Category: today’s top story

“Can artists and critics ever be friends? It might be different for music or film critics, but for an art critic in Britain in the 21st century, it has become an urgent question: critics have become so close to artists, they practically do their laundry.”

Zadie Smith writes that literature has a legacy of honorable failure. “A novel is a two-way street, in which the labour required on either side is, in the end, equal. Reading, done properly, is every bit as tough as writing – I really believe that.”

Jerry Brown became mayor of Oakland talking about how the arts should flourish as an essential part of the city. And that’s what they became. “Although some are critical of the mayor’s follow-through, there can be no doubting that his rhetoric about the arts and downtown housing helped sow the seeds of the city’s current cultural renaissance.”

“Nearly 50 percent of all credit-earning undergraduates in the United States are enrolled in community colleges. Besides having half of all students nationwide, community colleges enroll a disproportionate share of the country’s poorest students.” So why is funding for them so precarious?

As the trial of one of Canada’s most notorious serial killers gets underway in British Columbia, three artists are attempting to bring some measure of comfort to a stunned populace by memorializing the 26 victims of Robert Pickton in a variety of very public ways.

The Cleveland Orchestra will make its first commercial recording under music director Franz Welser-Möst this week, taking advantage of a new agreement with the musicians’ union which allows live concert recordings to be used for commercial releases without the usual upfront payments to the musicians. The recording of Beethoven’s 9th symphony will be Cleveland’s first new CD in seven years.

“The last and largest of [ancient Egypt’s] cult centers — the only major one still standing in clearly recognizable form — was erected for King Khasekhemwy, who ruled in the second dynasty around 2780 B.C… Now, in an ambitious effort to preserve this ruin, archaeologists, engineers and teams of artisans and laborers are shoring up the walls and gates of Shunet el-Zebib, ravaged by time and the elements and in danger of imminent collapse.”

“Time was when the ‘authorship’ of a work of art was usually (if not always) a clear-cut matter. Nobody wonders who wrote ‘David Copperfield’ or painted ‘Guernica.’ Even in the performing arts, it’s long been taken for granted that the mere act of performance creates no enforceable property right on the part of the performer… Here’s the problem: Where do you draw the line separating creative performance from actual authorship?”

It’s been 50 years since the death of legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini, and tributes are springing up all across the music world. “Commemorations will take place throughout 2007, mostly organized by countries and musical institutions that were touched by Toscanini’s work as an artist and by his political stance as a staunch opponent of fascism and Nazism.”

“Because entertainment aimed at children occupies a bigger share of the marketplace, the level of quality tends to be higher than it was, say, back in the heyday of Walt Disney live-action comedies. I would not wish it otherwise, but I also worry that the dominance of the family film has had a limiting, constraining effect on the imaginations of children.”