“A top Smithsonian official has resigned after he destroyed records from a key Smithsonian Board of Regents meeting. James M. Hobbins, 64, executive assistant to the secretary of the Smithsonian, has acknowledged destroying transcripts from a meeting in January when regents discussed then-Secretary Lawrence M. Small’s compensation, housing allowance and travel expenses.” Hobbins had been with the Smithsonian for forty years.
Tag: 08.08.07
Canada’s Arts Minister To Be Replaced?
The gossip in Ottawa is that Canadian Culture Minister Bev Oda could be on her way out as part of a cabinet shakeup in the Harper government. Martin Knelman says that Oda wouldn’t be much missed by Toronto’s arts community. “Oda has not convinced a lot of people that she is passionately devoted to strengthening the arts, or that she thinks a creative explosion could lead the way to helping Canada achieve greatness in the 21st century.”
MP3s: The Fast Food Of Music?
Is the age of the MP3 ruining our appreciation of good-quality recorded sound? Consider: the average MP3 file contains only 10% of the sound actually recorded on the original CD it came from. That CD, in turn, contains less than half of what engineers captured on-site when the recording was made. “Compressed MP3s represent a minuscule fraction of the actual recording. For purists, it’s the dark ages of recorded sound.”
Grey Gardens/Gonda Gossip Gets Goofier
Theatre writer and Broadway scourge Michael Riedel has been catching some flak from Grey Gardens insiders ever since he penned a column ridiculing the unusual (some would say incompetent) behavior of the show’s billionaire patrons, Kelly and Lou Gonda. “Their experience with Grey Gardens has not been a happy one and that they’re shocked at how treacherous and nasty Broadway can be.” Riedel, of course, is happy to share some more juicy Gonda tidbits in response to the backlash.
If You’re Scoring At Home, Stop
Oscar voters will no longer be allowed to receive CD copies of the soundtracks to movies nominated for best score or best original song. “The academy’s board of governors took the action amid increasing concern that the flood of ‘for your consideration’ CDs sent by studios and other distributors make it tempting for its members to evaluate the music on their home stereo systems and car CD players, and not in context with the films.”
Divvying Up The Digital Pie
The battle between Hollywood writers and producers over digital distribution is showing no signs of abating. “The tenor of the contract negotiations has been relatively civil so far, despite the writers’ discomfort with the producers’ initial residuals rollback proposal three weeks ago. But the rhetoric is heating up.”
Toronto To Unveil Major Studio Development
“Toronto will continue to try to wrest back its title as media-production centre of Canada today when Mayor David Miller announces details of the next phase in the development of North America’s largest studio and media-facilities cluster outside Los Angeles… The highlight of today’s announcement will be the unveiling of a condo-hotel-office building by maverick British architect Will Alsop, based in part on an ill-fated project known as the Cloud, which he originally designed for Liverpool.”
Art At The Presidio
San Francisco may be getting a new contemporary art museum, courtesy of the billionaire couple who founded The Gap. “The museum would be built from scratch on one of the city’s most recognizable pieces of property: the Presidio, the scenic former military base turned national park,” and would house “an impressive collection that includes pieces from the likes of Chuck Close, Richard Serra and Alexander Calder.”
Presidio Museum Could Bring Cachet To SF
How important could San Francisco’s new contemporary art museum become? Well, consider the collection it’s being built to house. “Containing more than a thousand works, the Fisher collection ranks among the finest of its kind in the world. In today’s overheated art economy, its value at auction might break the billion-dollar mark… But the money tells the less significant half of the story. The Fisher collection contains numerous things – early works by Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Agnes Martin, for example – unobtainable at any price because comparable pieces reside only in museums.”
Pay Your Admission, Then Entertain Yourself
An experimental play running at the Edinburgh Fringe probes the question of whether you can have theatre without actors. “Only two people at a time can participate in this work (there is no other audience; so much for the producer’s fantasy). It requires the audience-members-turned-actors to follow a recorded script and essentially perform for one another. The show, which makes the point quite creatively that every conversation is a performance, opened in London in February and has been performed in Portugal, Argentina, Germany, Norway, Italy and Minneapolis.”