Israel’s arts groups plan to shut down the country’s cultural life June 1 “if the government does not restore funding for artistic productions. Israel, like governments around the world, is facing a budget crisis, and has made deep cuts in cultural funding.
Blog
Questioning The Art Of Broadway – Or Is It The Economics?
So Broadway has reopened after the musicians strike and business is back to normal. Or is it? “In the end, the combatants in the great Broadway music strike of ’03 settled their fight in a fashion that leaves unanswered crucial artistic and economic questions. Craftsmen everywhere have ceded their skills to robots. Why wouldn’t this happen on Broadway? Here’s why it shouldn’t: People don’t come to Broadway to see efficiency. Broadway shows are already an economic anachronism. People are willing to pay big bucks to witness the magic of creation. If Broadway’s producers forget that, they will wreck an important local industry.”
A Warhol Stolen While On Loan?
How did a valuable Andy Warhol painting on loan for a traveling Guggenheim exhibition in 1998 end up in the collection of a Guggenheim trustee a year later? The painting’s lender is crying theft.
Where Are The Peace Songs?
“Whatever the actual effect of anti-war songs on global politics, they have long been a staple of pop culture. As evidenced by Bob Dylan’s ‘Masters of War’, Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On?’, the Clash’s ‘Straight to Hell’ and U2’s ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, the heavyweights of rock and pop have never been slow to let us know where they stand. But, with war on Iraq now apparently imminent, where is the song to rally round the white flag?”
An ENO Rescue Plan That Provokes Questions
The hard-up English National Opera has got a plan to reinvent itself and restore its finances. But Charlotte Higgens writes that “the filleted document that has been released prompts as many questions as answers. It is full of management-speak and empty of figures. The story that has hit the headlines is about redundancies. A hundred jobs out of 500 are to go. But will this deliver sufficient savings? Redundancy deals for 100 people could cost at least £2m. Freelance singers and musicians will be hired for the bigger shows, which suggests that there will be fewer of them when times get hard. Yet it is massive shows, such as The Capture of Troy, or Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, that ENO does especially well, and come off best in the Coliseum, London’s biggest theatre.”
When Pictures Aren’t What They Seem…
“One of the most successful – if bizarre – cases of overpainting a great artist’s picture came to light earlier this week, when it was disclosed that a Rembrandt self-portrait had been hidden under layers of concealing paint for 300 years. An unnamed pupil changed the 28-year-old Rembrandt into a flamboyantly dressed Russian aristocrat in a red hat, earrings, long hair and dashing moustache. For the next three centuries it was regarded as a portrait by an anonymous minor Dutch artist.” These things happen more often than one thinks. How?
Weakening World Heritage Site Protections
An organization that helps advise on World Heritage Sites says proposals being considered by the international body would severely weaken protections for the sites. “Among the changes the world heritage committee, which runs the world heritage scheme, will discuss are: Allowing states to veto any criticism of them for damaging or neglecting sites within their borders. Allowing states to prevent the creation of new sites in their borders if they stand in the way of development.”
Graphic Details Emerge In Polanski Case
TheSmokingGun.com specializes in unearthing incriminating documents about celebrities. The site’s latest revelation brings to light graphic testimony, previously sealed and unavailable to the public, from the statutory rape trial of director Roman Polanski, who is nominated for an Oscar this year. Polanski was accused of sexual contact with a 13-year-old girl, and the trial transcripts “include the girl testifying that the pair’s illicit romps at Hollywood hot shot Jack Nicholson’s house included anal and oral sex.” The new information could derail Polanski’s comeback bid at the Academy Awards, despite the now-39-year-old victim’s insistence that she has forgiven him.
Minneapolis To Close Libraries
A year ago, Minneapolis was planning an impressive new downtown library, and trumpeting the value of the project to the city and the entire metro area. Now, the new library may be on hold, and city officials are planning to shutter four branch libraries for the remainder of 2003 in an effort to deal with the severe budget cuts being handed down by the legislature. Minnesota has a budget deficit of nearly $5 billion for the next biennium, and the state’s largest city is facing massive cuts in services as a result. Closing the branch libraries is expected to save the city $2 million.
Barry On Keillor
So what’s Garrison Keillor really like? Don’t ask Dave Barry: “I do know that he’s a generous host, and very smart, and he can be funny as hell even when he’s not on the radio. But he’s not an easy guy to get close to.” But Barry says that Keillor is one of the great comic geniuses of the age, and that his ‘Humor Processor’ is always running. Keillor has had his critics in recent days, but how many comics can produce two full hours of original material a week, every week for almost three decades, and perform it live without a hint of the arduousness of the process?