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Weekend, September 11-12
Escapism vs. Confrontation As America steamrolls towards a vitally important presidential election with bitter recriminations flying on all sides and wild-eyed fury replacing measured discourse, Philip Kennicott sees a distinct split in the art world, mirroring the polarization of the U.S. population. "The arts are sorting themselves out into two camps: one that prizes independence, provocation and even direct political engagement, and another that offers a refuge apart from controversy and argument. They are, in short, diverging down either a secessionist path (come with us, if you will) or a concessionist route (we will work to please as many as we can). Both paths have their promise and their danger." Washington Post 09/12/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 9:47 am
And God Said Unto Pinocchio... "Two years ago, pop culture analyst Mark I. Pinsky unleashed The Gospel According To The Simpsons, a book analyzing the surprising spiritual topics knitted into Fox's irreverent animated TV farce. Now it's The Gospel According To Disney... So what's the substance of Disney's substitute gospel? Good is always rewarded. Evil is always punished. Overcome adversity. Work hard (even 'Whistle While You Work'). All things work together for good in the long run. And have faith, faith in yourself but also in an undefined something beyond yourself." And before you even ask, this gospel applies to Disney's films, not to its corporate power structure. Toronto Star (AP) 09/11/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 7:38 am
Cuno: Museums Losing Focus Is the continuing spread of blockbuster traveling exhibitions distracting museums from what should be their primary focus? Art Institute of Chicago president James Cuno thinks so, and he's raising eyebrows by saying so in public at a time when many museums view high-profile exhibits and big, fancy in-house gift shops and restaurants as the only things keeping them afloat. In his years at Harvard, Cuno "came to espouse what has been called an 'essentialist' view. It's a view that seeks to refocus attention on the acquisition, preservation and presentation of research of museums' permanent collections." The theory works in academia, but can it fly in the open market? Chicago Tribune 09/12/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 9:10 am
Spiegelman's New (Personal) Holocaust Twelve years after winning the Pulitzer Prize for his Holocaust-themed comic book, Maus, artist Art Spiegelman has again put ink to paper to memorialize a great human tragedy. This time, the tragedy is 9/11, and the work is autobiographical. "In content and theme, Maus and In the Shadow of No Towers share some ground. Each of the books deals with a relatively ordinary man, a Spiegelman of one time and place, confronting mass murder (on vastly different scale and a wholly distinct nature, of course) and an arrogant, power-hungry regime (again, on a far different level). Both focus on the primacy of family and tribe to their protagonists, and both evoke the incoherence, the gruesomeness and the vainglory of war." The New York Times 09/12/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 8:59 am
The Forgotten Art That Won't Go Away "When it comes to swimming against the tide, Olympic gold medals should go to all representational artists. For half a century, they have been almost completely ignored by museums, boycotted by prestigious galleries and scoffed at by critics." Still, a renaissance of figure drawing has been evident for some years, led by countless amateurs and enthusiasts, and embraced by a few diehard pros. But "in a society that values quick and easy success... and when so many galleries and museums prefer to give their space to video art, conceptual art and installation art, why do so many keep struggling to master a skill that art critics insist is anachronistic and old hat? Why this continuing compulsion to draw?" The New York Times 09/12/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 8:54 am
A Phoenix In St. Louis It was only four years ago that the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra faced the very real prospect of bankruptcy, with the best-case scenario seeming to be a drastic cutback in the ensemble's artistic quality and national profile. And yet, as the SLSO prepares for its 125th season this fall, it has raised $80 million for its endowment, appointed a new high-profile music director (David Robertson) to replace the late Hans Vonk, and generally sent out word that it is as viable an organization as any in the U.S. St. Louis Post-Dispatch 09/11/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 8:29 am
Change Coming In Detroit, But Don't Hold Your Breath "Neeme Jarvi says his impending exit as music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra wasn’t strictly his idea. He also declares he’d be happy to spend several weeks a year with the DSO while a search committee headed by Anne Parsons, the orchestra’s new executive director, looks for his successor. With Jarvi starting his final season at the artistic helm and Parsons just settling in, the landscape around the DSO might appear to be shifting. But don’t expect sudden upheaval." Detroit News 09/11/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 8:27 am
Temirkanov To Leave Baltimore Yuri Temirkanov has announced that he will step down as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at the end of the 2005-06 season. "He left his imprint on the BSO early during his tenure, replacing several principal players, including the pivotal position of concertmaster, with musicians who greatly enhanced the ensemble's overall tone... Temirkanov has been on a year-to-year contract since his initial three-year contract with the BSO expired at the end of the 2002-2003 season." Baltimore Sun 09/11/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 8:19 am
Subtracting The Superstars It's opening week for many American orchestras, and a new trend is emerging in response to the years of deficits plaguing so many ensembles: less star power, more homegrown talent. Research shows that a vast majority of the modern orchestra audience decides whether to attend a concert based on what's being played, not on who's playing it, so it hardly makes fiscal sense to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a big-name soloist who will only marginally increase the gate. In Minnesota, both of the Twin Cities' major orchestras have bought into the idea of showcasing the ensemble rather than some traveling star, and the upcoming season will be an acid test of the attendance theory. Minneapolis Star Tribune 09/12/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 7:59 am
Lucerne's Glory If the BBC Proms are the People's Choice Awards of orchestra festivals, then the Lucerne Festival must surely be the Oscars. Presented in one of the finest modern concert halls in the world and featuring a lineup that most critics would agree amounts to the very best orchestras the world has to offer (Cleveland, Concertgebouw, Vienna, etc.), Lucerne has risen in recent years to become the festival for people who are serious about music. More than that, though, the festival has boosted the profile of the city, and now, the fest's director has built a unique orchestra just for Lucerne, "drawing together outstanding orchestral musicians and soloists... from across the European continent." Toronto Star 09/11/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 7:31 am
Behind The Fraud, Some Very Nice Instruments The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra opens its season after a summer of turmoil surrounding the ensemble's purchase of millions of dollars of possibly overvalued instruments from now-imprisoned financier Herbert Axelrod. And while the controversy is far from over, James Oestreich says that it's nice to see the music once again taking center stage in Newark. "Whatever the collection may be worth beyond the smoke and mirrors of expert appraisals, no one questions that these are marvelous instruments and a boon to the orchestra." The New York Times 09/11/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 7:10 am
- Previously: Did Axelrod Sell NJ Symphony Fakes? Five of the 30 rare violins sold by Herbert Axelrod last year to the New Jersey Symphony might not be what he purported them to be, suggests an investigation. "They are old instruments, certainly, dating at least to the 19th century. But, the experts say, it is likely they were crafted by someone other than the famed violin-makers to whom they are attributed. In short, the experts say, they are probably fakes, worth a fraction of their appraised value." Newark Star-Ledger 08/01/04
Pursuing The Enablers U.S. government officials are recommending that Congress amend the nation's copyright law to hold companies which "rely on copyright infringement to make a profit" liable for the actions of consumers who use their products. The new regulations, which are aimed squarely at file-trading enablers such as Kazaa and Grokster, are very controversial, with privacy advocates insisting that previous Supreme Court rulings prohibit such wide-ranging prohibitions. Wired 09/11/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 8:36 am
When Do They Find Time To Practice? David Finckel and Wu Han, the new co-directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, could be said to be the poster children for 21st-century musical multitasking. The two are chamber music's power couple of the moment, with Mr. Finckel best known as the cellist of the Emerson Quartet. They run their own internet-based record label, founded a stunningly successful chamber music festival in California last year, and each maintain a full performance schedule. Unusual? Sure. But in these days when classical music is increasingly serving a niche market, it takes that kind of dedication and willingness to diversify to succeed. The New York Times 09/12/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 8:50 am
Eisner To Leave Disney Coming off a brutal year in which he faced withering criticism for his business tactics and came dangerously close to not being reelected to the company board, Disney CEO Michael Eisner has announced that he will leave the company when his contract expires in 2006. Sources suggest that the board would not have renewed the contract anyway, and that the announcement was a way for both sides to save face in what had become an embarrassingly public and drawn-out separation. Los Angeles Times 09/11/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 7:43 am
- A Problem Of Succession Two years is a long, long goodbye by corporate standards. Not only that, but the race to succeed Michael Eisner at the helm of Disney is reportedly wide open, leading to fears that the two-year lame duck period could cause chaos or institutional paralysis. "That could be particularly problematic for Disney, which has just started to rebound after a prolonged stock slump and months of turmoil marked by a failed takeover bid from cable giant Comcast Corp. and a shareholder revolt to unseat Eisner." Los Angeles Times 09/11/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 7:40 am
A New Intellectual-In-Chief "Six months after the abrupt dismissal of its former editor, The American Scholar, one of the nation's leading literary and intellectual journals, has found a successor. On Thursday, the Phi Beta Kappa Society, the journal's publisher, named Robert S. Wilson to replace Anne Fadiman, whose departure after a budget dispute with the publisher led to the angry resignation of 20 contributing editors and board members." The New York Times 09/11/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 7:19 am
Is Theater The Liberal Answer To Talk Radio? British theater is unapologetically political at the moment, and plays satirizing the Bush and Blair governments are wildly popular with UK audiences frustrated by the unresponsiveness of their leaders to public sentiment. But so far, the newly activist theater community has coalesced entirely around one point of view - the liberal one - and no one in the theater community seems to have a problem with that. Still, with some theaters beginning to blend political fact with Orwellian ideological fiction, the liberal dominance of activist theater is sparking debate in critical circles. Financial Times (UK) 09/10/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 9:20 am
Defiant To The End Chicago's distinctive and aptly named Defiant Theatre closes its doors forever this week with a production of Anthony Burgess's classic of violence and societal manipulation, A Clockwork Orange. "Anyone who's been watching the distinctive theatrical work of Defiant -- the original bad boys and girls of the off-Loop -- over these last 10 years quickly gets [director Christopher] Johnson's meta-point. Defiant is over... The original people have gone soft, gotten married, acquired proper jobs. You can't keep churning out the old ultra-violence, as Alex would say, on a shoestring in those circumstances." Chicago Tribune 09/11/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 8:09 am
Scholarship By Committee? When a Harvard scholar was recently accused of lifting several paragraphs of his new book from another author, he resorted to a now-familiar defense: it was his "research assistants" who had been sloppy and allowed the unattributed quotations. But that type of buck-passing infuriates some scholars, who are loudly questioning whether works written with the aid of multiple student researchers actually qualify as scholarship at all. "We're not talking about razor blades or soap. We're talking about creative endeavors. A book that bears a name is widely presumed to be written by that author." Boston Globe 09/11/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 8:13 am
Is TIFF Too Big And Unwieldy? The Toronto International Film Festival is a massive event and a vitally important industry showcase, there's no doubt about that. But Ron Weiskind was stunned by how disorganized the whole event has become, and wonders if it reflects a downturn in TIFF's fortunes. "Last year, I did interviews for nine movies, most of them major releases. This year, none of the top studios (except MGM, which may be sold soon) is offering press roundtables." Admittedly, one could argue that making life easy for the press is not the mission of a festival, but in an industry that lives and dies by its media coverage, it's a bad sign when reporters can't navigate the proceedings. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 09/11/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 7:53 am
The Sounds Of 9/11 A new audio-guided walking tour of lower Manhattan has just launched, memorializing the fall of the World Trade Center towers. At first blush, the idea of listening to the horrific sounds of 9/11 seems like a ghastly exercise, but the tour, put together by two National Public Radio producers, blends together such a wide array of aural experiences that you can't help but be drawn in. The New York Times 09/11/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 7:02 am
ABT Principal On Medical Leave A principal dancer at the American Ballet Theater has been placed on medical leave and will not perform at all during ABT's fall season. Nina Ananiashvili, who hails from Tbilisi, Georgia, will reportedly return in the spring, but the company isn't disclosing the nature of her illness or injury. The New York Times 09/11/04
Posted: 09/12/2004 7:21 am
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