Here it is the last week of October, and this is the first we here at ArtsJournal have heard of the thing. “Apparently the celebration has been held every year since 1993. Organizers believed a monthlong national celebration would give fellow Americans the opportunity to explore new facets of the arts and humanities in their lives. Presumably they had thoroughly explored the old ones. More than likely, though, they saw the arts as decorative adjuncts to life. Interesting — informative, even — but not essential.”
Tag: 10.21.05
The New Collectors
The art market is booming, by all accounts. But who are these people that are putting their money into art? “What kind of people are they, the buyers of contemporary art, so different from the recipients of creativity in other fields – neither like the publisher nor the reader of a book, neither like the producer nor the audience of a film, neither like the record company nor the listener to a song?”
Catchin’ Some Rays – The New DVDs
“Sony’s Blu-ray DVD technology has won over another heavyweight supporter in the battle to be Hollywood’s format of choice for the next generation of DVDs.”
Women Pull Ahead In College
There are more women than men in US colleges, and they’re scoring better too. “There are more men than women ages 18-24 in the USA — 15 million vs. 14.2 million, according to a Census Bureau estimate last year. But nationally, the male/female ratio on campus today is 43/57, a reversal from the late 1960s and well beyond the nearly even splits of the mid-1970s. The trends have developed in plain view — not ignored exactly, but typically accompanied by some version of the question: Isn’t this a sign of women’s progress?”
Chicago Architecture Tries To Keep Up With A Glorious Past
Chicago has a distinguished history of great architecture. The city’s contemporary architecure has difficulty competing, so a set of annual awards teases out some of the best. “Do the awards reflect great originality, or even the presence of geniuses among us? Maybe not, but they’re limited by the fact that they honor projects that have been executed; if you’re an architect and your last name isn’t Gehry, many of your best and most original designs are likely to remain unbuilt. And sure, the awards paint a collective portrait of architects who are primarily extending, refining and reinterpreting the tropes of modernism, rather than founding new movements or styles. But they’re doing so with a confident panache that virtually swaggers.”
Republicans Propose Killing Funding For Public Broadcasting
“As the White House scrambles to find ways to pay for an expensive war in Iraq and the rebuilding of New Orleans, public broadcasting is once again being offered up as an expense the American public can possibly do without. PBS television and radio receives $400 million US annually in federal support. The Republican Study Committee, a conservative group within the caucus, recommended on Wednesday that it all be cut.”
Why Do We Need PBS?
“PBS is at this point basically an upscale, government-funded, highbrow version of the mindset behind pretty much every major television network except for Fox News. You don’t have to be a declared enemy of the liberal establishment to have noticed this.”
Tate Buys Time For £20,000
The Tate has paid £20,000 for a piece of performance art that consists of members of the public asking one another for the time. David Lamelas’ work Time “questions the environment of the museum and static objects”. A photograph of a past performance was included in the price.
Judge Evicts Saatchi Gallery
“A judge upheld the claim by Japanese company Shirayama Shokusan that the London Saatchi Gallery had continually breached the term of its lease. The judge said Danovo, the firm which runs the gallery, had shown ‘deliberate disregard’ of the owners’ rights.”