Category: issues

“All building schemes must be pared to the bare minimum: one thing we don’t need at present is any new or bigger galleries, museums or theatres…. It is better to curtail the expansive empire-building of the Tate, British Museum and V & A than to squeeze lesser fry of the ability to keep up basic levels of operation.”

“House concerts are a folk tradition that’s as old as ‘Oh! Susanna.’ But nowadays they’re the stage for pop performers, too — everyone from Wilco’s revered Jeff Tweedy to Canada’s Be Good Tanyas to your neighbor’s aspiring singer/songwriter college student. Other arts — dance, theater and even visual arts — are being presented in Minnesota houses, apartments and back yards, as well.”

Tips range from consulting your insurance agent to this bit of Midwestern nice: “If your performer is from out of town, make sure he or she has a place to stay — even if it is your home.”

“To use the language of the 18th-century economist Adam Smith, the value of the arts ‘in use’ precedes their value ‘in exchange’. Once something is deemed desirable, the market can indeed establish its commercial price. But although the market can trade in the products of culture, it cannot express the value of culture as a process, or what it does.”

“Chicago architect Gary Ainge, who was principal in charge for the Harris Theater for Music and Dance in Millennium Park…, called the study’s conclusions accurate, though he cautioned against an overemphasis on bulging waistlines. ‘I don’t think it’s all body size,’ he said. ‘People’s expectations have changed about going to the theater.'”

“US District Court Judge Nancy Gertner ruled that the amount a federal jury ordered Joel Tenenbaum to pay last July was ‘unconstitutionally excessive’ in light of what she described as the modest harm caused to the record labels. She cut the award to $67,500, one-tenth the original sum.”

When popular culture seems to be an endless recycle of ideas that have already been played, what constitutes copying? Or Theft? “The question may not be what is completely new but rather what is assembling recycled parts in a completely new way.”

“For the performing arts, Twitter is shaping up to be revolutionary, as some of the world’s oldest media forms are compelled to engage with the newest. Both are about groups coming together to share an experience. But now, through Twitter, the audience and the makers of art are getting closer and closer.”

It was 1988. Times columnist Jack Smith wondered if it was a joke being played on L.A. “The architect is a New Yorker,” he pointed out. “Ten of the 15 jurors who chose him are foreigners. How can we be sure it isn’t a Trojan horse?”

“I think our difficulty, as consumers and commentators, is that this is a period of astonishing, and disorienting, change. A cultural road map at least 100 years old has been torn up in the past decade, and we are still trying to navigate without it – or with the piece of it we happen to be clutching. Making sense of cultural change is hard to do at the best of times. With not even a functioning atlas, it’s doubly hard.”