Guggenheim Returns To Its Roots It hasn't been a good year for Thomas Krens and his Guggenheim empire. The Las Vegas outpost so gloriously hyped when it opened has closed, and is likely to be demolished soon, and the plans for a massive new Gehry-designed home in Manhattan are on indefinite hold. The Guggenheim's latest exhibit of "classics" of modern art could be seen as just one more example of how the museum is being forced to retreat from the bold, avant-garde stance it adopted in the 1990s. But, says James Gardner, there's more to this new-old approach than just a reflection of hard times: "It's hard to find a single work among the 100 odd pieces in this show that is anything less than exemplary." New York Post 07/03/03
Posted: 07/03/2003 6:53 am
Rogues Gallery Wonder where those garish statues of former dictators end up? "Nearly 20 statues of leaders and heroes of authoritarian regimes occupy the rolling private garden of Harlan R. Crow, a Dallas real estate investor. Heavyweights like Stalin, Mao and Lenin stand among lesser-knowns like Klement Gottwald, the first Communist president of Czechoslovakia. Many of the statues, some as tall as 20 feet, were bought from the sculptors or from public officials as regimes crumbled. A few, like the large bust of Princip, were acquired as bullets whizzed by." The New York Times 07/02/03
Posted: 07/02/2003 5:04 pm
Conflicts of Interest At The Barnes In a report withheld for three years, an audit of the troubled Barnes Foundation is deeply critical of the way the foundation was managed. It is particularly critical of former director Richard Glanton. "Under a section titled 'Conflicts of Interest,' the audit outlined a series of Barnes transactions that it said Mr. Glanton engaged in with outside business partners, without informing the foundation's board. It said he ran up more than $225,000 in travel and entertainment expenses; tried to barter the foundation's banking business for support on the board; and let two women live in Barnes properties under unusual circumstances." The New York Times 07/02/03
Posted: 07/02/2003 5:00 pm
Canaletto For A Day A couple of London brothers have won a contest to hang a rare Canaletto painting in their home for a day. The program is intended to win new audiences for art, and the painting arrived with a curator and security guard. One of the brothers "admitted he had not been a huge fan of Canaletto before winning the painting. He said he now thought Canaletto was 'awesome'. Though the painting is returning home in the evening, Alex said the art fund was giving them a copy as a reminder of their day as blue-chip art collectors." BBC 07/02/03
Posted: 07/02/2003 4:44 pm
State of the Music Industry: The Public View Participants in a large interactive panel discussion on the future of the British music industry believe that the pop single is on its way out, that the talent pool has been overshadowed by the bland, lifeless, mediocre pop stemming from reality TV shows, and that the 'dance culture' popular among British youth has created a generation which is much less likely to buy traditional albums at all. Singer Beverly Knight summed up the feelings of many in the discussion: "Back in the day the chances were that unless it was a novelty record, it was a really good song. It's hard to sit at home and watch bands you know have been put together by a TV show. It's mediocrity dressed up as greatness." BBC 07/03/03
Posted: 07/03/2003 5:46 am
Classical Recording - Disfunctional Scarcely Describes It Even when recording a classical artist seems to make economic sense, it's not happening anymore at the big recording labels, writes Norman Lebrecht. And of course there's no tolerance for developing new talent or helping to make careers. So what's a talented young violinist to do? London Evening Standard 07/02/03
Posted: 07/02/2003 5:34 pm
I Sing Of Ireland Just as England has been wondering about the health of its pop music business, there are those who wonder if Irish music has also taken a dive. But, writes Neil McCormick, "reports of Ireland's musical demise have been greatly exaggerated. Ireland is a musical country, something that shows no sign of abating. There is intense activity on every level..."
The Telegraph (UK) 07/03/03
Posted: 07/02/2003 5:27 pm
Assessing The Sea Change In Arts Funding It's not easy being in charge of a big museum in the middle of a major expansion while, all around you, budgets are being slashed and legislators are calling you an expendable piece of the state funding puzzle. Eugene Gargaro, Jr is a month into his new job as board chair at the Detroit Institute for the Arts, and after only a few weeks, he's feeling the legislative pinch. "There's been a significant change in state funding. Ten years ago, the museum received about $16 million. It's possible that we'll only receive $2 million or less next fiscal year. We've come a long way since the early 1990s, and yet we still need that vital state support, and we have to get better at making our case." Detroit Free Press 07/03/03
Posted: 07/03/2003 6:26 am
Artists' Strike In France Threatens Summer Season "They've already called off operas and foiled film festivals. On Wednesday, thousands of France's performing artists took their strike on the road, puffing into tubas or waving puppets as they marched through Paris' streets in a demonstration. Now that spring strikes by transport workers, teachers and trash collectors have ended, a standoff over unemployment benefits for artists is threatening to ruin France's summer artistic season. Dozens of performances... have been canceled. Actors, musicians, filmmakers and theater technicians are worried about changes to a unique French system that protects performers with an unemployment plan that takes into account their downtime between projects." Andante (AP) 07/03/03
Posted: 07/03/2003 5:59 am
Cleveland's Hard Times "Things are about as bad as they've ever been for the arts in Cleveland. Three of the region's most important theatres (Ensemble, Dobama and Cleveland Public Theatre) cancelled the tail end of their 02/03 seasons earlier this year, mainly in an effort to stop the red ink. The Cleveland Film Society laid off half its staff after trying to compete with a made-for-TV "reality" series set in Iraq. Meanwhile, the majors are nervously raising and spending millions for huge capital projects..." Cleveland Free Times 07/02/03
Posted: 07/02/2003 9:12 pm
Art Lives In New Jersey New Jersey's state budget is now official, and the arts have survived. "The budget calls for $19 million in funding for arts and cultural programs. That's a drop from the $31.7 million the state gave to arts groups last year but a far cry from McGreevey's original budget proposal, which called for eliminating arts funding entirely." Trenton Times 07/02/03
Posted: 07/02/2003 4:27 pm
Jazz's Greatest Flautist Exits Stage Left "Herbie Mann, the versatile jazz flutist who combined many musical styles and deeply influenced genres such as world music and fusion, died late Tuesday. He was 73... Mann will be remembered for playing different styles of jazz and then combining them. He did bebop and cool jazz, and toured Africa, Brazil and Japan searching for new sounds." Toronto Star 07/03/03
Posted: 07/03/2003 7:06 am
Slim Shady, Master Poet? By all the usual measures, the rapper Eminem should be despised by the cultural elite. His lyrics are violent, misogynistic, and homophobic, and he has systematically dismissed all suggestions that a musician with his talent doesn't need the bigoted gimmickry to make it big. So how is it that young Marshall Mathers has come to be hailed as the next great poet of the music world by no less an authority than Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney? "The endorsement is just the latest indication that Eminem's public image has completed the transition from obscene thug to gifted lyricist... The star from the trailer park is becoming, in the words of Britain's The Independent, 'the new darling of the liberal establishment.'" National Post 07/03/03
Posted: 07/03/2003 6:46 am
Authentic Theatre Vs. Authentic Zoning Codes "A Hellenic group plans to build a solid marble, open air amphitheater modeled after a 2,400-year-old theater in Greece. The group planning the theater says it would be unique in the United States, and expects it to become a cultural and educational landmark." But this is in Connecticut, where homeowners are proprietary sorts, and the neighbors of the proposed amphitheater are taking a not-in-our-backyard approach to the whole thing. The usual concerns apply here - the size of the theatre, lack of available parking space, and excessive noise. So far, plans are going ahead, but residents are determined to shoot down the project. Hartford Courant 07/02/03
Posted: 07/03/2003 6:31 am
Theatre In The Around As part of the Lincoln Center Festival, "theatergoers taking part in 'The Angel Project' will be led one by one at five-minute intervals through an individualized journey to nine locations, many in the area of 42nd Street. The walk is scheduled to begin on Roosevelt Island, where people will be given a guidebook to follow as if on a kind of theatrical treasure hunt. Everyone goes on the same journey, but each person will see something entirely different by virtue of the canvas being so huge." The New York Times 07/03/02
Posted: 07/02/2003 9:27 pm
A Steinbeck Revival, Copyright Oprah It almost went unnoticed, what with Harry Potter and Hillary Clinton grabbing all the book-based headlines over the past month, but John Steinbeck's classic version of the Cain and Abel story, East of Eden recently sold 750,000 copies inside of a week. Why the rush on a 50-year-old novel? Oprah made it a selection of her newly-revived book club. "Organized book groups, which make reading a social experience, are springing up like weeds, especially in bookstores and libraries - providing a critical marketing opportunity for a publishing industry desperate to reverse sluggish sales numbers." Boston Globe 07/03/03
Posted: 07/03/2003 6:04 am
More Books, Fewer Reviews "This is an interesting time for books. While there are three times as many books being published now compared to 25 years ago, many magazine and newspapers that publish reviews have faced page cutbacks. A few have increased coverage—both the Los Angeles Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution have fattened their review sections recently. And there are new arrivals to the scene. Last year Speakeasy, affiliated with the Loft literary center in Minneapolis, and Readerville, the print version of the Web site of the same name, were launched. In March of this year McSweeney’s introduced the Believer, a four-color monthly with long reviews (of poetry as well as fiction) and interviews. The overall trend, though, has been toward what one New York Times editor recently referred to as 'the incredible shrinking book review,' the result of a weakened economy and an accompanying decrease in advertising for the media industry." Writers & Poets Magazine 07/03
Posted: 07/02/2003 5:18 pm
Bringing Back Oscar's Integrity Hollywood is getting tough. This week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, which hands out those little gold Oscar statues each spring, announced new rules designed to prevent studio executives from "overzealously" campaigning for a particular film, director, or actor to win a high-profile award. In the past, the AMPAS had employed a set of "guidelines" for such purposes, but many studios openly flouted them, so the hope is that the more stringent code will cause execs to think twice. Penalties for breaking the rules include losing one's seat at the Oscar ceremony, and, for voting members of the Academy, suspension or expulsion from that position. Los Angeles Times 07/03/03
Posted: 07/03/2003 5:38 am
BBC's New Arts Show: All About Yentob BBC1 has a new arts show. It's not very good, writes Patrick Wright. Perhaps it's because Alan Yentob the BBC exec is also Alan Yentob the producer and Alan Yentob the presenter. Is this too much Yentob around which to build an arts franchise? The Guardian (UK) 07/02/03
Posted: 07/02/2003 5:14 pm
Pay For Coming Attractions? Are some movie studios paying theatres to run trailers of their movies? "Studios historically have been adamant in refusing to pay for trailer placement, arguing that the previews are as beneficial to theaters as they are to distributors. But exhibitors are on the hunt for new revenue streams as they regain their financial footing following the massive screen build-outs of the past few years -- and the large cash outlays that made such expansion possible. While no studio would go on record as admitting to attempts at trailer placement, the subject has generated enough buzz around town to indicate that it is worth examining." Backstage 07/02/03
Posted: 07/02/2003 4:41 pm
Can't Dance, Don't Ask Me If you get up to dance in a New York City bar, you're breaking the law. "Call it whatever you like—writhing, shimmying, bumping, grinding, 'the white-man’s overbite' — but if three or more people are executing it in a bar, nightclub or music hall that does not have a valid New York City 'cabaret' license, the establishment will be fined. If such “violations” occur again, they can be padlocked." Now the city is thinking about revising the 77-year-old law...
Newsweek 07/02/03
Posted: 07/02/2003 5:21 pm
The Ladies Of City Ballet "All in all, things are looking up at New York City Ballet. Despite the erosion of detail evident throughout the Balanchine repertory (due, needless to say, to lack of appropriate coaching), there are at last enough strong ballerinas in place so that a number of Mr. B’s ballets are looking better than they were. And that’s what City Ballet is all about, pace Martins’ often-stated dictum that the company mustn’t become a museum. City Ballet is a museum, the central Balanchine museum, as the Prado is for Goya." New York Observer 07/02/03
Posted: 07/02/2003 4:55 pm
