Tag: 04.27.05

A Tipping Point In A Culture Crisis?

The announcement that the New York Public Library is selling off art to finance an endowment is a disgrace. “These are bad times for high culture at the cash register. Seats aren’t being filled, turnstiles aren’t whirling. Cultural institutions are having to scramble. That this is happening at a moment when there’s more wealth around than at any time, in any one single place, in history suggests that a tipping point has been reached, that the dumbing-down epitomized by the Styles section of The Times, or the failure of our great universities to educate, or what works and what doesn’t on Broadway or at your local multiplex, has finally achieved implosive velocity. It suggests that there’s more to what’s happening than a simple post-9/11 fall-off in tourism, that some kind of sea change is in the works.”

Oz Wins Goethe

Israeli writer Amos Oz has been awarded Germany’s top cultural prize, the Goethe Prize for culture. “Oz, a peace activist, was honoured for his literary work and impressive moral responsibility, according to Petra Roth, mayor of Frankfurt and president of the jury awarding the prize.”

Playwright To Critic: Get A Clue!

Playwright David Eldridge attacks critic Michael Billington’s complaint that contemporary plays are lacking in imagination and too tied to a 90-minute formula. “For the most part Billington’s thesis is shot through with an ignorance of the modern playwriting culture that is breathtaking for someone who goes to the theatre as much as he does, and belies a backward-looking agenda that bears as little relevance to a 21st-century theatre as John Major’s whimsical fantasy of re-creating the 1950s with warm beer and cricket on the village green.”

Bollywood’s Legit Financing In Peril

Bollywood, home to the world’s biggest movie industry has long had a shady connection to organized crime. But four years ago “top conglomerates run by India’s wealthiest families plunged into film financing when the Indian government declared Bollywood a bona fide industry. A series of flops and millions of lost dollars later, however, and the more respectable investors are running scared, leaving Bollywood’s hopes of putting its murky past behind in tatters.”

Researchers: TV Screen Clutter Impedes Understanding

“In the past few years, television stations have begun to reformat their screen presentations to include scrolling screens, sports scores, stock prices and current weather news. These visual elements are all designed to give viewers what they want when they want it. However, Kansas State University researchers say that it’s not working. ‘Our conclusion has been that if you want people to understand the news better, then get that stuff off the screen. Clean it up and get it off because it is simply making it more difficult for people to understand what the anchor is saying. We discovered that when you have all of this stuff on the screen, people tend to remember about 10 percent fewer facts than when you don’t have it on the screen.”

Nine Out Of Ten Want Mandatory Arts Ed In Schools

Nine of ten respondents to a survey in California believe that arts should be a mandatory subject in public schools. “Arts education has been on the decline in public schools for decades because funding has not kept pace with the rising cost of services. The emphasis on language and math instruction has made subjects such as music susceptible to reduction or elimination. Private fundraising has enabled restoration of programs in some, but not all, public schools.”

Is Laocoon A Michelangelo Fake?

The Laocoon is an iconic piece oif art, an ancient wonder. But “an art historian is claiming that the ancient masterpiece – which fascinated not just Michelangelo but Blake, who engraved it, and Napoleon, who seized it – is not what it seems. She says it was carved by Michelangelo himself. Can this be possible and, if so, what would it mean?”

Britain Forgets Its Centennial Composers

1905 proved to be a bumper year for birthing British composers. But you’ll not be hearing much about them this year. “So who’s to blame for centennial neglect? The finger points at craven British orchestras which seldom venture these days from a narrow corridor of safe works. London bands which once begged Lambert to conduct them cannot spare a birthday bouquet. Birmingham, which commissioned a Rawsthorne symphony, will not revive it. The Halle shows no interest in a local hero. Their timidity diminishes the art they exist to serve.”