Edinburgh’s summer Festival draws the best artists from around the world. Makes one critic wonder about the state of Scottish arts: “The arts have been ill-served down the years by successive governments. Over the last decade, leaving aside additional funding for the National Companies, we have seen a base grant to the arts in Scotland rise… a niggardly 1.1% a year, not only way below inflation, but less than any comparable public sector area.” – The Scotsman
Author: Douglas McLennan
TROUBLE IN WALES
With arts organizations closing and others languishing, arts leaders sound the alarm that “Wales is in serious danger of being relegated to the second division of arts and culture.” – Ananova 09/15/00
DREAMING BIG
As expected, yesterday Boston Ballet named Maina Gielgud as the company’s new artistic director. The Boston troupe, said officials, also has an ambitious new five-year plan designed to make it ‘one of the five best ballet companies in the world’.” – Boston Globe
- RECIPE FOR SUCCESS: “Audiences want to see stars. Like choreographers, stars are, in the first place, born. But then they need to be developed and nurtured. They need to be found.” – Boston Herald 09/15/00
CHASING BETTER RATINGS
Eight prominent Hollywood directors advocate scrapping the current movie ratings system, saying that it is unworkable. In its place, they propose a ratings system that would apply to all popular culture. – Washington Post
FOLLOW THE LEADER
What’s wrong with Australian museums? Leadership. “Appointing people because they interview well, are good publicists, claim to (or do) know the rich and famous, know more than anybody else about art (or science or history) is of little use, if not dangerous. People follow leaders because they want to, because they not only believe in the vision but can see a place for themselves in the sun, because they receive genuine support.” – Sydney Morning Herald
THE MEANING OF ART
What is it about Tracey Emin, anyway? What makes what she does “art”? “If she decides that a tent with the names of 102 people she’s slept with is art, that’s her prerogative. That unmade bed, for instance, ‘illustrates the themes of loss, sickness, fertility, copulation, conception and death’.” – The Scotsman
BUYING THE MUSEUM EXPERIENCE
“Museum retailing, an emblem and essence of the thriving American art museum of the 1990s, is going through turbulent times, rocked by competition in the marketplace and from cyberspace, and changing consumer shopping habits.” – Boston Globe
SHIFTING SANDS
Tibetan monks spent days making a sand painting at a Connecticut hospital in an attempt to aid the forces of healing there. But a couple of kids, mistaking the painting for a sandbox, destroyed it a couple of minutes. “The monks said it was good for them if the children were happy playing in the sand. They plan to start the project again.” – ABC News
NOT ABOUT THE FAME
Canadian poet Anne Carson is a recluse, not given to public contact with the outside world. So you have to piece together her life from other sources: “it’s known that she teaches classics at McGill University; that she won the 1996 Lannan Award, the 1997 Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998, among others, and that earlier this year, she received the McArthur Foundation ‘Genius’ Award worth $500,000 (U.S.). Michael Ondaatje says she is ‘the most exciting poet writing in English today’. Susan Sontag puts her in a ‘less-than-fingers-on-one-hand group of writers’.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)
HOUSTON SYMPHONY’S NEW MUSIC DIRECTOR
Houston Symphony names Hans Graf to succeed Christoph Eschenbach. Graf is currently music director of the Calgary Philharmonic and the Orchestre National Bordeaux-Aquitaine in France. – Houston Chronicle