Category: issues

“Under the program, a dozen of the city’s biggest and most popular museums” of art, history and science “offered free admission and other programs geared toward young people. The only requirements: Live in the city, be 14 to 19, and sign up. They did. Big time.”

“China’s culture-watchers have pitted Han Han and Guo Jingming against each other since they were teenagers. The two men, both now in their early thirties, make for a tempting juxtaposition, a sort of Mailer-Vidal rivalry” – except that Mailer and Vidal didn’t write million-selling Young Adult novels, record pop albums, and direct hit movies.

Says one longtime local, “We’re lucky the world discovered Marfa, but the week your [assessed] property values get sextupled is not the best time to get people to admit it.”

The La Jolla Music Society, the San Diego area’s leading presenter of touring classical music and dance performers, is building a two-audottoprium venue that will host films, lectures and exhibitions as well as concerts. The grand opening is planned for 2017.

Laura Miller argues that few of us realize “just how commonplace plagiarism charges are, how thin most of the evidence is and how poorly the average person understands the nature of the transgression. … We’re a plagiarism-obsessed society, partly because we know how much damage we can do to someone’s career and life by accusing them of it, but largely because so many of us don’t really grasp what plagiarism is.”

Publishers, record labels, digital distributors, streaming music services – these days it seems like everyone involved in creative works can earn some money except the creators themselves. (Rosanne Cash earned $114 from 600,000 streaming audio plays.) Here are the stories of two struggles – by John Steinbeck’s descendants and by one particular singer-songwriter grand-nephew and his partner – to claw some income back.

Lumenocity, a collaboration between the Cincinnati Symphony, Cincinnati Ballet, and video artists Brave Berlin – projecting intricate images onto the façade of Music Hall – was that media market’s top-rated TV broadcast last Saturday. And all 42,500 free tickets available for the three-night run were snapped up in 12 minutes. (includes video)

“The hard part now may be turning a moment into a movement. Will the tens of of thousands of people who watched the show help create a cohesive community, one that acts and spends and advocates for the arts? One that celebrates place? We may be about to find out.” (includes video)

Summer is the high season for large-scale outdoor concerts and festivals — “a city like Jerusalem has festivals practically every week”. And though local performers are inured to the threat of attacks, local police are refusing to grant permits for outdoor gatherings. The result is that hotels, restaurants and bands take a financial hit. “Suddenly, they’re stuck in Europe for two days. If they’ve got a large entourage and crew, putting them up can be quite expensive.”

“Mapping the geography of cultural migration does gives you some insight about how the kind of culture we value has shifted over the centuries. It’s also a novel lens through which to view our more general history, as those migration trends likely illuminate bigger historical happenings like wars and the building of cross-country infrastructure. At the end of the video you see Florida blowing up in red. More proof that indeed, the sunshine state is a damn nice place to die.”