Archives for March 2009

is more Jack Nicholsons. Seriously.

This revelation came in Monday’s New York Post, which said that a new memoir from Allegra Huston, Angelica’s sister, included a passage on Nicholson’s acquisition habits. “He
collected paintings to the point of obsession,” she wrote.

A little snooping around turned up more details. Nicholson apparently owns an eight-room
 home, modest by Hollywood standards, on Mulholland Dr. that is stuffed with just part of his collection — not just on the walls, but stacked in unoccupied rooms. The rest is in storage. Among his paintings are works by Picasso, Magritte, Bonnard, Matisse, Bacon and Dufy. In late 2007, he told the Times of London:

“I just like art…I get pure pleasure from it. My grandmother was an amateur painter.”

And: 

“I got involved in buying paintings when Diana Vreeland [the former Vogue editor] got me to an auction in England. Up came this beautiful Tiepolo drawing at Sotheby’s. I bought it for Anjelica Huston as a present. That’s how I got started.”

And:

“People look at an abstract painting and ask, ‘What’s it supposed to be? What’s the point?’ Hell, it’s a painting, that’s the point. It’s not supposed to be anything. Its job is to get you to look in a different way. That’s also what actors are supposed to do. Provide a stimulating point of departure for thought and feeling.”

Spoken like a true collector. 

Why is the Iranian new year, Nowruz, a reason for celebration in the arts world?

Well, the Met can rejoice because a group of Iranian-Americans held a sumptuous dinner-dance at — where else? — the Temple of Dendur. David Patrick Columbia’s New York Social Diary has the pictures. (Keep scrolling — NYSD also has some great pix of Maastricht.) That must have added some much-needed cash to the Met’s coffers.

But President Obama also gave a little signal when he sent a videotaped message to the Iranian people late last
week. It offered a new beginning in diplomacy between our two countries — and contained a message
 to the cultural world here, too, according to a couple of White House-ologists and cultural mavens.

The President used the occasion of an ancient Persian festival called Nowruz to extend the olive branch. Then he said:

Nowruz is just one part of your great and celebrated culture. Over many centuries your art, your music, literature and innovation have made the world a better and more beautiful place….We know that you are a great civilization, and your accomplishments have earned the respect of the United States and the world.

Obama made no promises, offered no cultural overtures. But at the end of the message, he returned to the arts:

There are those who insist that we be defined by our differences.  But let us remember the words that were written by the poet Saadi, so many years ago:  “The children of Adam are limbs to each other, having been created of one essence.”

Obama is a master of symbolism and of gesture. His campaign arts policy promised he would expand cultural diplomacy, though the post-election task forces, according to one knowledgeable source, did not focus on the issue. This speech, though, indicates that Obama is thinking about it.

Maybe the nation’s orchestras, operas and museums should be too.  

With arts groups struggling all around us, an article in yesterday’s New York Times, “As Detroit Struggles, Foundations Adjust,” really caught my eye. It contained a warning for arts organizations and arts-lovers. Describing how their reduced resources made them change the way they operate, foundation officials said they were “being forced to pick winners and losers.” In some cases, the foundations were forcing mergers. As a condition of aid to “Women Arise,” for example, the Hudson-Webber Foundation merged it with Matrix Human Services.

Then comes these key paragraphs:

Thus, the Hudson-Webber chief executive, David O. Egner, is asking himself whether Detroit needs both a world-class symphony and its Michigan Opera Theatre, and, if so, whether they could share an orchestra.

“These are the kinds of questions we need to be asking,” Mr. Egner said.

Hudson-Webber is a big foundation in Detroit. In 2007, the most recent figures available on its website, net assets totalled $174 million and it gave away nearly $8 million in grants. Of that, it donated $15,000 in operating support to the opera and $20,000 in operating support to the symphony, plus $200,000 of a three-year grant to support the symphony’s “summer initiative.”

But… 

[Read more…] about Should foundations pick winners and losers in the arts?

It’s encouraging that people are trying to think creatively abou the broken publishing model, which I mentioned on this site in my March 11 post, “Everyone’s A Writer.” After all, who’s going to cover the arts and publish reviews and criticism if not newspapers and magazines?

Turning newspapers into non-profits (on purpose, that is) is one; micro-payments for using online news sites is another.

Here’s another, by Dan Gillmor, posted earlier this week on BoingBoing. Gillmor argues that a critical mass of elite journalism organizations — from the New York Times to the Economist to the New Yorker — should band together and charge readers for access to their websites. Only after a few days would the content become free.

The implementation problems are obvious: someone would pay for the content and put it up online free elsewhere. Sure, that violates copyright laws, but it happens all the time.

But Gillmor’s “thought experiment,” as he calls it, may at least generate more thinking. It’s worth reading.  

West Side Story — a new production of the great musical by Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim, and of course Jerome Robbins — has arrived on Broadway, opening last night. It’s an event.

Since I haven’t seen it yet, I asked my friend Amanda Vaill — who has — to weigh in. Amanda wrote both Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins (2006) and Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About, the American Masters documentary that aired on PBS last month. Robbins was billed as the choreographer, director and conceiver of the 1957 original production, which was seen as a radical show.

What was Robbins trying to do with his staging of West Side Story?

 

What changes have been made, why, and do they work?

 

Other changes cut more painfully into Robbins’s design, though.

[Read more…] about What would Jerome Robbins think?