Category: issues

Some British MPs are calling for copyright protection to be extended to 70 years. “The issue is pressing because some of the most popular acts from the late 1950s and early 1960s will start to fall out of the copyright in the next few years, just as the music industry is looking to its digital archives to make up for falling CD sales.”

“Of course, it is not easy to characterize the wide range of America’s more than 3,500 colleges and universities. Even among the more limited number of research universities, institutional diversity is so broad that every approach to rank or even classify institutions has been rightly criticized. Most research rankings use only input measures, such as amount of federal funding or total expenditures for research, when funding agencies would be served better by information about outcomes — the research performance of universities.”

Since the 1960s, most artists have been audiotaped or videotaped talking about their work; because of changes in how they are trained, artists have become increasingly sophisticated in talking about their work and cooperating with critics to shape the interpretation of it. But where does this leave the historian?

Robert Cole, longtime director of the Bay Area’s Cal Performances, is stepping down. “The truth, as thousands of sophisticated and satisfied patrons can attest to, is that since he took over in 1986, Cal Performances has become a national and international nexus for all categories of the performing arts — not just classical music and dance but theater, jazz, world music and the spoken word as well.”

“Anne Ewers, president and CEO of the Utah Symphony and Opera, will begin a three-year contract as Kimmel president and chief executive officer starting July 9, a year after Janice C. Price announced her resignation.”

UK artists are bemoaning the government’s plans for funding the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. But David Lammy says that plans for the cultural festival held in conjunction with the Olympics will benefit the arts substantially…

“U.S. companies donated $4.2 billion through corporate foundations in 2006, an increase of about 6 percent for the second consecutive year, according to a new report by the Foundation Center. Colleges, universities and other education-related organizations received 25 percent of the giving in 2006, followed by community development or public affairs (22 percent), human services (19 percent), health (12 percent) and arts and culture (11 percent).”

“Planners aim to send the new C line under the city centre at a depth of 30 metres, well beneath the archaeological treasures that litter Rome. Stations will also be built deep underground, but even the simple task of digging entrances and exits is proving a headache and could mean the scrapping of the Largo Torre Argentina stop, which serves crowded tourist sights such as the Pantheon.”

“Now we finally know how much money is going to be spent on the cultural program for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. And while organizers claim excitement over the budgets for the Ceremonies ($64.3 million) and Cultural Olympiad ($20-million), members of Vancouver’s arts community are less than impressed.”

“Indian artists have condemned last week’s arrest of a post-graduate student from a university campus in the state of Gujarat. The state is currently governed by the right wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The activists said that the work of Chandra Mohan is “obscene and distasteful” because it shows naked men. The dean of the arts faculty at the university was suspended for opposing the student’s arrest. Chandra Mohan was released on bail after being imprisoned for four days.”