“Control is the key word in both opera and the ‘bad girls’ celebrity narrative. The contemporary nunnery is rehab, the house of penitent women, where lost girls reclaim their virtue and self-control.”
Tag: 03.15.07
Report: Why London Is Passing New York In Culture
“London, says the report, is becoming more attractive to companies because of the US’s stricter immigration policies. It also says the US regulatory framework is ‘a thicket of complicated rules’ and pinpoints the 2002 Sabanes-Oxley Act (which tightened up accounting practices in the States) and a litigious environment as further discouraging companies setting up in the US. The result of this is that hedge fund assets in the UK are growing at 63% annually, compared to just 13% in the US.”
2006’s Most-Popular Museum Shows
The Art Newspaper’s annual list. “For the third year, exhibitions in Tokyo top the list. The show with the highest daily attendance last year was “The Price Collection: Jakuchu and the Age of Imagination” at the Tokyo National Museum in its enormous Heisei wing. It had 6,446 daily visitors: huge, although not as high as the 9,436 the museum averaged in 2005 for its “Hokusai” show. The second most visited show was also in Tokyo, “Leonard Foujita” at the National Museum of Modern Art (6,324 a day).”
One Play, Two Theatres, One City (Uh Oh)
Two Seattle theaters–the “Seattle Rep (budget $9.6 million) and ArtsWest (budget $794,000)–both announced they would be doing I Am My Own Wife in May of 2008. Both were surprised by the other’s announcement–having two productions of the same play in the same season just ain’t done.” So what to do…
The Aussie Stereotype
“Increasingly, British views of Australia – especially as expressed by the middle-class commentariat – take as their starting point the idea that Down Under symbolises all that is cultureless, naive and vulgar.”
Vermont In Need Of Arts Money
Arts funding in Vermont is woefully inadequate says arts supporters. So it’s time for a bosst in the state arts budget. “According to the Arts Council, more than half of Vermont’s arts organizations have operated at a deficit for the past three years. During that time, the state’s general fund has increased by 30 percent while support to the Arts Council has increased just 3 percent.”
American Orchestras Diversify (Sort Of)
“A couple of generations ago, symphony orchestras were all-male, lily-white clubs. Today, women make up 46 percent of orchestra musicians and nonwhites 14 percent, according to a survey by the American Symphony Orchestra League. But women do far better getting positions in smaller, part-time ensembles, where they outnumber men (they constitute 67 percent of the Long Island Philharmonic, for instance) than they do in the most prestigious orchestras, where they constitute just over a third of the players.”
Women Drive UK Theatre Innovation
“Women who are often in the forefront of experiments in form and style in British theatre. For many women, it is not just what you say but how you say it that matters. Yet it still seems to be the case that when women experiment in form they are more likely to be shot down by critics and told that they don’t know how to structure a play properly.”
Where Is Japan In The New Art Market?
“Here is the scorecard for the recent contemporary art auctions around the world: New York, $240 million; London, $229 million; Hong Kong, $67 million; Tokyo, $1.1 million. How can this be? Japan, the world’s second-biggest economy, enjoying its longest expansion in six decades, has been left out of the current art market boom.”
Vandals Cover Up Nudes In Oslo Park
“Overnight, an unknown person or group covered up the breasts, genitals and buttocks of the statues decorating the city’s Vigeland Sculpture Park. Black bars were found Thursday morning censoring the nude scultptures in Oslo’s Vigeland Sculpture Park. A note left behind, purportedly to explain the action, criticized newspapers for showing too much nudity and said that this did not have to extend to the park as well.”