Embassy of the United States

Cultural Affairs

Arts, Sports, & Culture Archive

ALL AMERICA’S STAGE: GROWTH AND CHALLENGES IN NONPROFIT THEATER.
National Endowment for the Arts. December 26, 2008.
Full Text [PDF format, 8 pages]

Nonprofit theaters in the United States have seen unprecedented expansion across the United States, according to the research. It examines developments in the growth, distribution, and finances of America’s nonprofit theater system since 1990. The investigation revealed that National Endowment for the Arts funding is a likely catalyst in drawing sizeable contributions from other sources. Each dollar in NEA grant support is associated with an additional $12 from individual donors, $1.88 from businesses, and $3.55 from foundations.

[Note: contains copyrighted material]

STATE ARTS POLICY: TRENDS AND FUTURE PROSPECTS.
RAND Corporation. Julia F. Lowell. Web posted November 24, 2008.
Full Text [PDF format, 44 pages]

State arts agencies, key players within the U.S. system of public support for the arts, face growing economic, political, and demographic challenges to the roles and missions they adopted when founded in the mid-1960s. The report looks at state arts agencies’ efforts to rethink their roles and missions, reflecting on what the changes may mean for the direction of state arts policy. Drawing on readings, discussions, and analyses conducted for the study, the author concludes that if current trends and strategies continue, future state arts policy is likely to focus more on developing the creative economy, improving arts education, and encouraging a broader spectrum of state residents to participate in the arts.

[Note: contains copyrighted material]

AA08440
Hines, Andy GLOBAL TRENDS IN CULTURE, INFRASTRUCTURE, AND VALUES (Futurist, vol. 42, no. 5, September/October 2008, pp. 18-23)
Full Text [HTML format]

The author, director of Custom Projects at Social Technologies in Washington, DC, notes that just a decade or so ago, many were concerned about a homogenized global culture dominated by the U.S. and its powerful entertainment industry. However, local cultures around the world have been more robust than originally thought. The author notes that people are quite capable of taking the aspects of global culture they like, ignoring the rest, and retaining what they are attached to in their native cultures; this adaptability serves as a long-term driver of change. The author explores ten trends whose influence he believes will grow in the coming decades, including cultural multipolarity; new electronic media, particularly the Internet and mobile phones; the spread of new ideas; electrification; mobility; ethical consumption; women's rights; social freedom; and transparency.

AA08436
Earle, Jonathan IN A LEAGUE OF ITS OWN: THE NEGRO BASEBALL LEAGUES BASEBALL MUSEUM (Museum, May/June 2008, pp. 1-4)
Full Text [HTML format]

The Negro League Baseball Museum, located in Kansas City, Missouri, tells the story of segregated baseball from the post-Civil War era to the 1960’s, focusing on the Negro National League, organized in Kansas City by Chicago American Giants owner Andrew “Rube” Foster in 1920. The Negro League games became very popular, often drawing more then 50,000 spectators to Major League ballparks across the country. Baseball officially became integrated after World War II, when Jackie Robinson joined the Major League’s Brooklyn Dodgers; the Negro League folded after the 1948 season, as more black players followed Jackie Robinson’s footsteps into Major League baseball. While it was founded during the era of segregation, the Negro Leagues enabled black-owned businesses involved with the league to flourish, and helped solidify the black community. The museum attracted 55,000 visitors last year, supports itself through licensing of Negro Leagues names and logos, and is currently undergoing an expansion. The new location will still be in the historically black part of Kansas City, whose history is intertwined with that of the Negro Leagues.

SAVING OUR HISTORY: A REVIEW OF NATIONAL PARK CULTURAL RESOURCE PROGRAMS.
National Academy of Public Administration. Frank Hodsoll et al. Web posted November 12, 2008.
Full Text [PDF format, 123 pages]

The report responds to a request from the National Park Service (NPS) to provide independent recommendations to improve stewardship of cultural resources in our national parks, including historic structures, archeological sites, museum collections, cultural landscapes, and park histories. The Panel has identified ways that NPS can improve stewardship of these important national resources by strengthening performance-based management, ensuring park superintendent accountability, increasing flexibility in the use of funds, strengthening national leadership, and seeking additional funds and staff to reduce risks to cultural resources of national significance.

[Note: contains copyrighted material]

AA08415
Maine, Stephen INSIDE THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE (Art in America, October 2008, pp. 154-157)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

The author profiles a traveling exhibition of Harlem Renaissance illustrator Aaron Douglas. The exhibit, titled “Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist” was organized by Susan Earle of the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. Douglas, a schoolteacher from Kansas, came to New York in 1925 with intentions of continuing on to Paris. He stayed for six years and became an integral part of the New Negro Movement (later termed the Harlem Renaissance). Douglas’s work is influenced by Cubism, Art Deco, ancient Egyptian painting, and West African sculpture and masks and tells the story of self, race, and history. Douglas provided color illustrations for the works of many prominent black authors of the day. His “Aspects of Negro Life,” considered to be his signature piece, is part of the traveling show.

AA08416
McEvilley, Thomas JAMES LEE BYARS: A STUDY OF POSTERITY (Art in America, November 2008, pp. 142-149, 208-209)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

The author, an art critic and friend of the late artist James Lee Byars (1932-1997), notes that Byars, whose conceptual and performance art was often overshadowed by his “abrasive personal behavior”, is now receiving a more favorable response from the U.S. art establishment that once shunned him. This is possible, says Thomas, because, now that Byars has been dead for more than a decade, “people in America are beginning to forget how obnoxious he was.” A manic-depressive and a flamboyant, gaudy dresser, Byars was never taken as seriously in the U.S. as he was in Europe, and some U.S. critics dismissed him as a charlatan. But as memories of his difficult personality have faded, U.S. art patrons and critics are expressing renewed interest in Byars’ installation pieces (which were often understated and flamboyant at the same time) and his performance art, which stressed the fleeting nature of aesthetic experience. Byars, who famously said “I create atmospheres”, revisited certain themes repeatedly. His installation work “The Angel” (1989) consisted of 125 transparent glass spheres placed on a floor and arranged symmetrically to evoke the abstract form of an angel. In “The Red Angel” (1993), Byars created a baroque version of the same image, using 1,000 red crystal spheres arranged in a much more elaborate pattern. Although Byars resisted the commercialization of his work, the posthumous reappraisal of his career means that market forces are now “closing in on him,” Thomas observes. This is not altogether a bad thing, argues Thomas, since even Byars, “toward the end, growing exhausted by his 50-year-long rebel role, may have wanted conventional success a little bit.”

AA08418
Ouellette, Dan NEW IMPRESSIONS (Downbeat, vol. 75, no. 9, September 2008, pp. 30-33)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

This article profiles Ravi Coltrane, son of John and Alice Coltrane, as a jazz musician in his own right. After initial skepticism about music, he decided to attend the California Institute of the Arts to see if he could make it in the music business. He has not relied on the legacy of his father, whom he never knew personally, but rather sought to create his own path. Ravi Coltrane was close to his late mother Alice, and produced the follow-up album to her 2004 return to music. As a tenor and soprano saxophonist, he is now a permanent member in the band Saxophone Summit.

AA08420
Sublette, Ned MUSICAL HEALING? (Downbeat, vol. 75, no. 11, November 2008, pp. 38-43)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

Three years after Hurricane Katrina, a big part of the community that created New Orleans music is still gone. Many lost not only their homes to the flood, but also irreplaceable archives, books, recordings, CDs, rare artifacts, vintage instruments, research materials and sheet music. New Orleans is back up to 72 percent of its pre-flood population, but for African Americans, it’s just 63 percent. Most of the big names in music are back, but less so the rank and file. New Orleans has maintained its schedule of festivals, but the musicians’ union membership and theatrical performances are down. Most clubs have reopened. “The people who have had the most difficulty in returning are the working-class families, from whose ranks the new generation of musicians would emerge ... a generation of elders was lost,” says Sublette. Volunteer and charitable programs are struggling to meet the vast need that the government isn’t meeting. Pianist Henry Butler was turned down by a state program that offers assistance to Katrina victims; he now lives in Denver but returns for gigs, as do many other musicians. “My music has grown exponentially since Katrina,” he said, “partly because I’m feeling more.” But he doesn’t know if he’ll live in New Orleans again, because, he says, “I don’t know what direction the city is going to take.”

AA08392
Bennett, Joy JOYFUL NOISE: WOMEN RUNNING THE BUSINESS OF GOSPEL MUSIC (Ebony, August 2008, pp. 122-130)
Full Text available from your nearest American Library

Joy Bennett profiles some of the women who are the major players in gospel music, and their efforts to take control of their careers and play a bigger role in the industry. Gospel singer Yolanda Adams sums it up best: “To survive and thrive, you must diversify.” Fifteen years ago, Vicki Mack Lataillade set out to change the all-white male CEO culture in gospel music. Today, she is the CEO of Mack Entertainment and Lilly Mack/EMI/CMG Publishing, and has influenced the careers of some of gospel’s top names. Gospel singers are also getting in on the business side of the industry. Some, like Yolanda Adams and Mary Mary (biological sisters Erica Campbell and Tina Campbell) are gospel singers who have expanded to clothing lines, television series, and radio shows. CeCe Winans has taken it one step further -- she owns the label PureSprings Gospel and produced brother Marvin Winan’s the Grammy-award winning album. Bennett notes that this diversification is timely -- according to Nielsen SoundScan, which maintains industry statistics, record sales are declining, and sales in the gospel-music genre are down 14 percent. In order to remain viable, diversification is as much a financial necessity as it is about empowering women in gospel music.

Behar, Michael A STAR IS BORN (Wired, Vol. 16, No. 9, Sept. 2008, pp. 128-133; 160)
Full Text [HTML format]

Until now, high definition digital movie cameras have lacked control over depth of field, keeping everything in focus; have been very expensive (around $150,000); and have had lower resolution and color fidelity than 35-millimeter film. Enter Red One, which costs $17,500, records motion in 4,096 lines of horizontal resolution (with a lossless compression format to overcome the file-size problem) and has the same depth of field control as a film camera. It's not surprising that film directors such as Steven Soderbergh and Peter Jackson are very excited.

AA08336
Adams, Jim THAT CHAMPIONSHIP SEASON (American Indian, vol. 9, no. 3, Fall 2008, pp. 54-59)
Full Text available from your nearest American Library

Jim Thorpe was American Indian Country’s greatest athlete, having won three gold medals at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm and played on the national college football team from the Carlisle (Pennsylvania) Industrial Indian School, winning a landmark 1911 game against Harvard. A major blow to Thorpe’s reputation occurred when his amateur status was called into question, resulting in his Olympic medals being withdrawn. The author notes that this decision has been widely regarded as “official infamy”; a campaign by Thorpe’s daughter was successful in restoring his medals. Adams writes that Thorpe’s athletic achievements came at a low point in American-Indian history, only a generation after the Indian Wars; his exploits helped revive morale among the Indian population and create a new pan-Indian identity.

AA08337
Christian, Margena BECOMING TYLER: BILL COLLECTOR TURNED BILLION-DOLLAR MEDIA MOGUL WAS MOLDED FROM PAIN, PROMISE AND PERSISTENCE (Ebony, October 2008 Vol. 63, No. 12, pp. 72-84)
Full Text available from your nearest American Library

Tyler Perry is an accomplished African American director, screenwriter, playwright and actor. Yet just ten years ago he was struggling, recently homeless, hungry and having trouble paying the rent on his apartment, yet persevered believing in his talent and message. In 1998 he finally found success in the theater. In 2005 his DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN brought him success in film. Perry has thrived in his movie career without the help of Hollywood; he owns 100 percent of his movies. He has also has started added his name in front of his movies and plays: “I started to have them put my name on the marquee and on the ticket so that people would know this play is different from other shows. I was building a brand and it started to work. With film, I knew other movies would come along and try to duplicate what I was doing. That’s why my name is front of my movies.” From his Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta he now manages a multimillion dollar enterprise. Having just turned 39, these achievements may be only the beginning for this tremendously talented individual.

AA08322
Fletcher, Kenneth FOUR FOR A QUARTER (Smithsonian, vol. 39, no. 6, September 2008, pp. 80-85)
Full Text (EbscoHost; password required)

The photobooth, first introduced in the 1920s in New York City, proved to be immediately popular; people thronged to pay 25 cents for a strip of eight photos. By the 1950s, photobooths were ubiquitous, having spread across the country and overseas. The author profiles photographer Nakki Goranin, who has spent a decade researching the history of photobooths and collecting photo strips. Few of the old chemical-process booths are still around, having been replaced with digital booths. Goranin says that photobooth strips “tell so much about the country and what we’ve gone through” -– because there is no photographer to intimidate the subject, people tend to be much less self-conscious in the photobooth. Says Goranin, “for many people, these were the only photos of themselves that they had.”

AA08288
Carlson, Scott A SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY EMBRACES A SACRED JAPANESE TRADITION (The Chronicle Review / Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 54, No. 49, August 15, 2008, pp. B12–B13)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

Furman University, a school in Greenville, South Carolina, once closely associated with the Baptist church, is the proud recipient of a reconstituted Japanese Buddhist temple. After the new owners of the plot of land on which it was located in Japan said they would have to tear it down if it were not removed by early 2006, the temple was disassembled into 2,400 pieces in Japan and shipped in four containers across the Pacific and through the Panama Canal. The 900-square-foot building was reassembled on the Furman campus by Japanese craftsmen. The hand-crafted temple was originally built in the 1980s by Greenville’s Tsuzuki family, the matriarch of which had long ties to Furman, where she took courses in Japanese philosophy with David Shaner, a professor of philosophy and Asian studies there. Shaner plans to use the Place of Peace, as it is called now that its central shrine has been removed, as both a lesson in Asian studies and a lesson in sustainability. Designed to last centuries, the building can be taken apart so that craftsmen can repair or replace pieces as needed.

AA08289
Gener, Randy et al. THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT ON STAGE (American Theatre, vol. 25, no. 5, May/June 2008, pp. 28-41)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

Israelis and Palestinians view their histories and rights differently. This special series of six articles explores the role that theater has played, or can play, in relieving tensions related to the conflict. In SEE UNDER HOMELAND, Richard Gener looks at various productions in the U.S. in which Israeli and American artists are pursuing humanism in a violent world. In WHO CAN SPEAK FOR ME? Richard Stein writes about the lively Israeli theater scene, which does not shy away from tackling the explosive issue of Israeli-Palestinian relations, and tries to give the Palestinians a voice, even though they cannot really speak for the Palestinians. In BEYOND CONCRETE, Tal Itzhaki explores various works dealing with the occupation and with the differing perspectives of the Israeli and Palestinian communities living on opposite sides of the separation wall. Hala Khamis Nassar in CHALLENGING THE WALLS writes about Palestinian theater groups in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem that take on issues of Palestinian society and Israeli-Palestinian relations under trying conditions. In REHEARSING FOR FREEDOM, Alisa Solomon writes about children’s theater groups in the West Bank and Gaza that are trying to help children deal with trauma related to living under occupation. In 4 POSITIONS ON CULTURAL SANCTIONS, several Palestinian and Israeli theater professionals offer thoughtful and nuanced views on a controversial campaign calling for sanctions against Israel.

AA08290
Laster, Lori Ann WELCOME BACK TO GROVER’S CORNERS (American Theatre, 25, no. 5, May/June 2008, pp. 24-27, 74-75)
Full Text [HTML format]

Thornton Wilder’s enduring classic, ‘Our Town,’ continues on as more than just a tribute to small-town America but a commentary on the human condition. According to Tappan Wilder, the playwright’s nephew and literary executor, it is widely believed that ‘Our Town’ is performed at least once each night somewhere in this country and it has become part of the curriculum in American Studies departments in foreign universities. It has been performed in several overseas productions sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, sometimes with well-known actors in the cast. At the time the play was written and first performed in Princeton, New Jersey, in January 1938, the threat of World War II was looming, while the U.S. was still recovering from the Great Depression. The play represents a return to a more tranquil time. The author notes that with global political tensions in the world today, the play continues to provide a sense of comfort and stability, and a return to small-town American values.

PROMOTING FILM AND MEDIA TO ENHANCE STATE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT.
Center for Best Practices, National Governors Association. July 15, 2008.
Full Text [pdf format, 30 pages]

As governors continue exploring innovative strategies to grow their economies, states are increasingly looking to film, television and related media arts productions as a means of attracting high-paying jobs and related high-tech businesses, according to the report. The state and local economic benefits brought by hosting a major motion picture production are numerous. Film, TV and media arts productions help create local jobs by using residents to staff the production, as well as boost local economies by purchasing goods and services from local vendors.

[Note: contains copyrighted material]

AA08256
Bracco, Tara THE INNOVATION IMPERATIVE (American Theatre, July/August 2008, pp. 36-41)
Full Text [html format]

American theater is looking for innovative methods to increase their attendance and solvency. In November of last year, the Theatre Communications Group (TCG) held a two-day event called “Cultivating Innovation: From the Board Room to the Box Office”, focusing on new ideas to help non-profit theaters. The author cites the New York Metropolitan Opera, which is increasing opera’s audience by transmitting production into several hundred movie theaters in North America and Europe, and is advertising on New York buses and doing telecasts on screens in Times Square and Lincoln Center. Another area ripe for reconsideration is the traditional expectation that 50 to 70 percent of theater’s budget should be derived from ticket sales; this is changing, as endowments have grown in size, allowing some theaters to cut ticket prices to attract a younger audience and increase attendance. In the end, each theater company must find its own innovative way to financial stability.

AA08242
Pollak, Max WHAT I LOVE ABOUT TAP [website title: TAP'S TOP MOMENTS] (Dance Magazine, May 2008, pp. 38-40)
Full Text [html format]

Tap dancing is an American art form which has continuously evolved since its inception in the 19th century, with roots in Africa and the British isles. Dancing from those two very different locations combined into tap dancing in post-Civil War America, where “recent immigrants and freed slaves would challenge each other to show off their best moves.” Tap dancing gained commercial appeal and “was dominated by versatile and charismatic figures. All of them were superb entertainers, multitalented, graceful, and often hilariously funny.” For sound effect tap dancers originally used a wooden soled shoe. In the 1920’s an innovation, the use of aluminum in the shoe allowed faster and louder tapping. Tap dancing was popular in vaudeville and theater act shows. Starting in the 1920’s it was brought to an even bigger audience through cinema. After WWII tap dancing returned to its jazz roots: improvisation. Today, the art of tap is being maintained and taught by new tap dancers. Their innovation in utilizing new rhythms is a testament to the vitality of tap dancing.

REVITALIZING ARTS EDUCATION THROUGH COMMUNITY-WIDE COORDINATION.
Rand Corporation. Susan J. Bodilly et al. June 2008.
Full Text [pdf format, 109 pages]

Arts education has been a low priority in the nation’s public schools for more than 30 years. Severe fiscal crises in America’s urban centers in those years exacerbated the situation as schools responded by cutting teaching positions, especially none core subject areas. More recently, the general education reforms, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, that hold schools accountable for standardized test scores in mathematics and reading led to neglect of arts education. In a countermovement, some urban centers have developed initiatives aimed at coordinating schools, cultural institutions, community-based organizations, foundations, and/ or government agencies to promote access to arts learning for children in and outside of school.

[Note: contains copyrighted material]

AA08238
Bastone, Kelly GOING TO EXTREMES (Parks & Recreation, May 2008, pp. 60-67)
Full Text (EbscoHost; password required)

American municipalities are responding to residents’ growing enthusiasm for extreme sports. The author notes that providing outlets for extreme sports can also bring positive attention to a community, draw high-visibility competitions and events, and revitalize unsavory neighborhoods. Among the extreme-sports park success stories is Oklahoma City’s 26,000 square foot Action Sports Park, used for skateboarding, in-line skating, and BMX freestyle biking, and attracted over 30,000 users in 2007. Reno, Nevada, has opened the Truckee River Whitewater Park, which attracts both beginner and professional paddlers; the city estimates that the financial benefits to the community will far outweigh the cost of building and running the park. The Winter Sports Club in Steamboat Springs, Colorado has ski jump facilities, and is also used for training by Olympic ski jumpers. Some parks have virtually no financial costs; the “Walnut Wall” in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is a rock climbing site made popular by the refurbishing of the Walnut Street bridge which allows access to the north shore of the Tennessee river.

AA08221
Downs, Chris THE LITTLE LEAGUE CHALLENGER DIVISION ENSURES CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES HAVE OPPORTUNITIES TO PLAY BALL (Palaestra, vol. 23, no. 4, Fall 2007, pp. 20-24)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

Chris Downs, Media Relations Manager for Little League Baseball and Software, describes the history and operation behind The Challenger, a Little League division which enables boys and girls with mental and physical disabilities to experience the joy of playing the game of baseball just as millions of other children do around the world. Through a “buddy” system, a non-disabled Little Leaguer teams up with a Challenger player to assist him or her with hitting, running, or fielding the ball. The bond between the buddy teams is unique, and enables both members to experience a sense of achievement and increased confidence. “Through the Challenger Division, players can strengthen their self-esteem, while learning life lessons about teamwork, sportsmanship, and fair play – the hallmarks of Little League,” says David James, Little League Challenger Division Director. Established in 1989 and geared for youth ages 5-18, Little League’s Challenger Division now hosts nearly 1,800 teams and more than 26,000 players. Teams are set up according to abilities, rather than age, allowing youth of all talents to participate in a structured, athletic activity in their local communities. Challenger players also have the opportunity to participate in fun-packed weekend Jamboree tournaments geared specifically for them.

AA08222
Fey, Christine ARTOWN, USA (Parks & Recreation, vol. 43, no. 3, March 2008, pp. 46-50)
Full Text (EbscoHost; password required)

Artown is a month-long arts festival that takes place each July in Reno, Nevada. Like other cities across the United States in the mid-1990s, Reno faced abandoned buildings and property neglect in its downtown core. A small initial allocation from the Reno Arts Commission jump-started a partnership between local arts organization, the city and the Commission and led to the creation of Artown. Attendance has grown from 30,000 at the first festival in 1996 to over ten times that many today, and has brought civic pride and a new identity to the city. Artown proved to be a catalyst behind bringing a permanent arts scene to Reno; the downtown area now includes the Nevada Museum of Art and the National Automobile Museum, and a number of historic buildings have been retrofitted for arts-related activities. Theater companies, cinemas, independent arts galleries, public art and new retail and housing are all part of the economic resurgence of Reno. Economic prosperity and the growth of public-private collaborations have brought further benefits to the Reno’s citizens and visitors by exposing festival-goers to performers and artists they might not otherwise experience. “Food for the Soul World Music Series,” a popular event during Artown, offers great music, along with an opportunity for attendees to learn about hunger issues and to donate food and money.

AA08223
Nichols, John GEORGE CARLIN, AMERICAN RADICAL (TheNation.com, posted June 23, 2008)
Full Text [html format]

Standup comic George Carlin stopped voting in 1972 when George McGovern was buried in an electoral landslide by Richard Nixon. Two years later, Nixon's presidency was buried by the Watergate scandal; Nixon resigned in disgrace to avoid impeachment. In this tribute to Carlin, who died at age 71 from heart failure, the author looks at the intelligence and idealism buried in Carlin's biting humor. American politicians do not fall out of the sky, Carlin reminds us. "They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. It's what our system produces: garbage, garbage out." The comic made his career ranting not so much about politics as about the "ugly intersection of power and economics" where big wealthy interests dominate. "They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying -- lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else," Carlin said. The comic's outrage, often verbalized in four-letter words, brought charges of using "obscene language" against him and the Pacifica broadcasting network from the Federal Communications Commission. In Nichols’ estimate, Carlin was "an idealist -- and a patriot -- of a deeper sort than is encountered very often these days."

AA08224
Witchel, Alex SMOKING DRINKING WRITING WOMANIZING [website title: ‘MAD MEN’ HAS ITS MOMENT] (New York Times Magazine, June 22, 2008, pp. 32-39, 56-58)
Full Text [html format]

As the Times's title suggests, these are the nostalgic vices of the early 1960s advertising culture satirized in "Mad Men," the "smartest show on television," according Witchel. The author discusses how creator, executive producer and head writer Matthew Weiner recreated a time period and a lifestyle which has now generated a new spurt of interest as a popular culture phenomenon. Weiner's achievements with "Mad Men," produced by Lionsgate, are plentiful, starting with the storytelling; it is set in the early 1960s, straddling the repression and conformity of the 1950s Eisenhower years, and the yet-to-unfold social and cultural upheavals of the late 1960s. The show allows Weiner an arc of character growth that gives him the opportunity to mine the “Rat Pack” romance of the era in an almost eerily accurate depiction of time and period, including the smoking and drinking of most of the characters, the uptight clothing styles, and the buttoned-up emotions of the characters, so similar to the real-life lifestyles which are remembered as either exhilarating or repressive.

WRITER’S STRIKE OF 2007-2008: THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION.
Milken Institute. Kevin Klowden and Anusuya Chatterjee. Web posted June 8, 2008.
Full Text [pdf format, 38 pages]

The entertainment industry is still recovering from the effects of the work stoppage and digesting the implications of the new labor agreement. Revenue sharing from digital media was at the heart of the dispute and production was shut down on numerous films and many of television’s most popular shows. The writers’ strike has also had significant and lingering effects on television viewers, causing a decline in revenues for the broadcast networks. The report reviews the overall effects of the writers’ strike on California’s economy and the underlying causes of the dispute, examining in particular how the growing market for new media has changed the dynamics of the entertainment industry.

[Note: contains copyrighted material]

ARTIST IN THE WORKFORCE: 1990-2005.
National Endowment for the Arts. June 2008.
Full Text [pdf format, 150 pages]

The report is the first nationwide look at artists’ demographic and employment patterns in the 21st century. It analyzes working artist trends, gathering new statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau to provide a comprehensive overview of this workforce segment, its maturation over the past 30 years, along with detailed information on specific artist occupations. Numbering almost two million, artists are one of the largest classes of workers in the nation, representing 1.4 percent of the U.S. labor force. Artists earn an aggregate income of approximately $70 billion annually. The study compares artists with the labor force in general, reporting on factors such as geographic distribution, racial, ethnic, and gender composition, employment status, age, and education level.

THE GLOBALIZATION OF ADVANCED ART IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.
National Bureau of Economic Research. David Galenson. May 2008.
Full Text [pdf format, 75 pages]

The twentieth century was a time of rapid globalization for advanced art. Artists from a larger number of countries made important contributions than in earlier periods, and they did so in a larger number of places. Many important innovations also diffused more rapidly, and more widely, than in earlier times. The dominance for much of the century of conceptual forms of art, from Cubism and Dada to Pop and Conceptual Art, was largely responsible for the greater speed with which innovations spread. There is no longer a single dominant place in the art world, comparable to Paris for the first century of modern art.

[Note: contains copyrighted material]

AA08183
Bilger, Burkhard THE LAST VERSE: IS THERE ANY FOLK MUSIC STILL OUT THERE? (New Yorker, April 28, 2008, pp. 52-63)
Full Text [html format]

The author joins Art Rosenbaum and Lance Ledbetter, collectors of folk music, on a search for the last few folk musicians and singers. The searchers find octogenarians like Cora Mae Bryant and Mary Lomax who still sing old folk songs. Yet this story is as much about the history of folk music and the searchers themselves. Folk music is an oral tradition as old as America, originating in the Midwest, South and especially Appalachia, with many local styles. In the early 20th century collectors like Cecil Sharp and others began to write down and record folk songs. The 1920’s where a watershed time when folk songs were recorded and achieved commercial popularity. By the 1930’s record sales dropped; however in the 1950’s and 1960’s there was a revival, which Rosenbaum joined by playing, recording and cataloging folk music. Ledbetter represents a newer generation of folk music aficionados, and came to folk music in the 1990’s. Ledbetter’s major contribution to folk music is Goodbye Babylon, an acclaimed collection over four years in the making. Since then he and his wife have produced eight other folk music collections. That Lance Ledbetter and Art Rosenbaum were able find folk music singers in their search means that folk music as living genre has not disappeared, yet.

AA08184
De Mane, Erica WHEN MISS LEWIS COOKED (American Legacy, vol. 13, no. 1, Spring 2007, pp. 42-49)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

The author profiles Edna Lewis, who grew up in rural Virginia and moved to New York in the 1940s, was one of the pioneers in reintroducing Americans to fresh, seasonal foods. In the 1950s and 1960s, as a chef in New York, she brought the best of Southern cuisine to the public, at a time when America was increasingly eating frozen and canned foods. Lewis, who published several cookbooks on Southern cooking, inspired a new generation of chefs such as Alice Waters, who were creating new cuisines based on locally available fresh produce.

AA08185
Ganz, Scott; Hassett, Kevin LITTLE LEAGUE, HUGE EFFECT (The American, vol. 2, no. 3, May/June 2008, pp. 64-67)
Full Text [html format]

The authors, both with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), writing in a publication of the AEI, believe that youth sports strengthen the economic, academic and social prospects of Americans. Since almost all of life in a capitalist society involves some form of competition, young athletes learn the formula for success in a market-based system. The weekly wages of college graduates who were high school athletes are generally higher than those of college graduates who did not play sports in high school. Such athletes also outperform their peers throughout their lifetimes where hard work becomes one measure to determine success. American children spend more time participating in athletics than Europeans; Americans learn on the playing fields that effort and success are connected. This partly explains why over 45 percent of all eligible American youth play in an agency-sponsored league, like Little League baseball, Pop Warner football, or locally-sponsored soccer.

AA08186
Sachs, Lloyd LAKEFRONT BATTLEGROUND (Downbeat, vol. 75, no. 5, May 2008, pp. 100-104)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

The Chicago Jazz Festival, which hosts a free jazz concert, showcasing some of America’s best jazz musicians, is about to turn 30. The big crowds in attendance provide a lot of energy and excitement: “You try even harder than usual to be at the top of your game for the crowd,” says Chicago saxophonist Eric Schneider. This year, the jazz festival will take place at the lakefront Millennium Park in downtown Chicago. “Playing [in Chicago] when it’s getting to be nighttime and the lights in the city are coming on is quite striking,” says Sonny Rollins, who will be making his first appearance at the festival since 1992. The festival has been known for encouraging innovative and pioneering jazz performances, and the organizers’ willingness to take chances with new music has brought on controversy, such as the Globe Unity Orchestra’s 45-minute avant-garde performance in 1987. However, embracing virtually all jazz styles (“save smooth jazz”) has also contributed to the festival’s popularity and longevity. At its thirty-year anniversary, the Chicago Jazz festival is as young and vital as ever.

AGAINST ALL ODDS?: NATIONAL SENTIMENT AND WAGERING ON EUROPEAN FOOTBALL.
Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin. Sebastian Braun and Michael Kvasnicka. Web posted May 2, 2008.
Full Text [pdf format, 18 pages]

This paper examines how national sentiment in the form of either a perception or a loyalty bias of bettors may affect pricing patterns on national wagering markets for international sport events. By analyzing data on betting quotas from online bookmakers in twelve European countries for qualification games to the UEFA Euro 2008, the authors find evidence for systematic biases in the pricing of betters’ own national teams in the odds for win offered across countries.

[Note: contains copyrighted material.]

AA08145
Capriccioso, Rob THE PHRASELATOR II: A HIGH-TECH MILITARY DEVICE IS HELPING TO PRESERVE THE TRIBAL LANGUAGES OF AMERICAN INDIANS (The American, October 9, 2007)
Full Text [html format]

More than 90 American Indian tribes are using the Phraselator -- a speech interpretation device developed by the U.S. military to translate Arabic words into English -– to capture words and phrases in native Indian languages before they disappear. Most tribes have very few living members who know their native tongue, and “it is increasingly rare to find young Indians who communicate with their elders in the tribal language,” says author Rob Capriccioso. Don Thorton, a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, paired up with Voxtec, a Maryland-based company, to adapt the Phraselator to the preservation and teaching of American Indian languages. It can record and translate both audio and video files and can store up to 85,000 words or phrases on a flash memory card. The information can then be transferred to other computers so the tribe can build up a database, create dictionaries and teach younger tribe members the language. The tribes can do it all themselves and retain the copyright on their materials. Phraselators cost about $3,300 plus $500 for additional software; approximately half the tribes using the device have purchased them via grants from the U.S. government.

AA08147
Shivel, Gail SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES (Choice, vol. 45, no. 9, May 2008, pp. 1451-1458, 1460-1461)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

The author, a lecturer in English, University of Miami, believes that the widening gap between science and the humanities is actually quite a recent phenomenon, from Copernicus’s and Galileo’s challenges of the religious establishment during the scientific revolution to the over-optimistic embrace by the Victorians of the possibilities for scientific answers to all the world’s ills. The author begins with a discussion of the early literature, beginning with ancient times through the Renaissance and up to the early 18th century and the Enlightenment, and a discussion on whether the 20th century saw a division between humanists and scientists. The author explores the relationship between science and the mind, and science in the context of creative behavior.

AA08148
Viadero, Debra INSIGHTS GAINED INTO ARTS AND SMARTS (Education Week, vol. 27, no. 27, March 12, 2008, pp. 1, 10-11)
Full Text (EbscoHost; password required)

Since the 1990s, a popular, but unproven theory has circulated that the arts, and music in particular, could make children smarter. Now, recently released findings have lent credibility to this claim. After three years of studies by university neurologists and cognitive psychologists, a tentative conclusion can be made that training in the arts might improve general thinking skills of children and adults. The report, released in March, does not provide any definitive answers to the "arts-makes-you-smarter" question, but lays to rest the notion that students are either right- or left-brained learners. As one of the researchers involved in the studies says, "the work done here suggests a much closer connection between the cognitive processes that give rise to the arts and the cognitive processes that give rise to the sciences." Arts advocates applaud the report's overall findings as supporting their efforts to maintain arts education in schools where the emphasis, most recently, has been on raising test scores in mathematics, reading, and science. Dana Gioia, poet and chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, concurs and points out that "the purpose of education is to realize the full human potential of every child."

AA08128
Lamb, Chris SPRING TRAINING (American Legacy, Spring 2007, pp. 15-20)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

Jackie Robinson was recruited from the Negro League by Brooklyn Dodgers’ manager Branch Rickey and was first assigned to the Montreal Royals for a season in 1946. Montreal’s manager Clay Hopper was not pleased, telling a sportswriter that if his father were alive, “he would probably kill me for managing a black player.” Spring training was in Sanford, Florida, 40 miles from Daytona Beach. The team had to leave Sanford because of threats to Robinson and Johnny Wright, another black player, and spring training was moved to Daytona Beach. Twice Robinson had to be talked out of quitting. For his first game in a Montreal uniform, Robinson anticipated a torrent of racial abuse, but instead, as he remembered later, he heard a white Southerner’s drawling voice from the stands say, “They’re giving you a chance – now come on and do something about it!” Robinson took the challenge and played so well – even when four towns subsequently cancelled their games rather than see him take the field – that at the end of the season Clay Hopper shook Robinson’s hand and said, “You’re a great ballplayer and a fine gentleman.” Robinson was assigned to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, “ending major league baseball’s color barrier and forever changing the game,” notes author Chris Lamb.

AA08129
Lindsey, Brink CULTURE OF SUCCESS: INSIDE AN INEQUALITY RIDDLE (New Republic, March 12, 2008, pp.30-31)
Full Text (EbscoHost; password required)

The main reason high percentages of African-Americans and Hispanics don’t go to college is not because they can’t afford it or can’t do the work, but because the cultural backgrounds from which they come discourage it, says Lindsey, vice president for research at the Cato Institute. Lindsey writes: “It’s a bedrock fact of social psychology: Humans have a powerful and universal tendency to form self-policing social groups. With groups that are marginal to begin with, the tendency to enforce group solidarity can express itself through stigmatizing anything that looks like mainstream success.” Culture is acting as a brake on upward mobility, he says. What counts most to a child’s success is the parents’ inclination to nurture their child’s development and the influence of peer groups. More needs to be done, Lindsey says, to help adapt and meet to the challenges.

Perry, Alex THE POWER OF SOWETO'S SONG (Time magazine, Vol. 171, Iss. 13, March 31, 2008)
Full Text [html format]

The chance beginning of the Soweto Gospel choir, the successes and the ‘magic’ that the beautiful voices bring to their audiences, are vividly described in this short article.

AA08079
Euchner, Charles HOOP DREAMS (The American, vol. 2, no. 1, January-February 2008, pp. 26-34)
Full Text

With powerful global marketing, the National Basketball Association (NBA) is pushing basketball past soccer in its quest to become the world’s most popular sport. Basketball started on an international level in 1932 with the formation of the International Basketball Federation. Over 200 national federations are now members, organized since 1989 into five zones or "commissions": Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. This has been helped considerably by the recruitment of foreign players to play on American teams. Before 1992, there were fewer than a dozen foreign‑born players in the NBA. Soon it increased to over eighty-one foreign‑born players from thirty-five different countries and territories. Only two teams lacked a foreign player, and the NBA champion San Antonio Spurs boasted three starters born outside the U.S. By the 2005 season, twenty-seven of the thirty NBA teams had at least one international player on their opening-day rosters. Perhaps the most famous foreign born player is Yao Ming, from China, the first international player who had not played college basketball in the U.S. and the number-one 2002 draft pick when he was selected by the Houston Rockets. In 2007, NBA teams selected fifteen players from thirteen countries.

AA08066
Holmes, Pernilla IN YOUR FACE (ARTnews, vol. 106, no. 6, June 2007, pp. 106-111)
Full Text

The author writes that portraiture is undergoing a renaissance, and is becoming increasingly conceptual, with many contemporary artists making portraits that are often not recognizable as such. The article profiles a number of artists who are using portraiture as a way to address personal identity, politics or social inequity. Many younger artists are using portraiture as a platform to address the mass media’s obsession with celebrity, and often use sculpture or video as a medium.

AA08051
Litt, Steven THE GREENING OF MUSEUM ARCHITECTURE (ARTnews, vol. 106, no. 9, October 2007, pp. 190-193)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

The Grand Rapids (Michigan) Art Museum is the first newly constructed art museum in the U.S. to be certified under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard for environmentally-sound building practices. Museums in the U.S. have been slow to embark on “green” building design, fearing extra costs as well as potential difficulties in maintaining temperature and humidity controls necessary to protect works of art. Thanks to a growing number of conservation-minded philanthropists, there is increasing support for museums to adopt environmentally-friendly building practices. Among the other institutions featured in the article are the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

AA08024
Gottschild, Brenda THE MOVEMENT IS THE MESSAGE (Dance Magazine, vol. 82, no. 1, January 2008, pp. 62//68)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

Dancers have responded to social ills throughout the history of modern dance as dancers have mixed activism with art. Today, they are responding to a rainbow of causes, including the war in Iraq, breast cancer, racism, global warming, sexual abuse, torture tactics, domestic violence, environmental pollution, and homophobia. A new group of socially engaged works has emerged that allows contemporary artists to follow in the footsteps of their aesthetic ancestors, particularly since the wake-up call of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Urban Bush Women, Compagnie JANT-BI, Spectrum Dance Theater, Jane Comfort and Company, and Ananya Dance Theatre, profiled in this article, are among the contemporary groups who are exploring an area of performance that is still considered dangerous territory, especially when such artists risk their artistic integrity to take on such socially conscious themes. Two examples: Jane Comfort and Company, based in New York City, has created a work, An American Rendition, that uses dance images to symbolize hostages being tortured in remote outposts; another, Ananya Dance Theatre, in Minneapolis, tailors its ensemble of all-female dancers to performances that depict environmental pollution and the racism inherent in poisoning poor people’s neighborhoods.

AA08025
Johnson, Joyce REMEMBERING JACK KEROUAC (Smithsonian, vol. 38, no. 6, September 2007, pp. 115-121)
Full Text (EbscoHost; password required)

The author, a writer and friend of Jack Kerouac, writes that the publication of ON THE ROAD in 1957 “uncorked all that bottled-up restlessness” of what has been called the Silent Generation, the children of parents who had lived through the upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century. They “anxiously pursued a narrow definition of the American Dream, terrified of losing their hard-won middle-class status”, and taught their children to keep their heads down. In this staid era, Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD defined a craving for new experiences, a desire to pack as much intensity as possible into each moment. Fifty years after it was published, Johnson writes, Kerouac’s voice still calls out: “look around you, stay open, question the roles society has thrust upon you, don’t give up the search for connection and meaning.”

Levine, Robert THE DEATH OF HIGH FIDELITY (Rolling Stone, Issue 1042/1043, Dec. 27, 2007-Jan. 10, 2008, pp. 15-18)
Full Text [html format]

Is the age of the audiophile over? CD sales are dropping, and kids don't seem to mind the quality loss of MP3 compression (MP3 reduces a CD audio file by as much as 90%). To compound matters, producers and engineers use a studio effect called dynamic range compression to make sure every moment on a CD is as loud as possible, with little difference between the loud and soft parts of a piece of music. Even CD listeners are losing interest in high-end stereos, choosing instead surround-sound home theater systems. If you are one of the declining number of people who still prefer high fidelity sound, this article will give you a better understanding of why today's recorded music doesn't sound so great.

ON THE USES OF CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE.
Shelia Miyoshi Jager. Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College. Web posted November 13, 2007.
Full Text [pdf format, 38 pages]

This paper explores the role of cultural knowledge as a new strategy for counterinsurgency. The author believes that culture has been largely ignored in broader strategic goals. “The author highlights the importance of culture, and cultural awareness, in formulating a broad strategy for counterinsurgency which also has wide-ranging implication for U.S. foreign policy.”

TO READ OR NOT TO READ: A QUESTION OF NATIONAL CONSEQUENCE.
Sarah Sullivan, Bonnie Nichols, Tom Bradshaw, Kelli Rogowski, and Mark Bauerlein. Research Report, Office of Research & Analysis, National Endowment for the Arts. Web posted November 19, 2007.
Full Text [pdf format, 98 pages]

This study shows that Americans are reading less than they were ten or twenty years ago. The authors suggest that the diminished role of voluntary reading is “adversely affecting this country’s culture, economy, and civic life as well as our children’s educational achievement.”

This comprehensive study gathered statistics from more than forty studies on reading habits of children, teenagers, and adults.

AA07445
Kurtz, Patti UNDERSTANDING AND APPRECIATING FANTASY LITERATURE (Choice, vol. 45, no. 4, December 2007, pp. 571-572, 574-580)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

The genre of fantasy literature is difficult to define. Traditionally, the majority of fantasy works have been literature, but since the 1950s, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of video games, music, and painting. It is difficult to define the precise 'beginning' of fantasy literature, as such stories have existed in spoken forms before the advent of printed literature. Homer's ODYSSEY satisfies the definition of fantasy, however the genre’s more distinct beginnings were in the fairy tales of Europe. As a distinct type, fantasy literature became visible in the Victorian era, with the works of writers such as William Morris, Lord Dunsany, George MacDonald and Lewis Carroll, author of ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, followed by L. Frank Baum’s WIZARD OF OZ. Some assert that J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were seminal to the mass popularization of the fantasy genre, with works such as THE HOBBIT, THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA. The global phenomenon of J.K. Rowling’s HARRY POTTER series is a testament to the popularity of fantasy literature and to the type of creative and talented writers it now attracts.

AA07431
Drezner, Daniel FOREIGN POLICY GOES GLAM (National Interest, no. 92, November/December 2007, pp. 22-28)
Full Text [html format]

The phenomenon of celebrities appearing before Congressional committees to advocate for causes such as human rights or the environment is not a new one. Drezner, an associate professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, notes that celebrity culture has fundamentally changed; star entertainers are now taking an active interest in world politics, and are able to raise issues to the top of the global agenda. In the current media environment, there is an almost symbiotic relationship between celebrities and their causes. Earlier celebrities, such as Shirley Temple and Jane Fonda, were political activists. Temple, became U.S. ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia. The magazine Vanity Fair let U2 singer Bono guest-edit a special issue on Africa, due to his numerous visits to that continent, including a well publicized one with former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. Princess Diana was in the forefront of the campaign to ban the use of land mines; her death became a rallying point that led to Great Britain’s ratification of the 1997 Ottawa Convention. However, not all celebrities are successful; some are quite misguided or have been stung by criticism, as the Dixie Chicks found out when they blasted President George W. Bush on stage at a 2004 London concert.

AA07432
Lehman, David ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S AMERICA (American Heritage, vol. 58, no. 2, April/May 2007, pp. 28-41)
Full Text [html format]

British-born director Alfred Hitchcock came to Hollywood because it could accommodate his creativity more easily than England’s provincial film industry, says critic David Lehman. Hitchcock, who became an American citizen in 1955, made his greatest films here. In the America of his vision, “paranoia is sometimes a reasonable response to events in a world of menace.” Consider Shadow of a Doubt, Spellbound, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, North by Northwest, Vertigo. “The murderous or perilous coexists with the homely and domestic” in Hitchcock’s landscape. Imagine taking a shower at the Bates Motel. But the counterweight to his dark view of humanity is “an insistence on justice, and sometimes poetic justice, and a reiteration of basic American values.” Lehman notes how often U.S. monuments turn up in Hitchcock’s films and are “invoked for the ideals they stand for.” He also cites “Hitchcock’s humor and the marvelous way it coexists with the macabre.” In a sidebar, George Perry, another British ex-patriot, tells of his friendship with Hitchcock and says the film director “clearly had a great love for his adopted country and things American, relishing the variety and vastness of the landscape, the diversity and occasional eccentricities of its people.”

AA07433
Ringlero, Aleta MUD WOMAN (American Indian, vol. 8, no. 2, Summer 2007, pp. 18-23)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

New Mexico-based Pueblo artist Nora Noranjo-Morse credits her clay sculpture to the generations of the Indian Pueblo “mud women” of New Mexico, who have a long tradition of working with clay. However, much of her work reflects Noranjo-Morse’s opposition to the limited expectations of ethnic art and her struggle to break with the commercial art markets that promote the manufacture of trinket art. Her sculptures of the human form have a modern, minimalist style, including a series named Pearlene, which Noranjo-Morse conceived as her alter ego, and used as a protest against the social and cultural conventions limiting women’s behavior.

AA07417
Deutsch, Jonathan; Miller, Jeffrey FOOD STUDIES: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY GUIDE TO THE LITERATURE (Choice, vol. 45, no. 3, November 2007, pp. 393-401)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

Interest in food has reached an historical high, according to the authors. A scan of bestseller lists includes cookbooks by celebrity chefs, diet books, food memoirs, food travel books, serious overviews of food, and food supply. There is even a cable television network, Food Nation, devoted to all topics of food while movies with food themes are appearing in greater numbers every year. For the food historian, archives such as those maintained by The Schlesinger Library for Women in Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies have noted an increase in resources, such as its historical cookbook collection, which allows the serious researcher to study the manner in which food dictated the American way of life and the course of women’s history. In this essay, the authors discuss the important early works, subject-related journals, and the “go-to” reference works. Other sections include food history; food and the social sciences, which are considered the “bread-and-butter” of food studies; food and the humanities; and nutrition and policy.

AA07419
Seligson, Joelle “A PLACE PREPARED”: THE ACOMA PUEBLO (Museum News, July/August 2007, pp. 48-55)
Full Text [html format]

The Acoma Pueblo, whose 2,000-year-old community is the oldest continually inhabited in North America, have opened a new state-of-the-art museum, The Sky City Cultural Center, to replace the old one that burned to the ground in 2000. The new Haak’u Museum cost $17 million and covers 40,000 square feet. It serves not only as a traditional museum but as the place the entire tribe congregates for sacred rites and as a cultural center for the Acoma’s youngsters, who come regularly to learn how to craft the moccasins, dresses, and thin-walled pottery for which the tribe is famous. The museum is located in Sky City, an hour’s drive from Albuquerque, New Mexico, in spectacular terrain of lofty mesas, piñon trees and tumbleweed. The museum is surrounded by traditional homes -- almost the entire tribe lives within four miles of the center -- still inhabited by Acoma families, often without electricity or running water. The site with its new center became the first living Native American community to be declared a National Trust Historic Site in January 2007.

AA07403
37 UNDER 36: AMERICA’S YOUNG INNOVATORS IN THE ARTS AND SCIENCES (Smithsonian, special issue, Fall 2007)

Selected Full Text available from your nearest American Library

The editors of Smithsonian Magazine have selected a group of 37 up-and-coming young Americans in various fields as some of the most promising people whose careers are worth watching. Those being profiled are scholars, singers, writers, scientists, musicians, painters and activists, and include individuals such as Christina Galitsky, of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, who developed a highly-efficient cookstove for refugees in environmentally fragile areas; anthropologist Amber VanDerwarker, who is studying the mysteries of the Olmec culture; Philippe Cousteau, who is continuing his family’s tradition of filmmaking and environmental activism; novelist Daniel Alarcon; and Geneva Wiki, whose school in Klamath, California, is encouraging Native Americans to stay in school and continue on to college.

AA07404
Duncan, Michael THE ART OF INFLUENCE (Art in America, vol. 95, no. 5, May 2007, pp. 172-177)
Full Text via EbscoHost (password required)

A useful way to reevaluate the work of artists is to examine how, over time, their work has changed due to the influence of other artists, notes the author, an independent curator, in an article about two recent exhibitions in Los Angeles. “Enigma Variations” at the Santa Monica Museum of Art explores the effect that the work of Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico had on American postmodernist Philip Guston, demonstrating surprising thematic and stylistic connections between the two; as a teenager in Los Angeles, Guston was dazzled by de Chirico’s early work. “Magritte and Contemporary Art” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art features the work of Magritte side-by-side with that of 31 contemporary American artists, including Jasper Johns. In his own time, Magritte was regarded as an outsider to the Surrealist movement; however, the exhibition shows Magritte’s continuing importance over the past 40 years. Magritte’s turn away from abstraction to surrealism was also influenced by de Chirico. Although Magritte’s influence on popular culture was not a primary focus of the Los Angeles exhibition, his early career in advertising explains how many of his surrealist images are more recognizable than those of Salvador Dali.

AA07405
Reece, Erik RECLAIMING A TOXIC LEGACY THROUGH ART AND SCIENCE (Orion, November/December 2007)
Full Text

The community of Vintondale, Pennsylvania, like many former Appalachian coal-mining towns, is plagued by a poisonous discharge of sulfuric acid and iron known as acid mine drainage; in the 1990s, the Environmental Protection Agency designated acid mine drainage as the most serious environmental problem in the eastern mountains. T. Allan Comp, a historic preservationist who specializes in industrial sites, approached local people in Vintondale about a reclamation project he called Acid Mine Drainage And Art (AMD&ART). His idea was to reclaim toxic coal mine sites not only physically, but using elements of design, sculpture and local history, which would spur community involvement. The author writes that Comp met with a lot of suspicion at first, noting the traditional lack of civic involvement in former coal company towns, where such activity usually meant union organizing, that would result in being blacklisted or fired. Reece notes that Vintondale has since become a model for renewal of former industrial towns, and that “arts and the humanities are absolutely necessary to environmental recovery.”

AA07356
Greenhill, Jennifer A. THE VIEW FROM OUTSIDE: ROCKWELL AND RACE IN 1950 (American Art, Summer 2007, pp. 70-95)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

Norman Rockwell, whose iconic images of America made him one of the country’s best-loved artists, was himself a liberal who sympathized with African-Americans and was interested in depicting them in his art. But the Saturday Evening Post, for which he did many a famous cover in that time “when whiteness was normalized and blackness taboo,” would only allow him to depict African-Americans in subservient or subsidiary roles, believing it should show on its cover what its white middle-class audience wanted to see. Although he chafed at the demands of longtime Post editor George Horace Latimer, Rockwell on the surface complied with his role as “one of the foremost shapers of white middle-class America’s self image” in the mid-20th century, according to Greenhill. However, using a number of Rockwell works and their sources and earlier versions as examples, she shows that race figures prominently in his work, even when, as in the famous SHUFFLETON’S BARBERSHOP, there is no African-American figure in the painting. In Greenhill’s view, Rockwell ultimately failed to resolve the problem of racism in his art: “The work weighs the question of race and admits that it cannot conceive of a solution, admits there is a gap that it does not know how to fill.” For those interested in how carefully, even obsessively, Rockwell coded his work and loaded it with meaning, this is “must” reading.

AA07358
Wasserman, Steve GOODBYE TO ALL THAT (Columbia Journalism Review, September–October 2007, pp. 42—53)
Full Text

While American newspapers have reduced the resources and page space for book reviews, the decline is not altogether recent and there was no “golden age” of book reviewing in the American broadsheet. While many attribute the decline to book sections’ failure to generate sufficient advertising revenue, sports and other newspaper sections are not expected to serve as profit centers. Newspapers have in any case failed to exploit the commercial possibilities of reaching their most affluent, educated subscribers through book coverage. The real problem is “the anti-intellectual ethos in the nation’s newsrooms.”

AA07329
Hammer, Joshua UNDAUNTED (Smithsonian, vol. 38, no. 6, September 2007, pp. 66-73)
Full Text

Rory Stewart is a former British diplomat, adventurer and author who, at only 34 years old, has hiked across Afghanistan, worked in post-invasion Iraq for the British government, and now runs a foundation in Kabul devoted to preserving and restoring traditional Afghan architecture and crafts. The Turquoise Mountain Foundation, with seed money from Stewart's books and the Prince of Wales, has established workshops for traditional crafts such as calligraphy, woodworking and pottery. The foundation has also launched restoration work in Kabul's ruined Old City, thwarting plans to raze the old section to make way for concrete high-rises. Stewart's work today is, in part, inspired by his four-month trek across Afghanistan in 2001. "I saw so much destruction, so many traditional houses replaced by faceless boxes," Stewart tells Hammer. "I realized how powerful and intricate [Afghan tribal] communities can be and how many potential resources there are."

AA07342
Bolz, Diane PRIDE OF THE REALM (Smithsonian, vol. 38, no. 5, August 2007, pp. 423-426)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery is presenting “Great Britons: Treasures from the National Portrait Gallery, London.” By bringing to America approximately sixty of the finest painted portraits and photographs of the most significant British figures of the past 500 years, this exhibition demonstrates the common histories of the two countries; underscores the strong link between the U.S. and the United Kingdom, America’s oldest ally; and celebrates national portrait galleries everywhere. The presentation features such influential figures as monarchs Elizabeth I and II; individuals who created political change from Henry VIII and Oliver Cromwell to Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher and inventors from Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin to Stephen Hawking. In addition, the exhibition highlights the work of outstanding portrait painters Sir Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir John Everitt Millais and Walter Sickert. Photographic and digital works include Benjamin Howlett’s image of the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Sam Taylor Wood’s recent digital video portrait of footballer David Beckham. The images featured in the exhibition were chosen to show the range of people the Gallery celebrates as well as the array of great works and media in its Collection. Marc Pachter, director of Washington, D.C.'s National Portrait Gallery, says the exhibition "introduces you to people you have only heard or read about. It's almost as if you were invited to some kind of extraordinary dinner party to meet these individuals."

AA07344
Wat, Kathryn A. ART AND THE FEMINIST REVOLUTION (Women in the Arts, Fall 2007, pp. 8-13)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

A new exhibition set to open September 21 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., shows the impact of the feminist movement on art by women worldwide from 1965 to 1980. WACK! ART AND THE FEMINIST REVOLUTION, which will be on view through December 16 2007, includes among its 300 works by 118 artists such well-known pieces as Kristen Justesen’s SCULPTURE II (1968), in which the artist shows herself nude crouching in a cardboard box, and Judy Chicago’s PASADENA LIFESAVER RED #5 (1970). The exhibition also includes such famous performances as Yoko Ono’s CUT PIECE, in which audience members cut away her clothing, and Serbian artist Marina Abramovic’s video of herself combing her hair, ART MUST BE BEAUTIFUL, ARTIST MUST BE BEAUTIFUL. “Some artists included in WACK! do not consider their work to be feminist, often because they see their art as more personal than political,” says Kathryn Wat, the curator of modern and contemporary art at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the article’s author. “Yet the most intimate expressions can have the greatest political and cultural impact.”

AA07327
Harbold, Laura DRAWN FROM NATURE: AUDUBON’S ARTISTIC LEGACY. Woodville, Louisa LINNAEUS: IN SEARCH OF BOTANICAL TREASURES (Humanities, Vol. 28, No. 2, March/April 2007, pp. 10-17)
“Drawn from Nature”: Full Text

“In Search of Botanical Treasures”: Full text available from your nearest American Library

The work of naturalists John James Audubon (French/Haitian) and Carolus Linnaeus (Swedish) helped Americans appreciate their own native flora and fauna. Linnaeus created the two-part, Latin-based system of naming plants, animals and minerals still in use. He sent students to explore the world, including the New York-Canadian wilderness, and the specimens they brought back were part of his groundbreaking book SPECIES OF PLANTS, published in 1753. Linnaeus’ system of classifying the natural world “helped New World inhabitants establish an identity separate from their European kinfolk,” says author Woodville. Audubon is best known for his BIRDS OF AMERICA, a seven-volume set of 650 hand-colored prints published in 1840. Harbold interviews Larry Hott, director of DRAWN FROM NATURE, a documentary on Audubon funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, who sees Audubon as a man of contradictions -- a conservationist who was also an avid bird hunter, an American outdoorsman and European sophisticate, and an artist and entrepreneur. Many of the birds he painted are now extinct, along with much of the American wilderness that was their home. Audubon was “the first to sound the clarion call that there was a problem,” says Hott. The painter’s legacy lives on in the National Audubon Society and its dedication to preserving America’s natural heritage.

AA07309
Odell, Jennifer BROOKLYN JAZZ UNDERGROUND PROMOTES BOROUGH’S MUSICAL INNOVATORS (Downbeat, Vol. 74, No. 4, April 2007, pp. 13-14)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

While rap music emanated from the South Bronx in the 1970s, another New York borough is fast becoming a musical brand name. When hip-hop artist Mos Def calls out, “Where Brooklyn at?” during a show, Odell points out, it is because commercially successful hip-hop and jazz groups identify themselves with Brooklyn. In January, a collective of jazz musicians formed the Brooklyn Jazz Underground, in order to pool business skills and preserve their Brooklyn-based identities. They are focusing on booking weekend festivals to highlight all the group members’ music, selling CDs and bringing more fans to the collective’s Web site. The BJU may even pursue non-profit status to reach its goals related to school and community outreach. The BJU’s democratic structure promotes shared decision-making and work. If one person shoulders an unfair portion of the work, said pianist Benny Lackner, “people would care less and the dynamic would be off. I see that on a small scale in my trio ... the other musicians are more active because they have input.”

AA07290
Turner, Jonathan TWO CONVERSIONS AND A LOST CRUCIFIXION: WHY DID CARAVAGGIO PAINT TWO VERY DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF THE SAME SUBJECT? (ARTNews, April 2007, pp. 98-100)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

In the early 1600s, the Baroque artist Caravaggio (1571-1610) produced two very different paintings of the same subject, “The Conversion of Saint Paul.” These two works, along with a surviving example of “The Crucifixion of Saint Peter,” were displayed together for the first time last year in Rome’s Church of Santa Maria del Popolo, and may help explain why Caravaggio painted two sharply contrasting versions of a biblical scene. The author argues that the first rendition may have shocked contemporary sensibilities, and was probably considered “insufficiently reverent” for its treatment of a religious theme. Caravaggio introduced a radical naturalism and a dramatic approach to chiaroscuro (the use of light and shadow) that had a profound influence on generations of artists that followed him, but his innovations were not always understood or welcomed during his own lifetime. Both paintings are unorthodox for their time; the first version is more violent and has a more vivid palette, and the later version has the somber tones that likely made more acceptable to religious authorities. This first-ever display invites a renewed appreciation of the artist’s daring experiments with light, shadow, and strongly theatrical composition. Only 50 works by the Baroque master survive, but his paintings, “with their light sources beyond the frame and their movement suddenly halted as if in a snapshot, look increasingly modern,” the author concludes.

AA07275
Gopnik, Adam ANGELS AND AGES, LINCOLN’S LANGUAGE AND ITS LEGACY (New Yorker, May 28, 2007, pp. 30-37)
Full Text

As the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, in February 2009, approaches, the number of books on all aspects of his life and times is increasing. This summation of current Lincoln scholarship is, like its subject, surprisingly lively and relevant to a wide international audience. “Overcome again by Lincoln’s example,” writes longtime New Yorker author Adam Gopnik, “by the idea of a President who was at once an interesting mind, a tough customer, and a good writer -- I decided start reading the new Lincoln literature. It seemed to be multiplying by fission, as amoebas do, on the airport bookshelves. In books published in the past two years alone, you can read about Lincoln’s ‘sword’ (his writing), his ‘sanctuary’ (the Soldiers’ Home just outside Washington, where he spent summers throughout the war). You can read a book about Lincoln’s alleged love affair with a young officer, and one about Lincoln’s relations, tetchy but finally triumphant, with Frederick Douglass. There is no part of Lincoln, from manhood to death, that is not open and inscribed.” Gopnik’s tour of Lincoln literature offers thumbnail sketches of Lincoln’s sometimes evolving beliefs on faith, law, war, and, Shakespeare, among many other topics of his and our times. The article offers both a useful guide to what to read, and a quick lesson, if one is needed, of the continuing relevance of Abraham Lincoln.

AA07276
Lent, John A. COMIC BOOKS AND COMIC STRIPS: A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE SCHOLARLY LITERATURE (Choice, vol. 44, no. 11, July 2007, pp. 1855-1867)
Full Text (ProQuest: password required)

Throughout the 20th century, comic strips have been one of the prime conveyors of popular American images. Early syndicated comic strips were translated and published in Europe and Walt Disney successfully marketed his cartoon characters as hardbound collections in Latin America in the 1930s as part of President Roosevelt’s ‘Good Neighbor Policy’. The study and research into comic art was minimal until after World War II, when interest began to increase as the State Department and later the U.S. Information Agency produced comic books as part of the publications it sent to its overseas audiences. The author, a recognized authority on the popular culture of comic art and the author of several important works on the subject, attempts to identify the most prominent comic books and newspaper strips published in English. One promising area of comic scholarship in the U.S. during the last decade has been an increased exploration of foreign comics, and not just from Europe and Japan. A number of factors have contributed to this, including the worldwide commercial success of Japanese manga; the Internet, with its potential to connect cartoonists and comic scholars globally; the arrival of graphic novels and of journals such as the International Journal of Comic Art; the interest of American book publishers in foreign comics; and the growth of comic book conventions and conferences. Comic art’s biggest achievement in the past twenty years has been to find its place in academia; however, some areas still need further study, such as knowledge about the audiences, messages, and power structures behind comics. The essay is divided into two parts, dealing with reference titles, and discussing theory and criticism.

AA07248
Friedwald, Will ANY WAY YOU COULD BE, SAMMY WAS (American Legacy, Summer 2007, pp. 64-75)
Full text available from your nearest American Library.

Seventeen years after his death, Sammy Davis Jr. “is more omnipresent than at any time since the mid-1960s,” when he conquered every nearly every form of entertainment: night clubs, records, television, movies and Broadway, says author Will Friedwald, jazz columnist for the New York Sun. Davis and the rest of the Rat Pack are considered “hip all over again.” Along with two new biographies of Davis, two documentaries and two feature films are in the works. Friedwald cites biographer Wil Haygood’s contention that Davis wanted to be white [Haygood is black], and adds that Davis “needed nothing less than total love and approval from everybody all the time.” He traces Davis’ career from his first appearance on vaudeville at the age of three, in 1928, through his Rat Pack days. By 1955 Davis was a superstar, but he still encountered “subtle, debilitating racism.” His last great hit was “Mr. Bojangles” in 1972. Interestingly, an article in the June 3 New York Times by Pat H. Broeske also looks at Davis’s posthumous return to the limelight, observing that his life gives biographers and filmmakers a lot to work with: “beyond the drug problems and his love affairs [with white actresses May Britt and Kim Novak], he offers a vehicle to consider an American obsession: race.”

AA07249
McBride, James HIP-HOP PLANET (National Geographic, vol. 211, no. 4, April 2007, pp. 100-114)
Full Text

“Not since the advent of swing jazz in the 1930s has an American music exploded across the world with such overwhelming force,” writes the author. The culture of song, graffiti and dance that is collectively known as hip-hop has transformed popular music in every country that it has permeated. France, home to a large population of North African immigrants, is the second largest hip-hop market in the world. McBride traces the origins of hip-hop, from beat poet Amiri Baraka in the 1950s and 1960s, to the youth of the South Bronx and Harlem who came up with impromptu dance music in the 1970s – largely because the New York City public school system had drastically cut funding for the arts. While its structure is bewildering, and lyrics that glorify violence and ostentatious luxury disturb many, McBride writes that rap music has “become a universal expression of outrage ... at its best, hip-hop lays bare the empty moral cupboard that is our generation’s legacy. This music that once made visible the inner culture of America's greatest social problem, its legacy of slavery, has taken the dream deferred to a global scale. Today, 2 percent of the Earth's adult population owns more than 50 percent of its household wealth, and indigenous cultures are swallowed with the rapidity of a teenager gobbling a bag of potato chips. The drums are pounding out a warning. They are telling us something. Our children can hear it. We'd be wise, I suppose, to start paying attention.”

ARTS AND ECONOMIC PROSPERITY III: THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF NONPROFIT ARTS AND CULTURE ORGANIZATIONS AND THEIR AUDIENCES: NATIONAL REPORT.
Robert L. Lynch. Americans for the Arts. Web posted May 22, 2007.
Full Text [pdf format, 314 pages]

This is the third study of the nonprofit arts and culture industry and its impact on the economy. This study covered 156 regions (116 cities and counties, 35 multi-county regions and five states) that included 6,080 nonprofit arts and culture organizations.

The study shows that the nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $166.2 billion in economic activity—a 24 percent increase since 2002. The industry supports 5.7 million full-time jobs; generates $30 billion in revenue to local, state, and federal governments; and pumps revenue into restaurants, hotels, retail stores, and other local businesses. “Nationally, as well as locally, the arts mean business!”

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

ARTS AND CULTURE IN THE METROPOLIS: STRATEGIES FOR SUSTAINABILITY.
Kevin F. McCarthy, Elizabeth Heneghan Ondaatje, and Jennifer L. Novak. RAND Education, RAND Corporation. Web posted March 9, 2007.
Full Text [pdf format, 124 pages]

Nonprofit arts are facing challenges concerning growth and the prospect of consolidation. The William Penn Foundation and the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance asked RAND to examine the Philadelphia’s arts and culture sector and offer recommendations to ensure sustainability.

The study identified sources and characteristics of the new cultural sector and described ways that art communities are responding to these challenges. The study analyzed eleven metropolitan regions: Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Pittsburgh. It also focused on the relationship of three components: art infrastructures; the support system; and the socio-demographic, economic, and the political environment. The authors then assessed the strengths and weaknesses of the communities’ support services, and made recommendations for their art sectors.

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

Boxer, Sarah HIS INNER CAT (The New York Review of Books, vol. 54, no. 10, June 14, 2007, pp. 28-32)

Available from your nearest American Library

Bill Watterson, creator of "Calvin & Hobbes", has cited George Herriman's "Krazy Kat" as one of his major influences. This early-mid 20th century comic strip (ending with Herriman's death in 1944), also features Ignatz Mouse, always on the lookout for a brick with which to bean Krazy Kat, and Offissa Bull Pupp, the cat's protector and mouse's arrester. As Boxer notes, the strip "is its own country. The borders are forbidding and you have to accustom yourself slowly to its landscape and its lingo. But once you're in, there's no looking back." It's a shame that none of the American Libraries in South Africa have any of the books mentioned in this essay.

Colapinto, John WHEN I'M SIXTY-FOUR: PAUL McCARTNEY THEN AND NOW (New Yorker, vol. 83, no. 15, June 4, 2007, pp. 56-67)
Full Text (ProQuest: password required)

Paul McCartney wrote the tune to "When I'm Sixty-Four" as a teenager, and the words in his twenties. Having reached that age, there is a touch of sadness about McCartney, who has had his fair share of tragedies, starting with the loss of his mother at the age of 14. Yet he also expresses a sense of wonderment at his life: "There were just four people in the Beatles, and I was one of them. There were two people in the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team, and I was one of them. ... And there was one guy who wrote 'Yesterday', and I was him. ... All of these things would be enough for anyone's life. So to be involved in all of them is pretty surprising." Colapinto met with McCartney in England over five days, and the resulting article (in an American magazine, hence its inclusion in an American Library alert) is fascinating not only for details of the musician's present daily life (annoyingly frequent requests for autographs and photos whenever he ventures out; time in the studio, etc.) but also for his current take on the sixties and the little rock combo that had such a profound effect on popular culture in the U.S. and elsewhere.

AA07229
Eustis, Oskar HOW PAPP GOT IT RIGHT (American Theatre, Vol. 24, No. 1, January 2007, pp. 74-79)
Full Text (ProQuest: password required)

Full Text on Publisher's Website

“Theatre’s lineage ... is inextricably linked to democracy,” says author Oskar Eustis, artistic director of New York City’s Public Theatre. He recalls the founding of the New York Shakespeare Festival (1954) and the Public Theatre (1967) by Joseph Papp. In the 1950s Papp began staging Shakespeare productions in Central Park, “defending the principle that art belonged to everybody.” Eustis compares the birth of both theatre and democracy in Greece. Theatre changed forever when the god-like storyteller was replaced by characters speaking to each other on stage. “Truth resides not in the storyteller – truth resides somehow in the dialogue, in the space between two people,” he says. Similarly, “in order for democracy to work you have to believe that nobody has a monopoly on truth ... you have to believe that truth resides in the dialogue between different points of view.” Eustis goes on to decry reduced government support for the arts, “particularly for the risk-taking arts”; the need for nonprofit theatre to depend more on the box office; and the resultant blurring of lines between nonprofit and commercial theatre. “The idea behind nonprofit theatre – certainly the idea behind the Public – is that culture is actually part of the birthright of the nation. The great democratizing power of the theatre needs to be unleashed by the nonprofit theatre, not constrained.”

AA07231
Rodriguez, Marissa HOMECOMING KINGS: FROM THEIR NATIVE SAN ANGELO, TEXAS, TO THE WORLD AND BACK AGAIN, LOS LONELY BOYS HAVE COME FULL CIRCLE (Hispanic, vol. 20, no. 4, April 2007, pp. 56-58)
Full Text (ProQuest: password required)

Rodriguez describes the rise to fame of Los Lonely Boys, the Grammy-winning trio whose 2003 self-titled album includes the hit single “Heaven.” Los Lonely Boys are three brothers in their 20s; the name is inspired by a song written for them as children by their father. In an interview with Henry Garza, lead vocalist and eldest of the brothers, a moving story emerges. As teenagers, they started performing with their father, Enrique, whose dreams of fame as a country-western singer had been dashed years earlier, when audiences had been “unwilling or unable to reconcile his country sound with his ethnicity.” The father finally began to make a name for himself when he brought his sons on stage. But as they developed a rock’n’roll sound, the sons separated musically from their father. Henry describes it as “the most hurtful and rough time” in his life. Today, Enrique joins his sons on stage on some numbers. And after touring, Los Lonely Boys return home to the same Texas town where they grew up. “We represent being Chicano,” Henry says. “That’s who we were when we were born and who we were growing up.”

AA07232
Wei, Lilly LIVING COLOR (Art in America, April 2007, pp. 116-123)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

A 40-year traveling retrospective on the work of African-American abstract artist Sam Gilliam is now at its final stop in Houston, Texas. Gilliam’s draped and unconventionally suspended paintings, some of them as much as 75 feet long, are considered “a major contribution to the history of American formalism,” according to Lilly Wei, an independent curator. Lavishly illustrated, the article includes a reproduction of “April 4, 1969” -- his abstract painting commemorating the first anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Gilliam was inspired in some of his work after 1980 by the Russian Constructivists of the 1910s and 1920s, Wei says. “As he again questions and dismantles the rectangle of traditional painting and reconsiders the monochrome, the grid and primary colors, he is resuming a dialogue with artists such as Tatlin, Malevich and Rodchenko.”

AA07211
Als, Hilton IN THE TERRITORY; A CRITIC AT LARGE (New Yorker, vol. 83, no. 11, May 7, 2007, pp. 74-78, 80)
Full Text (ProQuest: password required)

In this profile of writer Ralph Waldo Ellison, the author notes that Ellison's first and only novel, INVISIBLE MAN (1952), is now regarded by many as one of the important texts on urban black masculinity. When it was first published, however, its critics in the literary establishment emphasized not the book's specificity but its broad appeal. By the time Ellison died in 1994, the novel had inspired more than twenty book-length critical studies. Despite the accolades, though, every time Ellison received another prize for INVISIBLE MAN, he had to face the inevitable question: where was his second novel? The author notes that Ellison “had the prickly nature of a high-minded moralist, intolerant of any standards other than those he imposed on himself”. In 1938, Ellison became a member of the New York Writers' Project, an offshoot of the Works Progress Administration; with thirty other writers and researchers, he was responsible for producing a comprehensive study called "The Negro in New York." Ellison also began to cultivate relationships with white writers and academics such as Stanley Edgar Hyman and Robert Penn Warren. He sought to emulate the writers who gave him a sense of himself as an artist, not just as a black man.

ART PRICES AND RACE: PAINTINGS BY AFRICAN AMERICAN ARTISTS AND THEIR WHITE CONTEMPORARIES.
Richard Agnello and Xiaowen Xu. Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, Alfred Lerner College of Business & Economics, University of Delaware. Web posted April 23, 2007.
Full Text [pdf format, 40 pages]

“In this paper we compare prices of oil paintings sold at auction from 1972 to 2004 for African American artists and their white contemporaries. It is widely documented by the art community that African American art has been under appreciated in America going back to the time of slavery. Along with the great strides made in the twentieth century towards racial equality in the U.S., African American art has become recognized in the national and international art scene with much focus from galleries, programs and exhibitions. Our interest is to investigate the extent that economic and financial markets have incorporated mainstream acceptance of African American art.”

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

AA07188
Elliott, Emory DIVERSITY IN THE UNITED STATES AND ABROAD: WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN AMERICAN STUDIES IS TRANSNATIONAL? (American Quarterly, vol. 59, no. 1, March 2007, pp. 1-25)
Full Text (ProQuest: password required)

The author, professor of English at the University of California, Riverside, believes that throughout American history, writers, artists, journalists, teachers, and public intellectuals have employed both explicit and subtle methods to critique the gaps between the expressed ideals of the United States and the lived realities, and so too have many American studies scholars used their research to examine and analyze from where we have come, where we are now, and to where we may be headed. Elliott believes that living in the richest and most powerful country in the world places upon us an enormous responsibility to employ every advantage we may have -- in research and library resources, academic influence, technological expertise, programmatic opportunities, travel support, networking and governmental contacts -- in working closely with scholars from every country to form alliances, advance knowledge, and accomplish goals together so far unimagined.

AA07189
Miles, Christopher BRIGHTNESS FALLS (Art in America, March 2007, pp. 128–133)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

American artist Jennifer Steinkamp's vast digital animation installations use space and light to engage the viewer in a fusion of the abstract, the literal and the symbolic. The result is a play on orientation that is the hallmark of the artist, 49, whose ambitious works and innovative use of digital media defy expectations. According to author Miles, in a medium often associated with distance and detachment, Steinkamp's works make viewers profoundly aware of their presence and sense of space. Colored waves of light move endlessly, yet each movement is an event in itself. Thus, Miles writes, the experience of being "in" one of Steinkamp's works is at once momentary and perpetual. Provoking viewers to consider what is not visible, or hidden, the artist, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, borrows an old trick used in film to represent the invisible. For example, in Formation (2006) and Rock Formation (2006), which is installed permanently at the Denver Art Museum, luminescent sheets of "fabric" appear to drift in endless succession from the top to the bottom of the wall upon which they are projected. Soon the viewer senses that the fabric is catching and rubbing on something as it falls. Steinkamp's works offer viewers the opportunity, then, to engage a moment, to consider carefully what is in view and what is hidden, and to figure out where they stand in relation to it.

AA07190
Secor, Laura KEEP AWAY: THE CASE FOR DOING NOTHING (New Republic, April 23, 2007, pp. 15-16)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

As part of a series of four essays written by different authors under the title “Iran: What Next?” Secor argues: “Getting involved in the Iranian opposition might make us (Americans) feel good, but it will only hurt the people we seek to help.” Secor says accepting U.S. aid only endangers Iranians that are part of a democratic movement she describes as “large, organized, intellectually sophisticated and politically skilled.” NGOs and other groups that accept U.S. aid, she notes, are labeled as part of a U.S. plot to overthrow the Islamic Republic. What the Iranian oppositions wants, and what the United State should do more of, Secor writes, is promote cultural and academic exchanges. “This will undoubtedly sound like a disappointing comedown to those who dream of fomenting revolution by remote control. But there is a deep and genuine thirst among Iranians for knowledge and experience of Western liberalism,” she writes. Slaking that thirst, she says, can have far-reaching, positive consequences that are in the best interest of the United States.

AA07191
Ulrich, Allan THE BEAUTY OF INFLECTIONS (Dance, Vol. 81, No. 3, March 2007, pp. 33-38)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

French-born Muriel Maffre, 41, is retiring in May after seventeen years as a principal ballerina with the San Francisco Ballet. At five-foot-ten, too tall by French standards for ballet in the 1980s, Maffre came to the United States and “proved that unconventional bodies can flourish in the American ballet system.” In San Francisco she has worked closely with such well-known choreographers as Mark Morris, Christopher Wheeldon, William Forsythe and Yuri Possokhov. “At their best, her performances in 19th-century classics, Balanchine staples, and contemporary fare fuse an analytic intelligence with an arresting physicality,” according to Allan, a senior editor with Dance Magazine.

AA07166
Gottschild, Brenda Dixon PRINCE SCAREKROW & THE EMERALD CITY (Dance, Vol. 81, No. 2, February 2007, pp. 30-34)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

Dixon profiles Rennie Harris, whose hip hop dance company Rennie Harris Puremovement has been in existence for fifteen years in February. Harris has been a pioneer in taking dance forms originally confined to African-American and Latino communities and bringing them to mainstream America in the same venues that host modern dance and ballet companies. A native Philadelphian, Harris choreographs narratives based on the hip hop movement vocabulary and his real life experiences,” says Dixon. Rome & Jewels, for example, does the story of Romeo and Juliet as a hip hop ballet to rap-poetry arias. The company, which has toured Europe several times, is treated like superstars overseas, even performing for royalty in Britain and Monaco.

AA07167
Renner, Pamela OEDIPUS AT SING SING (American Theatre, Vol. 24, No. 1, January 2007, pp. 34-36, 120-128)
Full Text (ProQuest: password required)

Theatre is transforming prisoner’s lives inside Sing Sing, New York state’s infamous maximum security prison. In a place where emotion is seen as a dangerous sign of weakness, says author Pamela Renner, acting in plays allows inmates to explore feelings they can’t express anywhere else and to lighten the burden of anger and regret “that can eat away at a man’s soul while he waits for the years to pass behind bars.” Fifty to sixty incarcerated men are part of a program called Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), founded a decade ago by a volunteer named Katherine Vockins. They stage two or three plays each year, discovering that “you can’t put on a play alone. A whole social structure is required – sharing and giving support, pulling together.” The article focuses on inmate Clarence Maclin, serving time for armed robbery, as he takes on the lead role in OEDIPUS REX. “I believe theatre has a healing power,” he says. The author notes that the United States has the highest prison population in the world and that public funding has been cut for college programs in prison; RTA helps fill a gap. A number of ex-prisoners who were part of the program now work in social service. One of them, Dino Johnson, now a counselor with at-risk youth, said “I sleep better being part of the solution.”

STRATEGIES FOR SUSTAINING ARTS AND CULTURE IN THE METROPOLIS.
Kevin F. McCarthy, Elizabeth Heneghan Ondaatje, Jennifer L. Novak. Research Brief, RAND Corporation. Web posted March 9, 2007.
Full Text [pdf format, 5 pages]

“The nonprofit arts face an environment that challenges their continued growth and raises the prospect of future consolidations.” The researchers developed a new framework for evaluating the arts’ support systems. They drew lessons from eleven major metropolitan areas across the U.S. By using comparisons, the authors assessed the strengths and weaknesses of each of the support systems; and then made recommendations for the vulnerability and sustainability of nonprofit arts.

[Note: Contains copyrighted material.]

AA07143
Bale, Theodore THE NATURAL (Dance, Vol. 81, No. 1, January 2007, pp. 96-102)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

Japanese ballerina Misa Kuranaga won the Women’s Gold medal at one of the world’s largest ballet competitions last summer, the 2006 USA International Ballet Competition. She is now second soloist at the Boston Ballet. Bale, the Boston Herald’s dance critic, describes how Kuranaga arrived in the U.S. at 18 unable to speak English and with a one-year scholarship to the San Francisco Ballet School, and then went to New York to study at the School of the American Ballet. Kuranaga, who was born in Osaka in 1983, says she can’t go home because Japan does not yet have professional ballet dancers. Mikko Nissin, the Boston Ballet’s artistic director, says Kuranaga possesses the talent to become a world-class ballerina, but he doesn’t want to rush her. “I want to make sure she reaches the highest possible level she can, instead of just making a big splash.”

AA07144
Cole, Johnnetta WHAT HIP-HOP HAS DONE TO BLACK WOMEN (Ebony, vol. 62, no. 5, March 2007, pp. 90-96)
Full Text (ProQuest: password required)

Cole, president of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina, and co-author of the book GENDER TALK: THE STRUGGLE FOR WOMEN’S EQUALITY IN AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITIES, points out contradictions in rap musicians’ claims that obscene language, glorification of violence and disrespect of women in hip-hop lyrics and musical videos “doesn’t mean anything.” She describes “a growing war between black men and women” since the 1960s and says that hip-hop is the site of its contemporary battles. According to Cole, young women at Bennett “feel anger and resentment” at casual references to sexual violence and the use of denigrating language toward women found in hip-hop lyrics. The article concludes that words do matter and that the black community must stop promoting damaging and inaccurate stereotypes of black females.

AA07145
Gilchrist, Ellen WATCHING WATER RUN (Smithsonian, vol. 37, no. 8, November 2006, pp. 28-30)
Full Text (ProQuest: password required)

The author, who lives in the small town of Fayetteville in the “hill country” of northwest Arkansas, writes that “after years in the flat lands, I am still delighted at the sight of rain running down my hilly street after a storm ... before you even get to the thrill of camping north of here and watching it run over real waterfalls near the Buffalo River.” Gilchrist notes that Fayetteville, despite being in a Southern state, really belongs to the Midwest. Gilchrist, a writing teacher at the University of Arkansas and author of 20 books, set her first novel in Fayetteville. She writes that it, like the typical small town in America, doesn’t have enough people to divide into classes -– there is no aristocracy, “except of beauty, intelligence and athletic prowess.” Small towns boast citizens who are multi-talented -- mail carriers who make stained glass windows and bartenders who write murder mysteries. Gilchrist celebrates the ire of local professors who write long-winded letters to newspapers to complain about everything from the closing of a museum that housed dinosaur bones to war.

AA07118
Carman, Joseph EARTH, WIND & FIRE (Dance Magazine, Vol. 80, No. 12, December 2006, pp. 30-36)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

Carman profiles three female stars of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater: Hope Boykin, Alicia Graf and Dwana Adiaha Smallwood. Boykin and Graf have unconventional bodies for dancers. Boykin, a native of North Carolina, is full-figured rather than having the classic straight-up-and-down dancer’s body, and had teachers who tried to discourage her from dance. Graf, who hails from Columbia, Maryland, is, at five feet ten inches, unusually tall for a dancer, and suffered what most believed a career-ending injury in 1999 while with Dance Theatre of Harlem; her comeback has drawn rave reviews. Smallwood, a native of Brooklyn, dances everything from hip-hop to classical ballet. The article is beautifully illustrated.

AA07119
Landi, Ann THE PICASSO CHALLENGE (ARTNews, October 2006, pp. 150-157)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

A major new exhibit traces the extraordinary influence of Pablo Picasso on successive generations of 20th-century American artists, with examples dating from 1910 through the 1990s. Landi, contributing editor of ARTNews, notes that the “Picasso and American Art” exhibit focuses primarily on “the nine American artists who were most deeply engaged with Picasso’s huge and varied output” –- Max Weber, Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, John Graham, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollock and David Smith. As the exhibit demonstrates, many of these artists were deeply impressed with Picasso’s Cubist paintings, but some were equally drawn to his early neoclassic phase. Side-by-side comparisons of works by Picasso and by his American contemporaries demonstrate how Picasso shaped the development of modern art in the U.S. The artists featured in the exhibit often made overt references to Picasso in their own paintings and sculptures, not only in homage but as a response to the perceived challenge of Picasso’s innovations. The show’s curator, Michael Fitzgerald, hopes that visitors to the show “will take away a sense of the intricacy of the relationship between American artists and Picasso in the last century,” says Landi. The exhibit made its debut at the Whitney Museum in New York in September 2006, and will go to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from February to May 2007, followed by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis from June to September 2007.

AA07121
Smith, Amanda THE MAGIC PILGRIM (Dance Magazine, Vol. 80, No. 12, December 2006, pp. 68-72)
Full text available from your nearest American Library

Originally from Japan, Yoshiko Chuma came to the United States 30 years ago and soon emerged as one of the most important postmodern choreographers, according to Amanda Smith, who is on the faculties of Coe College and Hofstra University. Her company, Yoshiko Chuma & The School of Hard Knocks, experiments with people, landscapes and space, performing in such unconventional places as subways, a Brooklyn canal, a Halloween parade, and the living rooms of selected hosts. Chuma is very active internationally, also directing Ireland’s Daghdha Dance Company and premiering in January a piece that featured dancers from Japan and Macedonia along with Americans, as well as Macedonian music and a shakahachi player from Japan. Her American husband often creates soundscapes and videos to accompany her work.

AA07096
DiMaggio, Paul HOW AMERICA DOES ART (American Prospect, Vol. 18, No. 3, March 2007, pp. 41-43)
Full Text [html format]

DiMaggio reviews two recent books devoted to the relationship between the arts community and government in the U.S. In VISUAL SHOCK: A HISTORY OF CONTROVERSIES IN AMERICAN CULTURE, Michael Kammen illustrates, through specific cases, the kinds of debates and tensions that have arisen over the past two centuries, including both artistic and commercial issues. In GOOD AND PLENTY: THE CREATIVE SUCCESSES OF AMERICAN ARTS FUNDING, Tyler Cowen presents a positive view of the current system which he believes “encourages artistic creativity” and “keeps politicization to a minimum.” DiMaggio provides a good overview of the different ways governments directly and indirectly support the arts (tax credits, support for education, etc.), how museums balance artistic and budgetary/attendance concerns, and the ways that public mores guide, clash with and are challenged by art.

AA07061
Corbett, John FROM THE WINDY CITY TO THE UNIVERSE (Downbeat, vol. 73, No. 12, December 2006, pp. 34-39)
Full Text (ProQuest: password required)

The author profiles the colorful musician, composer and mystic Herman Poole “Sonny” Blount, also known as Sun Ra, the father of “do-it-yourself jazz”. Sun Ra, who died in 1993, was active beginning in the 1950s, and gained international recognition in the 1960s, with the first of his big bands, the Arkestra. Sun Ra was a fan of ancient Egypt, and incorporated Egyptian and other-worldly imagery in his writings, record lyrics and clothing. The author pieces together early recording sessions in interviews with musicians Sun Ra recruited for his bands.

PERFORMING ARTS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Library of Congress
View the web site

This resource, which provides access to the Library of Congress's performing arts collections, should prove useful to music, theatre and dance researchers.

AA07077
Lang, Col. W. Patrick Jr. WHAT IRAQ TELLS US ABOUT OURSELVES (Foreign Policy, Web Exclusive, Posted February 2007)
Full text [html format]

Colonel W. Patrick Lang Jr., a retired Army colonel and member of the Senior Executive Service, who served with the Special Forces in Vietnam, as an Arabic professor at West Point, and as chief defense intelligence officer for the Middle East, presents the provocative argument that the true root of the problem in Iraq is the perception of foreigners held by most Americans, who “mistakenly believe that when we say that ‘all men are created equal,’ it means that all people are the same.” He criticizes U.S. foreign policy as tending to be “predicated on the notion that everyone wants to be an American” and contends that we “invaded an imaginary Iraq that fit into our vision of the world. We invaded Iraq in the sure belief that inside every Iraqi there was an American trying to get out. In our dream version of Iraq, we would be greeted as not only liberators from the tyrant, but more importantly, from the old ways.” It is vital that we learn to “deal with alien peoples on their own terms, and within their own traditions” if we are to avoid another such catastrophe.