The actors union AFTRA has spoken out against a bill in Congress that would dramatically increase fines for broadcast indecency. The bill seems sure to easily pass, but the union says it “represents an unconstitutional threat to free speech that, if passed, would undoubtedly have a chilling effect on artistic freedom.”
Blog
Connecticut Governor Proposes Big Arts Funding Cuts
Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell is proposing big cuts in the state’s arts budget. “The $23.7 million budget of the Commission on Culture and Tourism took a 16 percent decrease last week when Rell proposed her $15.3 billion state budget. Among other cuts was $450,000 removed from $2.25 million in cultural resources grants, which help fund arts groups’ operations, education and programs. The commission’s new budget total is just under $20 million.”
Russian Church Protests Rasputin Ballet
Members of the Russian Orthodox Church are protesting a ballet called Rasputin that features a character portraying Czar Nicholas II. “Orthodox Christians are offended by the fact that Emperor Nicholas II will be shown dancing in the production. In Czarist Russia, it was not permitted even to show the images of saints on the stage.”
Iraqi Artifacts Recovered In US
Eight priceless Iraqi stone seals are recovered by the FBI in the US. An “ex-Marine bought the seals from a vendor on a U.S. military base in southern Iraq in late 2003. He returned with them to the United States in early 2004 and took them to show Zainab Bahrani, a Columbia University professor of ancient Near Eastern art and archaeology. “I think he just looked me up on the Internet. He was in New York and looking for an expert. His goal was to return them right from the start. The reason he did it was that he was trying to show how easy it is to remove cultural artifacts out of Iraq. This is not a unique example. These objects are being taken out of the country by the thousands, and we are fortunate he brought the issue to the forefront.”
Tracing A Play’s Tangled Ancestry (Is It A Movie? A Play?)
Movie adaptations are everywhere in London’s West End. So a new “Days of Wine and Roses” seems straightforward – a new version of the 1962 Blake Edwards movie. And yet – this “world première” is a riff off the 1973 stage version. That in turn was based on the first Days of Wine and Roses, a play for television, broadcast live in 1958.
Would Olmstead Have Liked Central Park’s “Gates”?
What would the architects of Central Park have thought of the Christo and Jeanne Claude Gates? Probably not much. “From the beginning, Olmsted and Vaux strenuously opposed all attempts to introduce art into the park. In their Greensward Plan of 1858—the competition entry that won them the commission—they wrote that while it would be possible to build elegant buildings in the park, “we conceive that all such architectural structures should be confessedly subservient to the main idea, and that nothing artificial should be obtruded on the view.” They considered art a similar distraction from the restorative purpose of the landscape and kept statues out of the park.”
Lincoln On Historical Steroids
It’s three months before the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum is supposed to open in Springfield, Illinois. “Museum officials say they’re blending scholarship and showmanship on a scale never attempted before, without undermining the accuracy of the history they present. If they succeed, they contend, museums all over the world will imitate them. If they fail, they know — because it’s started to happen already — they’ll be savaged for Disneyfying the past.”
Reinventing Ohio Ballet
Ohio Ballet is picking up speed lately after a “rough transition since 1999, when founding artistic director Heinz Poll retired and his successor, Jeffrey Graham Hughes, took the company’s reins. Turnover in personnel has been high, attendance at performances low. But such problems are not unusual for a dance company that makes dramatic changes in leadership style and artistic product.”
See Color Through Music
A blind student who needed to read colored maps has developed software that helps him see the colors by translating them into musical notes. The software “assigns one of 88 piano notes to individually coloured pixels – ranging from blue at the lower end of this scale to red at the upper end.”
Radio In A Downloadable World
Is music downloading going to kill traditional radio? A Berlin station thinks so. MotorFM, launched Feb. 1, “abandons on-air commercials in favor of generating revenue from MP3 downloads and targeted sponsoring of its programming. The next step will be streaming audio directly to 3G cell phones and letting listeners pay for downloads by SMS text message.”