That's No Way To Balance A Budget "The Museum of North Arizona has elected a new board of trustees and named an acting director after revelations that the former director and trustees had sold 21 weavings and paintings from the permanent collection to help pay for the institution’s operating expenses caused an uproar among museum members." Worse, the sale of the objects netted the museum far less than what the objects were actually worth, according to a museum donor who spearheaded the protest against the board's actions. The new acting director of the museum is Max Oelschlaeger, who says that his top two priorities will be to shore up the museum's finances, and find a permanent director. The Art Newspaper 10/28/03
Posted: 10/28/2003 6:39 am
Art: Not Fade Away (And Yet...) Much contemporary art is made of materials that are deteriorating. "The technical term is inherent vice, insurance jargon meaning the certainty of future decay because of the materials used. Inherent vice is the timebomb ticking away inside private and museum collections of contemporary art all over the world. The first conference held to consider the problem is bringing together conservators, collectors, lawyers and, above all, art insurance experts, in London." The Guardian (UK) 10/28/03
Posted: 10/27/2003 9:50 pm
Musicians' Union Accuses Fund Director of Embezzlement The American Federation of Musicians has fired the executive director of its Sound Recording Special Payments Fund, which doles out money to unionized musicians around the country in payment for commercial recordings, and is accusing him of having embezzled more than $400,000 from the union. According to the AFM, no determination has been made as to whether a criminal complaint will be filed against Enex Steele, but the union has issued a formal demand that Steele immediately return the full amount he is charged with having taken. [Editor's Note: The link for this story is to a formal press release from the AFM, and not to an objective and independent news source.] American Federation of Musicians 10/14/03
Posted: 10/28/2003 6:44 am
Davidson On Disney: Populism Meeting Glitter Justin Davidson is duly impressed with the L.A. Philharmonic's new Gehry-designed digs: "It is a building made of visual metaphors: It blooms among the architectural crabgrass of downtown L.A... The hall is a come-on to the city on the part of a high-art establishment that feels miniaturized by the pop-culture machine. Like a maestro going to the supermarket, Disney Hall balances glamour with populism. It is a complex space, yet a straightforwardly spectacular one, too. It flaunts its impeccable sheen, yet invites visitors to touch. People have done so, and unless the maintenance crew proves overzealous, one of the more unexpected features will be the shadow of hands on steel." Newsday (New York) 10/27/03
Posted: 10/28/2003 6:11 am
Butting Heads In Birmingham Peter Thomas, the concertmaster of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra has resigned from his position, and will leave the highly-regarded orchestra in March 2004, reportedly as a result of ongoing artistic conflicts with CBSO music director Sakari Oramo. "Regular CBSO concertgoers will have noticed the two men have not appeared on stage together for months... Ironically, Mr Thomas flew to Europe in 1997 with former chief executive Edward Smith to persuade an initially hesitant Mr Oramo to replace Sir Simon Rattle in Birmingham." Birmingham Post (UK) 10/28/03
Posted: 10/28/2003 5:18 am
Stunning Appointment: Järvi to New Jersey In what is being widely viewed as a major coup for a second-tier American orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra has announced that Neeme Järvi will be its next music director, officially beginning in 2005. Järvi will take over immediately as the orchestra's principal conductor, ending a 2-1/2 year search to replace the departed Zdenek Macal in Newark. Järvi has been the music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for 14 years, and has been credited with transforming the DSO into one of the top ensembles in the U.S. The announcement is seen as a badly needed shot in the arm for the NJSO, which has been running severe deficits and which recently lost its well-regarded executive director to Pittsburgh. Newark Star-Ledger 10/28/03
Posted: 10/28/2003 5:09 am
Is Vienna Stalking Cleveland's MD? Seiji Ozawa is under contract as music director of the Vienna State Opera through 2007, so it isn't surprising that VSO officials are being coy about rumors that they are actively pursuing Franz Welser-Möst to replace him. Welser-Möst, the young music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, was first mentioned as an object of Viennese desire more than a year ago, but the talk of his wooing has revved up since he stepped in for an ailing Christian Thielemann last month, and led a well-received production of Wagner's Tristan & Isolde. Complicating the rumors is the fact that Welser-Möst's contract in Cleveland was recently extended through 2012. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 10/28/03
Posted: 10/28/2003 5:03 am
Where Have All The Music Stores Gone? The number of sheet music stores still alive is tiny compared with 30 years ago. "Nowadays, although recent polls show that 25 percent of adults say they play musical instruments, there are so few specialist stores that sell print music, and they don't really make a great outreach to people except for the ones who physically darken their doorsteps." The New York Times 10/23/03
Posted: 10/27/2003 11:14 pm
Let's Blame The Recording Companies "Why is the classical music tradition in difficulty, asks Charles Rosen? "At the time that listening to records was beginning to overtake going to concerts as the chief way of staying in contact with the classical tradition, the record companies consistently refused to make records freely or cheaply available to schools. Educating a future public would have meant planning in longer terms than the habits of thought of the modern business world are comfortable with. Nevertheless, this makes a coherent view of our cultural heritage in literature and music an awkward undertaking. Some educators have abandoned the idea as hopeless and even (sour grapes!) as unnecessary. Even the idea of a canon of great works of the past can inspire resentment today." New York Review of Books 10/03
Posted: 10/27/2003 10:43 pm
Disney Passes Expectations In The Fast Lane LA's new Disney Hall got through its opening weekend of three concerts in great style, writes Joshua Kosman. "Taken in tandem with Thursday's opener, the evenings added up to a beguiling snapshot of musical life in the Southland - venturesome, swaggering and ready to embrace whatever cultural developments may be passing through. In addition to its own extravagant charms, at once noble and puppyish, Disney Hall reveals anew the strength and resilience that this orchestra has attained under Salonen's leadership." San Francisco Chronicle 10/27/03
Posted: 10/27/2003 10:27 am
Public Art Recalled To Make It More Accessible The state of California recently called up some major changes to a public art project at the state capitol to make it accessible to those with disabilities. "The cosmic recall, scoffed by some and applauded by others, reflects a growing awareness of disability rights among art and design communities." Sacramento Bee 10/27/03
Posted: 10/27/2003 5:55 pm
How To Rebuild Iraq's Arts? "How do we take what exists in Iraq, how we fortify those institutions, how do we fortify the schools that teach music and art, how do we fortify regional arts organisations and what holes are left? Under Saddam, sculptors got a monthly stipend. They're not high up on the priority list of people in Iraq, but somebody has to attend to this." Reuters 10/27/03
Posted: 10/27/2003 5:50 pm
Santa Cruz: How To Dismantle An Arts Community Support for the arts in Santa Cruz, California has been evaporating. And the city's artists are leaving. "In the last couple of weeks, not a day has gone by when I haven’t heard of an artist moving away. The Diaspora of young artists here is evaporating because it’s too expensive to live here and because there’s a serious lack of venues in this town." Santa Cruz Sentinel 10/27/03
Posted: 10/27/2003 5:47 pm
Kaiser Gets A Surprise For His 50th Michael Kaiser, president of Washington's Kennedy Center and recently the foremost star of the arts management world, does not surprise easily. But somehow, his friends and supporters managed to pull off a massive surprise party for Kaiser's 50th birthday this week. "The entertainment was provided by Barbara Cook, Harolyn Blackwell, Patti LuPone and dancers from the Alvin Ailey troupe and American Ballet Theatre. The 136 guests included [Stephen] Sondheim, Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, World Bank President James Wolfensohn, and lots of other A-list political, business and diplomatic bigwigs." Washington Post 10/28/03
Posted: 10/28/2003 6:34 am
Crime & Punishment & Bungling & Retribution Canadian author Stephen Williams claims that he is being persecuted by Ontario authorities for the act of having written a couple of books about infamous Canadian serial killers and the botched police investigation which allowed them to go uncaptured for so long, and which will allow one of them to shortly be released from prison. The authorities insist that the 97 charges which they have laid against Williams are legit, in reaction to his accidental posting of two banned victims' names on his web site. Lynn Coady says that it's about time that the public got outraged on the author's behalf. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/28/03
Posted: 10/28/2003 5:46 am
No Money Problem Here! The UK's National Theatre is disputing a report in the Sunday Telegraph which claimed that directors at the National were being asked to stage plays for one-tenth the normal budget, and that the cuts were directly attributable to the cut-rate ticket prices which the theater instituted last summer, and plans to continue for the next three years. According to the theater, the low-priced tickets are being completely underwritten by a £1 million grant, which has had no effect on the creative budget. The National does acknowledge a distinct change to its recent design aesthetic, one that is "more minimal, creating a space where metaphor flies." Coincidentally, the minimalist stages are also cheaper. BBC 10/27/03
Posted: 10/28/2003 4:41 am
IS LA Theatre Healthy? Los Angeles' theatre community is huge. But is it vital? "In this awful economic climate for the arts, and because of the quality of the actors here, Los Angeles’ own off-off-Broadway — 90 percent of what’s produced here — serves as one of the nation’s most vital laboratories not just for new plays, but for companies that are working to incorporate movement and text into combinations that keep providing alternatives to the products of our mass media." LAWeekly 10/23/03
Posted: 10/27/2003 10:55 pm
London Needs Theatre Aid London's West End theatres are in dismal shape, many of them shabby and run-down. A new survey declares that the historic theatres need an urgent £255m facelift. The Guardian (UK) 10/28/03
Posted: 10/27/2003 9:41 pm
The Right To Withhold Your Name As a rule, newspaper readers don't pay a lot of attention to bylines. So a 'byline strike,' when it occurs, is the sort of semi-private protest which doesn't raise many eyebrows, except within the industry. Still, when journalists at the Montreal Gazette withheld their bylines two years ago, they were ordered to reinstate them by the paper's corporate owner, CanWest Global, and forbidden from talking to other journalists about the issue. Yesterday, a Quebec tribunal ruled that journalists have an absolute legal right to withhold their bylines, and though the ruling may go unnoticed by most Canadians, Antonio Zerbisias says that everyone who prizes independent thought should be celebrating. Toronto Star 10/28/03
Posted: 10/28/2003 6:24 am
Is Big Read "Anti-Literary?" The BBC's Big Read aims to have the public vote on their 100 favorite books of all time. But some criticize the exerciseas being "anti-literary." "Somebody said that The Big Read was not just un-literary but anti-literary and I think that's right. It is based on the assumption that the opinion of the public is always beyond reproach." BBC 10/27/03
Posted: 10/27/2003 11:47 pm
Amazon's New Intellectual Search Critics are oohing and ahing over Amazon's new search feature that throws the pages of thousands of books in a search engine. One of the things you can do is find which public intellectuals get the most citations. Probably doesn't mean anything, of course. A few years ago Richard Posner came up with a ranking of intellectuals based on article mentions. The new ranking? It's different... Slate 10/27/03
Posted: 10/27/2003 9:16 pm
In Praise Of Libraries For all their excellence, libraries are low in glamor. "What can a library do to compete with such events as the International Festival of Authors at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre, the announcement of nominees for the Giller Prize and the Governor-General's Award, or the celebrity-cookbook author Indigo is bringing to a suburb near you? It's possible, however, that society's collective inability to appreciate the public library as a vital institution is the library's fault." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/27/03
Posted: 10/27/2003 10:14 am
Disposable DVDs Ready For The Landfill? Call it ecological consciousness, consumer disinterest, or lousy marketing: whatever the reason, the "disposable DVD" phenomenon is withering on the vine. The discs, which can be rented and viewed like a normal DVD for two days before they become unusable, are billed as an item of convenience for the movie renting public. But apparently, even American couch potatoes aren't quite that lazy, because almost no one is renting the self-destructing discs. Wired 10/28/03
Posted: 10/28/2003 4:52 am
Excepting The Oscars Isn't Enough "Britain's top film awards could be heading for catastrophe next year if Hollywood does not resolve a row over voting, says organiser Bafta. No preview DVDs of new films can be sent to voters of any awards except the Oscars, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has ruled. They say there is too much chance that the advance copies could be pirated. But others say it will harm the award chances of small independent films, and Bafta wants the ban overturned." BBC 10/28/03
Posted: 10/28/2003 4:48 am
Taking Back Fair Use New rules allowing media companies to restrict the recording of TV shows are needed to protect the industry. But consumer advocates say the rules overly restrict fair use. Wired 10/27/03
Posted: 10/27/2003 9:04 pm
