National Public Radio is flying high these days as ratings soar and NPR expands. “But NPR’s ambition has stirred anxiety within the public radio system over how to preserve the character and financial viability of local stations in the ever larger shadow of the national production service they created more than 30 years ago as a modest support operation.”
Tag: 08.30.04
X Rated: Ugly Buildings? Knock ‘Em Down
An English architect preoposes a new classification for buildings. It’s an “X” rating thta would be awarded for buildings considered public eyesores. “I want the government to introduce grants for destruction. How often has a bad piece of architecture marred a beautiful view? In every town there are three or four buildings that are universally disliked.”
The Kennedy Years – Lots Of Heat, But…
Brian Kennedy came to run the National Gallery of Australia in 1997, and filled the landscape with his controversial opinions. Now he’s leaving and “colleagues and observers within the art world choose their words carefully to give a positive public summing-up of his time. Perhaps it was a cultural misunderstanding: humour in one national argot can be seen as brusqueness or querulousness in another. In any case, when he leaves his job tomorrow, after weeks of goodbyes, Kennedy will bequeath his successor an institution in need of artistic, political and social resuscitation.”