Two enduring characterizations of Los Angeles – that it’s unintellectual and star-struck are only partically true. There’s no shortage of intellectual events featuring A-list names. But the attendees appear every bit as star-struck for the intellectual heavy-hitters as other crowds do for the movie stars. “The only thing wrong with intellectual life in L.A. is that people keep asking if there’s intellectual life in L.A. The last remnant of provinciality is asking that question.”
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Sell Off – Major Music Labels For Sale
There are five major recording labels. And that number looks to be reduced in the near future. “In a sign of how bad things have become in the down-and-out music industry, most of the five biggest music companies are either up for sale or contemplating deals.”
Protesting Aussie Writers Withdraw From Consideration For Rich Prize
Some of Australia’s most famous writers have withdrawn from consideration for the country’s richest fiction prize. Why? “The novelists have withdrawn their names in protest at Forestry Tasmania practices, specifically the clear-felling of native forests for woodchips, and the use of 1080 poison which is claimed to be killing native and endangered animals in Tasmania’s wilderness.”
Web Of Prehistory
A new website will show detailed images of prehistoric rock art in the UK, cataloguing work that is thousands of years old. “The website will include global positioning system readings – highly accurate positions of the artwork compiled using satellites – and digital drawings and photographs.”
Elderfield Appointed MoMA Chief Curator – “Most Significant Curatorial Post In Modern Art”
The Museum of Modern Art has appointed John Elderfield as the museum’s new chief curator of the department of painting and sculpture. Elderfield “succeeds Kirk Varnedoe, who organized “Matisse Picasso” with him, in what is generally recognized as the most significant curatorial post in modern art. It was first held by Alfred H. Barr Jr., the museum’s visionary founding director.”
Royal Liverpool Orchestra Puts Itself On The Endangered List
The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra has declared a financial crisis. In a letter to all 76 players, musicians were told that “the gap must be closed by 2005-6 to secure a continued and viable future for the Phil. What we have become is not sustainable because it is not affordable. If the books are to balance, cuts will be inevitable, leading to possible redundancies among players and management. There are also fears that some players of less mainstream instruments may be offered part-time contracts.”
Williamson Wins Second Archibald Prize
For the second year in a row, Sydney artist Jan Williamson has won the Archibald packers’ prize for portraits with a picture of actor/writer Rachel Ward. “Williamson, a full-time painter and mother of nine, took out the packing room prize last year with her painting of singer-songwriter Jenny Morris.”
Porn Factor – The Modern American Library
“Today it’s common to walk into any public library in America and see adults and teenage students openly viewing hardcore pornography that is unavailable at home on any premium cable channel, is restricted to “adults–only” sections of video stores and, at least before the advent of the Internet, used to be purchased by church–going folks who felt compelled to don hats and fake mustaches to avoid shameful recognition. The situation is tearing at the very soul of librarians, most of whom were raised in a reverential atmosphere of uplifting ideals and lofty debates about how literature can shape and elevate the mind of man. The elevation of his other organs was simply not discussed.”
The Oscars, Tightly Scripted
The Academy Awards are serious business in Hollywood, but producers are well aware that the minds of their audience may be elsewhere if the Oscars are held in the midst of an invasion of Iraq. The show will go on, regardless of the political situation, but new rules are being imposed, and organizers say they will be strictly enforced. Rule #1: No one wants to hear actors in ball gowns spouting their political opinions. Rule #2: No paper lists of people to thank. Rule #3: For that matter, thank more than five people, and the orchestra will play you mercilessly offstage.
College Cuts Theater Department
“Last month, in a sharp cost-cutting move, the administration [of Mills College, a small liberal arts school in Northern California] voted to eliminate the dramatic arts department in 2004… For reasons both pragmatic and symbolic, the disappearance of drama from the academic program at Mills reverberates in especially pointed and powerful ways. Beyond the loss of classes, student productions and jobs for the small department’s four nontenured, ‘semi-permanent’ faculty members, the decision puts larger issues about women and theater — and the way women get seen and heard in the world at large — into high relief.”