Ever since New York’s Dia Center for the Arts announced that it was abandoning plans to renovate a Greenwich Village industrial space into 45,000 square feet of exhibition space, observers have been wondering what the Dia’s long-term future is, if any. “We need Dia, and Dia needs to do something decisive soon, even if it’s only to open a temporary space.” Meanwhile, buzz is continuing to build for the arrival of the New Museum, which has a $50 million home under construction in the Bowery.
Tag: 11.22.06
Getting The Theatre We Deserve (Musicals, That Is)
“Last week, audiences hyperventilated over the latest [musical], Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Sound of Music, while at Amy’s View there was appreciative but reserved applause. It is not all disaster for straight drama: Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll is still doing okay and it will be a real surprise if Peter Morgan’s Frost/Nixon does not at least run its course. But they are not doing anywhere near as good business as the musicals – and producers, in their more pessimistic moments, talk about straight drama being an endangered species in the West End. Perhaps we get the theatre we deserve. Straight drama will close unless people go and see it.”
Arts Journalists Are A Dying Breed
Arts jounalism as a profession is being dismantled in the daily newspaper, writes film critic Roger Moore. “Reviewers, in general, are canaries in the print journalism coal mine, the first to go. Classical music, books, visual arts and dance are dispensed with, or free-lanced off the bottom-line. That’s happened everywhere I’ve ever worked.”
Published Battle To Publish Lost O’Neill
A bidding war has erupted over a long-lost never-published manuscript by Eugene O’Neill. ” ‘The Screenews of War,’ one of the few short stories he ever wrote, is believed to have been penned 90 years ago but was quickly forgotten. Today, at least two major magazines and a book publisher are said to be intrigued by the 40-odd-page manuscript, which has been quietly circulated over the past week by the professor who made the astounding find.”
UK Arts Funding Squeezed To Pay For Olympic Park
“Arts organisations had their worst fears confirmed this week after they were warned they face further ‘significant cuts’ in lottery funding as a result of a 40 percent hike in the cost of the 2012 London Olympic park.” The park will cost £900 million more than originally estimated.
Actress Claire Bloom At 75
Sixty years on from her professional debut, she is making a rare appearance in the West End. Does she still think of herself as one of ours? “I’m not yours. I’m not anybody’s. I don’t feel that I belong particularly anywhere. I think probably one defines oneself much more by profession than nationality. I’m an actress.”
Nothing To Do With Art
One of 15 artists participating in a London residency proposes to do “nothing” as her art. “With the increasing acceptance of the ways of contemporary art by a wider public, it is quite hard to elicit more than a rolling of eyes from a media and public, who look on artists as parents at their adolescent child who is desperate to separate.”
Miami Herald Hires A Classical Music Critic
“Lawrence A. (Larry) Johnson has joined the Miami Herald as its classical music critic, effective immediately. In so doing, he exits the South Florida Sun-Sentinel after six years, where he had succeeded Tim Smith, now at the Baltimore Sun. The Sun-Sentinel will not replace Johnson and has apparently eliminated his position.”
Now Big Brother Is Truly Listening
Officials in a Dutch town have set up a system of street microphones set to pick up on aggressive sounding voices. The system “helped police make three arrests in a trial run earlier in the year. According to New Scientist Tech, the secret sauce is software that detects ‘high frequency vowel sounds [that] span a broader frequency range’.”
TV Network Challenges FFC’s Expansion Of Powers
“Fox is challenging what it calls an unprecedented campaign by federal regulators to punish broadcasters for airing ‘unintentional and isolated expletives’ during broadcasts. ‘The result is the end of truly live television and a gross expansion of the FCC’s intrusion into the creative and editorial process,’ Fox argued in its court filing.”