The cash-strapped Scottish Opera has received an emergency advance of £4 million of its 2004/2005 budget and “been forced to turn to the Scottish Arts Council for an emergency hand-out to pay staff salaries.” It seems likely the company will have to make job layoffs – with 80 employees at risk of losing their jobs.
Tag: 01.20.04
BritArt In Teheran
The British Council is on a cultural offensive in Iran. The Brits are putting together a show of art. “Contentious works, including a Hirst sculpture incorporating a human skeleton never exhibited before, will go on show in Tehran next month, just after elections that have already caused bitter tensions between Islamic hard-liners and liberals. Other works were held back by the British Council, however, including body casts by Antony Gormley and a wheelchair with knives by Mona Hatoum.”
London Art Fair Spruces Up
Where are the new collectors? “Finding them has proved more difficult in an age when collecting is less fashionable than it was and there are plenty of alternative ways of spending disposable income. But last week, London’s first major art fair of 2004 underwent a radical overhaul in an attempt to bring in new, younger buyers.”
The Booker’s New Wrangler
Member of Parliament Chris Smith is heading up this year’s Book Prize jury, and he says he has no preconceptions about what the winner should demonstrate. “Cynics might argue that this absence of preconceptions is merely a spin on an absence of knowledge. After all, how much time does your average MP have to keep up with even a fraction of the 10,000 or so novels published each year? What sort of books does he have on his bedside table?”
Tate Gets Bacon Studio
The Tate has acquired the contents of Francis Bacon’s chaotic studio, after a decade of controversy about it. “Art world legend insists that when Bacon died in 1992 the Tate was offered the studio by his heir and last companion, John Edwards, who died in Thailand last year. The gallery is said to have rejected the offer and the room, with every scrap of paper and cigarette stub forensically recorded, went to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, where it is a popular exhibit. The history of the material donated to the Tate is as eccentric as the artist.”
Music – Increasingly, We’re Hearing It Live
Sales of recorded music might be down in some places, but there was a lavish surge in concert-going in 2003. “I think that a lot of people have had enough of non-performing acts. A lot of the music of the 1990s was not real live performance music. The trend for real music is great news for us and great news for the industry in total.”
Ode To A Closing Bookstore
One of Melbourne’s biggest bookstores is closing, and it’s hard not to feel nostalgic. “Do I protest too much? Metropolis was just another place of consumption, much like a cafe or a bar or a chemist. Let’s not get sanctimonious about a bookstore. Maybe my mother is right; maybe I am a literary snob. Maybe I should watch more TV, drink more Coke, get in touch with the mainstream. Who am I to say Acland Street, post-Metropolis, has gone to the dogs?”
Adventures In Self-Publishing
Andy Kessler was wary. “I had been warned against self-publishing. You can’t get reviews, you can’t get shelf space, and you can’t get respect. One hundred thousand books are published every year, so you need an imprint to stand out from the noise. Being naive, and used to being treated like Rodney Dangerfield, I decided to publish my book anyway…”