Blog

What Arts Cuts Would Mean In New Jersey

In New Jersey, where Governor James McGreevey proposes to eliminate state arts funding, arts groups are trying to assess the impact of the cuts. What it would mean for mid-size arts groups: “reduced programming, possible layoffs, downgraded ambition, increased frustration. And the ripples could go beyond state grants. Private foundations and other arts supporters could pull back as they evaluate the financial stability of the arts organizations they have supported in the past.”

Hickox To Head Opera Australia

British conductor Richard Hickox has been appointed new director of Opera Australia. Hickox “replaces local conductor Simone Young, whose contract with Opera Australia was not renewed at the end of last year amid controversy over her vision for the company. However, she will remain in the position until Mr Hickox takes the reins in January 2005. Mr Hickox, 55, is now the principal conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and is also an associate guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.”

Live And In Concert (And Recording)

Bootleg live concert recording is booming, with fans trading recordings of thousands of concerts over the internet. “It is not just that the recordings of live performances are of far better quality than the scratchy cassettes of 40 years ago. It is that copies of such a recording, and subsequent copies of the copies, are better.”

Arnold’s Last ‘Books Column

After five years, Martin Arnold is packing in his “Making Books” column in the NYT. “I’ve had 212 opportunities to pronounce on what I still believe is the world’s primary cultural conduit. I have chronicled and commented on all sorts of literary trends, disputes, ups and downs, but the enduring consistence of what I have learned, the unrolling thread, has been about the durability and incandescence of books themselves; the bravery of those who write them; and the instinct to gamble by many, but not all, who publish them.”

Norman Mailer On Writers

On DH Lawrence: “He was perhaps a great writer, certainly full of faults, and abominably pedestrian in his language when the ducts of experience burned dry, he was unendurably didactic then, he was a pill, and at his worst a humourless nag…On Jonathan Franzen: “It is too full of language, even as the nouveaux riches are too full of money. He is exceptionally intelligent, but like a polymath, he lives much of the time in Wonkville Hollow, for Franzen is an intellectual dredging machine.”

Studio Libeskind: The Daniel And Nina Show

Nina and Daniel Libeskind are a power couple. “The couple, who invite constant comparison to characters from Mike Myers’ ‘Sprockets’ routine, do not look like the shark-suited developers or heavy-lidded bureaucrats who have dominated the downtown-redevelopment story. But in the decade or so since Daniel, the distinguished professor, and Nina, who shares a starring role in Studio Daniel Libeskind as the driving force of its business side, have been designing actual buildings rather than promoting architectural education, they have become a political force to be reckoned with.”

Fabled Ancient Library Reopens

The amazing Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum’s most famous building, finally opened this week, some 2000 years after it was enveloped in mud in the eruption that buried Pompeii. The “largest Roman villa ever found, it was the magnificent seafront retreat for Lucius Calpurnius Piso, Julius Caesar’s father-in-law. Piso, a literate man who patronized poets and philosophers, built there one of the finest libraries of its time. Many believe that the mud filled lower terraces could hide the fabled second library, which probably contains lost plays by Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus, lost dialogues of Aristotle, and Livy’s History of Rome, of which more than 100 of the original 142 books are missing.”