Not everyone pays for an artist’s work. That’s a good thing – it allows entry to the work and opens possibilities for the artist. “An ecosystem with many ways for unintended free-release is a requirement. Therefore, an ecosystem which looks to a mixture of the traditional amateur, performance, patronage, and commission forms of payment is a requirement. Depending upon rigid enforcement of performance payments will disrupt the balance. Listening to representatives from the recording and movie industries, you would think that selling fixed artifacts is the only way that artists can get paid. That has never been the case, and should not be in the future or else society and art itself will suffer.”
Tag: 04.21.03
The Iraq Museum Autopsy
Who let Iraq’s National Museum get ransacked? What’s missing, and how did it happen?
Restorer Of Michelangelo’s ‘David’ Walks Off Job In Protest
The art restorer hired to clean Michelangelo’s “David” for its 500th birthday, has walked off the job, protesting the “modern” cleaning technique chosen by the director of the statue’s gallery. “The gallery director who led an 11-year health check of the statue before it was decided to go ahead with the restoration, wants it to be cleaned using a modern ‘wet’ technique involving small amounts of water. Agnese Parronchi, the restorer, believes that any method other than careful dry brushing to remove the engrained dirt could further erode the protective coating.”
‘Titanic’ In Kabul
What popular culture to Afghans want, now that the Taliban is gone? “Most of the pop culture bubbling up in Afghanistan in the post-Taliban era is centered on neighbor India. Postcards of Indian stars and their bare bellies decorate everything from taxis to books. Hindi music blares from Internet cafes and car stereos. Bollywood action films are the hottest movies playing. The American exceptions are odd: Michael Jackson; any Hollywood action film, particularly those that went straight to the Third World before they officially hit the video market; and, of course, ‘Titanic’.”
More Women Leading Arts Organizations
“Statistics show that women have made great strides in leadership in the arts. In New England, women run 58 percent of museums today – compared to 25 percent in 1978. The number of women directing art museums nationwide has increased from about one in seven in 1989 to about one in three today, according to the American Association of Museum Directors. But some caution that the gains may not be as significant as they appear.”
Recipe For A “Golden Age”
Baghdad in the 9th Century was in a Golden Age, a time when “its civilization shone more brightly than any other, when its philosophers, mathematicians and doctors led the way intellectually.” But it was a time made possible by opening up to the outside world. Baghdad was “the Tokyo of its day. Many of the ideas it snapped up were foreign. Yet the Arabs adapted them brilliantly. The hospital was a Persian idea from as early as the sixth century, under the name ‘bimaristan.’ But in Baghdad the institution became much more sophisticated, with special wards for internal diseases, contagious cases and psychiatric patients.”
Major Foundation Endowments Decline – And So Do Grants
The Pew Charitable Trusts are major investors in the arts. But the decline in the stock market has sharply reduced the grants that Pew will give this year. “At the end of 2002, Pew’s endowment was valued at $3.75 billion, down 23 percent from its year-end peak of $4.89 billion in 1999.”
Bay Area Mid-Size Groups Feel Squeeze
Bay Area arts groups of all sizes are having difficulty in the current economic slowdown. But mid-size groups are especially hard hit in times like these.
Nina Simone, 70
Jazz singer Nina Simone has died at her home in France. “Simone, born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, N.C., had hit songs ranging from blues to spirtuals to classical fare. But she gained fame in 1959 with her recording of ‘I Loves You Porgy,’ from the musical ‘Porgy & Bess’. She later became a voice of the civil rights movement, with her song ‘Mississippi Goddam,’ and later, ‘To Be Young, Gifted and Black’.”
New Jersey’s Strad Problem – Who Gets To Play Them?
The New Jersey Symphony is the recipient of an amazing bounty – 30 violins from the Italian Golden Age – including 12 Strads. “The collection makes its official debut Saturday , when guests at a fund-raiser charging $2,500 per ticket will hear the instruments played at the historic railroad terminal hall at Liberty State Park in Jersey City. As the date nears, a new dilemma arises: In the midst of such bounty, who gets to play one, and who doesn’t?”