After two decades of talking, Orlando Florida is working seriously on building a new performing arts center. “A glittering new performing-arts complex in downtown Orlando could draw the best performers from Orlando and around the world and could serve as a uniting force for Central Florida. A poorly planned and supported project could become a giant vacuum, sucking up the Orlando area’s energy and cash.”
Tag: 08.28.05
A Law That Allows Second-Guessing Science
“The five-year-old Data Quality Act is a below-the-radar legislative device that defenders of industry have increasingly relied upon to attack all range of scientific studies whose results or implications they disagree with, from government global warming reports to cancer research using animal subjects. On its face, the act merely seeks to ensure the ‘quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity’ of government information. In practice, as interpreted by the Bush administration, it creates an unprecedented and cumbersome process that saddles agencies with a new workload while empowering businesses to challenge not just government regulations–something they could do anyway–but scientific information that could potentially lead to regulation somewhere down the road.”
TV Rediscovers Long Stories
America’s TV networks have rediscovered the serial drama with stories played out over weeks. “The change is as surprising as it is welcome. After all, viewers have been conditioned for years to expect less and less from TVWith these half-dozen additions to the fall’s prime-time lineup, the networks are acknowledging that, just maybe, audiences are hungering for more drawn-out, more intriguing and, ultimately, more humane storylines.”
A Brand New Getty
Michael Brand has a big promotion in his appointment as the Getty Museum’s new director. “No one, as yet, has a bad word to say about 47-year-old Brand, the likeable and well-regarded Australian who is credited with transforming the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, where he has raised $150 million for capital improvements. But his expertise is in Asian art, an area for which the Getty is not known, and there are suspicions that his appointment has more to do with his talents in generating money.”
Chicago Jazz Cranks Up A Notch
“Chicago long has been a magnet for and a generator of great jazz talent. But in the past year or so, the promotion and support of Chicago jazz performers have intensified dramatically, with major developments energizing an already robust scene. On the eve of the Chicago Jazz Festival, which unofficially kicks off with performances Monday, jazz observers young and not-so-young agree that they’ve never seen anything like this dramatic change in the local scene’s infrastructure.”
Plea: Make Scottish Culture Great
The chairman of the Scottish Arts Council has made an impassioned plea to the Scottish Executive to boost support for the arts. “The Cultural Commission is full of good things and full of rags and bones as well. Culture isn’t just what they do in Edinburgh: it could make Scotland great again in a new way. If we can get this through to our Scottish politicians, they will unfold the treasury.”
Media Companies Try To Influence Morality Debate
Why do self-proclaimed TV “watchdog” groups get to dictate about morality and what parents want? Now “three major media companies — NBC Universal, Viacom and News Corp. — have launched TV Watch to advocate parental controls and oppose government intervention. This newly minted group, which has brought together an unusual mix of corporations, creative types and conservative, free market proponents, is emerging as the council’s adversary in an escalating battle over what’s appropriate for the airwaves. ‘The discussion had turned into a very one-sided debate. Our group was formed to balance out the debate and provide some reason’.”
Of Self-Image and Self-Portraits
Why do so many artists make self portraits? And “what do historical self-portraits do? They concentrate into a single powerful icon not just the appearance of humanity but its feeling, what it is to possess “a self”. A sustained self-scrutiny: partly what the artist feels they really are and partly what society pressurises them to be.”
Arts Channel Evolves Beyond Specialty
Three years ago the subscription channel ArtsWorld was launched with viewers paying £6 a month to access it. It has a small but dedicated audience, but now the channel evolves to a new level, becoming free and available in 7.8 million homes. How will this affect programming?
Publishing’s Lost Summer
Ho hum. This summer was a snooze in the publishing world. “Maybe it was the heat, the lack of a juicy controversy or an exciting book, for that matter, that made the past few months unmemorable for most readers.”