Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin is expected to name a new minister overseeing culture this week. His last appointment to the Heritage Ministry job had no background in the arts. “The hope is that this time around, Martin will, in the words of the Canadian Conference of the Arts, ‘appoint a minister . . . with knowledge of, and experience in the arts and cultural sector’.”
Tag: 07.12.04
Exhibiting For All The Marbles
Unsuccessful at convincing the British Museum to return the Parthenon Marbles, the Greek government is staging an exhibition at the Parthenon to run while the Olympics are in Athens in August. “The intention of the exhibit will be to show the world our case, that we would like to unite the pieces of the frieze and the statues. Now we think the Olympics will be a chance to get the world interested, to put the pressure on the British to finally return these important pieces of our heritage.”
Actors Contract Talks Break Down
Negotiations between Broadway producers and the actors union Equity broke down over the weekend. “No new negotiations are scheduled but Broadway and touring shows were not disrupted because the guild has kept its members working throughout the past few weeks of tense negotiations.”
US Music Dominates UK
For the first time, last year American music has outsold UK music in the UK.”American artists sold 45.4% of albums compared with the UK’s 42.3%, the British Phonographic Industry said. The BPI said the figures could be explained by huge-selling albums by US singers Justin Timberlake and Norah Jones – against scant UK competition.”
Dump The MP3
Is it time to dump the MP3 format for music? “In order to keep file sizes down MP3 encoding loses a lot of data, a lot more than modern formats, and this shows in the quality of the listening experience. The way it compresses files and plays them back means that the music too often sounds awful on anything but tinny laptop speakers or cheap earphones. We cannot let some sort of techno-nostalgia get in the way here. There is no reason to defend MP3, no reason why everyone who currently listens to MP3s stored on their hard drive should not move to something significantly better.”
Met Museum Vs. The Neighbors
“The Metrpolitan Museum has long been the jewel in the crown of the Upper East Side, a sprawling wedding cake of a building celebrating the marriage of art and money. In the past few years, however, some of the museum’s neighbors have begun to see the Metropolitan less as a refined repository of priceless cultural artifacts than as a tacky tourist attraction of idling school- and sightseeing buses, souvenir sellers, and street performers—far more democratic than Fifth Avenue has ever considered desirable. Then, in 2000, the Met threw down the gauntlet, pushing a plan through the Parks Department that called for a 200,000-square-foot expansion” and the neighbors revolted…
Bucky Gets A Stamp
Fifty years after his patent on the geodesic dome was granted, Buckminster Fuller has been honored by the US Post Office with a commemorative stamp. “The stamp reproduces Boris Artzybasheff’s painting for Time magazine’s June 10, 1964, cover of Fuller — who preferred to be called “Bucky” — and his best-known discoveries and inventions.”
The Text-Message Novel
A Chinese author has written a novel for text-messaging phone. “Qian Fuchang has reduced his novel Outside the Fortress Besieged into 60 chapters of 70 characters each, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported. Described as a steamy tale of illicit love among already married people, the novel will be available exclusively to mobile phone users.”
Juilliard’s New Fundraising Strategy
This week, the Juilliard School, possibly the world’s most famous training ground for classical musicians, will put on a benefit concert featuring… um, Elton John? “The benefit is only one of the renowned music school’s latest fund-raising strategies, part of an effort to find new donors to support a major capital and endowment campaign estimated at around $290 million. The funds will be used to expand the campus and increase the scholarship money available for students.”