A New York Court has struck down a neighborhood group’s challenge to a major expansion by the Metropolitan Museum. “The Appellate Division of state Supreme Court ruled 5-0 that the community group’s court petition to block construction on environmental grounds was time-barred – more than two years late. The court said the group should have acted within four months.”
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Hemingway House Endangered
Ernest Hemingway’s house outside of Havana has been listed in the US as “endangered.” “The house’s exposed position and the tropical hurricane climate of Cuba has left the building with serious structural problems, with experts calling it a preservation emergency”.
Albanian Wins Booker International
Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare wins the first Man Booker International Prize. “I am a writer from the Balkan Fringe, a part of Europe which has long been notorious exclusively for news of human wickedness. My firm hope is that European and world opinion may henceforth realise this region… can also give rise to other kinds of news and be the home of other kinds of achievement in the field of the arts, literature and civilisation.”
US House Approves Increase In NEA Budget
“The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a Congressional Arts Caucus floor amendment to increase the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts by $10 million, while quashing two additional amendments that would have cut a total of $45 million from the federal arts budget.”
Labor Investigation Of Washington Ballet
“The National Labor Relations Board has called for a Sept. 7 hearing to determine whether the Washington Ballet, in Washington, D.C., discriminated against two dancers who helped form a union there.”
Teachout: Culture Blogs And The Quality Of Culture
Terry Teachout sees the rise of arts blogs as a profound cultural change. “Artblogs are barely more than three years old. It is far too soon to say which of their opposing tendencies, the atomizing or the embracing, will have a more profound effect on the wider culture they have already started to shape. It may be that blogging will encourage the creation of a new kind of common culture, exerting something of the same unifying force as did the old middlebrow media (and as About Last Night seeks to do). Or not: if the experience of political blogs is any indication, blogging may be more likely to foster discrete subcultures of shared interest, larger and more cohesive but nonetheless separate.”
Canadian Culture Increasingly Doesn’t Travel
“Canada’s export of cultural goods—such as art and music—has been steadily declining for the last four years. In 2004 it reached its lowest point since 1997, according to the Statscan report. The trade deficit in culture goods is due to a decline in exports—particularly to the US—and is most pronounced in the sector of written and published works such as books, periodicals, newspapers, and other printed materials.”
Book Banning In The Heartland
A culture war is being fought in America’s schools. “According to the American Library Association, which asks school districts and libraries to report efforts to ban books – that is, have them removed from shelves or reading lists – they are on the rise again: 547 books were challenged last year, up from 458 in 2003. These aren’t record numbers. In the 1990’s the appearance of the Harry Potter books, with their themes of witchcraft and wizardry, caused a raft of objections from evangelical Christians.”
Why Vilar’s In Jail
Erstwhile philanthropist Alberto Vilar has left a trail of debts and unhappy investors who finally lost patience with him
Why Can’t Johnny Write?
“Most composition courses that American students take today emphasize content rather than form, on the theory that if you chew over big ideas long enough, the ability to write about them will (mysteriously) follow. The theory is wrong. Content is a lure and a delusion, and it should be banished from the classroom. Form is the way.”