“Aboriginal art generates exponential profit for all those who touch it – even, though perhaps not proportionately, for the people who make it. The rules are now very strict: Aboriginal artists retain all their intellectual and moral rights in the work after it has been rolled up and tucked into a backpack or bolted to the wall of a banking hall, in perpetuity. Amid the frenzied buying and selling, with important Aboriginal art objects changing hands as often as several times a year, there is still a pervasive anxiety that Aboriginal art might be a con.”
Tag: 12.03.05
Was Magazine Music Poll Fixed?
Did the popular music magazine NME manipulate the results of its top 50 albums poll? “The allegations, first published by the blog Londonist.com on Wednesday, suggested that an early version of the poll, which is compiled each year by the magazine’s editors and writers, had been radically overhauled prior to publication. It was alleged that artists including Beck and Patrick Wolf had disappeared from the top 50 entirely, while others, among them high-profile names such as Babyshambles, Oasis and Kate Bush, had seen their ratings significantly boosted.”
Minority Report: TV Networks Doing (A Bit) Better
Minority groups report that American TV networks have “made some strides in increasing ethnic diversity in front of and behind the camera, but still have fallen short in demonstrating an overall commitment to multiculturalism.”
Lord Archer Returns
Out of prison and writing. “The disgraced Conservative politician has chosen Australia to launch his first novel since his release from prison in 2003, and he declared his comeback at a literary lunch in a plush hotel overlooking Sydney harbour in front of 410 avid fans.”
Hamlet’s Role In The Revolution
In Romania in the early 80s censorship in the theatre had stiffened and all plays had to be approved by the Councillor of Culture and Social Education. However, the suggestion of a play by Shakespeare went unchallenged: like Beethoven and Tolstoy, Shakespeare was a Universal Artist – to dispute this would be to expose the apparatchiks, always keen to defend their amour-propre, to charges of stupidity.They were enraptured. Line after line was greeted with the applause of recognition: this was their story. Hamlet’s oppression by Claudius mirrored theirs by Ceausescu, and if Hamlet vacillated, accused himself of cowardice, cursed himself for his inaction, it only reflected their own frailty and submissiveness. Allegory and metaphor are part of any theatre syntax but at that time in Romania they were its essential core.”
Why Naxos Rules The World
“Klaus Heymann runs a lean global empire that in some countries has gobbled up half the retail market for classical CDs in numbers of discs sold. The catalogue for his Naxos label now lists about 3,000 recordings, many of unusual repertoire, all still available at prices well below those charged by classical labels at EMI, Sony/BMG and Universal. Naxos also seems to have outrun its rivals on the Internet. Last month, Naxos’s entire recorded output of 75,000 tracks went on sale on eMusic, a U.S. subscription service that claims to shift 2.4 million downloads per month.”
Fiction Sales Plummet?
“International demand for English-language literary fiction has gone seriously south. Although hard numbers for the fall season won’t be available until January, the anecdotal evidence is not encouraging. Agents and retailers are complaining that sales for new fiction are soft, that orders for reprints and back-listed books are down, and that publishing houses from Berlin to Boston are becoming choosier about what novels they buy, when they are willing to buy them, and what they are willing to pay.”
Minnesota Orchestra Sees Red
The Minnesota Orchestra posts a $1.19 million deficit. “In most respects, the report Friday was upbeat, even turning a bit zany at one point when music director Osmo Vänskä and orchestra president Tony Woodcock played “If I Were a Rich Man” on clarinet and piano. Expenses were cut by $2 million during 2004-05, which brought on a rare occurrence in the orchestra world: a budget actually being less than it was the year before, $27 million, down from $28.6 million. A key cost-cutting measure came when the musicians agreed to a one-year wage freeze.”
Building Threatens Watts Towers?
A new municipal building is being erected in the parking lot next to LA’s Watts Towers. “Neighbors are concerned about congestion, and preservationists who cherish Simon Rodia’s fantasia of folk-art sculpture worry that the new building, which would augment the smaller, existing arts center nearby, will obstruct views of the towers. They question why officials decided to place a new, $4.7-million youth arts center near the towers, rather than on city-owned property around the corner that originally was designated for the project.”
A Month Of Novels
November was National Novel-Writing Month. “Nearly 60,000 people around the world set out Nov. 1 to reach the goal of writing 50,000 words in 30 days. About one in six made it. Students could enter under less-strict guidelines.”