“The conspicuous consumption that has fuelled the art market is umbilically linked to the conspicuous philanthropy that has fuelled much of the growth in contemporary art museums throughout the US, the Middle East, South East Asia and Europe. These institutions have been significant beneficiaries of the growing and, to many, morally indefensible disparities of wealth throughout the world. It has left them heavily reliant on, and overly attuned and attentive to, a narrow constituency whose long-term appetite or capacity for support is highly questionable.”
Tag: 03.11.09
Britain Continues Ban On TV Product Placement
Product placement will remain banned on UK television, after the government ruled there is a “lack of evidence of economic benefits” for allowing it.
Assembly-Line Theatre – How American Theatre Is Dominated
“The business of theatre educators is to export a ‘quality product’ that will be accepted by New York headquarters. Once there, if the product is ‘lucky,’ it is plucked from the big conveyor belt and shipped to the specific theatre that needs that particular product, wherever those theatres are. Once that product is plucked and successfully consumed at its final destination, the call is communicated back to the student’s originating theatre department to create another one like him or her.”
London’s Quest For A Theatre Museum
“Vienna has a theatre museum. Warsaw has one. So do Ljubljana, Oslo, Helsinki, St Petersburg. Brisbane, Australia, for heaven’s sake, has one. But London, where the whole world comes to get its theatre fix, has been left without a showcase for its 400-year heritage of show business. How myopic is that?”
Britain’s Channel 4 Casts Series With Disabled Actors
“The new series is called Cast Offs and follows six characters – each played by an actor with a different disability – who are left to fend for themselves for a year on a remote island. Although the series is entirely fictional, Channel 4 has said that it will be filmed in a mock-documentary style.”
Edinburgh’s Purple-Cow-Shaped Theatre Heads To London
“Udderbelly, the 400-seat, giant upside-down purple cow that has been a popular feature of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe since 2006, is to make its London debut this summer when it will play host to a new arts festival on the South Bank.” The venue, in partnership with the Southbank Centre, will offer an eight-week season of plays, music and children’s shows.
Police Want 29 More Charges Against Fairey
“Returning to Boston to face two graffiti charges, the Los Angeles-based artist who created the controversial ‘Hope’ poster of Barack Obama may be facing a deluge of new charges. During a closed-door hearing yesterday in Brighton District Court, Boston police applied for two additional vandalism charges against Shepard Fairey, and a detective working the case indicated that police plan to seek 29 more charges in Roxbury district and Boston municipal courts.”
Chastened Academy May Rejoin Museum Directors Assn.
“Three months after the Association of Art Museum Directors imposed severe sanctions on the National Academy Museum for selling two important Hudson River School paintings to pay bills, the two institutions issued a joint statement on Wednesday signaling that a compromise was taking shape. The statement said they had made progress towards helping the academy ‘regain its footing as a member in good standing of the American art museum community.'”
New York Drops Plan For Theatre Ticket Tax
“Legiters can breathe a sigh of relief now that New York state leaders have announced that $1.3 billion in proposed tax increases will be dropped from consideration — including a potential levy on live theater. The 4% state tax on legit tickets … had raised concerns in the legit industry that the additional charges would serve to further dissuade consumers from buying theater tickets, prices of which are already consistently on the rise.”
Turnabout As Fair Play: AP Countersues Shepard Fairey Over Obama Image
When the Associated Press demanded credit and compensation for use of the image of Barack Obama in Shepard Fairey’s iconic “Hope” poster (which the artist based on an AP photo), he filed a prophylactic suit against the news agency, arguing that he was protected under the Fair Use Doctrine. “Today, the AP returned the favor, filing an answer and a countersuit in the U.S. District Court.”