James B. Twitchell argues that church, college, and museum have lately become “just one more thing that you shop for, one more thing you consume, one more story you tell and are told.” No longer serving as “gatekeepers” to the worlds of spirituality, art, and higher learning, these institutions, Twitchell says, have collectively become mere “ticket- takers” peddling an experience of uplift and status-conferring affiliation, while individually laboring to project a distinctive brand “fiction.”
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Music For All! (And Profits Too)
A Canadian professor has an idea he thinks would breathe new life into the music business. He “proposes putting all recorded music on a robust search engine — Google would be an ideal choice, but even iTunes might work — and charging an insignificant fee of, say, five cents a song. In addition, a 1 per cent sales tax would be placed on Internet services and new computers — two industries that many argue have profited enormously from rampant file-sharing, but haven’t had to compensate artists. The assumption is that if songs cost only 5 cents, people would download exponentially more music. The extra windfall for musicians and those who own the publishing rights to the songs could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, or more, Pearlman.”
What Is It About “The Da Vinci Code”?
“If the “Harry Potter” books stand as the essential popular read for young people, then “The Da Vinci Code” has captured the crown for grown-ups. A word-of-mouth sensation from the moment it came out, Brown’s controversial mix of storytelling and speculation remains high on best-seller lists even as it begins its third year since publication. Twenty-five million books, in 44 languages, are in print worldwide and no end is in sight. Booksellers expect “The Da Vinci Code” to remain a best-seller well into 2005.”
Court To Hear Barnes Appeal
A Pennsylvania court will hear an appeal of a judge’s decision to allow the Barnes Collection to move to Philadelphia. “The court ruled yesterday that an appeal of December’s Montgomery County Orphans’ Court ruling, which allowed the Barnes Foundation to move its gallery and change several other key governing rules, can proceed. In yesterday’s decision, the Superior Court ruled against a request by the Barnes Foundation to quash the appeal by a Barnes Foundation student.”
Off-Broadway – For What Ails America
“This spring there is an exceptional crop of new work by living writers including David Mamet, Stephen Adly Guirgis (who wrote Jesus Hopped the A Train) and Stephen Belber. Watching these plays, it becomes clear that American dramatists are obsessed by the failure of existing legal, religious and political systems to deal with the rising tide of prejudice. They suggest you can actually smell hatred in the air.”
The RSC’s Home-In-A-Shed
The Royal Shakespeare Company has a new temporary home. “Those who have seen images of it might call it a large, rusty, flat-roofed shed resembling a giant container that has fallen off a cargo ship steaming up the Avon in Warwickshire. The theatre, a sonnet’s throw from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST) in the centre of Stratford-upon-Avon, is a key element in plans for a reshaping of the company’s principal performance space.”
Ode To John Tusa
The BBC3 radio interviewer is refreshing, writes Gillian Reynolds. Tusa’s series, monthly interviews with people significant in the arts, regularly restores my faith in the media in general and radio in particular with its honesty, directness, seriousness and sensibility. In other words, it is not pegged to some new volume or show and therefore not part of that promotional circus whose noisy parade daily fills the airwaves.”
Peter Boal Heads West
Later this year Peter Boal leaves New York City Ballet to take over Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle. “NYCB is the major repository and custodian of the Balanchine heritage. PNB is a bit like NYCB in its early days, when every Balanchine premiere stirred controversy as well as delight. And the Seattle company can afford to take chances on new ideas as to what dancing is all about. Peter Boal’s mental suitcase is packed. In many ways, he has already left home.”
Hall: Arts Funding Crucial To A Healthy Country
Tony Hall, chief executive of London’s Royal Opera House, says increasing funding for the arts is a “no-brainer” for government. “If you put the arts in the bigger picture, and talk about them as part of the framework of the creative and cultural industries, the argument that asks ‘can the arts really make a splash, do they really matter?’ becomes very clea. “They are part of something fundamental and big, which is the creative economy, which is now what we live off. And when you look at it like that then arts funding becomes a no-brainer … our future depends on creativity.”
Sharpton Calls For Ban Of Artists Connected To Violence
The Rev. Al Sharpton says that there is a need for a new law that would ban “artists who are connected to any violent acts, denying them airplay on radio and television for 90 days. ‘There’s a difference in the having the right to express yourself and in engaging in violence and using the violence to hype record sales, and then polluting young Americans that this is the key to success, by gunslinging and shooting’.”