Category: today’s top story

As museums (particularly those showcasing contemporary art) have grown in popularity, their mission has become more difficult to define, and their relationships with artists have grown complicated. “Art and its institutions have, we are told, grown increasingly democratic, more accessible to all. In fact, the more successful a museum grows, the more elitist it tends to become.”

“In Los Angeles, about two-thirds of the $47 million that United Way gave away last fiscal year went to nonprofits selected by contributors, one of the highest ratios in the country. Most of the donor-designated cash ends up in the arts and education, mainly with big institutions that do not specialize in aiding the poor or target problems such as low school graduation rates. … ‘Disney Hall is great, but we need to care about the people who live in the shadows of the buildings down the street from it,’ said L.A. United Way President Elise Buik.”

The murderous Pol Pot actively tried to erase Cambodian culture. “One cultural sphere that suffered particularly badly was Cambodia’s 1,000-year-old dance tradition. Before the rise of the Khmer Rouge, there were about 30 troupes performing Lakhaon Kaol, the intricate, masked, all-male sacred form that boasts 4,000 gestures in its movement vocabulary. It was a tradition that existed exclusively in the minds and muscles of the masters who practised it – and thus was almost entirely obliterated during the Pol Pot genocide.”

Students in a Connecticut high school wrote their own play about the war in Iraq. “They compiled reflections of soldiers and others involved, including a heartbreaking letter from a 2005 Wilton High graduate killed in Iraq last September at age 19, and quickly found their largely sheltered lives somewhat transformed. But even as 15 student actors were polishing the script and perfecting their accents for a planned April performance, the school principal last week canceled the play, titled ‘Voices in Conflict,’ citing questions of political balance and context.”

“Baumol’s cost-disease (sometimes more prosaically referred to as the Baumol-Bowen effect) is well-known among economists and arts administrators. First described by economists William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen in 1966, the main symptom of the disease is this: labor costs in the performing arts will always inexorably rise, and at a faster rate than other industries. That’s because in most industries, technological advances allow for increased productivity without an increase in labor. This doesn’t happen in the performing arts, though.”

“About one-third of the people living in the national’s capital are functionally illiterate, compared with about one-fifth nationally, according to a report on the District of Columbia.”

“There seems to be a schism opening up between the idea of attending an event and the actual experience. People appear to care more about gaining evidence of their presence at a cultural landmark than drinking in its pleasures. They want a photograph of themselves in front of the museum or even the star exhibit; they want the souvenir mousemat; in short they want its autograph. The erratic organic memory of looking at beauty seems to have been downgraded to a supporting role.”

“A trade association representing Broadway theaters and producers is doing an about-face and now wants state officials to dismantle the laws that limit the resale of tickets to musicals, plays, concerts and other events. … Gerald Schoenfeld, chairman of the League of American Theaters and Producers, said that ticket prices ‘would probably not skyrocket’ if the limits were lifted and that Internet sales had helped make it almost impossible to enforce the current law.”

It will be a new morning news magazine. “Also participating in the not-yet-named program are the BBC World Service, New York Times Radio and WGBH, the Boston public radio station. BBC correspondents and reporters and critics for The New York Times are to provide on-air reports for the live news program and take part in what is expected to be its more informal, conversational format.”

“An ancient Indian sculpture quietly consigned for sale in a New York gallery by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will be returned to the museum, LACMA Director Michael Govan said, as the museum reconsiders policies on the perpetually controversial issue of such ‘de-accessions.'”