Italy Seeking Indictment Of Getty Curator

“In Rome, prosecutors are seeking the indictment of Marion True, curator for antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and three art dealers on charges of illegally exporting cultural goods, receiving state-protected cultural property and criminal association. Italy, a pioneer in police work to crack down on illicit antiquities trafficking, forbids selling or exporting ancient artifacts found in the country. Getty officials defended True’s work.”

DC Gov Gets Into The Arts Biz

Historically, Washington DC government has not funded the arts in much of a significant way. But DC recently approved $20 million towards a new downtown home for the Shakespeare Theatre. The city’s mayor wants to dramatically increase cultural funding – “despite the city’s general fiscal troubles – by pitching theaters and galleries as economic development projects and arguing that they should be funded through sources that do not directly compete with routine city services.”

The Literary Jackpot (Doesn’t Happen)

Ah yes, what writer doesn’t dream of an instant bestseller – prfereably for one’s first novel. But “the truth is that the jackpot theory of literature only works up to a point, and, particularly, in an impressionable marketplace like America where barrow-loads of fashionable books are bought but not read. Most of the time, in Britain, the so-called ‘overnight success’ usually turns out, on closer inspection, to be the well-deserved fruition of a painstaking apprenticeship.”

When Art Went To War Against AIDS

“If art had often tried to protest prejudice, encourage compassion and console the grieving, it had never tried to provide safe-sex information, lower drug prices and stimulate the development of antiretroviral therapies. I remember thinking, early on, that this was not only unseemly in some way but also too much of an agenda for poor little art to shoulder.”

Zagat On Classical Music? Yikes!

The new Zagat guide rating culture has some flaws when it comes to classical music, says a letter writer to the New York Times. “Classical recordings, unlike those in other categories, are usually identified by at least three criteria: composer’s name, title of the work and performer’s name. In the Zagat guide, classical albums are typically listed alphabetically by composer name, perhaps followed by title, with little or no indication of performers. But a recording of a Tchaikovsky piano concerto with Van Cliburn as soloist is listed under “V.” I suspect that this is a little joke. Or perhaps not.”

A New History Of Dance

A new history of dance in the 20th Century takes an unusual line for a history book. “Although everyone will be using the book for reference, Nancy Reynolds and Malcolm McCormick have produced a work that is completely unlike a standard reference book; you don’t just look things up in it — you read it. Here is a coherent, reasoned and entertaining chronicle of dance performance in the West over the hundred years that are unquestionably the fullest and most complicated in the long history of this fragmented and elusive art.”

What Happened To The “Angels” Effect?

Back in 1993, “Angeles in America” was a miraculous thing, and it promised a generation of new plays that would follow. But, writes Frank Rizzo, “the plays that followed, on Broadway at least, were largely more of what had come before: naturalistic or tiny-cast shows centering on family crises or issues of personal identity. They examined the characters as individuals; some were wonderfully done, but few explored who we are as a community, as a country and a member of the global village. They…furthered their canons but did not necessarily stretch their art. But nothing compared to our being touched by Angels.”

Movie Studios Losing Fight Against Piracy

Hollywood studios’ latest attempts to combat piracy seem to be a miserable failure. “A major source of movies online is an underground network of groups that specialize in bootlegging films, piracy experts say. These “ripping crews” – which recruit members around the world to obtain, edit, transfer and store films – compete with one another to be the first to obtain a movie, the experts say. They frequently are assisted by people connected to the movie industry, whose numbers include cinema employees, workers at post-production houses and friends of Academy members.”

The Problem(s) With Chicago Theatre

The hit musical “Urinetown” had its origins ten years ago in Chicago in a tiny storefront. But the show never got traction there, and it took a move to New York and a decade for the show to morph into a hit. “And yet had ‘Urinetown’ become a fringe Chicago musical – which it was inches away from becoming – it likely would have run here for a month and then sunk without a trace in a city that still seems woefully unable to propel its homegrown properties to national prominence and longevity – unless those artists involved ship out for the coasts and start all over.”

Labor Fight Tearing Up Touring Shows In America

“Labor strife is the most contentious dispute in touring theater today, a battleground that could create aesthetic and financial casualties for audiences as well as producers and presenters. Using non-Equity actors can greatly reduce a producer’s costs of putting a show on the road: Union actors in major productions earn $1,252 a week plus $742 in expense money, which covers lodging, meals and other incidentals of life on the road. Non-Equity producers generally don’t disclose their payroll figures, but the union asserts that non-union performers’ earnings hover around $500 a week, with an additional $250 for expenses.”