The British government is offering those UK cities that lost out in the compatition for 2008 European Capital of Culture a pot of £15 million to spend on cultural projects. “The lottery-generated money, channelled through the Millennium Commission and the Arts Council, is intended for festivals, exhibitions and other events which show that culture and the arts are contributing to the area’s regeneration.”
Tag: 03.03.04
Architect Proposes Huge Moscow Artist Project
A Dutch architect has proposed building “five blocks of luxury flats, each block decorated in the style of a Russian artist. While the mayor backs the project, architectural critics have panned it as another example of the scars millionaires are inflicting on the city’s skyline.”
Pope Sells Million Books
A book of poems by Pope John Paul II has sold more than one million copies. “The pontiff first published the poems in 2003 but the print run was expanded after sales topped 300,000 in his native Poland.”
Gelb: William Shawn, Petty Tyrant
For years Arthur Gelb had idolized William Shawn and his New Yorker magazine. But when Gelb commissioned a profile of Shawn for the New York Times in 1966, he discovered another side of the legendary editor. Up close, Shawn was “ridiculously petty. He lived in a world he helped create, protected it against outsiders who might penetrate that world a little too deeply and might expose it.”
My Amazon Addiction…
“From the day their book first lands in stores, most writers will start spending minutes, hours—nay, days, weeks, months and years—tracking its progress on Amazon.com. Never mind that the online retailer accounts for only about 10 percent of a trade book’s total sales (slightly higher for business books, somewhat lower for children’s). By my count, the reviews and the ranking system on Amazon.com count for about 95 percent of writers’ hopes, anxieties and dreams.”
Newsome Changes Roles
“Steven C. Newsome, the director of the Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture, resigned yesterday but will remain with the Smithsonian Institution to help plan a national black museum. In his 12 years at the helm of the Anacostia Museum, Newsome directed a successful campaign to raise $8.5 million for a renovation of the museum’s Southeast Washington building, which was completed in 2002.”
Cleveland Arts Tax Fails
An ambitious initiative which would have established a dedicated fund for the arts in Northeast Ohio failed at the ballot box in Cleveland on Tuesday. The tax levy was designed to make up for a critical lack of arts and cultural funding in the region, but organizers had a difficult time selling the notion of any new tax to the public, and many felt that the complexity of the funding structure made the initiative difficult to explain. The final vote tally was 54% to 46% against the ballot measure.
Pittsburgh Cancels Children’s Fest
The Pittsburgh Children’s Festival has been scrapped for this year, after the city’s parks department said that it couldn’t afford to provide $60,000 worth of services to allow the event to proceed. The festival, which is put on by the Pittsburgh International Children’s Theater, costs $300,000 to stage, and the company has been unable to raise the money necessary to pick up the city’s portion of the budget.
The Overhyping of Lang Lang
This much we know to be true: Lang Lang is an unusually gifted young pianist. Also undeniably true is that Lang Lang was considerably overhyped by a classical marketing machine desperate to find the next Joshua Bell or Yo-Yo Ma to make up for the considerable losses the industry has been taking. But the backlash against the Lang Lang hype seemed to crystallize remarkably quickly last fall, in the wake of the pianist’s Carnegie Hall recital, and David Patrick Stearns is a bit suspicious of the motives of his detractors. Could Lang Lang’s race have been a factor? Or is it simply that he doesn’t fit into any of the pre-fab pigeonholes that music writers have set aside for hot young soloists?
Preserving The (Recent) Past
The future of the preservationist movement may be evident in a new trend which has seen several relatively “young” and unspectacular buildings saved from the wrecking ball by activists looking to preserve a piece of America’s architectural heritage. “Good contemporary architecture, always a precious resource, is often a victim of the rush to replace. Too new to benefit from the power of nostalgia but already old enough to look dated and shabby, buildings become especially vulnerable when they reach their mid-20s.” The trick, of course, is determining which examples of recent architecture are truly worth fighting for, but that anyone is fighting for them at all is an important step.