Provenance has become a major issue for museums. “We’re still figuring out what can be acquired and sold without problems, as opposed to 40 or 50 years ago, when people were much more careless about ownership history. The question to me now is, where do we draw the line? What if a piece was already in circulation before these new standards? The archaeologists don’t have an answer to that. They don’t say throw it out, and they don’t encourage you to buy it. What are we supposed to do?”
Tag: 03.18.07
How Digital Phography Is Changing The Art
“Digital technology, computers, software and the Internet multiply the number of people with access to taking and viewing pictures. Once you buy the camera, there are almost no other costs. That is increasing the variety and creativity in how people take pictures, and what they do with them.”
China’s Dance Explosion
“As in other sectors of Chinese culture, foreign visitors say, the rate of change is mind-boggling. If, that is, his hosts can raise the money. These days, the main hurdle faced by contemporary dance in China is far more familiar to Western artists: financing.”
Does Theatre Matter?
Playwright Lisa Loomer: “Theater has the power to remind us of our shared humanity. In this political climate, that matters. And, in a world of computers and iPods, a world of screen, there’s something about sitting next to a fellow human as the lights go down. There’s something about experiencing living, breathing actors — in real time. You can’t TiVo something like that.”
Washington Theatre Drawn To The Experimental
“It could just be the way the stars are currently aligned: The theater here has had its flirtations with any number of emerging talents before. For whatever reason, though, many playwrights being staged this season are innovators with the language and structure of drama.”
Is Internet Radio About To Die?
“A new ruling from the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board threatens to silence many, and perhaps most, webcasters. The Royalty Board’s decision to more than double the fees that webcasters pay to play recorded music might seem unfair to mom-and-pop Web radio operators — and to many of Web radio’s 50 million listeners — but it’s about time artists got their share of the money that radio rakes in.”
Art-House Movies Direct To Your Computer
“At the moment these sites pretty much appeal only to hard-core cineastes, mainly because watching movies on a computer monitor is far from an ideal entertainment experience. But a slew of gadgets, like the coming Apple TV, promise to erase the divide between the Internet and your home entertainment center by easily transporting a movie file sitting on the computer to the 52-inch plasma television in the living room, or magically giving the set Internet access.”
Who’s Ultimately Going To Decide Copyright?
“The content industry was a big supporter of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998. Viacom is apparently less of a supporter today. It complains that YouTube has not done enough ‘to take reasonable precautions to deter the rampant infringement on its site.’ Instead, the Viacom argument goes, YouTube has shifted the burden of monitoring that infringement onto the victim of that infringement — namely, Viacom. But it wasn’t YouTube that engineered this shift. It was the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.”
Should TV Abandon Pilot Season?
“It’s pilot season, a Hollywood rite of spring that network executives use to evaluate which shows to green-light for the fall schedule.” Neal Justin says that far from being an efficient use of everyone’s time, the system embraced by the networks results in shows being selected almost at random. Wouldn’t it be better to abandon the outdated practice of unveiling a whole new slate of shows every September, and instead greenlight the best new shows whenever they pop up?
Growing London, Gracefully
As London’s skyline continues to grow upward and outward, can the city prevent the kind of runaway development that leaves some cities looking cluttered and without focus? Those in charge believe that progress doesn’t have to mean letting the inmates run the asylum.