Nevad’s official Poet Laureate hasn’t performed an official function for years. So the Nevada Arts Council wants to appoint a new poet to the job. Some disagree with the idea. “Norman Kaye may be an 82-year-old real estate agent who gave up the showbiz life more than 40 years ago. He may be completely ignorant of poetic sensibility and device. He may be unable to travel, to communicate with the kiddies about the importance or even the structure of poetry. But Norman Kaye is rightfully a legendary Nevadan who, in desperately clinging to some modicum of past glory by fighting for his right to stay poet laureate, embodies the poetry of this place.”
Tag: 11.18.04
The Myths Of Demise of The Women’s Review Of Books
So the Women’s Review of Books is fading into history. Was it inevitable, given the times? That’s too pat an explanation, writes former WRB senior editor Lynn Walterick. “In the post–November 2 United States—and certainly earlier––dialogue, reasonable disagreement, and discovery appear to have joined the ranks of endangered species. Difference is under siege; choice—on all fronts—has disappeared, is declining, or is shadowed by threat. This is no time to leave the line of battle for the bottom line.”
The American Indian Story In Its Own Way
If you’re looking for a traditional art museum experience, the new National Museum of the American Indian is probably not the place for you. But “visitors not conditioned by art-museum preconceptions begin to feel the stirrings of Indian spirit as soon as they enter the museum’s majestic 120-foot-high rotunda.”
UK Sets Museum Standards
The British government is launching a set of standards for museums. “The initiative will govern how museums look after their collections and the information their visitors should expect to receive. The scheme is expected to become a “kite-mark” of quality for the smallest to largest institutions.”
The Morality Cops Look To Expand Their Jurisdiction
“With support from both Republicans and Democrats, the Federal Communications Commission is poised to get even more aggressive about enforcing moral values throughout broadcasting, even putting cable television in its cross hairs and taking aim at Howard Stern’s right to talk dirty on satellite radio.” Still, there’s a fairly decent chance that many aspects of the FCC’s decency crusade will eventually face court challenges, and judges, even conservative ones, have historically been loath to allow limits on the First Amendment.
Will The New Puritanism Last?
Even if a majority of Americans claim to agree with the government’s recent crackdown on supposed indecency on the national airwaves, their viewing choices make it fairly clear that risk-taking television isn’t going away anytime soon. “The cold truth is, what viewers say they want — in polls, through organizations and elsewhere — rarely jibes with what the majority of us actually sit down to watch.”
Teaming Up
Six Hartford-area arts groups have joined forces to offer a multi-genre season ticket package designed to allow younger residents uninterested in tradition season passes to a single organization to pick and choose among the arts offerings available in the city. “The $99 price tag is a significant discount over regular priced tickets, more than 50 percent for some events,” and purchasers can redeem the vouchers at the local symphony, opera house, museum, theater, or dance company.
Latinos Making Gains, But Will It Last?
There is a Latino theater boom going on all across America, and while the works of Latino playwrights may not exactly be exploding onto the stages of the nation’s most prominent companies yet, many major regional theaters are recognizing the importance of the Hispanic audience. Still, Latino playwrights are a bit suspicious of the new embrace of legitimacy, and are reacting cautiously, wanting to avoid becoming token minorities in the still overwhelmingly white theater world.
Nothing Attracts People To The Arts Like Fistfights & Incest
The BBC has snapped up the rights to a TV broadcast of Jerry Springer: The Opera, and will air the satirical look at America’s most over-the-top talk show host in January. A spokeswoman “said it was part of the BBC’s strategy to introduce a new generation of viewers to opera. The BBC have also commissioned six comedy operas from the makers of the hit West End show.”
Canada’s New Top Arts Advocate
The new national director of the Ottawa-based Canadian Conference of the Arts brings a unique profile and a long resume to the job. Jean Malavoy “comes to the CCA after a three-year stint as the executive director of La Nouvelle Scène, an umbrella theatre centre for four francophone troupes in Ottawa… He also has a certificate in marketing the performing arts from the École des hautes études commerciales de Montréal. In short, he knows both the bureaucratic/fiscal and the administrative/creative sides of the cultural ledger.” His main mission at the helm of the CCA will be to convince the precarious Martin government not to cut the arts for political gain.