The ever-expanding menu of entertainment options in America has made it very difficult for arts organizations to market their offerings with any degree of certainty that their efforts will lead to “butts in the seats.” So some groups are trying a technique known as the “marketing task force” – think of it as word of mouth on steroids – under which volunteers “use their inner circles of e-mail lists – their social, professional and organizational contacts – to create buzz.”
Category: today’s top story
Too Much Info (Make It Stop!!!)
Investigators attempted to add up all the digital information produced last year. That includes “all the ones and zeros that make up photos, videos, e-mails, Web pages, instant messages, phone calls and other digital content cascading through our world today. Add it all up and IDC determined that the world generated 161 billion gigabytes – 161 exabytes – of digital information last year. That’s like 12 stacks of books that each reach from the Earth to the sun.”
Swamped By Authority?
“What qualifies as intellectual authority today is changing fundamentally. People are much less prepared to defer to the acknowledged experts in various fields. At the same time, however, we are being swamped with data and information — a glut that cries out for analysis and summary. So there is a dilemma: Whom do we turn to?”
America’s Librarian Of The Year (And Why)
Maryland’s Mary Baykan blends “strong research, creativity and a down-home approach into a potent argument: that libraries, far from being anachronisms in a digital world, are latent powerhouses of change, as ready for activation as so many unused cables.”
The New Walt Disney?
“John Lasseter, 50, might seem an odd fit for a studio built on old-school cartoons and the mythology of Snow White and Cinderella. But since Pixar was acquired, Mr. Lasseter has been heralded as a latter-day Walt Disney, a cultural arbiter who can rekindle the spirit of Disney’s famous animation at its theme parks, on store shelves and in a theater near you.”
Could NY Phil Tailor A Post For Barenboim?
Daniel Barenboim doesn’t want to be a fundraiser. That would seem to mean he can’t become Lorin Maazel’s successor at the New York Philharmonic — and, indeed, Barenboim has said he’s not interested. But what if the job were reconfigured to be entirely about music-making, not money?
Davidson: Time Is Up For Vienna Phil’s “Tradition”
Justin Davidson is fed up with the Vienna Philharmonic and its persistent refusal to treat women as legitimate candidates for employment in a symphony orchestra. “A decade after it supposedly committed itself to entering the 21st century, I believe that the Vienna Philharmonic has relinquished its claim to serious consideration as a dynamic cultural organization… The geological pace of change is not merely a regrettable obstacle in the relentless pursuit of quality. It is product of a narrowly preservationist, antiquarian philosophy, which fetishizes sound at the expense of spirit.”
Turner Painting To Remain In UK
“One of JMW Turner’s finest watercolours will remain in the UK after the Tate launched a campaign to keep the masterpiece in the country. The Blue Rigi was sold at auction last June to an anonymous bidder for £5.8m – a record for a British watercolour. The culture minister put a temporary bar on the painting leaving the country to give the Tate time to raise the £4.95m it needed to buy it back. The total has now been reached after members of the public donated £550,000.”
Was Wagner A Cross-Dresser? A Letter Suggests So
“A previously unpublished letter by Richard Wagner to a firm of Milanese couturiers offers the intriguing possibility that the great composer was, in fact, a cross-dresser. The letter is published for the first time today in the inaugural edition of the Wagner Journal.”
NY City Opera Gets Its Man
As rumored, New York City Opera has announced that French conductor Gerard Mortier will take over as its general manager and artistic director, beginning in 2009. Mortier has had a long and successful (if sometimes controversial) tenure with the Paris National Opera, and City Opera’s success in wooing him is likely to be seen as a direct challenge to the much larger and richer Metropolitan Opera.