“The top 20 global languages – defined in terms of their use as a first or second language – provide an interesting reflection on the fortunes of those languages that have spread by organic growth and those that have expanded by means of mergers and acquisitions. At the top of the league table is Mandarin Chinese, which has 1,052 million speakers, more than twice as many as the next highest, English, with 508 million. Third is Hindi with 487 million and fourth Spanish, with 417 million. Of course, English is a far more global language – though primarily as a second language – than Chinese, the vast majority of whose speakers live in China. But with the present rise of China – and indeed India – it would not be difficult to imagine Mandarin and Hindi becoming far more widely spoken by 2100.”
Tag: 03.12.05
Seattle’s ACT Theatre In Financial Trouble Again
Seattle’s ACT Theatre finds itself looking at a $450,000 deficit on a $5 million budget. “Over the next few weeks, we’ll be looking at belt-tightening possibilities,” said company manager Susan Trapnell. “One likely option is about a month of unpaid furlough for Kurt (artistic director Kurt Beattie) and me. Salary cuts for top staff are another possibility.” Two years ago, ACT was on the verge of bankruptcy but pulled away from the brink of extinction with emergency austerity and fund-raising tactics.
Sadler’s Wells Risky New Gambit
“When the historically pivotal Islington theatre was rebuilt with a Lottery grant of £30 million, there was much sneering at “ballet” getting “people’s money”. Seven years on, and Sadler’s Wells is now the most virtuous theatre in London. It manages to be both local and international. Now a new stage begins. This week Sadler’s Wells’s chief executive Alastair Spalding announced a risky new development – risky because it challenges the theatre’s knife-edge finances.”
Charlie Parker, 50 Years Later
Charlie Parker died 50 years ago. “It said “pneumonia” on the death certificate, but it might have been more accurate to have written “everything”. At that point he had advanced ulcers, dropsy and a bad heart, and his liver was gravely damaged. The influence of Charlie Parker has been so all-pervading that it’s hard to imagine music without it; his influence has reached places where it would scarcely be suspected.”
Do Art Dealers Have Too Much Impact On The Art World?
“The era from the Renaissance through to the mid-19th century was one of patronage. But then the capitalist intermediary, the dealer, took over. And as early as 1871 the prestigious periodical the Art Journal was lamenting their part: ‘The influence of the dealer is one of the chief characteristics of modern art… to him has been owing… the immense increase in the prices of pictures.’ The pervasive influence of the dealers hasn’t stopped since.”
Small Wonders
“Ever since its earliest days, limning (to give miniature painting its original name) has been the subject of a certain status anxiety. Practitioners and commentators have worried that it is not art at all, but itsy-bitsy hackwork. Or, conversely, that it is not an artisanal craft suitable for men, but merely a hobby for ladies. Or that it is an instrument of the court, full of pomp but not much else. Or, that it is small and domestic, a toy art. Yet alongside this anxious babble is the work itself, an unarguable four centuries’ worth of small marvels.”
UK Libraries In Desperate Need Of Cash
Britain’s public libraries are in serious decline, according to a new report, and a £650 million backlog of crucial repairs needs to be addressed soon. The lack of public funding for library maintenance has led to the “scandalous” situation, and the report calls funding for book allocation “very low” as well.
It’s An Author! It’s A Marketing Whiz! Wait! It’s Both!
“With profits in the publishing world pretty flat in recent years, big publicity budgets are largely limited to the heavyweights in the writing world, the proven novelists (such as Stephen King) or famous memoirist (such as Bill Clinton). Everyone else gets about $5,000 to $10,000 to promote their title, if they’re lucky. Many get nothing at all… The days when it was enough for an author to launch a Web site and give away some tote bags are over. An unknown writer today has to be an imaginative entrepreneur, with strong marketing skills — not just a wordsmith.”
Piecing Together A City’s Art Index
Members of a San Francisco synagogue has discovered a “treasure trove” of 19th-century art hidden in plain sight on its walls and ceiling. The discovery that two prominent local artists working in concert were responsible for the temple’s beautiful, Renaissance-inspired interior has touched off a renewed round of interest in San Francisco’s often cloudy art history. “The 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed public records and personal papers, erasing much of the city’s artistic history from current memory.”
Why Can’t Eschenbach Just Be Eschenbach?
Philadelphia Orchestra music director Christoph Eschenbach, who has a passion for 20th-century music and is legendary for his fiery performances of Shostakovich, could not be much more different from the man he replaced, Wolfgang Sawallisch, a low-key European conductor of the old school, whose tastes ran more to German romantics. “So you have to wonder why [Eschenbach] has spent so much time in his first year and a half as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra plowing through repertoire that was the specialty of his immediate predecessor. Comparisons are inevitable, and Eschenbach is not coming out on top.”