The Australia Arts Council awarded $26,000 to inmates of a regional prison to perform an opera and cabaret. But the state’s justice minister, who found out about the grant after it was made, says he’ll have the money returned, saying “the money would be better spent on victim support services, or programmes aimed at reducing re-offending.”
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Chinese Artist Owns Rights To Mao
Yes, China is still a Communist state. But the country’s leadership is anxious to show the rest of the world that it respects property rights. So that might explain a ruling by the Beijing Higher People’s Court, that ordered the Museum of the Chinese Revolution – a major landmark in central Beijing – to pay an artist’s family the equivalent of $31,000 for selling copies of a picture of Mao Zedong without permission. The court ruled “that while the museum is allowed to display Dong’s painting, reproduction rights are still held by his widow and children. The verdict would likely have horrified Mao, leader of the 1949 revolution that eliminated most private property.”
The Ideas (Best & Worst) Of 2002
What were the most underrated ideas of the year? The most overrated? From baseball stadiums to spas to war and propaganda, leading adademics and scholars made their nominations to the New York Times.
Langston Hughes Opera Recovered
A long lost blues opera by Lanston Hughes and James P. Johnson performed only three times in 1940 has been reconstructed and performed. “The music is a combination of jazz, swing, blues and ragtime, all set within a classical structure. At various points it recalls the work of Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Scott Joplin and Dvorak. Some of the numbers set spectators to tapping their fingers and toes in rhythm.”
The Poet As Suicide Bomber?
Was 17th Century poet John Milton a terrorist? Since September, the pages of a venerable British Times Literary Supplement have rung with the charge: “that Milton’s verse play ‘Samson Agonistes’ is ‘an incitement to terrorism’ and that its hero, the blind Israelite champion, who pulled down the pillars of the Philistines’ temple, killing himself along with thousands of citizens, ‘is, in effect, a suicide bomber’.”
Why The Performing Arts Are In Danger
Kennedy Center president Michael Kaiser warns that the performing arts are in danger, and issues a five-point call to action. “We have been scared into thinking small. And small thinking begets smaller revenue that begets even smaller institutions and reduced public excitement and involvement. No wonder so many arts organizations are announcing record deficits.”
Circle Of Life – Melbourne Artists Forced Out By Developers
In recent years West Melbourne has been a place for artists. Not because it was so aethetically interesting, but because it was cheap. But now building restrictions have been changed and the area is suddenly desirable to developers. And the artists are moving out…
Fighting Saddam, Reading Shakespeare
“According to the Pentagon, war — at least the impending war in Iraq — is Shakespeare, the 5th-century BC Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu and two modern bestsellers about heroism and wartime correspondence. Before Christmas the US Defence Department began distributing free, pocket-sized copies of these books to its troops, to ensure that soldiers are improving their minds while removing Saddam. More than 100,000 copies have been given away so far.”
Toronto’s New Star Potential
Toronto is on the verge of a building boom – and billions of dollars are being spent. “After more than a decade of devastation, Toronto’s cultural institutions have regrouped into a position of civic leadership. By the time the cranes are down, Toronto will have works by some of the world’s leading architects, Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind and Will Alsop among them. Already, controversy is swirling.”
The Picture That Started It all
The world’s first photograph was taken in 1826. Is it a great picture? “It’s all too easy to think that an interesting picture is a picture of an interesting thing—this is the power of photojournalism, some snapshots, certain forms of portraiture, and so on. But the truth is trickier: The quality of a photograph lies not in its subject matter but in the irreducible entanglement of photographer, apparatus, and image.”