The Cincinnati Symphony is racing to negotiate a new contract with its musicians. “The talks are among the most difficult in memory because of the symphony’s $1.8 million budget deficit over the last two years. An anonymous gift wiped out that deficit, but the orchestra is facing increased pressure to balance the budget this season.”
Blog
Slovakia: A Culture Minister Who Gets It
Slovakia’s culture minister proposes that the country triple its spending on the arts by 2010. “Ignorance of culture is colossal; society is commercial, consumer-oriented and kitschy, and it seems this trend cannot be stopped.”
Fire Damages Famous German Library
A fire ravaged one of Germany’s most famous libraries thursday – Weimar’s Duchess Anna Amalia Library. “The library was opened in 1691 and housed the world’s largest collection of Faust by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who had lived in Weimer.”
Australia’s New Culture Wars
The Australian government has decided to focus on funding classical music this year. But the official opposition party denounces the policy, decrying what it terms the Government’s “war on culture, citing alleged political appointments to the boards of the ABC and Canberra’s new national museum.”
Paper Mail In An Electronic Age
“Today’s postal systems are staring over a precipice. Unless they reinvent themselves, some observers say, they won’t last two decades – let alone a century. Can hand-delivered paper survive in the world of e-mail and instant messaging? Despite ominous trends, the answer, surprisingly, is almost certainly yes.”
Selling Inside Your Brain
It was probably inevitable – marketers want to see inside your brain to see what products you like. “Using the tools of neuroscientists are trying to learn more about the mental processes behind purchasing decisions. The resulting fusion of neuroscience and marketing is, inevitably, being called ‘neuromarketing’.”
New Ranking Of The World’s Top Universities
An annual list of the world’s top universities puts Harvard at the top. “Of the world’s top 20 universities, all but three — Cambridge, Oxford and Tokyo — are in the United States.”
Ireland’s Abbey Lays Off Staff
Ireland’s Abbey Theatre, the country’s national theatre, is laying off a third of its staff. “The managing director of the Abbey, Brian Jackson, today said that the theatre cannot go on losing in the region of €800,000 a year, and that the company has taken steps to address what he has termed fundamental structural issues.”
Do Movies Need A New Ratings System?
Some critics are complaining about the current movie rating system. “To better help parents monitor an expanding universe of media, some observers are calling for a uniform rating system that covers everything: movies, TV, and videogames. Others suggest changes to the current ratings, such as an R-13 category or even an A for adult movies that aren’t pornographic, as a way to address the problematic rating at the center of the debate.”
Luring Hollywood Into Opera
With charm and shrewdness, Placido Domingo, the general director of the Los Angeles Opera, has been enticing Hollywood into the fold since he was a midwife at the company’s birth in 1986. ‘It’s not that we’re in Hollywood so we have to use film directors. It’s because we believe in them. It has never been a gimmick.”