What is it about opera in Chicago and a dollar bill? In the last year, two companies there have used the buck as a way to draw in people and raise some money at the same time.  Last year, the Chicago Opera Theater set up a six-week "People's Opera" contest, asking people to choose the opera, out of three, that they wanted to see produced -- for $1 a vote. They selected Mosè in Egitto by Gioachino Rossini, which will open the 2010 Spring Festival Season in Millennium Park next April. Chicago Opera Theater, … [Read more...]

The National Endowment for the Humanities gets far too little attention, imho. So I took some time this past weekend to look at its most recent round of grants, which were announced earlier this month. Nearly 200 awards worth a total of $20 million were made to cultural institutions, universities and libraries in 36 states and Washington, D.C., plus a couple of scholars working overseas. The grants cover digital humanities, preservation/access, educational and public programs, research and collections. The biggest … [Read more...]

While "Chelsea Visits Havana," the first big group show of American art in Cuba was moving into place -- it opened on Friday at the 10th Havana Biennial -- there was other art news on the Cuban front that slipped below the radar. Credit my friend Georgina Adam, an editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper, who pointed me to it in an item in her regular Saturday column for the Financial Times. In late February, the U.S. State Department said it would investigate the current ownership of a painting, now in the hands of an … [Read more...]

Twenty-four hours after first reading Lynn Chu's op-ed in Saturday's Wall Street Journal on the proposed Google book settlement, it's still on my mind. I have not been following this issue as closely as I should be, and no doubt there are counter-arguments. But her analysis certainly disturbed me. Here are some key passages: There is nothing more individual in the world than a book, an author, a publisher, and the value of a contract. The aging baby boomers now flacking the settlement don't seem to understand that PDF scanning (how … [Read more...]

Friday afternoon: waiting for callbacks for stories I'm working on, callbacks that rarely come on Fridays after about now. Unfortunately. Which set me to some Friday afternoon pipe-dreaming. The Frick Collection has been thinking about expansion since at least Sam Sachs was director there; current director Anne Poulet has echoed the call for "limited expansion," as she has termed it. For nearly a year, the gorgeous 45-foot-wide townhouse around the corner, at 22 East 71st St., has been up for sale. It was, of course, home to the late … [Read more...]

There's no debate over the state of the contemporary art market -- it's pretty dead. But the once high-flying Chinese contemporary art market, well, that may or may not be equally depressed. On March 10, The New York Times said it was, citing recent auction results and quoting Zoe Butt, the director of Long March Space: "The era of Chinese contemporary art commanding such high prices is over." Long March recently closed two of its three galleries in Beijing. On Mar. 11, Pace Wildenstein chairman Arne Glimcher fought back, publishing … [Read more...]

A grand jury has spoken: art dealer Larry Salander has been indicted on 100 counts, "including grand larceny, falsifying business records, scheming to defraud, forgery and perjury," according to The New York Times website. Salander has been arrested; more details will be coming out during the day. The total stolen was calculated at $88 million. Everyone who ever visited his posh gallery on East 71st Street in New York wondered how Salander did it; we're about to learn more details. In the context of Wall Street scandals, this must … [Read more...]

I know AJ's readers want to believe that the Obama Administration will do wonders for the arts and humanities communities. I know you don't like to hear otherwise. But I have to tell you honestly what my reporting turns up: so far, not so good. Yes, the $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts in the stimulus bill was great news. But while we wait for appointments to head the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the appointment of Kareem Dale (below) as mini-czar -- which is now likely to be temporary -- and two lesser … [Read more...]

The Indianapolis Museum of Art is having a good March: there's been a steady stream of announcements -- on a laudable new searchable database of deaccessions, the acquisition of Gauguin's "Volpini Suite" of zincographs, and this week on the news that the museum had met its goal of acquiring 125 gifts for its 125th anniversary in 2008. But on my recent visit there -- too short -- I had a chance to see first-hand, and was charmed by, a less splashy effort by the museum. Last year, the IMA was among the … [Read more...]

A few weeks back, I mentioned an article in the Wall Street Journal describing an effort by the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy to get foundations to devote a much larger proportion of their grants to minorities, poverty alleviation and other social causes. If the Committee succeeded, the arts would obviously be disadvantaged. Today the Journal continues its coverage with an article about reaction to the report. Some foundations are fighting back. One -- the California Wellness Foundation -- even cancelled its membership … [Read more...]