There's all-too-familiar and sad news coming from Milwaukee: the Journal Sentinel will begin August minus several of its arts journalists. Dance critic Tom Strini, theater critic Damien Jaques and books editor Geeta Sharma Jensen have taken the most recent buyout offer -- the fourth and most attractive one since fall, 2007 at the paper. Mary Louise Schumacher, the art and architecture critic -- who's staying -- says that the three had 84 years of experience, collectively, in her blog post today. She also writes about … [Read more...]

Several days ago, AJ blogger Greg Sandow weighed in (here) on the recent Chorus America study, which purported to show that people who sing in choruses are better citizens than   those who don't sing in a group (nothing about singing in the shower...). To recap, here was the main point, taken from the press release: An estimated 32.5 million adults regularly sing in choruses today, up from 23.5 million estimated in 2003....That's good news because singing in one of the 270,000 choruses in the U.S., such as a community … [Read more...]

Time for a little update on ArtBabble, the website for art videos founded by Max Anderson and the Indianpolis Museum of Art. Yesterday, AB's enthusiasts there sent out an email -- an e-babble, they called it -- announcing Art Babble News! of Ten New Partners! to Art Babble Fans! I appreciate their enthusiasm, so I decided to announce the partners here:  Art Institute of Chicago KQED Museum of Arts & Design Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego Norman Rockwell Museum Rubin Museum of Art San Jose Museum of Art Solomon R. … [Read more...]

It looks as if the Brandeis University-Rose Art Museum brouhaha is turning some museum associations into, for this field, activists. A group task force is circulating a petition with the theme "Great Universities Have Great Museums," closely following the NEA's slogan, "A Great Nation Deserves Great Art." When Brandeis announced in January that it intended to close the Rose Art Museum, a few critics complained that neither the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries nor the … [Read more...]

Did you by chance catch the 1,000-word article in the Sunday New York Times about the  remaking of France's President Nicholas Sarkozy as more cultured? It outlined how Sarkozy's wife, Carla Bruni, is tutoring him, probably as prep for the 2012 election: she's changing not only his loud clothing and flashy watch to more suitably Presidential fare, but also his reading habits, his music, his films. The Daily Beast chimed in today with a more tabloidy version. I was … [Read more...]

For whatever reason, jazz has been on my mind recently, but this isn't about the music exactly. This is about visual art. Over the weekend, an exhibit  about jazz caught my eye.  Trouble is, The Jazz Century, which opened at the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona on July 22 (and is on view there till Oct. 18), isn't coming to the U.S.  Curated by art critic Daniel Soutif, the exhibit premiered at the Mart museum in Rovereto, Italy, then moved to the Musee du Quay … [Read more...]

Since Michelle Obama and the NEA drew my attention to the status of jazz last month (link), with festivals being cancelled and audiences shrinking, I've been paying much closer attention to it. The other day, a news item about the Newport Jazz Festival and impressario George Wein caught my eye. Wein, who helped found the Newport Jazz Festival 55 years ago and the Newport Folk Festival five years later, told the Providence Business Journal that he plans to create a non-profit organization to present the two events after … [Read more...]

An article in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer brought back fond memories of reporting I did a few years ago. The story heralded Bert Levy, a 96-year-old docent at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which gave him a birthday party: Levy has volunteered as a guide at the art museum since 1996, and his colleagues can't get enough of him. "He's revered," said Ronn Shaffer, a fellow guide. He quotes Shakespeare, reads and writes Latin, knows French, recites poems and doesn't hold back his sense of humor. "The art museum saved my … [Read more...]

When was the last time you went to the movies on a weekday between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.? How about a concert, a dance performance or a play? If you can't remember, I am not surprised. Most of us are working during those prime hours. We simply don't have the luxury of taking time off from work to go to a matinee.  So why is it that 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (or, worse, 4 p.m.) are the most common hours for art museums to be open? To save money, many museums are trimming back hours -- incredibly, some … [Read more...]

I discovered, while looking up Jessica Lange's photography credentials on the Aperture website for my post about her show at the George Eastman House (here), that Philip Gefter -- a photo editor I used to work with at The New York Times -- has a new book out called Photography After Frank. It was published by Aperture last month. I reconnected -- he, too, has left the Times -- and now I have a copy of the book. Philip also wrote about photography for the Times, and you'll find many of those essays as well as new … [Read more...]