Why does most research on culture end up with a positive spin, asks Andrew Taylor. “Much of the research on the public aspects of the arts is done by advocacy organizations or community coalitions with an admitted bias (of course the arts have a positive impact on city economies, education, at-risk youth, and luring the creative class, and we’ve designed research to prove it). Even at professional conferences, we are more likely to share ‘best practices’ and handy tips to sell tickets quickly, rather than exposing and exploring times we dropped the ball or didn’t even see it. It’s all fine and friendly, but such one-sided and guarded discussions are contrary to learning.”
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Is Copyright Killing Culture?
“Culture as we know it is increasingly bound up in the very laws that are supposed to nurture it. Copyright law has gone from promoting creativity to hindering artistic expression, thanks in part to the efforts of a few giant corporations that are sitting on billions of dollars worth of intellectual property. Culture is paying the price for these bad laws. In fact, the labyrinth of copyright has already had a devastating effect on an entire art form.”
Branding For Non-Profits
“Large nonprofit organizations, like their corporate counterparts, have long recognized the value of branding. Now, small local groups are picking up on the importance of standing out from the charitable crowd. Nearly 1.4 million nonprofits are competing for dollars in the United States. Whether they hire a public- relations expert or buy an online-branding kit, they all hope their logos will convey a trustworthy cause to donors – and make it easy to distinguish their envelopes from the daily round of junk mail.”
Mockbee Wins Architecture Gold Medal
“In an era marked by celebrity architects and grand cultural projects, the American Institute of Architects has awarded its 2004 Gold Medal to Samuel Mockbee, a visionary designer and educator who devoted his career to building housing for the rural poor. The award, announced yesterday, is posthumous.”
A Balanced Grammy Slate
No one artist dominates this year’s Grammy nominations. “The most nominations any artist received was six, with four performers tying for that amount. Three were from the rap world — Jay-Z, OutKast and Pharrell Williams of the Neptunes — and the fourth was the R&B singer Beyoncé.”
Out Of Nature
Can you make art about nature anymore? “I still find my hackles rising at the glibness with which nature, according to ancient wisdom our nourishing mother, has been dismissed from the scene. In particular, I wonder whether artists, for whom, since the time of the cave-painters, nature has been the chief fount of inspiration, have been too hastily complicit in this dismissal.”
English National Opera Director Quits
Paul Daniel, who has been mujsic director of the English National Opera for eight years, is quitting. The troubled company has just come through a rocky 18 months. “Mr Daniel has been unhappy at ENO since the mid-2002 resignation of Nicholas Payne, its general director. ‘It’s been hard to square what’s happened over the past 18 months. I’ve been emotionally caught up in this. The change has been pretty distressing.”
Peck: Too Many “Stepford” Novels
Dale Peck on the decline of modern writing: “Even allowing for the fact that any living literary community produces its fair share of James Fenimore Coopers and Pearl S. Bucks and Henry Millers and that it takes time to separate the chaff from the wheat; and even taking into consideration the theory that cinematic and virtual media have displaced the printed word as the dominant narrative forms, and that the novel and its grown-too-big-for-its-britches sibling, the memoir, are only occasionally profitable anachronisms; and even recognizing that literacy standards and technological advances have made it theoretically feasible for just about anyone to write and publish a book–even considering all these factors, the number of Stepford novels that are written, published, reviewed, and read every year is completely out of control.”
D.C. Shakespeare Theatre To Expand
Washington, D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre has announced plans for a new 800-seat theatre to go with its existing home in the district’s downtown. The new theater will cost $77 million, and is expected to open in 2007. The project is a gamble, since there is plenty of theatrical competition in Washington, but the company is confident that it can sell 1,200 tickets a night, and says that its subsribers support the expansion.
Revitalizing a Downtown
Benjamin Forgey says that the Shakespeare’s new building, having been wisely placed on a key block of Washington real estate, will be one of the most significant additions to the city’s architectural and cultural scene in recent memory. “Together with MCI Center, it signifies the reinvention of the old downtown as a new center of arts and entertainment. And as part of a big, oft-stalled development taking up three-quarters of a very large, strategically key city block, it demonstrates that complex obstacles can be overcome with enough patience, time, money and, above all, foresight.”