“Returning to Boston to face two graffiti charges, the Los Angeles-based artist who created the controversial ‘Hope’ poster of Barack Obama may be facing a deluge of new charges. During a closed-door hearing yesterday in Brighton District Court, Boston police applied for two additional vandalism charges against Shepard Fairey, and a detective working the case indicated that police plan to seek 29 more charges in Roxbury district and Boston municipal courts.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Shepard Fairey Is Up Against It In Boston
“This may be the only place in America where Shepard Fairey, the street artist whose omnipresent portrait of Barack Obama has become a touchstone, is not fully feeling the love. Mr. Fairey appeared in two municipal courts here this week to fight a cascade of vandalism charges…. While this is not his first encounter with the police — Mr. Fairey has been arrested more than a dozen times for posting his art on whatever surface catches his eye — it appears to be his biggest legal tangle to date.”
Chastened Academy May Rejoin Museum Directors Assn.
“Three months after the Association of Art Museum Directors imposed severe sanctions on the National Academy Museum for selling two important Hudson River School paintings to pay bills, the two institutions issued a joint statement on Wednesday signaling that a compromise was taking shape. The statement said they had made progress towards helping the academy ‘regain its footing as a member in good standing of the American art museum community.'”
New York Drops Plan For Theatre Ticket Tax
“Legiters can breathe a sigh of relief now that New York state leaders have announced that $1.3 billion in proposed tax increases will be dropped from consideration — including a potential levy on live theater. The 4% state tax on legit tickets … had raised concerns in the legit industry that the additional charges would serve to further dissuade consumers from buying theater tickets, prices of which are already consistently on the rise.”
Barbican Creates Five Residencies For Leading Orchestras
“Instead of being a venue for one-off flying visits by orchestras, the Barbican said it wants to change the dynamic and develop more lasting relationships with organisations that it today names as international associates.” They are the Los Angeles Philharmonic, “the New York Philharmonic, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the New York-based Jazz at Lincoln Centre, which will be the first resident next year.”
Teaching Artists To Act Like Business People
“The recession has not been kind to the arts world. It seems every week there’s more bad news about opera companies folding or theaters scaling back their seasons. But there’s a group dedicated to helping the nation’s small arts organizations work better as businesses.” Fractured Atlas, that is.
A Rand Rebellion? Atlas Shrugged Enjoys A Resurgence.
“[O]ne surprise bestseller of the economic Armageddon is a decades-old science fiction novel about an imaginary economic Armageddon – popular now, its fans insist, because the collapse of civilisation it describes is on the verge of coming true. Sales of Ayn Rand’s 1957 book Atlas Shrugged – a hymn in praise of radical individualism, extreme self-interest and laissez-faire capitalism – are surging as the crisis deepens, according to TitleZ, a service that tracks sales trends on Amazon.”
Women Likely To Fill Both Of UK’s Top Poetry Posts
“The two most important positions in the British poetry establishment are about to be filled – and it looks likely, for the first time ever, that both incumbents will be women. An announcement is expected in the next few weeks on the poet laureate to succeed Andrew Motion when he steps down in May. That same month, an election will be held to find a replacement for Christopher Ricks as the Oxford professor of poetry – a position held, variously, by Matthew Arnold, WH Auden and Seamus Heaney.”
Billy Corgan To Congress: Radio Should Pay To Play
“Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan came to the Hill yesterday to testify about musicians being paid fairly when AM/FM stations play their songs, as part of MusicFIRST’s coalition to inundate the Hill with artists’ testimony. … (Being paid when one’s song plays on the radio happens in nearly every country in the world, except for a few notables like China and Iran.)”
In Broadway Previews, A Two-Act To Become A One-Act
“‘Impressionism,’ a new Broadway play about the healing power of Art, is in desperate need of the healing power of Cutting.” With opening night of the Jeremy Irons-Joan Allen vehicle pushed back two weeks, lead producer Bill Haber has told “investors that ‘Impressionism’ will be whacked to one act without an intermission (that’s one way of eliminating the mass exodus!), and that confusing sections created by what he calls ‘flashback moments’ will be trimmed and clarified.”