As music education in public schools continues to go the way of the dodo, several prominent music colleges have begun stepping in to fill the gap. The hope is that the people in charge of American schools will eventually recognize the inherent value of arts education, and make music a regular part of the curriculum again.
Tag: 01.04.06
What We Read…
A list of the top-selling books of 2005…
Dance As A Visual Art?
“Ballet, in the present day, has lost much of its dialogue with the progressive visual arts, which have raced into post-modernism and beyond. It risks getting left behind unless it can, once more, find a willing partner in another art and achieve a synchronous rebirth.”
Ian Tops Most-Powerful Theatre List
David Ian, chairman of Live Nation’s global theatrical division has topped the annual Stage 100 list of most influential theatre people. He replaces Andrew Lloyd Webber who led the list the past 5 years. “Theatre impresario Cameron Mackintosh is listed in second place this year, with Lloyd Webber slipping down to third equal with Howard Panter and Rosemary Squire, founders of the Ambassador Theatre Group.”
Selling To Buy More? Hmnnn…
“Now that we have become such meticulous conservators of the past, museums and galleries have become overloaded with objects they lack the space to display and which have apparently minimal significance. Major national institutions are constitutionally forbidden to sell items, and laws relating to charitable bequests exert further restrictions. But elsewhere, if the trustees see fit, there is nothing to prevent the disposal of such stock – euphemistically described as ‘deaccession’.”
Brits Using Libraries Differently
“In 2004/05, visits to public libraries rose for the third year running, with the number of visits up by a total of 17m since 2001/02. However, the fact that the number of books borrowed is on the decline appears to suggest that visitors are using their local libraries for research or for multimedia facilities rather than for their traditional purpose of book lending.”
Harlem Boys Choir Evicted
“After more than a decade based at a public school at Madison Avenue and 127th Street, where it helps run the Choir Academy of Harlem, the Boys Choir and its lesser-known sister chorale are being evicted by the city’s Department of Education for what the agency describes as a host of financial and managerial improprieties. Although it has always had difficulty raising funds, the choir now faces its most serious crisis since it was founded in the basement of a Harlem church nearly four decades ago.”
NY Galley Owners Fight, Then Get Busted On Tax Evasion
“A feud between Upper East Side gallery owners whose clients include some of New York’s wealthiest collectors has resulted in both admitting to tax violations.”
NY Curator Named To Head Miami Museum
Terrence O’Tiley, chief curator of architecture and design for the Museum of Modern Art, has been named director of the Miami Art Museum. “He inherits a museum about to embark on its biggest mission to date: building a new home in Bicentennial Park and expanding the museum to fulfill the prominent cultural role voters and civic leaders envision. In 2004, Miami-Dade voters approved $275 million in county bond money to fund two museums — MAM and the Museum of Science — at Bicentennial Park.”
Are Real-World Indictments The New Crime Novels?
“This is a golden age for the turgid and stultifying, a wave of indictments, plea bargains and ‘informations’ interspersed with three Supreme Court justice nominations in a five-month period, with all of the poetic briefs, memos and opinion-writing those can yield.” What are we talking about? Why, those delightfully lurid and informational indictment documents now being handed down in Washington with almost as much frequency as new Scott Turow books, of course. In fact, the interest in such legal docs is so intense as to provoke the question: are these court filings now officially a form of entertainment for wonks and news junkies? And if so, could they even be considered… gulp… literature?