Minnesota has traditionally funded the arts at a higher level than the rest of the country. But a new report says that foundation giving to the arts has been scaled back, and that small arts groups are hardest hit by the financial squeeze. Dance is the poorest-funded of all the arts.
Tag: 11.19.02
Newly Rich
This gift has suddenly turned Poetry from a struggling journal little known outside literary circles to one of the world’s richest publications. [Editor Joseph] Parisi said it was by far the largest single donation ever made to an institution devoted to poetry. ‘There just isn’t anything to compare it to. We will be the largest foundation in the world devoted to poetry. It’s a huge responsibility, as I’m realizing every day more and more.”
Zine Dreams
Zines are a publishing phenomenon. They’re self-published little magazines usually “written and self-published by one or two obsessed souls in places like Hoboken and Topeka, then sent out into an unsuspecting world bearing such wonderfully loopy titles as Brain Thong, and Murder Can Be Fun, and The World Would Be a Much Better Place if Everybody Wore Tight Pants.” Zines are what result “when the citizens of a great nation are granted an inalienable constitutional right to publish anything they darn well please – then also granted easy access to computers and copy machines.”
An Indie Success Story
Enough with stories about the woes of independent bookstores. Here’s a success story, in a southern suburb of Miami: “At a time when book lovers are mourning the disappearance of the independent bookstore, Books & Books has become a beacon of hope for independent booksellers. It is one of the few stores in the country that have succeeded in showing that individuality, personality and a passion for books can go a long way in competing against retail giants.”
Has Radio Quality Been Hurt by Derugulation?
“The Future of Music Coalition (FMC) charges in a new report that the 1996 Telecom Act, which allowed companies to own more stations, ‘has not benefited the public. It has led to less competition, fewer viewpoints and less diversity in programming.’ Nonsense, says the National Association of Broadcasters. “Studies repeatedly show 75% of Americans express high satisfaction with radio. This report has all the credibility of Miss Cleo.”
The Scholarly Buffy
A Melbourne University professor puts out a call for scholarly papers on the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer and is flooded with proposals. “Scholarly Buffyphiles prefer the Online International Journal of Buffy Studies (www.slayage.tv), a website governed by an editorial board with academic contributors examining notions such as Buffy as ‘transgressive woman warrior’, or Buffy ‘and the pedagogy of fear’. Intellectuals around the globe are deconstructing, dissecting and extrapolating from Buffy, across disciplines, in journals and at conferences too.”
Former National Ballet Dancer Dies In Motorcycle Accident
William Marri, 33, a former principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada, died Saturday after being in a motorcycle accident in New York. Marri had left the National last March to join the cast of the Billy Joel/Twyla Tharp show Movin Out, which recently landed on Broadway. “Marri was riding his motorcycle before an evening performance when he crashed.”
Hey – A Canaletto For Your Home?
Britain’s Art Fund is celebrating its 100th anniversary, “during which it claims to have stopped nearly half a million works of art from going abroad.” The fund is arranging exhibitions all over the UK, some of them in unusual locations. None of the plans more unusual, though, than a proposal to put an Old Master painting in a private home. “Obviously there are security and conservation issues, but we seriously intend to allow an Old Master painting to be shown to an ordinary home. We are serious. I can assure you it will happen, the museums love the idea.”
Art Rescue Project
Since 1903 the Art Fund has rescued “almost 500,000 treasures at risk of sale to private or foreign owners” and turned them over to public museums and galleries.
Indians Back Out Of Museum Deal
The Pechanga Indian Tribe has backed away from a deal with the financially troubled Southwest Museum in Southern California “The proposed deal would have given the Pechangas a chance to borrow thousands of the Southwest Museum’s artifacts, 98% of which are held, unseen by visitors, in the Mount Washington facility’s storage rooms. To display the artifacts, the Pechangas proposed a museum and cultural center of their own, which would rise near the tribe’s hotel and casino on the edge of Temecula. In exchange for the loan of artifacts, the casino-wealthy tribe was to have provided $750,000 yearly to the Southwest Museum for five years, then as much as $1.3 million yearly once the items were on display at the reservation.”