A plan by the mayor of London to spend £350,000 on subsidizing theatre tickets for Londoners, is being welcomed by the theatres. “Just one third of the 12 million people who pay to see plays, musicals, dance and operas in London’s theatreland actually live in London. The tickets, which can cost up to £40, are being offered at reduced prices of £10, £15 and £20 between 15 January and 29 March.”
Tag: 01.15.03
Kantor To Head NYT’s Arts & Leisure?
Word is that “Jodi Kantor, New York editor of Web magazine Slate – has emerged as the top candidate to become editor of The New York Times ‘Arts & Leisure’ section.” Kantor is 27 and has been at Slate for four years. The move signals NYT executive editor Howell Raines’ seriousness about a new direction for the paper’s culture page.
The Debate That Wouldn’t End
“New York’s wide-ranging civic conversation about the World Trade Center site degenerated into rhetoric that ricocheted off on all sorts of tangents at the start of the second round of public hearings on the fate of Ground Zero.” Officials in charge of the process seem to be trapped by the dual expectations of the public that a) public opinion will not be ignored, and b) something will eventualy rise on the WTC site, even though whatever it is will not come close to satisfying all constituencies.
Oberlin Prof To Head Up Smithsonian Division
“Sharon F. Patton, a scholar and the director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, yesterday was named director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art… The museum was founded by Warren Robbins in 1964 as a small private enterprise on Capitol Hill. Under the Smithsonian mantle, it became part of the largely underground complex of halls near the Smithsonian Castle Building. It has 7,000 objects of traditional and contemporary art, the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives and the Warren M. Robbins Library.”
MacArthur Hands Out Some Expensive Party Favors
“The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is giving special one-time grants totaling $21.5 million to 41 Chicago arts and cultural groups ranging from the city’s largest museums to small community-based arts education groups.” The grants come as the foundation celebrates its 25th anniversary, and includes a $14 million gift to National Public Radio, and $1 million each for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Lyric Opera, among others.
First Gay Bookstore To Close
The Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, in New York’s Greenwich Village, was already a success by the time the Stonewall Riots gave rise to the modern gay rights movement in 1969. But this month, the bookstore, which is believed to have been the world’s first to specialize in gay and lesbian literature, will shut its doors for the last time. Many gay bookstores have been closing in the last decade, ironic victims of the more open society they helped to create, in which gays and lesbians no longer feel the need to hide in self-contained communities, and general-interest bookstores often have gay and lesbian studies sections.
Mitchell To Stay On At PBS
PBS’s controversial chief executive appears to be close to inking a deal extending her contract with the public broadcaster for another three years. Pat Mitchell, who came to PBS from CNN in 1999, has presided over a stormy era for the network, in which it saw much of its market share usurped by specialty cable channels. Mitchell has been criticized for running PBS like a commercial network, but has also drawn praise for her realistic approach to the job, and her willingness to expand the network’s overall mission.
Hell, No, We Won’t Go! (But We’ll Draw A Bit, If You Like)
Where there is war, or the threat of war, there will always be anti-war protest, and a new exhibit examines the movement from an artistic perspective. From Vietnam-era posters depicting the My Lai massacre to T-shirts decrying the Bush administration’s current Iraq policy, visitors can trace not only the recent history of American political demonstration, but the way in which contemporary sensibility informs the art of such protest. In Vietnam, shock value was front and center, but today’s anti-war movement seems to rely as much as anything on the cynical humor often ascribed to Generation X.
Sundance’s Raison d’Etre
The Sundance Film Festival has its critics, of course. Indy producers complain that the Utah-based festival has become too enamored of big-budget Hollywood types in recent years, and big-budget Hollywood types grouse that they can’t get a film shown there unless it stars Parker Posey. But Kenneth Turan thinks that Robert Redford’s festival has found its niche, and it has little to do with budget size: Sundance is the place for films which just don’t seem to fit anywhere else, and its organizers have never abandoned their effort to keep the event fresh and exciting.
Life After Laureate – Quincy Troupe Begins Again
Quincy Troupe, who had to resign as California’s first Poet Laureate and from his teaching job at the University of California, San Diego last fall after it was discovered he had lied on his resume, has settled into a new life. “I think I did the admirable thing by resigning, but that wasn’t enough for some people. They wanted me to bleed. You wouldn’t believe the hate mail that I received. The (racial slurs) I was called. I didn’t do anything that cost anyone a dime. It wasn’t fraud. I didn’t do what the people at Enron did. But some people wanted my head.”