take notice. By the time he retired in 2000 to return to his native England, Hemmings had left behind a company with a $22-million budget and an eight-opera season of more than 50 performances, most of them selling out.” Los Angeles Times 01/04/02
Thursday January 3
CHANGE AT THE TOP: Many of the orchestra world’s most prestigious ensembles are about to get new music directors – a new generation of conductors set to shape orchestral music for the 21st Century. It’s about time. Andante 01/02/02
A NEW STANDARD OF SUCCESS? It is a strange phenomenon of an uncertain time in the orchestral world that many top ensembles are announcing year-end fiscal numbers that would have been considered horrifying a couple of years ago, but can still be said to place the orchestra well out of the danger zone inhabited by groups in Toronto, St. Louis, and elsewhere. Case in point: the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, which ran over $1 million in the red in 2001, but is going ahead with a massive venue expansion plan and shows no signs of making cuts. Detroit Free Press 01/02/02
HOPE FOR HIGHBROW? The San Francisco Opera’s new director may be sick and tired of all the fundraising work her job entails (no surprise after the years she spent in Europe, where the arts are publicly subsidized,) but the necessity of catering to the interests of certain wealthy patrons isn’t stopping Pamela Rosenberg from mounting challenging new productions. Among the costly and daring projects the SF Opera is planning: the American premiere of a Messaien opera that critics swore up and down would never be heard here. San Jose Mercury News 01/03/02
THE NEW JAZZ: The new Grove dictionary of jazz is out. There are many changes from the first edition, which debuted in 1980. “The Grove now bends an ear to those post-1980s phenomena, ‘acid jazz’ (‘the first jazz term to have been coined by a disc jockey’) and ‘smooth jazz’, and devotes an essay to the subject of women in jazz as an acknowledgment not only of the growing number of female performers, but also of the politics of that change.” The Guardian (UK) 01/03/02
SANDERLING TO STEP DOWN: Conductor Kurt Sanderling is turning 90, and he’s decided to retire from the podium after 70 years on stage. “Musicians are rueing his departure, while admiring its dignified restraint.” Why do so many other artists have difficulty knowing when it’s time to quit? The Telegraph (UK) 01/03/02
Wednesday January 2
LA SCALA CLOSES: La Scala’s opera house closed its season last weekend and now the house is closed for a major renovation. But the closure has many worried. “La Scala’s management says the work will be completed in three years and that the house, its gilt and glory fully restored, will be ready for opening night Dec. 7, 2004. ‘Temporarily closed for repairs’ has been the kiss of death for some of Italy’s other important opera houses. Their stories are as melodramatic as Maria Callas’ love life.” Chicago Tribune 12/31/01
KEYS TO SUCCESS? Should classical music popularize itself like the visual art industry has? “Classical music doesn’t suit that sort of hype. Its sedentary, spiritual quality tends to appeal to older people. Unlike the visual arts, it demands communal concentration – something most young people, raised on a culture of soundbites, are not prepared to do. It can’t be sampled at a glance, it’s not visually exciting. It also happens to be horribly labour-intensive. Worst of all, classical music is in the throes of an identity crisis, because its principal tools are 18th- and 19th-century creations, with a few 20th-century accretions. The vast majority of orchestras and venues have failed to reinvent themselves in a way that suits modern media.” Financial Times 01/01/02
IN PRAISE OF STAPLES: “Of all the performing arts, classical music has been the most hopelessly bound to past repertory. It’s essential for those who want this art form to have a future as well as a history to encourage new work and cajole ensembles, orchestras and opera companies into supporting living composers. Yet such calls are not meant as a criticism of the standard repertory. These works have survived for a reason. The problem is that repertory staples are trotted out too often for their own good.” The New York Times 01/02/02
TROUBLE GETTING MUSIC: Many music fans looking for recent classical recordings in stores before Christmas were stymied. Selection in stores is lousy and distribution is limited. So where did all the music go? “It must be said that the downturn in the disc business doesn’t herald the end of classical music. Box office figures for live performance remain good to excellent here and elsewhere. Yet veterans of the disc biz say it’s rarely been worse.” Philadelphia Inquirer 01/01/02
CANNON FODDER: “The Cannon, named for its huge, sonorous sound, is a 250-year-old Guarneri del Gesù violin. It is owned by the city of Genoa, jealously kept in a vault inside Palazzo Tursi, Genoa’s City Hall, and supervised by a committee of experts responsible for the violin’s maintenance and preservation and for deciding who plays it. Typically, the honor falls to select world-class guest soloists and to winners of the Paganini Competition who are allowed to perform only from a classical repertory that has been approved in advance. [Jazz fiddler] Regina Carter’s concert marked the first time in the history of the violin that a nonclassical musician played it.” New York Times 01/02/02
DALLAS POSTPONEMENT: The Dallas Opera has seen ticket sales fall by about 15 percent. One of the company’s cost-cutting measures is to postpone the American premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s The Silver Tassie to the 2004-2005 season. The opera is “based on a play by Sean O’Casey, tells the story of an Irish soccer hero who goes off to World War I and returns paralyzed by a battle injury.” Dallas Morning News 01/02/02
THE EXAMINED DANCE
“The theoretical study of dance, using the broad content and methodology of the humanities, is still far less developed than in those other arts. And there is much less in the way of rigorous dialogue among well-trained scholars in the various theoretical disciplines.” Aesthetics-online 12/01