The new Lara Croft movie is out, and though it’s James Bondian bent makes it more action movie than archaeological thriller, Croft does play a fantasy archaeologist. So Archaeology Magazine had an archaeologist review the film. His verdict? “For all its entertainment value, there’s nothing here of any redeeming value in terms of archaeology.”
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Towards A New Cultural Manifesto
Max Wyman spent 35 years as a critic at the Vancouver Sun before retiring. Now he’s working on a manifesto intended to suggest a new relationship between government and the arts. “Intended as a tool kit of public debate, the manifesto calls for a new cultural contract between government and the governed. Its central thrust is the belief that culture, like health and education, is not only an unassailable human right but essential to the social and ethical well-being of society — and should be fostered and funded appropriately.”
Is Minnesota Fringe America’s Largest?
“In 1994, the Minnesota Fringe Festival was a scruffy amalgam of 50-some shows spread over a week at a half-dozen venues on the West Bank of the University of Minnesota. This year, the Fringe boasts individuals and groups from throughout the state, across the country and around the world staging 162 shows — a total of 783 performances — over 10 days on 20 stages flung across Minneapolis. For the last couple of years, the Minnesota Fringe has claimed the title of The Largest Fringe Festival in the Country, a figure few -dispute.”
Guthrie Posts Another Budget Surplus
Minnesota’s “Guthrie Theatre eked out its seventh consecutive operating surplus during the 2002-03 fiscal year, in which season subscriptions and total attendance declined and the value of the theater’s endowment plummeted by more than $8.5 million.”
Day-Oh… Opera Company Presents Pop Concerts To Raise Money
With a deficit of $1.3 million and a $6.5 million budget to feed, Atlanta Opera needs to raise serious cash. How? “When the Atlanta Opera recently announced plans to present pops concerts – concurrent with its main opera season – it seemed to highlight the staggering difficulties ahead.”
What A New Editor Might Mean To NYT Cultural Coverage
So will New York Times’ coverage of culture change under new exective editor Bill Keller? He’s said to have a healthy interest in culture and can be expected to take it seriously. He “takes over with a Raines-named troika newly in charge of the NYT’s cultural coverage. In October 2002, former foreign correspondent Steven Erlanger was anointed culture editor; in January of this year, cultural kahuna Frank Rich was given even more power; and, just two weeks later, 28-year-old Jody Kantor, the New York editor for the online magazine Slate, was named editor of Arts & Leisure.”
Why Christo And Central Park Are Made For Each Other
A former New York City parks commissioner who denied permission for Christo to stage his “Gates” project in Central Park 22 years ago explains why he thinks the project is now a good idea. “Now there is both a time and a place for Christo and his ‘Gates.’ Now they cannot hurt the park or distract us, as they surely would have in 1981, from our duty to preserve and maintain it forever. ‘The Gates’ will visit the park briefly, like the New York City Marathon, which wends through and terminates there, or Joe Papp’s Shakespeare in the Park at the open-air Delacorte Theater. And its colorful, whimsical embrace of the restored landscape will make us stare, laugh, gasp, prance, gawk, and say, to no one in particular, ‘Isn’t the park wonderful. . . . Isn’t New York amazing’.”
The New Museum Playgrounds
There was a time when museums were viewed as institutions of contemplative learning. No more. “Contemporary museums can often seem more like attention- grabbing playgrounds and amusement parks than the glass-cased, heavily labeled temples of old. Now, if a child or reasonably game adult doesn’t get his senses bombarded, his hands and/or feet soaked and clothing streaked with some foreign substance at a museum, he might as well have stayed home and surfed the information-crammed Internet.”
Nixon: The Performance Artist
Back in 1974, when the U.S. was captivated by the televised Watergate hearings and the downfall of a president, viewers probably just assumed that they were watching the news. But in retrospect, wasn’t Watergate the moment when America’s news media stopped being merely a cold, hard reading of the facts, and became a videocentric free-for-all, a neverending race for the perfect shot, the ideal angle, and the subtle manipulation of content for narrative purpose? In other words, was the decline and fall of Richard Nixon actually the first recorded instance of video art?
A.S.K. Not What The Theatre Can Do For You…
Organizations like Los Angeles’s A.S.K. Theatre Projects, which has suddenly and somewhat mysteriously shut its doors in Southern California, are quite rare in the theatre world. A.S.K. was half theatre lab and half theatrical foundation, the type of organization dedicated to giving talented young writers, directors, and actors a shot at making something special. The results weren’t always good, but that wasn’t the point. A.S.K.’s founders believed strongly that raw talent must be nurtured for it to become art, and with the organization having been apparently folded into a New York-based foundation, L.A.’s theatre scene is feeling the loss.