The 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts “noted that the downward trend was at least partially due to the deteriorating economic conditions of the past two years, including the rise in the price of gas and an overall drop in consumer spending. But it also emphasized larger shifts in the American public’s relationship to the arts.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
B&N’s Nook Rushed To Market Before It’s Ready
Though the promotional materials make it sound great, various “missing features are symptoms of B&N’s bad case of Ship-at-All-Costs-itis. But the biggest one of all is the Nook’s half-baked software. To use the technical term, it’s slower than an anesthetized slug in winter. And it’s buggy.”
Oxford Alters Rules For Electing Professor Of Poetry
“The vote, every five years, has been called a ‘kamikaze convention’, and this year descended into embarrassing farce when Ruth Padel felt compelled to resign after nine days in the job. For some, the arcane voting rules are the problem,” while others “believe the voting changes could make the election even more of a bun fight.”
At La Scala, A Slightly More Somber Opening Night
“If Old World Europe still has its great spectacle, it is this annual senior prom, at the end of which the so-called loggionisti, the diehard fans in the rafters who are opera’s original bloggers, rain ritual terror or roses down on the performers.” The singers got cheers, the director jeers.
Berlusconi Disses La Scala For 2012 At The Multiplex
“[T]his week, as the great and the good turned out at La Scala opera house in Milan for the opening of a new version of Carmen, many wondered why the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was not in attendance.” Turns out he was at the movies, taking his own bow.
New Jersey, Our TV Barometer Of Reality?
“Whether it’s ‘The Real Housewives of New Jersey’ or ‘Jersey Shore,’ the fictional mob reality of ‘The Sopranos’ or the real-folks rock of Bruce Springsteen, if you want real reality, not silly poseurs sneaking into the White House, there’s no better place to find it than New Jersey.”
PETA To Pounce On Kids At Pa. Ballet’s Nutcracker
“PETA is planning to hand out anti-fur stickers to children waiting to see the Pennsylvania Ballet’s staging of The Nutcracker at the Academy of Music on Saturday afternoon. The stickers … will be attached to leaflets explaining how animals suffer because of the fur, leather, and exotic-skins trade.”
Royal Opera House’s Manchester Plan Clears A Hurdle
The Lowry arts center in nearby Salford has withdrawn its opposition to the scheme, under which the Royal Opera House would have a presence at Manchester’s Palace Theatre. “Opera and musical theatre would be concentrated at the new facility at the refurbished Palace and the Lowry would concentrate on lyric theatre, ballet and dance.”
Villa Savoye And Barcelona Pavilion, In Gingerbread
Four major Chicago-area architectural firms took up the challenge of designing gingerbread houses — in one case, a village of them. Blair Kamin offers critiques: “The design achieves the clean-lined, sculptural look the architect desired, in part because the baker tossed out rigid gingerbread for the curving rooftop walls and substituted more malleable fondant.”
Australia Denies Visas To Five North Korean Artists
“The artists, from the Mansudae Art Studio in Pyongyang[,] had been invited to the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane to discuss their paintings,” but “Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has denied the men visas, saying their studio was a propoganda tool of Pyongyang.”