“Whitman is an involuntary spokes-celebrity here, and perhaps you deem this ad a desecration of all he stood for. I can’t say I blame you. But were you forced to choose a clothing line for our favorite barbaric yawper to rep, you might choose this one.”
Tag: 10.26.09
Survey: Giving To Charities Set To Decline 9 Percent
According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, “the nation’s biggest charities are forecasting a 9 percent decline in giving this year. That would be the steepest drop since the group started tracking private donations in the early 90s.”
Miami Art Museum Director Resigns Abruptly
“Terry Riley, director of the Miami Art Museum, has resigned, effective immediately. Riley, who arrived in 2006, has been spearheading the fundraising for the museum’s new location.” An architect, Riley “will return to Keenen/Riley Architects as a partner, and will continue working with the museum as a consultant through June 30.”
These Dance Moves Prohibited (Warning: Explicit Language)
High school administrators who “fretted over how to deal with freaking, grinding and other provocative dances” are combating “explicit teen dancing with an equal dose of explicitness” in the contracts they now require students and parents to sign “before a teenager can step onto the dance floor.”
Seattle May Close Most Libraries Two Days A Week
“Since 2000, library usage in the city has soared; from 4.5 million in-person and virtual visitors to 13.2 million in 2008,” but with city departments ordered “to cut budgets in response to a $72 million revenue shortfall, the library is proposing a 23 percent reduction in library hours.”
Rocco Landesman On Public Arts Funding
“You can’t just go to Congress with your hat in your hand.” You have to make the case that the arts are an economic engine. Landesman continues to characterize the NEA’s budget of $155 million as “pathetic,” although he says he’s been advised that saying so is impolitic. “The State Department has more money for the arts in its budget than the NEA,” he said. “The Department of Defense is the single biggest purchaser of musical instruments in this country.”
Weekend’s Top Movie Takes In $22 Million, Cost $15,000
“Paranormal Activity,” an independently produced thriller picked up by Paramount’s DreamWorks unit, cost only about $10,000 to produce and has been marketed with a combination of conventional advertising and cheap Web-based tactics.
Studios Struggle To Figure Out Post-DVD Era
“While DVD and Blu-ray will remain a huge profit center for years to come, studio executives are finally confronting an uncomfortable reality: little silver discs — for reasons of convenience, price and consumer burnout — may never recover their sales power. To grow, studios need to figure out digital distribution.”
What Should Happen To Bank Art?
“The art owned by financial institutions should get out more — at the least to give the taxpayers, who have been so generous with the financial sector, an aesthetic return.”
How Malcolm Gladwell Writes
“There’s a constant issue of tone: who do you want to read these pieces, and how do you want them to be read? I can write them in a way that is deeply satisfying to a professor of philosophy at Princeton, but we all know if I do that I’ll lose everybody else, and I can do it at the other end of the spectrum for a 10-year-old. You have to pick where you want to be, which for me is somewhere around the middle. Maybe a little to one side of the middle.”