“A plan — floated earlier this year by the executive committee of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ music branch — to replace the award with one for original documentary scores, has been rejected by the branch membership.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Margaret Atwood On Accepting Dan David Prize In Israel
“We don’t do cultural boycotts,” said Atwood, who is a vice president of International PEN. “I would be throwing overboard the thousands of writers around the world who are in prison, censored, exiled and murdered for what they have published.”
UPS Truck Crashes Into Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum
“In an incident with little if any recent precedent on the National Mall, the truck shattered a plate-glass window that forms part of the outer wall of the museum’s lobby. … Linda St. Thomas, spokeswoman for the Smithsonian Institution, of which the circular-shaped museum is part, said the truck came about one foot into the building.”
American Conservators To Aid In Rescue Of Haitian Art
“The initiative, in its swiftness, its close collaboration with a foreign government and its combination of private and government financing, represents a new model of American cultural diplomacy, one that organizers believe stands in stark contrast to the apathy Americans were accused of exhibiting during the looting of Iraqi artistic treasures in 2003.”
Think Again, Hollywood: Film Futures Trading Is Beneficial
“Today onions are the only commodity for which futures trading is banned,” and “no one is silly enough to ask a member of Congress to simply outlaw futures trading in a certain type of contract — no one, that is, except Hollywood film producers. … But if the new provision makes its way into law, the biggest losers will be the very film producers who lobbied for it.”
Alain De Botton Helps Others Conquer Fear Of Modernism
“The author of books including the Consolations of Philosophy and The Architecture of Happiness, has commissioned five houses by some of Europe’s leading modern architects, which he plans to rent out on a not-for-profit basis. He said his purpose was ‘to help people get over the dichotomy that modernism equals awful and antiquated equals great’.”
John Guare To Judge Yale Drama Series Playwriting Award
“Mr. Guare will choose the winners for the years 2011, 2012 and 2013. Past judges have included Edward Albee, for the series’ first two prizes in 2007 and 2008, and David Hare, who chose the 2009 award as well as this year’s winner, Virginia Grise, for her play ‘blu.'”
Arts Vulnerable To Cuts At Some Calif. Public Universities
“At Cal State Fullerton, David Grimes, director of the classical guitar program, says enrollment is being capped at 10, down from 28,” saving $48,000 annually. “At Cal Poly, the provost has recommended phasing out the fine arts major that usually has about 80 to 100 students,” saving “$200,000 after current enrollees finish their degrees.”
One Way To Eliminate Tension Between Teaching & Playing
The nonprofit consortium In the Pocket NYC “helps performers teach and teachers perform,” creating “a social network for professional musicians who offer private lessons, giving them built-in substitute teachers.”
Appreciation: Lena Horne
“She couldn’t sing about the penthouse [described in the song ‘Penthouse Serenade’] because she couldn’t live there–and that was that. Obviously, this tells us much about the racist policies of that unenlightened era, but it tells us even more about Horne as an artist: If she couldn’t believe in something, and make it real for herself and her audiences, then she wouldn’t sing it.”