“Is live theater still relevant in a society where computer users can create high-quality video and distribute it almost instantly via the web?” Two Seattle critics have been debating the issue, and a new area production titled “How Theater Failed America” is more grist for the mill.
Tag: 02.12.08
Hey – Don’t Forget The Concert Hall
“The concert hall is itself a fine musical instrument–an instrument that is an indissoluble constituent of the hearing experience (notice I didn’t say listening experience). A concert hall is acoustic architecture that interacts with and enhances music. An iPod is not. A sound-designed downtown club is not.”
Educational Television? Doesn’t Exist
Aric Sigman says that all TV is bad for young kids. “The phrase ‘educational television’ was, of course, invented by people who make television. To me it’s an oxymoron.”
American Group Says Canadian Copyright Laws Lacking
“Canada has taken no meaningful steps toward modernizing its copyright law to meet the minimum global standards of the WIPO internet treaties, which it signed more than a decade ago.”
The Man Who Runs The LA County Museum
Michael Govan “sits at the heart of the mainstream museum world, at an institution fraught with change — undergoing hundreds of millions of dollars in upgrades to its disorganized and occasionally dilapidated campus, including a new building, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, opening this week; accused by some of giving one hardheaded board member, Eli Broad, undue influence; and needing to foster new philanthropists and art collectors in a city not known for either.”
UK Museums Debate Proposed Tax Change
UK arts leaders are saying that proposed tax changes will dry up art donations from wealthy donors. But is this really true?
Were Newspaper’s Stories On Smithsonian Director Travel Fair?
The Washington Post wrote about Richard West Jr.’s travel as founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. He spent $250,000 and West supporters complained about the stories…
Chinese Dance Forges An Identity
“Companies regularly tour abroad, while the free exchange of ideas between East and West has expanded the Chinese artistic sensibility. Audiences are growing and new dance troupes have been formed, while the art form has forged a uniquely Chinese identity.”
LACMA’s Buttoned-Down Addition Plays With Messy Artists
“Even with this theatrical flourish, Piano has added a characteristically well-tailored building. It’s a museum, though, that Director Michael Govan is determined to turn over to artists with untidy aesthetic intentions.”
Where Museums Are Vulnerable
“Now that museums have tightened up on nighttime security, they have to know how to secure objects while they’re on view, when there are people in the gallery.”