“On the occasion of Women’s History Month, Back Stage talked with the heads of several women’s organizations for their spin on the challenges facing women in the arts and media today and to learn what they’re doing about them. A repeated refrain is that while the status of women has improved enormously, there is still a lack of equality in terms of clout and pay. Men continue to outnumber women in positions of power behind the scenes, get better roles on stage and screen, and generally earn more money than their female counterparts of equal competence and experience (at any level above scale).”
Tag: 03.11.05
Tracing CanLit Back To Its Source
Canadian literature has been hot in recent years. But where does this writing come from? Much of it derrives from the lit program at the University of British Columbia. “Sure, there are other schools – the universities of Victoria, New Brunswick and Windsor prominent among them – but UBC was first (founded in 1965 by poet Earle Birney) and it’s earned the kind of cachet that must drive its rivals to distraction. “Indeed, nearly half the graduating class of 2001 finished school with a book contract. Every publishing house, it seemed, needed its own author from the Buchanan Building.”
College Selling Art To Cover Legal Settlement
Facing large legal settlements with students who were sexually assaulted by a former teacher, Upper Canada College is selling millions of dollars worth of art and property. The art will be sold off primarily at public auction over the next few months. “The decision will be difficult for some people, but the art is not crucial to the education of the students here.”
TV Comes To Shangri la
The Himalayan country of Bhutan didn’t get television until 1999. Now its residents are hooked. “Residents of the capital, Thimphu, now say they are glued to the telly for several hours a day. Long-running and popular Indian soap operas beamed from across the border are hot favourites. Thimphu residents animatedly discuss the serials and follow the fortunes of their characters.”
Toon Town – A Studio’s Gotta Have ‘Em
“Virtually all the major studios now have an inhouse facility producing computer-generated (CG) feature films, from Sony’s Imageworks to Fox’s Blue Sky Studios, which created “Robots.” Not surprisingly, the film-release calender for 2005 is filling up with CG films. Dreamworks has “Madagascar,” a tale of zoo animals surviving in the wild, due out Memorial Day weekend. “Chicken Little,” the first film to hatch from Disney’s new CG studios, arrives in November. But some observers wonder how long Hollywood can sustain the CG-film gold rush.”
Is There A Better Case To Be Made For The Arts?: The Home Stretch
What do Bill Ivey, Midori, Robert L. Lynch, Glenn Lowry, Ben Cameron, Andrew Taylor, Joli Jensen, Jim Kelly, Adrian Ellis, Phil Kennicott and Russell Willis Taylor have in common? They’re taking part in a week-long blog debate on ArtsJournal about the value of the arts: “Let’s paint a picture of what we think a vibrant cultural system should look like, and then advocate on behalf of policies that take us there. In my experience, arts advocates tend to ask for “more,” rather than for a specific outcome. If we want a drawing teacher in every fourth grade classroom, let’s talk that way. I think policy leaders and funders like to know exactly what will happen if they support a program. The challenge, of course, is that once we get where we say we want to go, we have to be willing to stop, and not ask for more…That’s been hard for us to do.”
Is The Science Boom Busting?
In the 1990s, books about science were hot. “With the boom, inevitably, there came a torrent of rubbish. The stylistic innovations of the trendsetters soon became, in the hands of the disciples, stale recipes, recycled over and over in formulaic and uninspiring ways. Even the titles began to seem repetitive: The Panda’s Thumb, Galileo’s Finger, Einstein’s Brain … What a pity nobody had the chutzpah to write a book about Newton’s penis. A decade and a half later, there are signs that the popular science boom is running out of steam.”
The Disfunctional ICA
London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts has a new director. But “what a strange, dysfunctional institution the ICA is. Part cultural department store, part youth club (where the vicar is the DJ), part Kunsthalle, part computer shack, part bar and restaurant … But this is the problem: there are too many parts, too many players, too many conflicting ambitions and drives, everyone pulling in a different direction amid perennial resentments. It is a situation where identity crisis is the norm.”
Auckland Orchestra Gets Reprieve
Auckland’s City Council has approved an emergency $200,000 “top-up” for the budget of the Auckland Philaharmonia. “The Government arts funding agency approved a six-month operational deficit budget until June 30, 2005, “on the basis that the philharmonia’s structure would be reformed and other funding sources were secured, especially from territorial local authorities.” The orchestra recently declared it would be unable to operate past June without help, and negotiations with local governments have ensued.
Music Of The People, By The People, And For The People
Artist/musician Christopher Marclay went around Berlin posting music staff paper and inviting people to write on it. “My aim was to create a collective score made by the people of Berlin,” he says. “Did many people actually write music? “Yes, surprisingly, perhaps because Berliners are so cultured musically. Of the 800 photographs of these posters I made a selection of 150, which make up the ‘score’.” Since then the score has been interpreted in vastly different ways, which is natural enough, given that the mixture of squiggles, images, notes and words is hardly precise.”