The world of learning has always felt the tension between theoretician and practitioner. So here’s something to ponder: “In the next 50 years, the entirety of our inherited archive of cultural works will have to be re-edited within a network of digital storage, access, and dissemination. This system, which is already under development, is transnational and transcultural. Let’s say that prophecy is true. Now ask yourself these questions: Who will be carrying out this work? Who will do it? Who should do it?”
Blog
Picasso, Van Gogh and Some of the Boys Sitting Around in a Bar
Artists see the world in their own stylistic ways. Here’s a Flash animation that imagines what the everyday world might look like through the eyes of different artists.
A Culture Minister With A Critical Streak
UK culture minister Kim Howells made headlines a few weeks ago by trash-talking the art chosen for this year’s Turner Prize shortlist. Now that a winner has been chosen, he renewed his attack this describing Turner judges as “black-wearing elites who talk in psychobabble. He said that the competition, which was won by Keith Tyson on Sunday, had been overrun by self-serving colonists of the ‘incomprehensible classes’.”
New York’s New Museums
The economy may be dragging, but a handful of new museums is in the works in New York. They include a museum devoted primarily to Himalayan and Tibetan painting. Also, “the New Museum of Contemporary Art in SoHo, the quarter-century-old bastion of cutting-edge art, is planning to build a new $35-million, 60,000-square-foot home along a motley stretch of the Bowery.”
We’re Keeping The Loot
How did the directors of 18 of the world’s major museums come to sign a declaration against returning long-held antiquities in their collections to countries of origin? Evidently it was instigated by the British museum, even though the museum is not listed as a signatory. “Today museums would not condone what people did 200 years ago. But you cannot rewrite history. Those were different times, with different ethics and different mores.”
Revolt Of The Volunteers
Members of the Junior Associates of the Art Gallery of Ontario wanted to “run their events their way, they say – events that generated as much as $90,000 for buying art” and they wanted to say how the money they raised was spent on contemporary art. When the Toronto museum refused (who’s running the place anyway?) the volunteers left the museum en masse to start their own organization. “In the world of volunteer management, the AGO power struggle is a classic, if somewhat extreme, cautionary tale of our times – the ramped-up needs and expectations of the female baby boomers pitted against the institution in financial and administrative extremity.”
Mostly Mozart Names New Leader
Last summer, Lincoln Center canceled all of its Mostly Mozart Festival orchestra concerts after a labor dispute with musicians. Some thought the festival might be canceled or radically remade. Now a new director has been named. Louis Longrée, 41, “recently completed a stint as music director of Glyndebourne Touring Opera and regularly conducts at Glyndebourne Festival Opera in England.”
Blockbuster Names W/O The Blockbuster Sales
Big publishers count on big blockbuster fiction to make their profits – your Tom Clancys, your John Grishams – their megasales are what puts the shine on a bookseller’s holiday season. Except this year. The big pop fiction isn’t selling like it usually does…”Crichton appears down. Clancy is down. The Turow is not making its numbers. All the big-ticket fiction has been suffering the last six to eight months.”
SF Symphony In The Black
Though orchestras across America are reporting financial troubles, the San Francisco Symphony says it posted a small surplus for 2002 – $112,000 on a budget of more than $45 million. Income was almost evenly split between earned income and contributions.
Poetry – Writing On Without The Millions…
Of course the hundreds of small poetry publications that struggle on year after year would like a piece of the $100 million Ruth Lilly recently gave Poetry magazine. But it’s not all about the money. “They write because they love it with no expectation of making money. Even the big poets don’t make much. While novelists or even some non-fiction writers can fantasize about a possible movie contract, for poets, there’s the cold reality that winning a multi-state lottery is more likely.”