The number of workers employed in cultural jobs in Canada peaked in 2001, says Statistics Canada. “The agency says there were 578,000 people employed in the cultural sector in 2001. That number dipped the next year to just over 577,000, which represents 3.7 per cent of the country’s total labour force.”
Blog
Down Year For Film Critics Awards
This was a terrible year for the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, writes Rex Reed. “An award from the New York Film Critics Circle used to be the most powerful and prestigious of all the prizes in the overcrowded traffic jam of back-patting cinematic supermarket giveaway shows. People who thumbed their noses at the Academy Awards were always proud to accept a NYFCC award, and always said so onstage and in print. This is no longer true. Hasn’t been since the year the NYFCC named Cameron Diaz the best actress of the year. This year, more than one person present was overheard comparing this once-august event to an awards-show spoof on Saturday Night Live.”
Broadway Hunkers Down
“Winter on Broadway usually means a winnowing of shows as tourists leave town after the holidays and the audience in the New York region tends to stay home. Several shows, like “Cabaret,” closed in early January in expectation of the long, fallow cold months. But the first weeks of this winter, after a fall season crowded with money losers and critical pariahs, look a bit grimmer than usual because of bitter weather and continued doubts about the economy and tourism.”
Surely Vermeer Movie Is A Parody?
The new movie about Vermeer is more of a mockumentary than a documentary. “The Vermeer film’s pedestrian seriousness and fustian reverence are their own eventual parody: I found myself giggling in the intervals when I wasn’t fidgeting. Biopics like this are the cinema’s equivalent of putting a blue plaque on a wall. “Vermeer slept here”. So may many moviegoers. Nothing wrong with serious style of course, except when married to a stupefying triviality of content. As an exploration of art’s pains and processes, Girl with a Pearl Earring has all the profundity of a Mills and Boon novel.”
What Is The Future For Recovered Iraqi/Afghan Treasures?
Two major collections, not seen for years, have been uncovered in Afghanistan and Iraq. “But when will these astonishing objects next be seen, and where? That, too, is highly controversial. In neither Baghdad nor Kabul is the security position good enough to allow museums to reopen – and the Kabul Museum is a ruin. It has been mooted that both the Bactrian and Nimrud treasures should go on international tour to museums in America. The Musée Guimet in Paris – which has a magnificent Afghan collection – has expressed interest in the Bactrian gold. But these are highly sensitive proposals. To parade the Nimrud jewellery around the USA, would ‘not be at all a tactful thing to do. Let the Iraqi people see their treasures first’.”
Is There Too Much Art-Fairing In Miami?
Miami now has three big commercial art fairs on its annual schedule. “A community that just a few years ago wondered if it would ever develop a commercial art market now finds itself grappling with the possibility that it may be saddled with too much of a good thing. After all, these waves of art dealers winging into town aren’t coming simply to enrich our cultural lives, as welcome as that may be. They’re coming to ring up sales. And one has to wonder if there are enough art-hungry customers to go around.”
New Campaign To Return Parthenon Marbles
A campaign to persuade the British government to return the Parthenon Marbles to Greece has been mouted. “Run by umbrella organisation Marbles Reunited, it is based on research suggesting three out of every four British people want them returned. The group wants them put alongside the other surviving Parthenon sculptures in a museum being specially built for the start of the Athens Olympics.”
Lingua Franca Debacle
A bankruptcy trustee for the erstwhile Lingua Franca magazine puts the screws to freelance writers in an attempt to get them to give back money the magazine paid them before folding. “A dead magazine putting the squeeze on its freelancers? Insiders are lamenting this sad end to the glorious saga of Lingua Franca, which tweaked higher education and popularized what is now known as the journalism of ideas. In chilly apartments around the city, freelancers are freaking out, calling lawyer friends, and wondering how they will come up with the money.”
Slick Campaign For Marbles As Public Attitude Changes
“An increasing number of Britons believe that it is wrong to keep the Parthenon marbles in the British Museum in London. A new video, sent yesterday to 1,000 parliamentarians, opinion formers and television companies, begins a new, slicker phase in the longstanding campaign to return the Parthenon stones, formerly known as the Elgin marbles, to Athens.”
Jenkins: Why Marbles Should Stay In Britain
Tiffany Jenkins argues that the Parthenon Marbles belong where they are. “It is vital that the marbles remain in the British Museum. Not because the marbles look better there, because the British Museum owns them, or because the Greeks can’t look after them. Quite simply, the marbles take on a higher meaning in Bloomsbury than they ever could in Athens. In the British Museum the marbles can be seen among the artefacts of human history.”