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College kids may choose to spend their campus days studying the glories of Plato, Shakespeare and Le Corbusier. But, as a new study points out, there may be a steep price to pay. Recent college graduates with bachelor’s degrees in the arts, humanities and architecture experienced significantly higher rates of joblessness, according to a study being released Wednesday by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. Among recent college graduates, those with the highest rates of unemployment had undergraduate degrees in architecture (13.9 percent), the arts (11.1 percent) and the humanities (9.4 percent), according to the study. The recent...

Tuesday was a day that started with a stunning sunrise, as seen above in this photo by Associated Press photographer Elaine Thompson. The day was bracketed with another stunning display of color at sunset, courtesy of our dryer than usual December. Rain is expected to return later in the week.

Great Lee Greenwood Tribute with some 9/11 stills.

Photographer Don Jensen is on a roll with Mount Rainier. Last week, he brought us this time-lapse video of stars circling the mountain, and now he’s taking his work one step further.

Immediately after President Obama took office, his Hollywood benefactors clamored for the creation of a "Secretary of Culture." Tinseltown was disappointed with the administration's crony arts czar choice (Chicago lawyer Kareem Dale), but left-wing artists and entertainers have now been mollified. Instead of one government-supported arts czar, the White House has designated an entire herd of them. On Tuesday, as part of Obama's "Winning the Future" initiative, the president designated members of the liberal activist group Creative Coalition as official "America's Champions of Change for the Arts." This is the latest in a series of "public engagement" efforts overseen by...

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has plans to develop a "logic model and measurement framework" that supposedly will help it weigh the impact of art on society and, presumably, when, why, and how that impact affects governmental funding of the arts. Here's an excerpt from the Statement of Work governing the project, which NEA intends to outsource to a "capable" contractor. "SECTION B SUPPLIES/SERVICES AND PRICES B.1 GENERAL Historically, generations of artists, philosophers, and social science researchers have struggled to define the role and impact of art in terms of public value. They have asked questions as fundamental...

MADISON, Wis. -- The Legislature's budget-writing committee has voted to cut state funding for the arts by 66 percent. Gov. Scott Walker had proposed cutting funding for the Wisconsin Arts Board by 73 percent. The Joint Finance Committee voted Thursday to restore about $350,000 of the cut with taxpayer money if federal matching funds are available. Total money for the arts would drop from $1.6 million a year to $535,000. The committee also agreed with Walker's recommendation that the independent board be made a part of the state Tourism Department. Democrats railed against the proposal, saying there was no justification...

(CBS/AP) The world-renowned Philadelphia Orchestra, long considered one of the best in the nation, will be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection - an apparent first in recent history for a major U.S. orchestra.

Every year since 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has crowned the year’s finest film. But which is the greatest Best Picture winner of all time? We entered the past 72 title-holders — beginning with 1938’s “You Can’t Take It With You” and ending with 2009’s “The Hurt Locker” — into a March Madness-style tournament, adjudicated by Post film critics Lou Lumenick and Kyle Smith.

Former Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer on Monday gave WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange data on about 2,000 clients that he contends may have evaded taxes, published reports said. At a press conference in London, Elmer told reporters about 40 politicians and “pillars of society” were among the individuals he gave Assange information on, the reports said. Elmer told The Observer newspaper during the weekend that the individuals named in the data include “business people, politicians, people who have made their living in the arts and multinational conglomerates — from both sides of the Atlantic.” Elmer once headed the Cayman Islands office...

Arts & Letters' founder/editor/curator was Denis Dutton, who died on Tuesday from cancer at the age of 66. He was the scion of the Dutton publishing family, a Californian who had moved to New Zealand to be a professor of philosophy and aesthetics at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch.* I traded e-mails with Denis, then joined him for lunch when he next passed through Manhattan. He was unlike anyone I'd ever met. Denis was a very sly, very funny, supereducated, and widely allusive lunch companion. . . . . . Still, it was not tough to discern, even if...

Sesame Street residents, beware. State funding for public broadcasting is again on the chopping block in the package of budget amendments Gov. Bob McDonnell plans to submit to the General Assembly for consideration in 2011. The governor is proposing a $2 million reduction in the next fiscal year and a full phase-out by the close of the following year to save $4 million, according to administration figures. McDonnell included public broadcasting funding cuts in budget amendments he submitted to the legislature in the spring as part of a four-year plan to eliminate state support. They were rejected. While the governor...

Despite the Left’s best efforts, conservative and American values are coming back into the culture. After years of declaiming against the Left’s domination of our culture, I’m startled and delighted to discover that the tide is beginning to turn. My fellow conservatives should take note and lend a hand. For the last three decades or so, the usual conservative approach to the arts has been threefold: We complain about what’s being produced; we fret about the influence it will have; then we give up with a shrug. We complain because it seems to us the anti-American Left has made of...

What in the name of Gilbert Stuart is going on at the National Portrait Gallery? A week ago, CNSNews' Penny Starr reignited the culture war with an arresting story about the staid old museum that began thus: "The federally funded National Portrait Gallery, one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, is currently showing an exhibition that features images of an ant-covered Jesus, male genitalia, naked brothers kissing, men in chains, Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breasts and a painting the Smithsonian itself describes in the show's catalog as 'homoerotic.'" Film of the crucifix with ants crawling on Jesus is from...

FULL TITLE: Smithsonian Christmas-Season Exhibit Features Ant-Covered Jesus, Naked Brothers Kissing, Genitalia, and Ellen DeGeneres Grabbing Her Breasts The federally funded National Portrait Gallery, one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, is currently showing an exhibition that features images of an ant-covered Jesus, male genitals, naked brothers kissing, men in chains, Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breasts, and a painting the Smithsonian itself describes in the show's catalog as "homoerotic." “This is an exhibition that displays masterpieces of American portraiture and we wanted to illustrate how questions of biography and identity went into the making of images that are canonical,”...

San Francisco/NEA Stimulus Success Story of the Day: #1 of 37Today's Profile: Alonzo King LINES BalletAccording to CNSNews.com:CNSNews.com presents this week’s “Golden Hookah” to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for distributing $1.4 million in special economic “stimulus” grants to 37 “arts” organizations located in the City of San Francisco.Money for the grants was slipped into the $787-billion economic "stimulus" law that President Barack Obama signed in February 2009.While the NEA says the grants were awarded on the basis of artistic merit and excellence--and that political affiliation was in no way a part of the selection process--"arts" groups in...

Complete title: The Golden Hookah Award: 37 'Arts' Organizations in San Francisco Got $1.4 Million in Federal 'Stimulus' Money Golden Hookah Award CNSNews.com presents this week’s “Golden Hookah” to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for distributing $1.4 million in special economic “stimulus” grants to 37 “arts” organizations located in the City of San Francisco.Money for the grants was slipped into the $787-billion economic "stimulus" law that President Barack Obama signed in February 2009.While the NEA says the grants were awarded on the basis of artistic merit and excellence--and that political affiliation was in no way a part of the...

BOISE, Idaho • A private group that drew attention in 2007 by naming U.S. Sen. Larry Craig to its “Idaho’s Hall of Fame” amid furor over his sex-sting arrest has elevated Mount Rushmore sculptor and Ku Klux Klan member Gutzon Borglum to its 2010 class of honorees. Borglum, born in Idaho Territory in 1867, chiseled heads of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt into South Dakota’s Black Hills. In the 1920s, he was also in the Klan. Recently, America has been debating the ambiguous legacy of another ex-Klansman, U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat...

Create your own designs inspired by the tiles of William de Morgan. Save your finished design in the gallery, print it, and send it to friends. From Wiki: William Frend De Morgan (16 November 1839 – 15 January 1917) was an English potter and tile designer. A life-long friend of William Morris, he designed tiles, stained glass and furniture for Morris & Co. from 1863 to 1872. His tiles are often based on medieval designs or Persian patterns, and he experimented with innovative glazes and firing techniques. Galleons and fish were popular motifs, as were "fantastical" birds and other animals....

Famed Italian fashion house Giorgio Armani’s young, urban upscale label Emporio Armani shines brightly with their S/S 2010 collection of bright, big and blingy jewelry and chunky accessories for women. You are making a bold, glittery and identifiable statement my friend, if you’re wearing an expensive Emporio Armani.

God, the Creator, a lover of the beauty in His created world, invited Adam, one of His creatures, to share in the process of "creation" with Him. He has permitted humans to take the elements of His cosmos and create new arrangements with them. Perhaps this explains the reason why creating anything is so fulfilling to us. We can express a drive within us which allows us to do something all humans uniquely share with their Creator. God has thus placed before the human race a banquet table rich with aesthetic delicacies. He has supplied the basic ingredients, inviting those...

Fox Entertainment held a special session at the World Economic Forum in Davos with James Cameron, director of Avatar. Clips of the movie were shown and James talked about the making of the film. Here, he answers the questions: How did you make a 3D movie, and what is the future of 3D? James has "greyed out" a bit! http://www.economicvindicator.com/2010/02/james-cameron-talks-about-future-of-3d.html

POMONA, Calif. | There's no steeple out front, no rows of pews inside, not even so much as a crucifix on display. Still, this cramped little art studio in the middle of what, until not very long ago, was a street with as many broken dreams as it has potholes, is the closest thing to paradise that the Rev. Bill Moore has found. It's the place where the 60-year-old Catholic priest serves God by creating abstract paintings that he sells by the hundreds. No ordinary preacher, the man known as Father Bill throughout Pomona's fledgling arts district long ago...

Man says wife can beat him each week Li Xinran A. MAN with a violent wife has taken the unusual step of signing an agreement with her that allows his spouse to beat him once a week. Zhang, 32, said his wife Chen, who is skilled in martial arts, frequently beats him during disputes over petty things such as who will wash the dishes, Chongqing Evening News reported yesterday. Both Zhang, a photographer, and Chen want the marriage to continue and have sought a way to end her violent tirades. "I don't want to beat him very often, but I...

Rocco Landesman is President Obama's handpicked chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Last week he gave the keynote address to the 2009 Grantmakers in the Arts Conference. Those of us concerned about the politicization of life and art in the Age of Obama will not be consoled by a reading of Landesman's speech. The speech bears examination in its entirety, but Landesman's tribute to Obama is especially worth a look: This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept...

Me dancing at the shelter,it was crowded today. At a weapons testing sandbox testing out a machinegun i bought. At Anthroxtacy dancing.

The National Endowment for the Arts held a startlingly inappropriate, creepily Stalinist, and probably illegal conference call for potential grant recipients the other day... and EC analyzes what they're really doing and why it's so damn creepy. If only Comrade Obama knew...he'd put a stop to this!

Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood is out today with new details on the National Endowment for the Arts scandal, including a full transcript and audio recording, as well as a CliffsNotes summary by John Nolte, of the notorious Aug. 10 conference call in which administration officials urged artists to help promote President Obama's legislative agenda. Formally, the call was led by Michael Skolnik, who is not a government employee. But Skolnik declares at the start of the call that he is acting on behalf of the administration:I have been asked by folks in the White House and folks in the NEA about...

They looked marvelous and gave us one elegant thrill after another! The 61st annual Primetime Emmy Awards were dominated by Mad Men, 30 Rock and a whole host of classically coiffured stars, creatively couturing themselves in glamorous gowns and edgy ensembles. Blake Lively floated down the red carpet in her sexy red Versace gown. Olivia Wilde looked fabulous in a mint green Marchesa chiffon gown.

Must go to the site for audio and see the Glenn Beck links too. http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/watercooler/2009/sep/01/official-dishonesty-national-endowment-arts/

The economy is putting a squeeze on the nation's biggest arts complex. The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is canceling its holiday tree lighting ceremony in December. The decorated tree erected in the center's main plaza has become an annual tradition, with a live televised ceremony drawing both New Yorkers and tourists. Lincoln Center blames the cancellation on what it calls "the challenging economic climate" -- and also construction at the entrance to the plaza. “[Construction] will be completed by next year, but it is in no shape to hold the group that the tree attracts," Kate Merlino, a...

Yes, we can! With tax dollars!* * * * *Spin this, Media Matters! On his TV show, Glenn Beck spoke to filmmaker Patrick Courrielche who revealed at Big Hollywood that he had participated in a teleconference call in which the National Endowment for the Arts -- the largest funder of the arts in the U.S. -- encouraged artists to create pro-Obama art: I was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to take part in a conference call that invited a group of rising artist and art community luminaries “to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing...

recently wrote a critique of the art community’s lack of dissent in the face of many controversial decisions made by the current administration. Entitled “The Artist Formerly Known as Dissident,” one of the key points argued in the article was the potential danger associated with the use of the art community as a tool of the state. Little did I know how quickly this concern would be elevated to an outright probability

This copy is for your personal, noncommercial use only. You can order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers here or use the "Reprints" tool that appears next to any article. Visit www.nytreprints.com for samples and additional information. Order a reprint of this article now. August 9, 2009 Drama Confronts a Dramatic Decade By FRED KAPLAN IT’S 1963 as the third season of “Mad Men” on AMC gets under way next Sunday night. And its creator, Matthew Weiner, hopes the show stays on the air long enough to string out his story through the entire turbulent...

Published on More Intelligent Life (http://moreintelligentlife.com) WHEN NOVELISTS SOBER UP By Tom Shone Created 20/07/2009 - 10:57 Writers who drink are old hat. But what about writers who quit drinking? Tom Shone has been studying them for his new novel ...From INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine, Summer 2009John Cheever was most unhappy to be picked up for vagrancy by the cops. “My name is John Cheever [1]!” he bellowed. “Are you out of your mind?” Found sharing some hooch with the down-and-outs in downtown Boston, he was promptly admitted to Smithers Alcoholism Treatment Centre on Manhattan’s East 93rd Street, where he...

Quote of the day—On Dash Snow, 27-year-old rebel/artist who was found dead in a hotel in the East Village a couple weeks ago [h/t Ann Althouse]: Dash Snow was, in no particular order, a jokester, a jailbird, a thief, a freak, a successful art-brut savage, a doting father, a connoisseur of various cocaine bathrooms, a retired writer of graffiti and the latest incarnation of that timeless New York species, the downtown Baudelaire. — New York Times, July 24, 2009 Yes, you read that right: a doting father. Such a doting father that he was never even married to the mother...

Serenaded by the white goddess: Photographer Willy Vanderperre does a graceful and magnificent job capturing Austrian model Iris Strubegger as an icy marionette, pale of form, cool of beauty, existing in a dreamy realm of her own for V #60. A Touch of Class indeed.

If Mormons’ “HBO moment” was not bad enough, it seems that Hollywood, Broadway and the publishing world aren't likely to give up on portrayals of Latter-day Saints on screen, on stage and in books any time soon. Such Mormon portrayals, often stereotypical, have been showing up since the 1800s. For example, When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced detective Sherlock Holmes in the story, “A Study in Scarlet.” It was set against the backdrop of anti-Mormon inaccuracies about Latter-day Saints and their beliefs popular in England at the time. On a later visit to Utah he apologized for the inaccuracies. Here...

Roger ScrutonBeauty and Desecration We must rescue art from the modern intoxication with ugliness. Spring 2009 At any time between 1750 and 1930, if you had asked an educated person to describe the goal of poetry, art, or music, “beauty” would have been the answer. And if you had asked what the point of that was, you would have learned that beauty is a value, as important in its way as truth and goodness, and indeed hardly distinguishable from them. Philosophers of the Enlightenment saw beauty as a way in which lasting moral and spiritual values acquire sensuous form....

X-Men star Patrick Stewart in foul-mouthed tirade at fan who took picture in theatre Apr 16 2009 By Jane Hamilton HOLLYWOOD star Patrick Stewart launched a foul-mouthed tirade at a fan who took a picture of him onstage. He called the man an "a***hole" as he queued to get the actor's autograph following a stage performance.The 68-year-old X-Men star is touring with acting legend Sir Ian McKellan in Samuel Becket's classic play Waiting For Godot.As the fan waited outside the King's Theatre in Edinburgh afterwards, Stewart pointed his fingers and shouted: "Can you sleep at night?" His co-star Sir Ian looked...

"If you telephone me on the mobile, I would be able to speak to you through my 'ear.'"

TUESDAY'S GREGALOGUE: EMINEM So in Eminem's comeback video, there's a scene featuring him in bed with a Sarah Palin clone, post-coital presumably - but here's the real cool part: he breaks wind.How edgy. How in your face. Way to speak truth to power - even if it came out your ass.Seriously, this is not bad for a white, balding rapper quickly approaching forty and desperately clinging to a shred of relevance - not unlike his white, balding fans already over forty desperately clinging to jobs in telemarketing. I mean, is it any wonder he's resorting to material reused and reheated...

Rap Is CrapPosted By Ben Shapiro On March 29, 2009 @ 7:05 am In Entertainment, Featured Story, Politics | 2 Comments Today, [1] Grammy-winning rapper T.I. (Total Imbecile? Thug Idiot?) was sentenced to 18 months behind bars for illegally owning machine guns and silencers.  In the aftermath of his arrest, prosecutors informed T.I. that he could serve two decades in prison; he quickly agreed to 1000 hours of community service, touring around the U.S. talking to teens about the problems with drugs and gangs.  MTV made a show about him called “[2] T.I.’s Road to Redemption.”  This from a guy...

Tony-winning actress Natasha Richardson was killed by a blunt trauma to the head and her death was ruled an accident, the city Medical Examiner reported Thursday. Richardson sustained an epidermal hematoma - a blood clot that forms upon impact and starts growing between the brain and the skull - after wiping out Monday on the bunny slope while skiing at a Canadian resort. "This is a very treatable condition if you're aware of what the problem is and the patient is quickly transferred to a hospital," Dr. Keith Siller of New York University Langone Medical Center said. "But there is...

President Barack Obama has established a new staff position in his White House with the task of overseeing arts and culture, Kareem Dale. Dale, a partially-blind lawyer previously served as national disability director for Obama's campaign and served on the arts policy committee for Obama in Illinois. No details have been provided about the specific job duties as of yet, but it's been described as "a big step forward in terms of connecting cultural and goverment with mainstream administration policy."

The most ubiquitous woman in fashion — she’s everywhere, everywhere these days — Lara Stone imitates a young Brigitte Bardot for Jean Paul Gaultier’s S/S 09 ad campaign.

Several years ago, after I emerged from the fog of knee-jerk Liberalism that envelops most of the entertainment business, I began to wonder why it was that so many of my colleagues remained mired in the magical thinking that so often seems to characterize the Left. After all, many of my colleagues were reasonable, kind, and intelligent people. Among my friends, were musicians, actors, photographers, and writers - all of whom were highly creative and dedicated to their craft yet, as is typical of those on the Left, they couldn’t be swayed by facts if those facts contradicted the prevailing...

A call for President-elect Barack Obama to give the arts and humanities a Cabinet-level post -- perhaps even create a secretary of culture -- is gaining momentum. By yesterday, 76,000 people had signed an online petition, started by two New York musicians who were inspired by producer Quincy Jones. In a radio interview in November, Jones said the country needed a minister of culture, like France, Germany or Finland has. And he said he would "beg" Obama to establish the post. Listening in New York, Jaime Austria, a bass player with the New York City Opera, and Peter Weitzner,...

The transition team of President-elect Barack Obama is keeping a firm hand on any appointment news, but the buzz in art-and-politics precincts has the new administration seriously considering the idea of an official White House Office of the Arts, overseeing all things having to do with the arts and arts education.

HUGH Jackman has a funny way of selling Australia - both his movie and his country - to Americans. I mean, likening us to Nazis? Let’s check the transcript of the actor’s extraordinary rant this week on The View, a popular women’s TV chat show in the US hosted by Barbara Walters and Whoopie Goldberg. And let’s check if, at the end of it, you’d want to see either the Baz Lurhmann movie in which Jackman stars or the evil country which spent $40 million on tourism ads meant to piggyback the film’s “success”.