I hope that officials of the Newark Museum of Art felt at least a twinge of seller’s remorse (if not a rush of shame) after reading the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s lavish praise of the painting that Linda Harrison, Newark’s director, had deemed expendable. - Lee Rosenbaum
I’m not sure how smart it is to attack the premise of the session you’ve been asked to be part of, but I was asked for a provocation, so here goes. - Douglas McLennan
As CultureGrrl readers will remember, my first post-pandemic visit to a museum — the Metropolitan — did not end well. Happily, things went more smoothly for me at the Whitney ten days later. - Lee Rosenbaum
I’m thrilled to announce the publication of The Artful Manager: Field Notes on the Business of Arts and Culture in paperback and eBook formats. This book gathers 50 posts from the first 18 years of The Artful Manager blog – edited, updated, complemented with opening quotes, and sorted into three themes. - Andrew Taylor
In my previous post on the Newark Museum of Art’s dicey deaccessions, I didn’t analyze the overall sale totals, my customary practice when covering auctions. Here’s why: It took a while for me to assemble the information I needed, because Sotheby’s now intentionally withholds the figures that I’ve habitually relied upon to evaluate results. - Lee Rosenbaum
Chicagoan Bob Koester, proprietor of the Jazz Record Mart and Delmark Records for nearly 70 years, is a model of music activism and entrepreneurship from an era rapidly receding. - Howard Mandel
As part of her reinvention and rebranding of the Newark Museum (which, in 2019, added “of Art” to its name, even though it also includes science exhibits and a planetarium), its current director, Linda Harrison, less than three years into her tenure, appears to be running roughshod over its own policies, not to mention the AAMD’s deaccession guidelines. -...
The return to the stage (though not their own) of the Met and of Opera Philadelphia, along with a streamed Aïda from the Paris Opera, have a few lessons for us. - David Patrick Stearns
The Artistic Advisor to the President and Chair of Composition Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music, also Artistic Director of Curtis Summerfest, speaks about the role of technology in today’s conservatory. - Aaron Dworkin
Real care has to be taken with comparing data on prices and audience characteristics, because the prices were set in the first place as a result of local audience characteristics. There is no universal 'demand curve' for the arts: each company has a unique situation based on where it is. - Michael Rushton
New York City has announced a new program, City Artist Corps, inspired by FDR's Works Progress Administration. There are two major problems with launching a WPA-styled policy in 2021, one in terms of the choice of policy, and one in terms of the very conception of arts policy. Let's look at these in turn. - Michael Rushton
As I put it in a program note: “It’s a COVID-period entertainment: compact, flexible, rejecting Romantic symphonic upholstery in favor of a dry, caustic sonority conducive to bitter entertainments, light-hearted yet not evasive.” - Joseph Horowitz
