“Many influential figures have a cavalier attitude to free speech, believing that ‘dangerous’ ideas should be repressed. Disbelief in today’s received wisdom is described as ‘Denial’, which is branded by some as a crime that must be punished. It began with Holocaust denial, before moving on to the denial of other genocides. Then came the condemnation of ‘AIDS denial’, followed by accusations of ‘climate change denial’. This targeting of denial has little to do with the specifics of the highly-charged emotional issues involved in discussions of the Holocaust or AIDS or pollution. Rather, it is driven by a wider mood of intolerance towards free thinking.”
Tag: 01.31.07
Cuts Looming For UK Museums
“The national museums have put forward three options if cuts are imposed on the scale intended. They can reintroduce admission charges; they can stop lending items and exhibits to the rest of the country; or they can shut departments, buildings and entire institutions. The removal of entry charges five years ago resulted in 85 million extra museum visitors and is being trumpeted as one of New Labour’s triumphs. There is no way the government will allow that egalitarian policy to be reversed.”
Pittsburgh Back In The Recording Game
The Pittsburgh Symphony, without a recording contract for the past decade, has signed a deal with PentaTone to record all four Brahms symphonies later this year. The deal was done under the new national agreement allowing orchestras to make live concert recordings without large upfront payments to the musicians.
Can Miami Support Its New Arts Center?
Miami’s new Carnival Center for the Performing Arts has been winning rave reviews in its opening months. But “one wonders how the Center will be filled. With the new opera house the Florida Grand Opera has modestly increased its season from five productions to six. But following the disbanding of the Florida Philharmonic in 2003, Miami has lacked a professional orchestra. Can a city that won’t even support an orchestra supply an audience for the new facility?”
Kimmel Flooded Again
A faulty sprinkler system sent water shooting into a recital hall at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts late Tuesday night, forcing the center to cancel several performances. It was not the first time that the high-volume sprinklers caused trouble – the Philadelphia Orchestra was deluged while rehearsing in the center’s main hall in 2002.
Ravinia Gives Conlon Four More Years
James Conlon’s contract as music director of the Ravinia Festival has been extended through 2011. “Conlon is scheduled to complete his multi-year Mahler symphony cycle with the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia in 2011, the centennial of the composer’s death. His other ongoing projects at the festival include a complete Mozart piano concerto cycle and Breaking the Silence, a multi-year series of concerts dedicated to reviving music silenced by the Nazi regime.”
Love Your Work – Here, Have A Guarneri!
“An anonymous patron in Australia has purchased a rare 1743 violin by Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù for long-term loan to the Australian Chamber Orchestra… The unnamed benefactor offered Tognetti a choice between the Carrodus and a 1733 Stradivarius.”
Get Up! Put That Brain (Soul) To Work!
It’s so easy to be anesthetized by the bland dullness of mass culture that washes over us every day. “Hey, is it not time to, you know, get a little more serious? Reacquaint yourself with some hot swatches of substance? Tip the scales of intellectual lust back from blandly passive to deliciously active?”
Uproar Over Smithsonian Salaries
“The Smithsonian paid 42 of the 90 trust executives (or 46 percent) more than the maximum basic federal pay rate of $165,200 in fiscal year 2006, and 19 of these trust executives (or 21 percent) were paid salaries greater than the $212,000 salary paid to the Vice President of the United States.”
Politics Of Slash And Burn (As In Arts Funding)
How could a local London council cut funding for its biggest cultural asset? Cut off Battersea? “The truth is that this scorched-earth approach in Wandsworth – which also extends to closing the Wandsworth Museum – is not a blip. The emergence of a cuts agenda is the great unreported development of London politics.”