The Miami-Dade Performing Arts Center currently (and perpetually) under construction has bumped up its final project cost again (username: ajreader@artsjournal.com / password: access), much to the frustration and chatter of county government and citizenry. I’ve touched on the huge and complex project before (first in this weblog entry last September, and then again last November), […]
Selling Strads in bulk
A weblog reader sent some thoughts on the controversy of Herbert Axelrod and his valuation of his Stradivarius violins donated/sold to the Smithsonian and the New Jersey Symphony (touched on in a recent post). The perceived over-valuation seems to be fuel for the tax-reform fire currently smoldering in DC. This reader suggests that the claimed […]
Come on, get happy
A great short piece in the NY Times Magazine explores the darker side of happiness, as described in a recent journal article in Psychological Science (can’t link you there…sorry). Says the Times article: The happier your mood, the more liable you are to make bigoted judgments — like deciding that someone is guilty of a […]
Tax reform poster children
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette discusses emerging efforts to review in-kind contributions to nonprofits and their restrictions within the IRS tax code. It sounds like a deadly dull conversation, far less interesting than the NEA budget advances, but alert managers should take careful note. As the conversation is forming, arts and culture organizations are looming large in […]
When in doubt, look to the frogs
The Sunday New York Times was chock-a-block with interesting angles on arts management issues. Two of particular connection were an article on the slow vanishing act of architect Daniel Libeskind from the World Trade Center redevelopment; and another on the phenomenon of theater workshops of new works, and their tendency to kill full productions rather […]
Some tidbits while my brain cools
It was a long and fascinating week at the National Performing Arts Convention last week, likely to launch a hundred future blog entries. First, it all needs time to settle. In the meantime, some tidbits and pointers from some of the conversations in Pittsburgh that might be worth your attention: The San Francisco Symphony demoed […]
Off to Pittsburgh
I’ll be traveling to Pittsburgh all next week (June 8 – 13) for the National Performing Arts Convention. During the massive, cross-disciplinary event, I’ll be co-leading (with Alberta Arthurs and Steven Tepper) a research team of 20 graduate students, deployed across all the convenings to observe, capture, and document the big ideas and common challenges […]
Here’s a useful thought
Tessa Jowell of the UK’s Department for Culture, Media, and Sport has a bit of a radical thought for a government funder: perhaps our ‘public purpose’ approach to funding and fostering the arts for their instrumental benefits is missing the point entirely. In a bullet-point essay she published in May, she offers a thoughtful argument […]
Just don’t start playing solitaire
The New York Philharmonic recently tested a new audience information prototype (covered here in the New York Times, and also in Greg Sandow’s column), that feeds notes and insights about the current performance to the folks sitting out in the seats. It’s a wireless PDA-equivalent, currently called the Concert Companion, that’s designed as a performance-enhancement […]
The tyranny of templates
Graphic information specialist Edward Tufte (who I’ve talked about before) has some strong opinions about a favorite software program in the business world: Imagine a widely used and expensive prescription drug that claimed to make us beautiful but didn’t. Instead the drug had frequent, serious side effects: making us stupid, degrading the quality and credibility […]
