Category: issues

“The annual awards, announced today, will go to country music legend Dolly Parton, rhythm and blues balladeer William “Smokey” Robinson, musical theater innovator Andrew Lloyd Webber and classical conductor Zubin Mehta. In addition, the center is saluting Steven Spielberg, perhaps the most influential commercial filmmaker of his generation.”

American satire of the 1950s and 60s spawned a social movement. “The two decades following World War II spawned satiric forms and techniques that have permanently altered the direction of modern American comic expression.”

“A new charity, United States Artists, will announce today an ambitious plan to provide support to working artists, starting with a grant program that will be one of the most generous in existence. Fifty artists working in a wide variety of disciplines and at various career stages will receive $50,000 each, no strings attached. The first recipients will be announced on Dec. 4.”

“War has generated some of the strangest, as well as some of the greatest and oldest, images in art. Neolithic cave paintings show swarming battles of stick figures armed with bows and arrows. Assyrian palaces were decorated with epic scenes of siege warfare. And so it goes, through the conquests represented on Trajan’s Column in Rome to the Battle of Hastings on the Bayeux Tapestry to … well, as it happens, not quite through to today. We have been at war for most of this century, but this global and unprecedented conflict has not yet inspired much art.”

The Getty board secretly copied deposed president Barry Munitz’s computer files in its investigations last December. “Confidential Getty documents reviewed by The Times and interviews with former senior officials provide a road map of the firm’s internal investigation, which led to Munitz’s ouster and ongoing negotiations with foreign governments over the return of contested artwork.”

Included in the firing are pop music critic icon Robert Christgau, dance editor Elizabeth Zimmer, book editor Ed Park, theatre editor Jorge Morales. “Since New Times Media took over the paper, Voice staff members have feared that the new management intended to centralize arts coverage and use writers and editors from various Voice Media papers to fill the local pages.”

Why are raves making a comeback in the UK? The corporatization of pop music doesn’t give outlet to teenage rebellion. “It is hard to pretend you’re posing a threat to anything other than your own will to live when you’re surrounded by corporate logos at an event broadcast on the BBC and attended by ex-Big Brother housemates and the cast of Hollyoaks. What self-respecting teenager wouldn’t instead opt for an illegal rave, with its sense of outlaw cool and danger – offering not just drug-fuelled hedonism, but an attendant palaver involving the chance to run across motorways, trespass on private property and the occasional spot of light rioting?”

That would be Seattle, which has the highest percentage of residents with university degress. “Seattle’s also been ranked as the most literate city in the United States by Central Connecticut State University, beating out Minneapolis, Washington and Atlanta. That rating was based on such things as the number of booksellers, libraries and newspaper circulation – as well as educational attainment.”

The tax rules for those donating art to non-profits is changing, and som art experts are worried. “Provisions in the new federal pension law change the tax rules on charitable donations of fractional interests in such property. The changes complicate a practice known as the partial gift and could dissuade collectors and others from making donations, experts say.”

There was a large drop in the average SAT score this year. “A five-point drop in critical reading, to 503, was the largest decline since 1975 and the two-point drop in mathematics, to 518, was the largest dip since 1978.”