Should the UK be spending vast sums to try to keep precious artworks in the country? Tate head Nicholas Serota thinks so. So what would be a good use for the £25 million that some are proposing to spend to keep a Raphael from being sold and taken to the US? Critics and artworld folk offer some suggestions.
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Classical Music As Racist Institution
Charlotte Higgins is unequivocal: Classical music is institutionally racist. The extent to which it is dominated by white faces – audiences, performers, administrators and critics alike – is overwhelming. Black taxpayers may be paying their share of the bill for an important tranche of Britain’s cultural life, but few are either participating in it or enjoying it. British theatre may be witnessing a flowering of extraordinary black acting and writing talent, but classical music remains determinedly white.
This lack of participation, however, does not reflect lack of appetite.”
Seattle Art Museum – Time To Expand
The Seattle Art Museum shows off its expansion plans. “SAM’s downtown expansion is a unique, mutually beneficial partnership with Washington Mutual Bank that allows the museum to expand incrementally into its new 300,000-square-foot space. In the first phase, SAM will occupy about 95,000 square feet. The bank will lease the unused upper floors from the museum, allowing it to amortize the financing of the $63 million expansion. When SAM fully occupies its new building, it will triple its current size to 450,000 square feet.”
Bye-Bye CD’s?
“The future of the album – both in its physical form and as a grouping of related songs – is being pondered by everyone from bands who refuse to provide their music to online services to technology analysts, who predict that the CD will become passé within the next five years. It’s a pressing concern, given the decline of record sales since 2000 and the popularity of downloading singles by a public tired of paying $15 for an album with one hit and lots of padding.”
Online Library For the Blind Launches
The Canadian National Institute for the Blind debuts a new online library for the blind. “There are more than 10,000 audio, text, and Braille titles available on-line, including recent bestsellers such as Life of Pi and The Stone Diaries. Users can also search and order from a collection of more than 60,000 titles.”
Seattle Fringe In Danger
The Seattle Fringe Festival is in crisis, and must raise $120,000 in the next six weeks in order to survive, according to its executive director. The fiscal crunch will apparently not affect the separate FringeACT theater festival presented each spring in Seattle, but the main FringeFest has suffered mightily in recent years from slumping ticket sales and a drop in corporate and individual giving.
Is The Canadian Bloom Off The Hollywood Rose?
“Hollywood studios are threatening to pull all of their film productions from Quebec if they can’t resolve their conflict with the Quebec producers association. Local industry players are taking the threat very seriously, given that Hollywood producers spent a record $368 million in Montreal last year. The studios are seeing red because the Association des producteurs de films et de télévision du Québec wants to force them to be represented by the Quebec group when the Americans film there.”
No Books About Chimneysweeps In the Works Just Yet
Who better to launch a children’s book imprint than Mary Poppins? Julie Andrews, the actress who played Poppins, has contracted with mega-publisher HarperCollins to launch just such a project. Andrews has written multiple children’s books herself, and the new imprint will feature only books which have her personal stamp of approval.
Money For The Arts? Get In Line.
The city of Cleveland is trying to get voters to support the idea of putting public money into the arts. But even in a city which which desperately needs to reinvigorate its cultural scene, that sort of ballot measure is a tough sell, and the levy which arts supporters are seeking to bring before the public seems to be stuck in a complex set of negotiations over timing and budget priorities. Specific levies for individual projects are common in Ohio, and the arts levy may have to wait its turn behind levy requests for schools, parks, and a convention center.
Glover Takes Governor General’s Award
Canadian expat Douglas Glover has won his native country’s Governor General’s award for fiction, beating out Canadian über-author Margaret Atwood for the $15,000 prize. Glover’s winning novel, Elle, is a fictionalized account of 16th-century French noblewoman Marguerite de Roberval’s years as a castaway. Other winners in the GG awards, which celebrate the best Canadian writing of the year, were Vern Thiesson (drama,) Tim Lilburn (poetry,) and Margaret MacMillan (non-fiction).