The home in the little town in India where George Orwell was born in 1903 is to be restored. “More than a century after Orwell’s birth, his first home – a crumbling, one-storey building near the abandoned indigo warehouse where his father worked – is home to a local English teacher. Now plans are afoot to build a museum and a stadium and put up a statue of the writer in the 10-acre area in Telliapatti.”
Blog
Who’s Buying Music?
Music consumers are getting older. “In 1999 music buyers over 30 accounted for less than half of all music sales. Now 55% of music is bought by over 30s.”
Saving A Whole Lotta Painting
Conservators are working to save one of the largest paintings in the world – a 45 feet-by-195 100-year-old religious work in California. “Using 4-foot-long brushes, Polish artist Jan Styka completed the painting in 1897 after working on it 12 hours a day for five years. Styka originally had hoped to show the painting at the St. Louis Exposition of 1904 but there was no room so Styka displayed other works instead.”
Would You Buy This Art Online?
A few years ago the internet was full of companies trying to sell art online. “These days, with New York-based e-commerce firm JupiterResearch projecting that 2005 Internet spending will top $79 billion in the U.S. alone and Web sales will continue to post double-digit growth until at least 2009, the wrangling over art’s future on the Internet has been reignited. Critics still insist that unlike books, clothing, and other consumer goods, art really has to be experienced in person before deciding whether or not it’s the right fit. But with some 126 million Americans already buying an increasing number of goods electronically, a new batch of entrepreneurs is banking on a bright future in online art.”
Montreal Symphonty Strike – A Disagreement Over Suspending Negotiations
Why have talks in the Montreal Symphony musicians’ strike stopped? “An MSO spokesperson told The Gazette yesterday negotiations were suspended for the month of August because the mediator was on vacation. Musicians’ association president Marc Beliveau concurred. Yet a press release from MSO management, dated Thursday, quotes the chief negotiator for management as saying, “Given the gulf separating the two sides, we fully understand why the mediator saw no need to schedule any new negotiating sessions.”
Kaminer To Edit NYT A&L
Ariel Kaminer has been named the new editor of The New York Times Arts & Leisure section. “Ariel was deputy editor of the section under Jodi Kantor and, before that, an editor on the Magazine under Adam Moss.”
Writing Off The Movies
“’ Product,’ the old Hollywood moguls used to call the movies they made. Most of them were main-chance Jewish operator types who ran their studios on the factory model. They were aware that the right actors and actresses were crucial and were what people paid their money to see. Directors who knew how to get the best out of these actors were also important, as were producers with a talent for organization and for keeping all these temperamental characters in line. But without writers there was nothing; the game could not even begin until writers had put the ball in play. And yet writers, as everyone knows, have always been thought the most dispensable element in the Hollywood equation.”
Doing The DVD Death Spiral
The wait between when a movie is released to theatres and when it comes out on DVD has gotten shorter. That in turn has increased pressure on movie theatres and is changing a time-tested business model. Is there a way to pull out of this death spiral?
Aussie Movie Chain Slashes Ticket Prices
Australia’s movie box office is suffering like it is in the rest of the world. So one of the country’s biggest movie theatre chains is slashing prices. “Hoyts announced yesterday that tickets for ‘any movie, any session, all day long’ would be discounted savagely from Thursday to Sunday after yet another flat weekend for takings.”
Is Knowing The Cultural Reference Better Than The Culture Itself?
“The traditional benefits of entertainment were the pleasures of the experience. For that, you had to see the movie, read the book or hear the CD. These were — and are — powerful pleasures, powerful enough to make entertainment a multibillion-dollar industry. But as society has grown more complex and the information we can know has grown exponentially, knowingness — the idea of being in the know and of having the expertise to navigate through the haystacks of available information to find the needles — has come to provide an arguably more satisfying form of gratification. That’s why the knowingness industry, including the Internet, seems more vital than the entertainment industry. Google is the new metaphor for fulfillment.”