It hasn’t been a good year for Thomas Krens and his Guggenheim empire. The Las Vegas outpost so gloriously hyped when it opened has closed, and is likely to be demolished soon, and the plans for a massive new Gehry-designed home in Manhattan are on indefinite hold. The Guggenheim’s latest exhibit of “classics” of modern art could be seen as just one more example of how the museum is being forced to retreat from the bold, avant-garde stance it adopted in the 1990s. But, says James Gardner, there’s more to this new-old approach than just a reflection of hard times: “It’s hard to find a single work among the 100 odd pieces in this show that is anything less than exemplary.”
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Slim Shady, Master Poet?
By all the usual measures, the rapper Eminem should be despised by the cultural elite. His lyrics are violent, misogynistic, and homophobic, and he has systematically dismissed all suggestions that a musician with his talent doesn’t need the bigoted gimmickry to make it big. So how is it that young Marshall Mathers has come to be hailed as the next great poet of the music world by no less an authority than Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney? “The endorsement is just the latest indication that Eminem’s public image has completed the transition from obscene thug to gifted lyricist… The star from the trailer park is becoming, in the words of Britain’s The Independent, ‘the new darling of the liberal establishment.'”
Authentic Theatre Vs. Authentic Zoning Codes
“A Hellenic group plans to build a solid marble, open air amphitheater modeled after a 2,400-year-old theater in Greece. The group planning the theater says it would be unique in the United States, and expects it to become a cultural and educational landmark.” But this is in Connecticut, where homeowners are proprietary sorts, and the neighbors of the proposed amphitheater are taking a not-in-our-backyard approach to the whole thing. The usual concerns apply here – the size of the theatre, lack of available parking space, and excessive noise. So far, plans are going ahead, but residents are determined to shoot down the project.
Assessing The Sea Change In Arts Funding
It’s not easy being in charge of a big museum in the middle of a major expansion while, all around you, budgets are being slashed and legislators are calling you an expendable piece of the state funding puzzle. Eugene Gargaro, Jr is a month into his new job as board chair at the Detroit Institute for the Arts, and after only a few weeks, he’s feeling the legislative pinch. “There’s been a significant change in state funding. Ten years ago, the museum received about $16 million. It’s possible that we’ll only receive $2 million or less next fiscal year. We’ve come a long way since the early 1990s, and yet we still need that vital state support, and we have to get better at making our case.”
A Steinbeck Revival, Copyright Oprah
It almost went unnoticed, what with Harry Potter and Hillary Clinton grabbing all the book-based headlines over the past month, but John Steinbeck’s classic version of the Cain and Abel story, East of Eden recently sold 750,000 copies inside of a week. Why the rush on a 50-year-old novel? Oprah made it a selection of her newly-revived book club. “Organized book groups, which make reading a social experience, are springing up like weeds, especially in bookstores and libraries – providing a critical marketing opportunity for a publishing industry desperate to reverse sluggish sales numbers.”
Artists’ Strike In France Threatens Summer Season
“They’ve already called off operas and foiled film festivals. On Wednesday, thousands of France’s performing artists took their strike on the road, puffing into tubas or waving puppets as they marched through Paris’ streets in a demonstration. Now that spring strikes by transport workers, teachers and trash collectors have ended, a standoff over unemployment benefits for artists is threatening to ruin France’s summer artistic season. Dozens of performances… have been canceled. Actors, musicians, filmmakers and theater technicians are worried about changes to a unique French system that protects performers with an unemployment plan that takes into account their downtime between projects.”
State of the Music Industry: The Public View
Participants in a large interactive panel discussion on the future of the British music industry believe that the pop single is on its way out, that the talent pool has been overshadowed by the bland, lifeless, mediocre pop stemming from reality TV shows, and that the ‘dance culture’ popular among British youth has created a generation which is much less likely to buy traditional albums at all. Singer Beverly Knight summed up the feelings of many in the discussion: “Back in the day the chances were that unless it was a novelty record, it was a really good song. It’s hard to sit at home and watch bands you know have been put together by a TV show. It’s mediocrity dressed up as greatness.”
Bringing Back Oscar’s Integrity
Hollywood is getting tough. This week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, which hands out those little gold Oscar statues each spring, announced new rules designed to prevent studio executives from “overzealously” campaigning for a particular film, director, or actor to win a high-profile award. In the past, the AMPAS had employed a set of “guidelines” for such purposes, but many studios openly flouted them, so the hope is that the more stringent code will cause execs to think twice. Penalties for breaking the rules include losing one’s seat at the Oscar ceremony, and, for voting members of the Academy, suspension or expulsion from that position.
Theatre In The Around
As part of the Lincoln Center Festival, “theatergoers taking part in ‘The Angel Project’ will be led one by one at five-minute intervals through an individualized journey to nine locations, many in the area of 42nd Street. The walk is scheduled to begin on Roosevelt Island, where people will be given a guidebook to follow as if on a kind of theatrical treasure hunt. Everyone goes on the same journey, but each person will see something entirely different by virtue of the canvas being so huge.”
Cleveland’s Hard Times
“Things are about as bad as they’ve ever been for the arts in Cleveland. Three of the region’s most important theatres (Ensemble, Dobama and Cleveland Public Theatre) cancelled the tail end of their 02/03 seasons earlier this year, mainly in an effort to stop the red ink. The Cleveland Film Society laid off half its staff after trying to compete with a made-for-TV “reality” series set in Iraq. Meanwhile, the majors are nervously raising and spending millions for huge capital projects…”