Category: issues

The State of California has opened an investigation into the running of the Getty Trust. “The attorney general has requested eight years of records relating to trust Chief Executive Barry Munitz’s compensation and expenses, as well as expenditures made for his wife, grants, gifts to trustees and a 2002 real estate transaction. State regulators also have asked for documents connected to criminal charges pending in Italy against Marion True, the Getty’s curator for antiquities, for allegedly conspiring to purchase looted artifacts.”

After the US Congress failed to fund it, the Kennedy Center is postponing indefinitely plans for a huge $400 million plaza in front of the center. “The plaza would have laid a broad covering over the Potomac Freeway and included paths for pedestrians and bikers leading back to the Mall. A signature element was a cascading fountain stretching four blocks toward 23rd Street NW. The project was expected to take 10 years to complete.” The project isn’t dead, say Kennedy Center officials, but “under normal highway funding procedures, the money could not be appropriated before 2009.”

Getting the Kirov Ballet and Opera into London for their annual visit is a major undertaking full of risk. “Unloading them into the Royal Opera House, setting them up and changing them over, while allowing the performers time for rehearsal on stage – all on the tightest of schedules – is an operation that would tax the military, achieved only by slogging through wickedly unsociable hours.”

An artist challenges the American obscenity law. “The case, filed in 2001 by Barbara Nitke, whose Web site includes pictures of sadomasochism and bondage, argues that the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which prohibits obscene material from being distributed on the Internet, is overly broad and violates the First Amendment. Ms. Nitke contends that the law has a chilling effect on artists, educators and alternative-sex advocates because the explicit material they present on the Web could be deemed obscene in parts of the country, even if it is acceptable under community standards in other parts.”

“Before Disneyland, with some notable exceptions, a place was what it was — the product of its own history, geography, climate, economic base, social arrangements and technological development. After Disneyland, American places increasingly came to be idealized fictional narratives about place — not real places, but metaplaces.”

The Massachusetts legislature is considering a big injection of money for the arts. “The new Cultural Facilities Fund, part of a $296 million economic stimulus package proposed for fiscal 2006, would be among the first of its kind in the nation. Aimed at enriching the lives of Massachusetts residents, the fund is also supposed to bolster the state’s economy by shoring up attractions that bring tourists and their dollars to the Bay State.”

A new study reports that nearly 26 million attended non-profit arts events in New York City in 2004. “For New York City’s legitimate theatre industry, one of the report’s central conclusions — that the total audience for nonprofit cultural organizations is ‘more than twice that of the Broadway theatre’ — is doubtless going to be subject to spin and interpretation. For example, it might be seen as representing Broadway’s relative strength both as a cultural and tourist destination and as a universally recognized brand.”

Obscenity has always been a tricky subject for American courts, as they try to balance First Amendment rights against the right of communities to reject things that violate their collective values. A 2001 lawsuit, filed by an artist whose website includes images of sadomasochism and bondage, was intended to force yet another official answer to the seemingly insoluble problem by challenging the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which bans the distribution of obscene content on the Internet. The case has made its way to Federal District Court, where this week, a panel of judges ruled against the artist. But there is little question that the case will eventually land before the Supreme Court.

The Olympic Hopefuls are a highly successful Minneapolis-based band believed by many to be on the verge of breaking out nationally. But if that breakout occurs, the band will be missing half its name. In a strange case of copyright enforcement that recalls the recent dust-up between the U.S. Postal Service and the band known as Postal Service, the U.S. Olympic Committee has firmly pointed out to the Olympic Hopefuls that the word “olympic” was copyrighted by an act of Congress in 1950. In the case of USPS vs. Postal Service, things worked out fine, with the band keeping its name in exchange for a free performance and some promotional work. But the Olympic Hopefuls are now just The Hopefuls, hoping that their fans will still recognize them.

Keeping important works of art in their country of origin is a dicey business, partly because collectors frequently have other ideas, and also because the general public often gulps at the cost of outbidding such collectors. In 2004, the UK government managed to use a combination of parliamentary maneuver and serious cash to keep the Macclesfield Psalter, a supposedly critical part of British art history, in country. But how truly important is the book, and was it really worth £1.7m just to keep it out of California?