The Minnesota Orchestra will try a new tactic at educational outreach this week, presenting a set of the orchestra’s long-running “Kinder Konzerts” series, aimed at preschool-age children, narrated entirely in Spanish. The series plays to more than 5,000 children every season, but this is the first time that the orchestra has presented any performances in a language other than English.
Blog
Art And War In Israel
No one ever expects war to have a positive effect on a society, but in Israel, where war and violence are as much a part of life as eating and breathing, the arts are becoming a major unintended casualty. The combination of political pressures, frayed public nerves, and economic doldrums are threatening the artistic infrastructure of the region in a fashion which ought to alarm arts advocates worldwide. And yet, in a time when the world, and particularly the Middle East, seems to be perpetually at war, the problem goes largely unnoticed by the larger global community.
In Defense of Bureaucracy
When an LA Times columnist derided the California Arts Council as being of little use to real artists last week, arts advocates were stung by the attack. Laura Zucker defends the industry’s reliance on large support and fund-raising staff: “The creation of art doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is impossible to separate grants aimed at making art from those that support staff, fund-raising efforts, marketing and technical upgrades. If a wonderful work of sculpture goes unseen because there are no curators to discover it, no access to exhibition space or no marketing plan to advertise and promote the exhibition, what has been accomplished?”
Biblical Signs of Armageddon – Surfing/Literature Division
“Roxy Girl, one of the hottest labels in girls’ fashion, makes sweetly sexy, surfer-centric sportswear along with almost everything else a beach bunny would need: hats, glasses, totes, watches, sandals. Now the firm has come up with the ultimate brand-name accessory: preteen reading with the Roxy Girl label. It’s the first time a clothing company has ventured into the literary field.”
How Do You Get To Diversity?
“The arts rarely appeal to a truly diverse audience. Are tastes in multicultural Britain so far apart or is it the same old problem of ‘us’ and ‘them’?” In other words, when is elitism necessary to insure good art, and when does it become an impenetrable dividing line between the cultural haves and have-nots? Liz Hoggard finds that it’s much easier to define the problem than to present any real solutions.
A Clue To Who Mona Was
Mona Lisa is a star. But who was she? “Over the past five centuries, that smile has been exploited and replicated in so many forms that the Mona Lisa has been transformed from a mere masterpiece into an international celebrity. And, like a Hollywood star, she now has to have her own bodyguards and lives behind triplex bullet-proof glass in a humidified, air-conditioned environment. Aside from the riddle of the smile, it’s the mystery of Mona Lisa’s identity that has inspired amateur art detectives all over the world. After centuries of uncertainty, a vitally important document has recently come to light in the Milan State Archive.” It suggests Mona Lisa’s identity.
Why Art Is Stolen
Art is stolen for other reasons than the usual profit. “The theft of major paintings is essentially illogical. Contrary to popular belief, high-profile pictures are rarely stolen to order, and the resulting publicity means that they are impossible to sell on the open market. In reality, they pass through a number of hands fairly quickly, and for a variety of reasons…”
Barenboim, Said, And A Vision Of Peace
For several years now, Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim and Palestinian intellectual Edward Said have been using their personal friendship to search for larger methods of bridging the gap between their two fundamentally opposed peoples. But perhaps more powerful than Barenboim’s music or Said’s words is their joint realization that these things alone are not enough to change the course of the Middle East. Instead, they believe in humanizing each other, for all the world to see. “What is striking about these two friends… is how different they are. Not because one is an Israeli, one a Palestinian – they are, as individuals, temperamentally opposed: one, easy, expansive, the other, Said, more cautious, despite his outspokenness.”
Poets Against War
“By definition, wars are deadly and destructive. In Western societies at least, it takes little moral courage or imaginative reach to oppose such qualities. In aiming their fire at such easy targets as the warmongers who inflict horror on the innocent, many poets invite an interrogation: Do you accept that some wars may be necessary? If so, how do you choose which ones should be fought?” A new collection of anti-war poetry spends more time on the answers than one might expect, and as a result, actually packs a political punch at a time when many mainstream artists have been cowed into keeping their pacifist sensibilities to themselves.
Does An Author’s Looks Matter For Book Sales?
As a writer with three novels published by New York houses, I knew that each new book got harder to place. I was aware of the publishers’ lust for ‘new blood,’ for authors with no track record, but who were therefore full of potential, vs. those who were mid-list. That’s the category for authors whose average sales are in the 5,000- to 7,000-copy range, the book industry equivalent of a woman who is dismissed as ‘plain.’ The thinking, of course, was that vivacious and photogenic authors were more attractive to the media and more effective on book tours. For a while this worked, until every bookstore in the country had a bestselling author every other night of the week and readers looked upon the opportunity to greet their favorite author with about the same enthusiasm as for their favorite pizza topping.”