A US Senate subcommittee will investigate the tactics of the Recording Industry Association of America’s to go after music downloaders. The committe will “look at not just the scope of that campaign but also the dangers that downloaders face by making their personal information available to others. Senator Norm Coleman said he would review legislation that would expand criminal penalties for downloading music.”
Tag: 08.15.03
Network Failures Are For Arts Too
Network failures don’t occur just in electrical power grids, writes Andrew Taylor. “Just think of the network of organizations, funders, and associations that create, present, support, and deliver the arts across America. These organizations and individuals are mostly running at over-capacity (long hours, low pay, bad computers, etc.). They are more interconnected than they know. Many are showing signs of burning out. And most of the generators that kept them going are cutting back or cutting out (state arts agencies, national foundations, individual donors, earned income, volunteer labor, etc.).”
Searching For Older Women
Movie roles for older women are almost non-existant. A new documentary explores the problem. “There’s more dignity in aging in France and England and Europe. You see many more women having better careers in their 50s and 60s. Here it’s Gene Hackman, Al Pacino, Sean Connery. Name three women of that age that are still working.”
Korean Movies Make Inroads On Korean Audiences
Korean cinema is making a comeback with Korean audiences. “Last month, 45.9 percent of all moviegoers went to see Korean movies. This level is an all-time high for the month of July since the government removed the restrictions on foreign movie imports in 1985.”
Getting Creative About Earning Money
Faced with a downturn in government funding for the arts, arts organizations are getting more creative in their fundraising. “On a national level, nonprofit entrepreneurship can be a big business. But wave of the future or not, entrepreneurship is hardly foolproof. Where it is possible to make money, it is almost always possible to lose it.”
Merce Cunningham – Adventures In Radiohead Land
Merce Cunningham has always been an experimenter, willing to try new things. “So it’s no surprise that he has chosen experimental rock bands, Radiohead from Britain and Iceland’s Sigur Rós, to co-create the score for his next work, ‘Split Sides,’ premièring in October at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.”
Orchestra Joke Has Audience Running For The Exits
The audience for a Sydney Symphony concert was clapping between every movement of a Tchaikovsky symphony. As a joke, the conductor also began applauding, then bade the orchestra rise for a bow. “But rather than creating an embarrassed silence for Tchaikovsky’s tragic finale, the cheers swelled, the bravos grew, some took their coats and ran for trains, and it looked for a moment as though Tchaikovsky’s most tragic work had become his most optimistic, its hidden program, of which he spoke but which he never revealed, rewritten with a happy ending…”
Kirk Varnedoe, 57
Former Museum of Modern Art curator Kirk Varnedoe has died at the age of 57. “Though he was an important historian of modern art from early on, and went on to public prominence as the top curator at the Museum of Modern Art, he never had much of the delicate aesthete about him. Kirk’s athletic, virile manner made him an oddity in the art world, and less than a favorite of a few of its inhabitants. His forceful surface also contradicted the delicately subtle tenor of his work and thought.”
Lev Kerbel, 85
“Lev Kerbel, one of the premier sculptors of Socialist realist works whose statues of Lenin once graced city squares across the Eastern bloc, has died, NTV television reported Thursday. He was 85.”
LA’s Theatre Entrepreneurs
A couple of California investors sink millions of their own money into building their own new theatres in Los Angeles. The question is why?