Ontario’s Shaw Theatre Festival has a new artistic director, and Jackie Maxwell is wasting no time in putting her mark on the organization made famous by her predecessor, Christopher Newton. That type of situation is bound to make fans and critics (not to mention actors) a bit nervous, but Christopher Rawson says that the Shaw appears to be as artistically vibrant as its ever been. “Of the three shows I saw, two are well worth traveling to see and the third is worth seeing once you’ve made the trip.”
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Shakespeare In Alabama. And Oregon. And, Well, Everywhere.
“After the Civil War… consumers moved away from communal celebrations and began to enjoy culture in small groups or alone, a development heralding the eventual triumph in our day of the home entertainment center. Yet 150 years later, Shakespeare is undergoing a rebirth in this country, thanks to dozens of well-entrenched festivals devoted to his work, as well as a new initiative by the National Endowment of the Arts. Paradoxically, the biggest name in literature once again finds himself most at home in smaller cities and towns.”
A New Enlightenment: Cultural Lifeline or Western-centric Hoohah?
Ever since 9/11, various social and political commentators have declared flatly that the only hope for global peace is for the Islamic world to undergo an “Enlightenment” of the type the West experienced a couple of centuries back. Such an Enlightenment would overturn religious misconceptions, dispel ethnic hatred, and bring the Islamic world into harmony with its neighbors and with itself. Sounds good, hmm? One problem: many highly intelligent people don’t see what was so great about the Western Enlightenment, and make a compelling argument that it caused at least as many problems as it solved.
The Ups And Downs of Philanthropy
“Two New York-based not-for-profit research organizations, the Foundation Center and Grantmakers in the Arts, have issued a report showing that while the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks had a deleterious effect on arts and culture philanthropy during 2001 and 2002, the drop in giving wasn’t as steep as first feared. Meanwhile, a new survey… suggests that charitable giving by corporations slackened in 2001, but then, in a surprise, rose dramatically in 2002.” Still, these numbers don’t mean that arts giving isn’t at disturbingly low levels, and the scramble in dozens of U.S. states to fix deficits by slashing arts funding is making matters even worse.
Zeroing Out The Arts In California
The budget crisis in California is dire, so dire that the Democrats in control of the State Senate are seriously considering a proposal to completely eliminate the State Arts Board, which issues $18 million in grant money to California artists each year. The wholesale destruction of the board, which draws $20 million from the public coffers annually, wouldn’t go far towards eliminating the Golden State’s eye-popping $38 billion deficit, but Senate leaders say there may be no way around it.
Harry Goes Back For Another Printing
The launch of the new Harry Potter last week broke all publishing records. “To help keep stores supplied, Scholastic announced last Tuesday that it was going back for a third printing of 800,000 copies, which will bring the in-print figure up to 9.3 million copies.”
Why Overpay For The Old Stuff?
Art forgery is usually a dangerous business, but Christophe Petyt has turned it into a wildly profitable business. “At 32, he is the world’s leading dealer in fake masterpieces, a man whose activities provoke both admiration and exasperation in the higher levels of the art world. Name the painting and for as little as £1,000 he will deliver you a copy so perfect that even the original artist would struggle to tell the difference.”
Chabrier The Hedonist
“Emmanuel Chabrier wanted to write operas so lewd, people would start to ‘make babies in the stalls’.” Where other composers wrote music full of the joy of God, or the joy of great knowledge, Chabrier wrote about the pure, unadulterated fun of being human. “His party piece was to sing the front page of that day’s newspaper, dramatising the events depicted – a street accident, the fall of the Bourse – with appropriate extra-musical effects.” But beyond all the bluster and hedonist revelry was a serious artist whose works attracted the admiration of composers as distinguished as Debussy and Ravel.
Who Says Farmers Don’t Know Art?
Back in the 1970s, an Australian farm-implement and hardware company needed something to put on the walls of its headquarters, and began to make a project of acquiring museum-quality art. The company now owns better than 600 works, and last year, it mounted an exhibition to allow the public a glimpse of what the company’s execs see every day. “National interest was so great when the exhibition was originally limited to the Art Gallery of Western Australia last year that it was decided to tour it nationally. The paintings will be on the road for the next 2 years, visiting all states.”
Restored Tiepolo To Be Shown In Melbourne
“It sounds like a marriage made in heaven – one of the world’s greatest paintings housed in one of the world’s great art galleries. By the end of the year, the marriage will be consummated. The celebrations will be held in Melbourne at the opening of the $160 million renovation of the National Gallery of Victoria’s St Kilda Road headquarters. The painting, Tiepolo’s Banquet of Cleopatra, will have pride of place. The freshly restored work will hang at the end of one of the new, high-ceilinged galleries that have been installed in the former open courtyards.”