“For a fairly long time, the weakness of empirical research on our claimed benefits of the arts has been a bit of a family secret — something we don’t discuss out loud. The arts build strong cities. The arts build strong schools. The arts build strong communities. Give us cash. In my head, here’s the larger point: The arts are essential to vibrant cities, dynamic and balanced schools, connected communities, and engaged citizenry. If we believe it, we should make every effort to understand the complexity and depth of those connections.”
Tag: 02.17.05
PBS’s Identity Crisis
Public television is suffering from an identity crisis, executives inside the Public Broadcasting Service and outsiders say, and it goes far deeper than the announcement by Pat Mitchell that she would step down next year as the beleaguered network’s president.
Producer Buys Five Broadway Theatres
“Producer Rocco Landesman became the owner of Broadway’s third-largest theater chain, Jujamcyn Theaters, yesterday. Mr. Landesman, the longtime president of the chain, said he paid less than $30 million for its five theaters to the estate of James H. Binger, the wealthy Minnesotan who was chairman of the company and who died in November.”
London: The Season Of Drama
Schiller is the big hit in London this winter. And drama is king. “It has already been a memorable winter for drama in London. There have been three intriguing productions of ‘Macbeth’, one as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s season of Shakespeare’s tragedies. The RSC has also brought in from Stratford-upon-Avon a season of plays from Spain’s Golden Age, and there are some excellent revivals of work by Noel Coward, Terence Rattigan and David Mamet. For a serious, committed theatre-goer, the West End is heaven at the moment.”
Washington Ballet Dancers Vote For Union
Dancers of the Washington Ballet have voted 18-2 to unionize. They’ll be represented by the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA). The vote took place in a secret ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board on Mon., Feb. 14. AGMA represents dancers and opera singers in the United States. In early December 2004, the ballet company’s dancers asked AGMA to represent them and negotiate a collective bargaining agreement on their behalf.”
US Government Releases Confiscated Art Passports
Federal authorities reversed themselves on Thursday and decided to release artwork, including fake passports, that they confiscated last week in Detroit from the luggage of an Austrian artist on his way to set up an exhibit at a museum.
Books As A Contact Sport
“The First Annual TMN Tournament of Books, presented by The Morning News (TMN), a daily online magazine (themorningnews.org/tob), and Powells.com, an online bookstore, is under way. The writers aren’t hacks and they aren’t in a stadium. The fans don’t roar and they don’t judge. But the Web tournament is set up exactly like an N.C.A.A. basketball tournament, with ladders, seeds and head-to-head contests. Round after round, novels from 2004 are pitted against each other until only one of the original 16 is standing. The champion will be announced on Feb. 28. At that point its author may receive a live rooster, which has a cryptic connection to the brother of the writer David Sedaris.”
Rand Corp: Stop Quantifying, Focus On Quality
“After wading through stacks of economic and educational studies used to drum up arts funding, Rand Corp. researchers say the numbers don’t make a persuasive case and that arts advocates should emphasize intrinsic benefits that make people cherish the arts.” Education and economic return have been proven selling points with politicians who are otherwise reluctant to fund the arts at all, but the Rand study says that “trumpeting the most quantifiable and utilitarian benefits doesn’t address the biggest long-term challenge facing arts organizations: cultivating an arts-savvy public that wants what museums and performing groups offer.”
Making Sure There’s Always Something Good On TV
“Those sleek flat screens popping up on people’s walls may just look like fancy televisions. A new generation of artists and gallery owners wants you to think of them as something else: an empty picture frame… Digital works, the latest genre of new media art, usually are sold in limited edition DVDs. But this spring, Steven Sacks, the director of New York City’s bit-forms gallery, plans to start selling lower-priced original works of software art at software ART space. Prices will range from $100 for unlimited-edition works to $1,000 for numbered pieces. Buyers will get a sleekly packaged disc; limited editions will be signed by the artist.”
FilmFest Wars Claim Two In Montreal
Montreal’s Festival du Nouveau Cinema is in danger of folding in the wake of the resignations of its president and executive director. Montreal has three major film festivals, and city officials have been working with the film industry to try to cut that number by two. The result has been open warfare between festival organizers, which culminated last week when the newest entry, the Montreal International Film Festival, was seen as encroaching on the Nouveau’s territory with its decision to schedule its inaugural season directly opposite Nouveau’s.