03.13.00 – ArtsJournal Wayback

AT THE RISK OF BEING CYNICAL

Artist defends his controversial work for Whitney Biennial. “What I’m very upset about is the attempt to dictate to museums what they show, and the statements made by politicians in Washington that have curtailed the freedom of the National Endowment for the Arts. The attention to those issues is deflected by the spin of my supposedly having trivialized the Holocaust.” – New York Times

FAMILY FEUD: Members of the Whitney family line up against one another over controversial Hans Haacke work for the Whitney Biennial. – BBC

GROSS? YES GROSS

San Francisco art student’s sex-act performance deserved a F for unoriginality. But “what is going on here is part of a long and rich tradition, here recapitulated more as a whimper than as a bang. Shocking the bourgeoisie has been a goal of Western artists for the past 150 years. When Edouard Manet painted a cheeky prostitute who boldly looked back at the presumed male viewer as a decidedly non-classical nude, he helped set off an artistic challenge to shock the viewer that has escalated with every subsequent generation. But after more than a century and a half, virtually everything has been done before.” – San Francisco Examiner

SPERM SENSE

Do your sperm spend more time in museums than you do? DNA maps unlock the self and become fodder for art. – Seattle Post-Intelligencer

SONG OF FREEDOM

In the 1970’s a group of musicians in Chile set the revolution to music by forming the New Song movement – a mix of folk music, contemporary protest song, popular poetry and added Andean pan pipes, flutes and the charango, a tiny mandolin-style guitar. The Pinochet regime quickly banned all instruments associated with the movement, and one singer was murdered. Pinochet’s return to Chile has brought fear of oppression, causing musicians to raise their instruments again in protest. – The Scotsman

IT’S ALL A GAME

Computer animation is great, but the programs are expensive for filmmakers. So some movie makers have turned to the engines that drive computer games to render Hollywood-quality animation at a fraction of the price. – Wired 03/13/00

SO WHO NEEDS A PUBLISHER?

Authors have been publishing their books on the internet for some time. But when Stephen King hits the web with his latest, bypassing the traditional book process, the publishing industry gets nervous. – Washington Post

AT WIT’S END

Margaret Edson won a Pulitzer for her first play “Wit.” But while the enormous attention the play has received is gratifying, she says, she has no plans to write another. – Philadelphia Inquirer

SO WHAT IF IT MAKES MONEY

Does Toronto have a theater crisis? The city is currently stuck with a glut of live-performance venues, with little or nothing to fill them and too few entrepreneurs willing to risk production dollars. The Canadian Opera Company is trying to raise $130 million to move out of its current home at the Hummingbird Center and build a new theater. Some want to tear the Hummingbird down. Others want to spend $30 million on fixing it up. What fuels the indignation of the Hummingbird’s management is that the 3,200-seat behemoth is actually generating a profit. (Indeed, it’s the only city-owned venue, including the Toronto Zoo, that’s in the black.) – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

TEAR ‘ER DOWN

The Hummingbird Centre? There are better acoustics in a pinball arcade. Better sight lines in a football stadium. The word “albatross” comes to mind. – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

FROM SILVER SCREEN TO STAGE

Musicals may not be popular fare at the movies, but increasingly, stage musicals are being made out of movie themes. – Variety