Seattle’s ACT theatre said earlier this year it needed to raise $1.5 million by April 15 or it would go out of business. No word as of Wednesday if the goal had been met, but as of Monday (03/14) “a total of $987,000 had been raised to date, approximately two-thirds the overall goal. The great bulk of that sum has come from a small group of targeted individuals, including ‘board members, past supporters, general public subscribers, and people who know us,’ and donations have ranged from $5,000 to $100,000.”
Tag: 04.14.03
Why Arts Don’t Play On TV
Why don’t the arts find more of an audience on TV? It’s because they’re ghettoized in “high art” packaging, says one BBC producer. “Hollywood and the advertising industry have succeeded in adapting music, verse and dance to popular taste where television has so far failed.”
SAG And AFTRA Union Leaders Vote To Merge
Directors of America’s two main actors unions have coted to merge. “Aimed at providing more negotiating muscle, saving money and ending jurisdiction squabbles, the plan would fold the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists into the new Alliance of International Media Artists. Sunday’s vote by SAG and AFTRA directors turns the issue over to members, who are expected to vote by this summer. Although the strong support by directors bodes well for the plan, at least 60% of the members still must OK it.”
Debating NY Arts Cuts
New York Gov. George Pataki proposes cutting the state’s arts budget as part of a series of cuts of the state budget. “He wants to trim the grants to arts organizations by 15 percent, from about $44.4 million to $37.8 million. But critics want far deeper cuts. The grants totaled more than $50 million a decade ago but have ebbed and flowed with the state’s economy. New York spent more than any other state on the arts last year, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.”
US Says It Will Help “Restore” Baghdad Museum
The United States says it will help restore the Iraq National Museum. “Secretary of State Colin Powell said the Baghdad museum was ‘one of the great museums in the world’ and that the US would take a leading role in restoring it. Coalition forces were criticised for not protecting the institution, which housed many treasures from ‘the cradle of civilisation’, when it was ransacked on Friday. But critics say it’s too late. ‘And it’s gone, and it’s lost. If Marines had started before, none of this would have happened. It’s too late. It’s no use. It’s no use’.”
See pictures of damage to the museum here
Hughes Pleads Guilty In Car Crash
Art critic Robert Hughes has admitted guilt in the car accident he caused in Australia in 1999. “A Perth court fined him A$2,500 (£960, $1,500) after he pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm. Prosecutors said Hughes was driving on the wrong side of the road when the crash happened. But he said he does not remember anything about the head-on accident 120 km (75 miles) south of Broome.”
Investing In Your Celebrity…
A British television show has created a stockmarket out of celebrities. Viewers “give real celebrities a ‘share price’ and ‘invest’ in them by predicting whether their ‘stock’ will rise or fall. ‘Celebdaq’ (its awkward name stems from Nasdaq) was created for the British Broadcasting Corp. last summer as a Web site, but this year it has also become a controversial Friday night TV show on the new digital channel BBC3, which is targeting an audience aged 25 to 34. The show has the look of a financial news channel. The stock value of some 250 celebrities – actors, musicians, sportsmen and the famous-for-being-famous – crawls across the bottom of the screen like tickertape. Stars have their own abbreviations: SALHAY is Salma Hayek, SANBUL is Sandra Bullock.”
Kids Book – Is Everything Fair Game?
It used to be that children’s books were filled with niceness. It’s different now: “With the exception of fantasy, most books for older children eagerly embrace ‘unsuitable’ subjects: mental illness, poverty, crime, sex and drugs. Perhaps childhood is disappearing. When most information, as well as entertainment, came from the printed word, it was possible to isolate what children read from the fare on offer for adults. This came to mean the sheltering of children from adult secrets, particularly sexual secrets. The growth of radio, television and the internet obviously means that this isolation is now at an end; all children now have access to information that would have been automatically denied them as little as 20 years ago.”
Women Composers Gather In Seoul
Last week Seoul, South Korea, hosted the largest-ever gatherin of women composers from around Asia. Some “300 composers and musicians from 22 different countries presented research, participated in panel discussions, and performed 69 works in nine venues scattered around Seoul…”
Defending American Expressionism
“For decades, American Expressionism has been denigrated, if not ignored. Postwar conservative art critics and politicians derided the work as art by ‘Reds and fellow travelers.’ Contemporary critics are no kinder.” But Bram Dijkstra says this is grossly unfair, and he’s making a case for it in a new book on the subject. “This is not just art with a social content, it is great art with a social content.”