A chandelier crashed to the seats in a West End theatre Saturday night. “Audience members ran for safety as plaster started to fall during When Harry Met Sally at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on Saturday. The show’s star, Luke Perry, leapt off the stage to help people to safety.”
Blog
Barnes – Museum Or School?
“Ever since trustees appointed by Lincoln University gained control of the foundation’s board, the debate on how the Barnes should operate now and in the future has been skewed, either through ignorance or deliberately. The public, the media and the art community have long perceived the foundation to be a museum. On the other hand, the foundation’s indenture of trust, which governs its operation, is quite specific that it’s a school. Lower Merion Township agrees, because residential zoning along Latches Lane allows schools but not museums.”
Art For Art’s Sake (And More)
How to support the arts and solve funding problems? The answer is not just to talk about about the economic benefits and social goods that can accrue. “Put another way, the Medicis weren’t asking Michelangelo why this was good for business. Unfortunately, that was the almost exclusive approach of summit participants, perhaps because so few artists and other creative types were in evidence. Modern Medicis should take note.”
An On-Air Chill
The almost-anything-goes world of shock-jock radio has turned upside down since Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” during the Super Bowl halftime show. Since that fleeting glimpse of Jackson’s mostly obscured anatomy, the Federal Communications Commission has issued more than $1.5 million in fines. Moreover, with the U.S. House of Representatives recently passing a bill allowing fines of $500,000 for each instance of radio ‘indecency,’ with the White House voicing support and the U.S. Senate considering even more draconian measures, the climate for provocative speech on America’s radio airwaves has changed dramatically and swiftly.”
Dead-ending Paint?
Being a painter is tough these days, writes Blake Gopnik. “There will always be talented artists who can overcome the difficulties that painting faces. In fact, with the odds so stacked against them, the handful of truly good paintings that get turned out look that much more impressive. I’ll bet that somehow, somewhere, someday — in a decade, a century, could be a millennium or two — a whole new kind of painted work will come along to breathe new life into the medium. Painting has dead-ended before, and each time a Titian or a Monet, a Picasso or a Pollock has hit on a way out that no critic could have guessed at in advance. Any critic who insists that can never happen again is asking to eat crow.”
A Golden Era For Lit Magazines?
“Literary magazines play an ever more indispensable role in the publishing food chain. And recently, especially here on the West Coast, they’re starting to swarm…”
Scottish Artists Protest Government
“Fifty-five of Scotland’s best-known musicians, authors and artists have signed an open letter to the country’s First Minister in which they argue that ‘a void’ has opened up where an arts strategy should exist. The signatories include the composer laureate Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, authors Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith and Alasdair Gray, and opera singer Jane Irwin. Dozens of theatre directors, poets, critics and administrators have also put their name to the letter, which represents an unprecedented revolt against government arts policy.”
Scottish Opera’s Impossible Position
The entire board of Scottish Opera should resign to protest the impossible position the government has put them in. “Five years on from the devolution settlement and all those lofty words about the arts being put at the centre of Scottish life, the company’s programme has been cut to just one new production. It is facing hefty redundancies. Confidence is low. Morale among the 240 staff is at rock bottom. Given all the rhetoric expended by the arts and political establishment in Scotland, what is unfolding here is shocking, and the position in which the directors have been put is wholly invidious. They are effectively being asked by the Executive to collaborate in an attack on the artistic base which they as directors are duty bound to defend.”
Arts Funding Equation – Not Money In, Quick Results Back
“Politicians have to give up the idea that financial investment in the arts has to produce a quick and easily measurable result comparable to shorter hospital waiting times or improved school exam results. The insistence on the institution of a national theatre shows that the politicians remain incapable of giving up that perennial question when it comes to arts funding: “But what do we get for our money?”
Ancient Library Of Alexandria Discovered
Archaeologists have discovered what they claim is the long lost great Library of Alexandria. The Library is often described as the first great university in the world. “The 13 lecture halls uncovered could house as many as 5,000 students in total. A conspicuous feature of the rooms was a central elevated podium for the lecturer to stand on. It is the first time ever that such a complex of lecture halls has been uncovered on any Greco-Roman site in the whole Mediterranean area.”