“In the world of politics, power is pretty upfront: you argue; you face off; you declare war. In culture, the playing out is subtler, but can be, in its way, no less ruthless and devastating. By excluding certain kinds of objects, or by presenting them as relics of a dead past, a museum can degrade a culture just as surely as time and weather can. Fortunately, a museum can also reverse this process. And that has been happening, sometimes with vigor, sometimes with foot dragging, in America over the last 20 years. Whatever the motivating trend – call it postmodernism, pluralism, multiculturalism – the status of non-Western art is beginning to change in mainstream institutions, including sleeping giants in New York like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the recently repackaged Museum of Modern Art, from obscurity to varying degrees of prominence.”
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Harry Publisher looks For Great Year
“Bloomsbury, the publisher of Harry Potter, today said it expects to make a £20m profit this year based on strong advanced orders of the latest instalment in the adventures of the boy wizard.”
Battle Of The Orchestra Execs
Two major British orchestral figures have engaged in a public argument. “John Summers, chief executive of the Hallé, accused Clive Gillinson, managing director of the LSO, of portraying orchestras as a ‘bunch of complainers’, when in fact ‘government support for what we do has never, in recent times, been more sympathetic’.”
Why Ontario Film Needs To Get Local
Much has been made of the decline in Ontario’s film industry as a result of the come-ons Hollywood has been getting from other locales across North America. But the real problem may be that Ontario has allowed its homegrown film industry to settle into a malaise brought on by the belief that the American windfalls would never stop. “To tie the fortunes of your film industry to foreign production is like building your dream house on quicksand. U.S. producers may flock here one year — and favour somewhere else the next year. And when they leave, if you haven’t built a domestic film culture, everything crumbles.”
Kosman To Modernists: Quit Blaming Everyone Else
Joshua Kosman wasn’t impressed with the bitter condemnations and whiny tone of conductor James Levine and composer Charles Wuorinen in last Sunday’s New York Times concerning the failure of serialism and other complex forms of new music to engage the public. “Audiences couldn’t care less. Wuorinen’s music and that of other similarly oriented composers has yet to make a dent in the culture at large, or in the consciousness of music lovers. Hence the bitterness, the self-pity, the snarling at the listeners for whose benefit all this scribbling is ostensibly being undertaken.”
King Of All (Morning) Media? It Ain’t Howard.
What’s the top-rated morning radio program in the U.S.? No, it’s not Howard Stern, and it’s not some right-wing blowhard shrieking into the microphone about the evils of Dan Rather. It’s NPR’s quarter-century-old bastion of straight news, Morning Edition, which racked up an average of 13.2 million listeners per week in the latest ratings book. That’s actually an increase in listenership from the previous year, despite the bad publicity the program received after NPR dismissed longtime host Bob Edwards last year.
Disney/Miramax Divorce Is Official
“Disney and fabled Miramax chieftains Harvey and Bob Weinstein wrapped up their divorce yesterday, putting an end to a 12-year marriage that yielded acclaimed hits like Chicago, and Shakespeare in Love, but ended with bitter feuds as the Weinsteins’ ambitions grew. The Weinsteins will exit their 25-year-old company named for their parents, Miriam and Max on Sept. 30, the same day their nemesis, Disney CEO Michael Eisner steps down.”
Will McEwan Be Allowed Back In US?
Ian McEwan has a new book. It’s a hit. But he wonders if he’ll be allowed into the US to promote it. “McEwan’s diplomatic woes began a year ago when U.S. officials turned him away from entering the country in error. But that error has remained on the books to haunt him still. ‘Once you have been refused entry to the States, you go into the computer and you are regarded with suspicion. It is a matter of enormous irritation. I only got in this time by the skin of my teeth. This could well be the very last time I ever get in’.”
Levy Wins Commonwealth Writers Prize
“Author Andrea Levy has won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Small Island, her novel about West Indian immigrants in postwar London. It is the third major literary prize for the best-selling book, which also took the Orange Prize and the Whitbread.”
Koolhaas Tweaks His Dallas Design
Rem Koolhaas’s design for the theatre that will anchor Dallas’s grand new Performing Arts Center has undergone its first round of retooling, and the results are impressive, says David Dillon. “The Wyly looks like nothing in the Arts District, or anywhere else for that matter, which is just fine with the adamantly acontextual Mr. Koolhaas. He likes buildings that are mysterious and hard to place, that might be anything and anywhere.”