Oscar organizers have sued several companies and 50 unknown parties for selling tickets for Hollywood’s biggest award show, fetching up to $30,000 a pair from fans longing to rub shoulders with Leonardo DiCaprio or Hilary Swank.
Blog
Ivey: American Arts Need A Rethink
Former NEA chairman Bill Ivey says it’s time to rethink about how we think abou the business of arts in America. “Look at record companies — they’re almost all for-profit. Museums are almost all nonprofit. Theatre is unusual because some institutions are in one world and some are in another, and that makes you wonder about the value of nonprofit status. Some parts of the arts system — like design, architecture, and, for the most part, book publishing and fashion — lack much of a nonprofit presence yet are vigorous parts of the cultural landscape, which they retain without getting grants. So it would be interesting to back up and look at the system without the old assumptions.”
StatsCan: Canadians Watch Less TV, More News, Less Sports
Older Canadians are watching more TV, but their younger compatriots watch less. “In 2003, men aged 18 to 24 spent an average of 11.1 hours a week watching TV, down from 14.3 hours in 1998. Young women in the same age bracket watched 15.5 hours a week on average in the most recent period, down from 17.6 hours.” As for what Canadians watch: current affairs and news-watching are up while sport is down…
Acclaimed Canadian Publisher Downsizes In Attempt To Survive
One of Canada’s acclaimed small presses The Porcupine Quill, says it is radically downsizing in order to survive. The imprint blames book giant Indigo. “The press typically takes in $350,000 a year, $150,000 in sales and the remainder in public support, ‘but sales are dropping like a rock’. He blames the policies and practices of Indigo Books & Music Inc., the nation’s largest bookseller. He says that last year Indigo cut its orders dramatically, ordering only 2,797 units of his press’s 11-book list, which included critical favourites So Beautiful by Ramona Dearing and Emma’s Hands by Mary Swan. Meanwhile, Indigo’s returns of unsold books were 1,415, more than 50 per cent of its order. By comparison, in 1998, Indigo and Chapters (absorbed by Indigo in 2001) ordered 13,293 copies of the press’s books and returned 4,052, or less than 30 per cent.”
Chinese Request For Art Import Ban Provokes Debate
“Chinese officials have asked the State Department to impose the restrictions, on a wide range of artifacts from the prehistoric period through the early 20th century, because they believe that demand in the United States for Chinese antiquities has helped fuel a sharp increase in looting of archaeological sites and even thefts from museums over the last several years. The request has sparked an impassioned debate in the Asian-art world, in which many prominent archaeologists, preservationists and scholars have lined up to support the Chinese government, while many antiquities dealers and museum officials argue that the changes would be unfair, ineffective in stopping looting and devastating for the art market and for museums.”
Poet Robert Creeley, 78
Creeley wrote, edited or was a major contributor to more than 60 books, including fiction, essays and drama. He belonged to a group of poets – beginning with Modernists like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and continuing through the Beats and the Black Mountain poets like Charles Olson – who tried to escape from what they considered the academic style of American poetry, with its European influences and strict rhyme and metric schemes.
Delaware Museum Gets A Director
The Delaware Art Museum has chosen a new director – Danielle Rice, who is currently an associate director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She’ll have a challenge: staff layoffs and construction problems on a new $24.5 million expansion project have made the Delaware Museum a troubled place in recent months.
A Golden Age Of Kid Lit?
We’re in a Golden Age of children’s literature. “What does it mean to call a specific period of literary endeavour ‘golden’, without it being mere hype? What it doesn’t necessarily mean is a golden age as accountants might understand the term. Publishers mutter gloomily that while there are a huge number of children’s books out there, there hasn’t actually been a rise in the number of authors selling books. The market share for children’s literature is stuck at 15%. What is happening is that a few (a very few) children’s authors are selling loads; the names you know already – JK Rowling, Jacqueline Wilson, Philip Pullman.”
Will Muti Quit Music Over La Scala?
Conductor Riccardo Muti is said to be so depressed by the debacle he’s involved in at La Scala theatre that “he may give up music altogether, his wife was quoted as saying yesterday. Cristina Mazzavillani told an interviewer: ‘I really don’t know if he still has the will to work’.”
Banksy – Using Art Against Curators
Banksy’s recent caper hanging paintings in four New York museums has those museums worried about security. But “what makes Banksy’s exploits effective as attention-getters, however, is the degree to which he uses the tools of the curators against them. His paintings had ornate frames and the plaques that accompanied them mimicked those found in galleries. ‘He’s using their language, their style of presentation’.”