The head of PBS is firing back at the FCC over the agency’s new no-tolerance policy governing profanity on television, saying that it is “important for public broadcasting not to just roll over, but to be very clear that in order to tell some stories, we may need to use language that, at the moment, the FCC is not sure that they feel is appropriate for broadcast television.” PBS is worried that it will have to cut or digitally obscure certain words in the latest Ken Burns documentary, focusing on World War II, in order to avoid heavy FCC fines.
Tag: 07.27.06
Make Or Break Time For Toronto Arts Center
Toronto’s Hummingbird Centre for the Performing Arts, reeling from the recent departures of its two resident companies, is moving to rebrand itself as “a multipurpose, multicultural facility.” But more than a repurposing will be necessary to keep the center humming: a new business plan recently approved by Toronto’s city council compels Hummingbird to raise $60 million in the next year, or face becoming a tenant of the real estate company that’s spearheading the center’s ongoing expansion project.
Curator, Know Thy Collection!
Canada’s national archives recently came tantalizingly close to acquiring a $200,000 map of the country dating from the mid-17th century. What stopped the sale? Turns out the archive already had one. How could such an embarrassing slip-up have occurred? Well, it’s complicated, but part of the problem may be that the archive “has shifted cultures, from one based on specialized curators who knew their collections in depth, to a more open, democratized strategy.”
Still Museum Names Design Finalists
Colorado’s Clyfford Still Museum has named five prominent architectural firms as finalists in the race to design the museum’s 30,000-square foot headquarters. When completed, the privately funded museum will house 2,100 of Still’s works, donated to the city of Denver by the artist’s widow. A final decision on the architecture is expected in early November.
Spending Money To Raise Money
“Seven Chicago grantmakers have teamed up to help small arts groups develop the business side of their operations. The group has pooled more than $600,000 to create the Arts Work Fund for Organization Development. It is aimed at area arts and cultural non-profits that have been around at least three years and have operating revenues of less than $1 million.”
Ideas, Ownership, And Endless, Endless Lawsuits
Issues of intellectual property in the film business are always tricky, particularly when one writer accuses another of stealing an idea or a movie plot, an accusation that can be difficult to prove legally. But claims of idea theft are way up in Hollywood these days, and a lot of the blame (or credit) for the uptick can be laid at the feet of a single lawyer, who has “spent the last two years capitalizing on having won a federal appeals court decision that makes it easier for writers who pitch an idea or circulate a script to make a claim of theft stick.”
Genesis Of The Anguished Artist
“When exactly did artists decide that they were different from ordinary mortals, that in all likelihood they were superior to the rest of us? Or, viewed differently, when were they granted such a privileged status? When did Western societies start venerating them as sensitive, misunderstood geniuses?” A new book suggests that the answer lies somewhere in the tumultuous 19th century…
Even If You Return It, It’s Still Stealing
The former president of the Buffalo local of the American Federation of Musicians has pled guilty to embezzling $74,000 from the musicians he purported to represent. Mark Jones “charged items on the local union’s credit card, then charged the same items to the parent union and pocketed the money… Jones repaid $21,000 of the amount he had taken before the investigation began, and has since repaid nearly all the rest, according to the United States Attorney’s office.”
Rochester Phil Rakes In The Cash
Upstate New York’s Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra has set an in-house fundraising record for the second year in a row, taking in nearly $2.2 million for the 2006 fiscal year. “At a time when many orchestras in the country are posting deficits, the RPO, flush from its fundraising success, made another kind of record this week, a recording of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F.”
Study: Arts Ed Helps Students Learn
A study released by the Guggenheim Museum suggests that arts education helps students learn in other subjects. “The study found that students in the program performed better in six categories of literacy and critical thinking skills — including thorough description, hypothesizing and reasoning — than did students who were not in the program.”