“The project has not gone smoothly, costing some £400m – or around 16 times the initial estimate. In 2009, investigators said millions of roubles had been misspent by a subcontractor. Several contractors were fired from the project by the government, and there were repeated delays.”
Category: issues
E-Publishing’s New Possibilities
“Even when publishers are working online, they’re learning to produce things in different shapes and sizes. As music is produced for digital storage, songs are expanding beyond the three-minute limit. And with the ebook, the definition of a book is becoming more fluid.”
So What Really Is Canada’s Culture, Eh?
“We’re a smug country, coddled by the predictable rhythms of the seasons, cozy in our British Commonwealth status and interested in nurturing a tiny sliver of distinct Canadian-ness. We like our hockey, royal weddings and bland U.S.-centric entertainment. By our popular-culture tastes we are defined.”
In San Diego’s Strained City Budget, Mayor Chooses Arts Over Libraries
“Closing a $56.7 million deficit … required choices that in a vacuum look horrible: Who wants to defend a decision to close branch libraries citywide for all but 18½ hours a week?” But Mayor Jerry Sanders has rejected any cuts in the city’s $6.4 million arts funding, saying explicitly that the arts create more jobs than libraries.
How The British Lost Touch With Their Identity
“With the empire gone, its constituent nations question what ‘Britain’ means any more, and the loosening of national ties has reawoken [sic] them to the complexities of identity, the way its layers – Briton, Scot, Muslim – can chafe against one another. The British have stopped telling their children stories about the past because they are unsure which stories to tell.”
Reopening Date Announced For Bolshoi Theatre
Construction company Summa Capital said Monday the theater will reopen in October in its original, 1825 design, with czarist insignia and additional underground stages.
The Death (And Life) Of Artistic Reputations
Not much more than a year ago, Julie Taymor was still widely considered one of the great American theater artists. Then came Spider-Man, and now “Taymor is roadkill on the Great White Way.” Kevin Nance considers some other creators (Edward Albee, Faye Dunaway, Samuel Barber, James Dickey) whose reputations crashed – and, sometimes, revived.
Smithsonian Gift Shops Should Sell Only Made-In-USA Items, Say Congressmen
A West Virginia representative “has introduced a bill that would require all items sold in any of the Smithsonian’s 30 stores, located in 19 museums and galleries and its zoo, to be made in the United States.”
The Analog Artists (Not Everything Has To Be Digital)
“The work of these artists is born of a dissatisfaction with digital culture’s obsession with the new, the next, the instant. It values the hand-made, the detailed and the patiently skilful over the instantly upgradeable and the disposable.”
“Participation” In Online Culture In UK Up 10 Percent In 2010
“The research, commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, shows that the proportion of adults who had ‘participated digitally in culture’ in England increased from 25.1% in the year 2008/09 to 34.8% in 2010. More than 40% of those who had participated in 2010 said they had visited theatre and concert websites.”