Hope Abelson died last year at the age of 95. She was an ardent supporter of Chicago arts, and before she died she set up a fund to help emerging arts organizations. “According to the trust, the awards will recognize area performing arts groups that have less than $1 million in operating revenues, been in existence at least three years and whose work demonstrates ‘innovation, inspiration and creativity’.”
Tag: 08.30.07
Spike Lee Talks About Culture
The son of a jazz musician and a schoolteacher, Lee grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in a home where freedom of expression was valued intensely. His anger at America’s 21st-century creative lockdown is fuelled by the fear and silence from people who ought to be role models. “Today’s media are used as a narcotic to put people into stupors,” he says.
UK’s TV Crisis
“In many accounts, the BBC’s current woes are conflated with the pervasive malaise afflicting the TV industry. This is not to excuse the BBC, which should neither have been caught up in ‘Crowngate’ nor have faked competition scams. But the wider problems have been worsening for a decade, and they affect the BBC because the corporation is inevitably influenced by the wider broadcasting ecology.”
Classical Music’s Adaptive Powers
“Classical music isn’t dying, but the term itself means less with every passing year – not because it represents an osteoporotic tradition, but because its ever-widening embrace includes musicians who refuse to be bound by notions of appropriateness. There are no accepted standards or styles, which means that the critic lives on shifting sands.”
Vaclav Havel Pulls Play Over Wife
Vaclav Havel’s decades-long return to the theatre has been delayed because of his decision to pull his latest play from Prague’s National Theatre after its refusal to allow his wife to play the lead role.
Can A Critic See Too Much Theatre?
“Seeing as broad a range of work as possible, in as many locations as possible, is invaluable for any critic, but is there a danger of seeing too much?”
Edinburgh Festival Directors Warn Of Peril Ahead
“In a rare joint appearance, the directors of the five main festivals, covering the international, Fringe, books, film and tattoo, said Edinburgh would lose its status as home to the world’s largest arts festivals unless public investment increased and strategic thinking and creative innovation improved.”
A Plea To Save The British Museum’s Reading Room
The British Museum is using its iconic reading room for other purposes these days. “Conversions to art galleries are all well and good: Tate Modern and London’s Wapping Project have made virtues of redundant industrial buildings. In Paris, the Musée d’Orsay transformed a railway station into a palace of impressionist art. But it seems to me that the fate of the Reading Room shouldn’t be sealed like this just yet. Can’t the British Museum devise a scenario based on what this iconic space symbolises?”
What’s So Special About 7:30? (Or 8?)
“With so many people working flexible hours and so large a percentage of the audiences retired or elderly, why are theatres so fixated on the 7.30 start and galleries on 10 to 6? Shouldn’t there be more matinees, and more late evening openings for exhibitions? If supermarkets can do it, why can’t arts venues?”
Serial Pain
Last winter Ronan Bennett serialized his latest novel in The Observer newspaper. Then he went abou publishing it as a book. “People were quite generous about the way they read a serial novel in a newspaper. But I’m not going to put a book out that will be scrutinised and read closely if it’s not the best I can make it. Do you want it now, or do you want it good?’ It’s something screenwriters say.”