The National Endowment for the Arts’ new chairman Dana Gioia is questioning the NEA’s “relatively recent transformation into an isolated entity supporting art for a very limited audience. ‘We need to earn the trust and respect of the American people. The NEA exists to serve all Americans, and it must create programs of indisputable artistic merit and broad national reach. Art without an audience is a diminished endeavor.”
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Shakespeare’s New Houses
Shakespeare gets ever more popular. New theatres devoted to the Bard are being built in Europe. “In the past month an Italian version of London’s Globe theatre has sprung up in the Villa Borghese park in the heart of Rome. In Poland, efforts are underway to reconstruct a Shakespearean theatre that thrived in the Baltic port city of Gdansk almost 400 years ago, but has since been replaced by a carpark.”
Onstage – Turning The Lights Back On In America’s Old Theatres
Conservation-minded entrepreneurs across America are taking old theatres on the main streets of America and “turning historical movie houses into “cultural destinations.”
Plays – Just Slipping Away
“Playwrights have shuttled between Hollywood and the theater for decades. But the commute is looking more attractive lately, with the poor economy affecting the arts, and mass media growing in influence. With the economy not exactly booming, now is not a great time (if there is one) to be trying to earn a living from the theater, note observers – making Hollywood look all the more appealing. In New York, for example, several theaters that focus on new works are doing fewer plays than they did 30 years ago, dropping from two dozen a year on average to six or eight today.”
The Video Game PhD?
Video games are already in the schools. Now they’re becoming subjects in schools. “Long the bane of professors who’d rather students do less game-console thumb-clicking and more schoolwork, video games are entering the curriculum and the realm of academic research – to the cheers of some and the boos of others. Indeed, ‘video game studies’ is an oxymoron to many faculty.”
Another Arts Agency Closing?
The Long Beach, California city arts commission may go out business after deep cuts in its funding. The 27-year-old arts agency “has a 10-member staff that helps administer the grants, after-school activities, neighborhood arts programs and Smithsonian Week, which brings in national scholars once a year.”
Jazz’s European Home
“For the past ten years or so, Italy has been arguably the strongest jazz nation in Europe. One continues to discover major players who are almost unknown anywhere else. Although jazz is certainly historically American, its most current developments are no longer any one nation’s monopoly.”
Who Stole Leonardo
Who stole the Leonardo painting in Scotland? “His fee, measured in millions, will in all likelihood fund an international drugs deal. Serious Crime Squad detectives, drafted into Dumfries-shire in the wake of yesterday’s theft, believe the Madonna was stolen to order. The theft had all the hallmarks. The thieves bypassed other masterpieces in the Duke of Buccleuch’s Drumlanrig Castle to steal the smaller but infinitely more valuable Da Vinci.”
Stolen Leonardo
A Leonardo painting has been stolen in southern Scotland. “The work, known as Madonna with the Yarnwinder, was owned by the Duke of Buccleuch and on display at Drumlanrig Castle, in southern Scotland. Police said they were looking for four men seen driving near the castle in a white Volkswagen Golf Gti today.”
Following Leads
Scottish police have found the getaway car used by the brazen art thieves who swiped a Leonardo yesterday, but are still looking for the thieves themselves. The car was found abandoned in the woods near Drumlanrig Castle, and authorities are searching for a second car. The stolen painting is, of course, impossible to sell, and it has been added to Interpol’s database of major artworks which are missing or stolen.