“Violence no longer informs me. It no longer has the power to teach. It is a one-note song I’ve heard so many times it has lost its power to stun or impress or delve deep. It now merely tears at the fabric of the soul, punches holes in the anima, scrapes its knuckles on the pavement of hate, and you can shrug and roll your eyes and go watch The Hills Have Eyes or Saw II or even play some hi-res shockingly ultraviolent video game and enjoy the brutal escapism and wallow in the bloodshed while pretending it’s not slowly, quietly blackening your world view like a smoker sucking down another carton of Marlboro Reds, but deep down, where the meanings are, I think maybe, just maybe, you might be seriously mistaken.”
Tag: 03.15.06
Cleveland Museum To Add Condos?
“The Cleveland Institute of Art may soon build the most highly visible address for the wealthy in Cleveland since the demise of Millionaires’ Row in the early 20th century. The art institute’s board is thinking seriously about replacing an aging, outmoded classroom building opposite the Cleveland Museum of Art with a luxury condominium tower. The building would overlook the museum and the Case Western Reserve University campus, making it one of the most desirable addresses in the region… The condominium tower project, which could also include a ground-floor art gallery or other cultural facility, could generate income to help pay for college operations.”
Musical Chairs Not So Popular In Pittsburgh
If you’re an orchestra looking for a quick and easy way to incense your season ticketholders, the Pittsburgh Symphony has a surefire technique for you: make them switch seat locations. A new set of ticket packages are forcing the orchestra to relocate 772 of its 9,650 total subscribers, and some are objecting, loudly. “Complicating things further, the PSO asks its subscribers to give to its annual fund-raising campaigns shortly before asking for ticket renewals.”
Spinning Controversy Into Broad Discussion
A new 100-foot sculpture by Jonathan Borofsky is prompting controversy at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University, not for what it is, but for where it’s going. “Where and even if it should be installed has been widely debated on campus, ever since the university announced its intention to plant it at the intersection of the Hornbostel Mall and the Cut, the campus’s two rectangular green spaces, by building a concrete pad there.” The controversy has led CMU to create a new public art committee which includes student input and will create and monitor the school’s new public art policy.
Sopranos Ratings Way Down
To judge by the slobbering devotion displayed by most daily newspapers these days, you’d think that The Sopranos was more or less the only program left on television. (Okay, they also admit to the existence of Desperate Housewives.) And certainly, the New Jersey mob drama has built up quite the following over its five seasons. So it had to come as a shock to HBO (and all those adoring critics) when the premiere episode of the show’s final season lost fully 1/4 of its audience from last season.
Is It A Marketing Problem, Or A Quality Issue?
Hollywood is considering a major promotional campaign designed to get the public off the couch and into movie theaters on a far more regular basis. The campaign, which would be patterned after the highly successful “Got Milk?” and “Pork – The Other White Meat” campaigns, would be the film industry’s new hope for reversing the slide in box office receipts. However, at an annual conference, theater owners objected to the strategy, saying that the problem of slumping attendance stems from Hollywood’s insistence on making and marketing terrible movies.
Demigod Needed: Must Enjoy Chaos
“Wanted: an educational visionary with the political skills of a senator and the diplomatic polish of a secretary of state. The successful candidate will be a scholar of national prominence, a charismatic speaker, a successful fundraiser. Bold leadership required; affable personality preferred. The post is university president — a job where the spotlight is bright, stakes are enormous and, some say, expectations are impossible to meet.”
When Downsizing Isn’t A Dirty Word
As the Cincinnati Symphony prepares to announce its 2006-07 season, music director Paavo Järvi is turning up the heat on one of the orchestra’s most pressing issues – its concert hall. “With 3,516 seats, it’s the largest concert hall in the U.S., and despite having an audience any orchestra in the country would be proud to own (the CSO has more long-term subscribers than any U.S. orchestra), the cavernous hall swallows them up… There has been considerable speculation about ‘downsizing’ Music Hall, which was never intended as a concert hall in the first place, the CSO having left its home in Emery Theatre in 1936 to give Music Hall an anchor tenant.”
Safire As Arts Champion
Americans for the Arts has pundit William Safire deliver its annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on the arts. “The surprise here is not that Safire, the self-proclaimed right-winger, has a mainstream view; rather it’s that large policy organizations, like Americans for the Arts, have gravitated so far away from the “left” position.”
The Barrier To Risky Theatre?
“Today’s playwrights are a motivated, opinionated, highly intelligent, politically aware group of angry young men and women. It’s not that we don’t want to write big, demanding plays. It’s that we’re so often frustrated in our ambitions. And why? One reason comes up time and again: money.”