“Nearly 3 million people — representing 2.2% of all jobs in the United States — work in the arts, according to a new survey by Americans for the Arts, released to coincide with Arts Advocacy Day on March 15 in Washington, D.C. The report states that arts companies, organizations, and related businesses now exist in all 435 Congressional districts, lending credence to the position maintained by many arts advocates that the economic power of America’s “creative industries” should not be underestimated.”
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A List: 13 Things We Don’t Understand
There are plenty of things we understand about how the universe works. Indeed, it seems like every month there’s something wonderfully impossible that we’ve managed to figure out. And yet, the number of things that make absolutely no sense whatsoever is long. Here’s a list of 13 things about the world that defy explanation (so far)
MP’s Attack Arts Funding Freeze
A group of influential British members of Parliament has condemned the government’s freeze in arts funding. “The government needs to re-evaluate its allocation of resources to the arts taking a long-term view, to ensure that real terms cuts are avoided where no compelling arguments or evidence are presented for their necessity. In our view no such arguments have been made. The government should reconsider and find the £34m needed to keep the Arts Council funding in line with inflation.”
Ha Jin Wins PEN/Faulkner
American author and poet Ha Jin has won the 25th annual PEN/Faulkner fiction prize for his latest novel War Trash.
16-Year-Old Canadian Arrested At Parthenon
The 16-year-old Canadian girl was arrested on Sunday in Athens “while posing for a snapshot at the 2,500-year-old temple at the Acropolis. Guards reacted as fast as Hermes, the messenger of the Greek gods,” when they saw her handle a shard of the Acropolis. She was charged with theft of an antiquity, her lawyer in Athens said.
Protesters Rally Against Bolshoi Opening
“More than 200 protesters from the pro-Kremlin youth movement Moving Together gathered outside the theatre, shouting: ‘Sorokin – out of the Bolshoi.’ Vladimir Sorokin, the postmodernist author who wrote the libretto, has been accused of dragging the famous theatre’s reputation into the mud. The opera features a scientist called Rosenthal, who creates clones of the famous composers Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Mussorgsky and Verdi. After his death, the composers are forced to busk outside a train station and Mozart falls in love with a prostitute.”
Ruling: Looted Book Must Be Reurned To Italy
A 12th-century book stolen from Italy after the second World War and residing in a British library since 1947 must be returned to Italy says a court.
Banksy Strikes The Met… And MoMA, And The Brooklyn Museum…
“Over the last two weeks, a shadowy British graffiti artist who calls himself Banksy has carried his own humorous artworks into four New York institutions – the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the American Museum of Natural History – and attached them with some sort of adhesive to the walls, alongside other paintings and exhibits. Similar stunts at the Louvre and the Tate museum have earned the artist – who will not reveal his real name – a following in Europe, where he has had successful gallery shows and sold thousands of books of his artwork. But his graffiti has also landed him in legal trouble.”
Aussie Orchestras Meet To Plan Protest
Representatives of Australia’s national orchestras are meeting in Sydney to fight proposals to cut government orchestra funding. “The orchestras are fighting the recommendations of former Qantas chief James Strong to save money by cutting musician numbers in some ensembles by 25 per cent.”
Controversial Bolshoi Opera Opens Tonight
The stage is set for the opening of the Bolshoi theater’s first new opera for 30 years on Wednesday, but Russian critics are branding it pornographic and conservatives want it banned before the curtain even goes up…