FWSO president and CEO Amy Adkins, with the approval of the nonprofit’s board of directors, proposed cutting the concert season from 46 weeks to 43, decreasing artist fees for the Concerts in the Garden series by 25 percent, and eliminating three weeks of paid time off. The loss in wages would mean a nearly 23 percent loss in salary since 2010 once inflation is accounted for.
Archives for October 2015
Report: Al Pacino’s New Broadway Show Is A F****** Disaster
“Friends of the actor say they’ve never seen him so despondent. He sits in his dressing room after the show “totally lost,” one says. And sources say he’s getting no help from Mamet, who saw two dress rehearsals and the first preview and then vamoosed to California.”
Chicago Needs Money. So Where To Get It? Classical Music Of Course!
“In the run-up to the City Council’s budget vote this week, the Progressive Caucus came up with a list of revenue-generating amendments including one intended to add a 9 percent tax to the cost of tickets for two of the city’s major cultural engines—Lyric Opera and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It would be so easy. All the council would have to do is delete a paragraph of the Municipal Code.”
How To Make Ballet More Diverse
On the stages of American Ballet Theater and New York City Ballet black, Asian, Latino and multiracial dancers are beginning to change the face of ballet where it matters most: Lincoln Center, home base to both companies.
Canada’s National Ballet Posts Its Sixth Straight Surplus
David Binet, Board Chair of The National Ballet of Canada, today reported that company revenues were $30,851,000 with expenses at $30,806,000 resulting in an operating surplus for the year of $45,000 and accumulated surplus of $65,000.
Is Analog Photography Making A Comeback?
“Using film makes people think about what they are photographing. You only get one go, you can’t take 50 pictures and delete them all.”
SXSW Says It Erred In Canceling Panels And Adds Anti-Harrasment Programming
“By canceling two sessions we sent an unintended message that SXSW not only tolerates online harassment but condones it, and for that we are truly sorry,” said Hugh Forrest, director of SXSW Interactive, in a statement.
LACMA’s Michael Govan, A Different Kind Of Museum Director
“The good thing about being the museum director is that you’ll eventually be forgotten. You can take risks. So if you succeed, if you fail, it’s not really a big deal in history. It’s the artists who are going to be remembered.”
UK Arts Pay Survey Shows Gender, Age Equity Gaps
“The overall profile of respondents gives an indication of the fragmented nature of the arts workforce as a whole. Just a third (720) of the 2,183 who completed the survey earned their entire income by working in a full-time salaried position on a permanent contract for a single employer, with the rest working either part-time for one or more employers, on temporary or casual contracts, or as freelance workers.”
Scottish Arts Funding Row Sparks Debate On Definitions For What Gets Funded
“Ironically, arts funding remains one area of government that is especially closed to any suggestions of change. It remains wedded to a post-war conception of elite decision making where those that know make the choices about what the rest of the population will most benefit from having subsidised.”
WQXR Music Editor Fired For Plagiarism
“The stories in question were found to contain descriptions, phrases and sentences that duplicate or closely resemble work that was previously published elsewhere. An NPR.org copy editor uncovered the connections last week while working on one of Brian Wise’s stories.”
Research: A Link Between Creativity And Dishonest Behavior?
“We suggest that creative identity derives its value, specifically, from a sense of rarity, specialness, and uniqueness, which causes a sense of entitlement (among creative people),” they write in the Academy of Management Journal. “This sense of entitlement, in turn, can cause individuals to engage in dishonest behaviors.”
The Broadway Ticket Lottery: How To (Try To) Get Cheap Seats
“Broadway lotteries that offer deeply discounted tickets have blossomed since 1996, when “Rent” made some $20 seats at the Nederlander Theater available for every performance. (It started as a first-come, first-served offer but evolved into a lottery.)”
Big Changes At Once-Floundering, Now Thriving Oregon Ballet Theatre
Over the next two years, the company will be moving to new studios, selling its old building to retire all of its $1.8 million debt, expansion into the suburbs, and a summer outdoor series dedicated entirely to women choreographers – and, of course, the ballet-and-beer initiative.
Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia In Barcelona Begins Final Phase Of Construction
Remaining work on the great basilica, for which Antoni Gaudí laid the first stone in 1882, includes the west sacristy, the six central spires, and the Tower of Jesus. When complete, Sagrada Familia will be the tallest house of worship in Europe. (photos)
How The New York Public Library Is Reinventing Itself
“These days, digitization of the NYPL collections falls under the aegis of NYPL Labs – which began as a catchall name for a range of digital experiments, then became an in-house, prototype-building research and development group, and now is a full-fledged department that’s broadly responsible for both the digital and experimental sides of the library and its branches.”
‘Soup’ Is An Anagram Of ‘Opus’: Thoughts On Warhol’s Campbell’s Paintings
“4. What do they look like? They aren’t pictures of anything really. They’re certainly not paintings of actual soup cans. Nor are they really paintings of the label. He worked not from actual cans with actual labels, but from promotional materials that Campbell’s sent out. In other words, these aren’t so much pictures of either cans or labels, as they are reproductions or copies of commercial graphics, blending design and text. What kind of objects are these? These soups/works kick up this question like so much dust.”
‘The Moth In The Flame’ – An Unpublished Short Story By Truman Capote
“Written for his high school newspaper, The Green Witch, in the early 1940s, … ‘The Moth in the Flame’ captures in a very short space the vast range of tumultuous emotions that spring from a distressing encounter.”
The Most Anticipated New Restaurant In Providence Turned Out To Be An Art Project Satirizing Foodie Culture
Lura Cafe “would be a refuge for diners in the know, serving modern takes on cafe classics – all local, all organic, all certified GMO-free. It was upscale and casual, timeless and avant-garde. … It announced itself – as all similarly accoutred restaurants must – with a social media blitz, featuring sans serif lettering, sunny high-angle shots of brunch dishes, even a breathless write-up in the New York Times. It was also totally fake.”
Four Centuries Of Cat Art Go Up For Auction
“The sale … is one of the largest of its kind to occur in the UK, featuring 244 works – and the trove is really delightful, bringing to public eye many rare and original illustrations that depict cats in a variety of ways, from straightforward portraits to bizarre or humorous caricatures.”
SXSW Cancels Panel On Harassment In Gaming – Because Of Harassment And Threats
“The decision has been widely panned online, news organizations including Vox Media and BuzzFeed have threatened to not attend, and the situation has been cast as a win for the angry and misogynistic teratoma of trolls that identify themselves as part of the Gamergate movement. Meanwhile, SXSW’s official explanation for the cancellations is a misdirected mess.”
I Was On One Of Those Canceled SXSW Panels – Here Is What Went Down
User-experience designer and researcher Caroline Sinders explains the planned focus of the panel (titled “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games”), the abuse she and family members had previously suffered from GamerGate types, the strange dynamic that developed around her panel proposal, and the even stranger responses of SXSW staff.
‘Boulez Is Napoleon, Stockhausen Is Just Bismarck’: A 1967 Interview With Morton Feldman, In English For The First Time
This interview … was conducted in 1967 by composer and musicologist Jean-Yves Bosseur, then aged twenty. … [It] was conducted in English originally, but the audiotapes have been lost. Therefore until now this interview has only been available in French translation.”
London’s Handel House Museum Opens A Hendrix Half
“In the mid-18th century, George Frideric Handel wrote his epic oratorio Messiah in a Georgian town house here. Around 230 years later, Jimi Hendrix moved in next door. Now, a revamped museum dedicated to both musical pioneers is set to open Feb. 10 on Brook Street in the Mayfair district, in the adjacent apartments where they lived.”
Nobody Does Haunted Houses Better Than The Japanese
“I screamed more in that tiny haunt than I did walking through some of the top haunts in the United States with every high-priced animatronic and 20-foot-tall monster available. I believe the key difference was how immersed I was in the story and the personal connection I felt with the girl and the ghost.”