“The Minnesota Fringe Festival had another record-breaking year in both ticket revenues and total audience size. The 11-day performing-arts extravaganza, which ended Sunday, sold 44,814 tickets, a slight increase of 200 tickets over last year… There was some speculation within the Fringe community that attendance would dwindle in a year that featured more newcomers and fewer well-known names.” Average attendance per show was down slightly, but Fringe organizers say that’s because, without many big-name blockbusters on the schedule, the audience fanned out more than usual.
Tag: 08.17.06
New Leadership For Chicago Museum
Chicago’s oft-overlooked Jane Addams Hull-House Museum has a new director. “[Lisa Yun] Lee, a native of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., is known to many Chicagoans for her philanthropy… and for founding, with two friends, The Public Square. That organization sponsors debates and dialogues on cultural and political issues, especially social justice.”
Derailing The Track
“In yesterday’s book world, no one except publisher and author — and sometimes not even author — knew how many copies of a book were sold. Sales figures were proprietary. [But today,] when a veteran writer’s agent submits a manuscript to a new publisher, the publisher calls Bookscan to check the writer’s track record – ‘the track’ – to see how many copies of previous books were sold. If the numbers are flat or trending down, the publisher may pass.” And a bad sales record can stick to an author like glue, to the point that many authors are beginning to use pseudonyms in an effort to “fool the track.”
Is Technologically Assisted Art Really Art At All?
Digital photography has been a revelation for those who make their living with a camera. But has technology stripped the art out of the medium? “The advantages of digital are plain enough: easier storage, the ability to upload photos straight to the computer, no need for film, being able to take a mulligan on images you don’t want to keep and, if results are all you require, no need for screwing around in a darkroom. But for ‘making photographs’? For making art? No. It’s like ‘painting’ a picture using your computer. It’s kind of fun to do and what you have when you’re done may be superficially terrific, but unless you’ve actually applied brush to canvas you’re no artist. You are merely a technician with a good eye.”
Get Ready For A Lot More Shameless Plugging
A new report says that product placement in films, TV shows, and even song lyrics may triple by 2010. “The practice, where firms pay to have their products featured in the media, was worth $2.21bn last year… Product placement is common on US television, but it is banned in the UK.” The biggest impetus for the product placement explosion is the increasing prevalence of digital video recorders, which allow viewers to skip through commercial blocks.
The Reluctant Nazi? Perhaps Not.
Daniel Johnson was stunned when he read Gunther Grass’s admission that he served in the Waffen SS during World War II, and following Grass’s subsequent complain that he feels “attacked” in the wake of his confession, Johnson wants to explain his own feeling of betrayal. “You do not need me to tell you that, for a German of your generation, frankness about your activities during the Third Reich is not merely a moral imperative, but a sine qua non for any kind of public role… All the evidence points to you having been not only a fanatical Nazi but a dangerous one too, eager to wear the death’s head insignia of the SS.”
Rushdie: Grass Has Atoned For His Sins
Author Salman Rushdie is defending Gunther Grass’s body of work, saying that the “disappointing” news of Grass’s service to the Third Reich doesn’t diminish his literary accomplishments. “Grass has spent his adult life opposing the ideas he espoused as a child and that in itself is an act of courage, he’s a friend of mine and I don’t intend to change that.”
Put The Books Where People Can Find Them? The Hell You Say!
The New York Public Library is undertaking a major reordering of the materials in its main reading room. “After 95 years as one of the city’s grandest public spaces, the reading room is letting go of the arcane, impenetrable ordering system to which it has clung for generations and replacing it with something a person might actually be able to understand… The [old] system is used only by the New York Public Library. Its greatest drawback is that no one but the system’s librarians really understands it.”
Removing A Physical Bridge To Build A Metaphorical One
New York’s Lincoln Center is undergoing a dramatic renovation, and the public will get a sense of what they’re in for this week when a massive pedestrian bridge above 65th Street is dismantled. The bridge demolition serves as a nice metaphor for the entire project, with planners hoping to “open the institution up to the city, making it seem more welcoming and less elitist both physically and in spirit.”
The 8pm Conundrum
Why are symphony orchestras in so many cities bound and determined to start every evening concert at 8pm? Doesn’t the reality of modern life suggest that concertgoers might want a range of options as to start time? Late-night concerts have been a major success at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York, and early start times have been embraced in some other cities. “The bigger challenge is finding ways for music lovers to fit a concert or opera into a workday with time to spare for dinner.”