“Alberto Barbera put together three intelligent and well-received Venice International Film Festivals from 1999 to 2001. He was preparing his fourth in 2002 when Silvio Berlusconi came to power and he fell victim to Italy’s political spoils system.” With Berlusconi gone, Barbera is back.
Author: Matthew Westphal
First Changes In Australian Arts Funding Overhaul Revealed
“Five arts touring programs, including Playing Australia, that were previously administered through the government Office for the Arts will be transferred to the Australia Council … with its peer-review assessment procedures.” Also making the move will be a visual art funding scheme called Visual Arts and Craft Strategy.
Aboriginal Town Develops Musical About Itself In Seven Weeks
Now this is getting arts out into the community: Opera Australia sent technical staff and three indigenous professional performers (including pop star Casey Donovan) to a north Queensland aboriginal settlement to write and perform a community-based musical about the town’s painful history and resilience.
Moving Away From Starchitecture At The Venice Biennale
“A divide is opening up – generationally, economically and philosophically. The starchitects … are still here, but the appetite for celebrations of individual genius, and isolated, beautifully crafted buildings, seems to be dissipating. To co-opt the language of the Occupy movement, the big names are starting to look like architecture’s 1%.”
Portrait Of The Artist As A Walking Drug Experiment
“Cocaine. Cough syrup. Crystal meth. You name it, Bryan Saunders has probably swallowed or snorted it. Since March 30, 1995, Saunders has drawn at least one self-portrait each and every day” – many of them under the influence of one or another controlled substance.
A Babel Of Arts Ministers: At The First International Culture Summit
“[There] are so many different starting points for discussion, and perspectives on those starting points, that it is fascinating to hear the disjointed interjections from the floor. Academics and policy advisers may have a common language for talking about topics such as cultural diplomacy, but politicians don’t appear to.”
National Ballet Of Cuba Cancels South African Tour Over Non-Payment
“The NBC took the decision on Tuesday night ‘after the SA government’ ongoing delays in the payment of the funding required to secure and arrange the tour and in providing assistance with the required logistical details.”
Indianapolis Symphony Management Wants To Slash Pay, Abandon Year-Round Season
“According to committee chairman Rick Graef, a horn player with the ISO for the past two decades, management wants to reduce the number of musicians under contract from 87 to 63, cut wages by 45 percent, reduce the schedule from 52 to 36 weeks and revisit the terms of the musicians’ pension.”
Meet The World’s Oldest Living Silent-Film Star
“Whatever happened to Baby Peggy? Few people under age 90 might even ask that question … [but] circa 1923, [she] was as well-known to movie-fans as Pola Negri, Rudolph Valentino and Jackie Coogan.”
Plants Have (At Least) Five Senses, Too
Researcher Daniel Chamovitz: “Some people may not be comfortable describing what plants do as seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. They certainly lack noses, eyes, ears, mouths and skin, but in what follows, I hope to convince you that the sensory world of plants is not so very different from our own.”