Arts consultant Adrian Ellis suggests a more balanced and ecological approach to museum revenue discussions, beyond the rhetoric of the Boston MFA deal with Las Vegas, or the Barnes Collection struggles with de-accessioning (selling off pieces from the collection) to remain solvent. According to Ellis, all such conversations are cut from a common cloth: There […]
Archives for 2004
The problem with purpose
So I get this pizza pan as a gift…I’m pro-pizza, to be sure. But when reading the promotional copy on the pizza pan, I find this: Sensible and sublime, practical and whimsical, the objects envisioned by the world-renowned architect infuse our daily lives with joy. Then I’m in Starbucks buying my mega-venti semi-caf no-foam mocha […]
More on value…but now it’s just silly
This weblog talks a lot about how we ‘value’ culture (pricing, community support, etc.). So I couldn’t pass up the hilarious burst of responses to a recent story out of Germany. Sixteen violinists from the Beethoven Orchestra in Bonn are suing for a pay raise, because they play more during a performance than the other […]
How to kill classical music…a pointer
Fellow weblogger Greg Sandow is running a great series (okay, two entries in a row) on ‘how to kill classical music’. Phase one was about the appalling CD cover art in so many classical releases, phase two talked about dry and uniformative press releases. Both entries speak to the point of selling what people buy, […]
Shopping mall responses
My post earlier this week about shopping malls and performing arts centers generated some thoughtful reader response. Richard Layman took me to task for putting only a positive spin on the self-contained ‘mall’ concept (as defined by shopping malls and extended by Lincoln Center-style ‘culture malls’). Says Richard: Your discussion about Lincoln Center ignored the […]
Get thee to the Getty
The Los Angeles Times offers a quick view of a current exhibit at the Getty entitled ‘The Business of Art: Evidence from the Art Market’ (which has a nice on-line component). The exhibit tracks the transactions of visual art, and explores the complex relationships that have determined the ‘market value’ of works and artists over […]
The performing arts center and the mall
The New Yorker has a fabulous piece on the two pioneers of the American shopping mall, Victor Gruen and A. Alfred Taubman. Gruen created what is recognized as the archtypical shopping mall (two stories, facing inward, air conditioned, anchored by two major retailers, and featuring a central courtyard) in Edina, Minnesota, fifty years ago. Taubman […]
Don’t change the players, change the game
An interesting NPR segment on campaign finance reform in federal elections (two years after the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Law passed) may not seem related to arts management issues. But frequent readers will anticipate what I’m going to say: it is. The law sought to disentangle federal candidates from the ‘soft money’ that seemed to be […]
Here come the theaters
The Boston Herald reports on the Boston boom in new and renovated theater openings in the next 18 months. It’s only a net gain of 4000 seats, spread among 8 new spaces (one of them having 2500 seats), but it’s bound to change the theater/audience ecology in subtle and interesting ways. The two most interesting […]
Stuck in traffic of our own design
The parody newspaper The Onion has a great mock article that should strike a chord with us all: Urban Planner Stuck In Traffic Of Own Design PITTSBURGH, PA‹Bernard Rothstein, an urban planner and traffic-flow modulation specialist with the Urban Redevelopment Authority, found himself stuck in rush-hour traffic of his own design for more than an […]
