Art? What Art? Let's Dance! "At a growing number of museums around the country, party nights aimed at younger patrons are bringing in everything from D.J.'s spinning house music to double-Dutch jump-ropers (at the Seattle Art Museum's Thursday After Hours series, which sometimes lasts until midnight)... Museums have plenty of reason to look for younger crowds. According to a survey sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and conducted by the Census Bureau, the median age of Americans who visited art museums rose by five years, from 40 to 45, between 1992 and 2002, reflecting a sharp drop in museum visits by people 18 to 34." The New York Times 11/19/04
Posted: 11/19/2004 6:21 am
MoMA Should Have Gotten More For Its Money New York's Museum of Modern Art has always viewed 20th-century modernism as the core of its collection, and the museum's new home pays appropriate tribute to that tradition. But while the collection is virtually beyond reproach, Michael Kimmelman sees many flaws in the new MoMA's finished product, beginning with the somewhat boxy and cold feel of the architecture, and exemplified by the "appalling and cynical" $20 admission price. An additional disappointment is that "the Modern is clearly still not sure what to make of the art of the last 30 or 40 years - what its role and mission, as well as its taste and judgment, are in an art world that has changed and expanded." The New York Times 11/19/04
Posted: 11/19/2004 6:02 am
- This 'Modern' World MoMA may have a new look, but patrons will have no trouble finding their familiar old favorite works, and that brings up an interesting conundrum for an institution purporting to be about all that is new. "Art museums have come to be petting zoos. They are places where strange, wild, difficult, potentially dangerous objects are brought, stripped of their histories and confined to 'neutral' settings for safe observation. This way, objects start to change, to lose their volatility, their bite and sting and, at the Modern, their modern-ness. And what does modern-ness mean, applied to art? A zillion things." The New York Times 11/19/04
Posted: 11/19/2004 6:00 am
Philly Art School To Sell Off Its Collection "The Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial, a tuition-free art school and an active part of Philadelphia's cultural community, will auction nearly all its remaining artwork [this weekend]," raising as much as $100,000 for the school's endowment. But the school is stressing that the sale, which will include 50 Russian religious icons and a treasure trove of works by local artists, was not precipitated by budget problems, but by a desire to find a home for the works where they can be seen by the public. The school has no exhibition space of its own, and in fact, the existence of its collection came as a surprise to many in the art world. Philadelphia Inquirer 11/18/04
Posted: 11/18/2004 8:11 pm
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If It Ain't Baroque... The eminent baroque ensemble Apollo's Fire is teaming up with the Cleveland Instutute of Music and Case Western Reserve University to provide leadership for CWRU's pre-professional baroque orchestra, which is designed to give special training to music students with a particular interest in period performance. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 11/19/04
Posted: 11/19/2004 6:44 am
How Dare They Rehearse At A Rehearsal? The Boston Symphony has a long tradition of offering the public access to occasional "open rehearsals," and the events have historically borne less resemblance to an actual rehearsal than to a casual performance. In fact, on the occasion that a conductor or soloist has actually attempted to use these scheduled services to work on a piece of music at some level of detail, the BSO has been guaranteed to receive multiple letters of complaint from those patrons in attendance. Still, new music director James Levine is making it clear that a rehearsal is a rehearsal, and he has no interest in plowing through repertoire for its own sake. Boston Globe 11/19/04
Posted: 11/19/2004 5:51 am
It Ain't Over Yet In Philly... The musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra have delayed yesterday's scheduled vote on their new contract agreement, with some musicians saying they felt "rushed" by the process. Another musicians-only meeting is scheduled for today, and the committee that negotiated the deal is still confident that they can resolve and outstanding questions surrounding the contract. Philadelphia Inquirer 11/19/04
Posted: 11/19/2004 5:41 am
- Previously: Street Smarts: A Deal Gets Done In Philly An all-night bargaining session between the musicians and management of the Philadelphia Orchestra has led to a tentative 3-year agreement, thanks to another intervention from Philadelphia Mayor John Street. The musicians will take a wage freeze in the first year, but by the third year, they will have the highest minimum salary of any orchestra in the US. Mayor Street's involvement in the talks was applauded by both sides, and it was evident that a deal would not have been possible without his mediation. Philadelphia Inquirer 11/17/04
Pittsburgh Symphony Salaries To Take Huge Leap The Pittsburgh Symphony has not been on the radar screen of those watching orchestral negotiations this year, which makes sense, since the PSO's contract won't expire until fall 2006. But the musicians of Pittsburgh have been watching the contract battles quite closely, because their own deal contains an unusual clause, under which they will be rewarded for their willingness to take recent pay cuts with a whopping 23% raise in the final year of their current contract. That figure comes from calculating the average of the pay scales of the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestra, and will take the Pittsburgh scale to $102,403. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 11/19/04
Posted: 11/19/2004 5:27 am
Who Needs Schools When We Have Peter Gabriel? Say what you want about the superiority of classical music or the complex intricacies of jazz, but according to novelist Dave Eggers, there's simply nothing like good old-fashioned American pop music to get the creative juices flowing and make you smarter. "Like many citizens, I think a regular regimen of intense listening to the more literary or even pretentious songwriters should replace standard education... Music-as-learning-tool combines the three most potent sources of persuasion: a trusted voice, sublimity and endless repetition." The Guardian (UK) 11/19/04
Posted: 11/18/2004 9:33 pm
Nothing Attracts People To The Arts Like Fistfights & Incest The BBC has snapped up the rights to a TV broadcast of Jerry Springer: The Opera, and will air the satirical look at America's most over-the-top talk show host in January. A spokeswoman "said it was part of the BBC's strategy to introduce a new generation of viewers to opera. The BBC have also commissioned six comedy operas from the makers of the hit West End show." BBC 11/18/04
Posted: 11/18/2004 9:08 pm
Slatkin Out At National Symphony Leonard Slatkin's contract won't be renewed past the 2008 season. "Public information was kept to a polite and restricted minimum. Slatkin's current contract, which was to expire in 2006, will be extended two years, either as a courtesy to the conductor or to buy the orchestra more time to choose another music director -- or, as seems likely, a combination of the two." Washington Post 11/18/04
Posted: 11/18/2004 1:27 pm
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KC Arts Center Stalled Over A Garage "[Kansas City] officials, in a dispute that affects other downtown developments, are at loggerheads with backers of the proposed performing arts center over the location of a promised garage. The clash has complicated the city's effort to acquire land controlled by backers of the performing arts center for a $50 million ballroom planned for the Bartle Hall convention center, city officials say. And Kansas City Ballet officials say that until the flap is resolved, their plan to build a $25 million home on the east side of Wyandotte Street between 16th and 17th streets is on hold." Kansas City Star 11/19/04
Posted: 11/19/2004 5:46 am
Teaming Up Six Hartford-area arts groups have joined forces to offer a multi-genre season ticket package designed to allow younger residents uninterested in tradition season passes to a single organization to pick and choose among the arts offerings available in the city. "The $99 price tag is a significant discount over regular priced tickets, more than 50 percent for some events," and purchasers can redeem the vouchers at the local symphony, opera house, museum, theater, or dance company. Town Times (CT) 11/18/04
Posted: 11/18/2004 8:52 pm
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Stricken Kennedy Center Actor Dies "Gregory Mitchell, the actor who suffered a heart attack Nov. 11 during a performance at the Kennedy Center, died yesterday at Washington Hospital Center... Mitchell, 52, collapsed while onstage with Mikhail Baryshnikov in the drama Forbidden Christmas, or the Doctor and the Patient during the second of its six-performance run. After a doctor in the audience attended to him, Mitchell was taken to George Washington University Hospital and later transferred to Washington Hospital Center." Washington Post 11/19/04
Posted: 11/19/2004 6:53 am
The H.L. Mencken Of The Opera World Sir Jonathan Miller may be English opera's greatest curmudgeon, and at 70, he clearly doesn't feel that he has a lot to lose by criticizing his colleagues in the industry. With only a bit of prodding, Miller reveals that, in his view, Joe Volpe is little better than a Jersey mob boss, critics are "midgets talking into a loudspeaker," and the well-heeled opera fans who crowd Covent Garden on a weekly basis are "chalk-striped aubergines" who don't know the first thing about great art. Miller can afford to say these things, apparently, because he believes that he will never again work in opera. The Guardian (UK) 11/19/04
Posted: 11/18/2004 10:32 pm
Canada's New Top Arts Advocate The new national director of the Ottawa-based Canadian Conference of the Arts brings a unique profile and a long resume to the job. Jean Malavoy "comes to the CCA after a three-year stint as the executive director of La Nouvelle Scène, an umbrella theatre centre for four francophone troupes in Ottawa... He also has a certificate in marketing the performing arts from the École des hautes études commerciales de Montréal. In short, he knows both the bureaucratic/fiscal and the administrative/creative sides of the cultural ledger." His main mission at the helm of the CCA will be to convince the precarious Martin government not to cut the arts for political gain. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/18/04
Posted: 11/18/2004 8:28 pm
Nouveau Poète Lauréat du Canada Canada has named a new poet laureate: Pauline Michel, a Francophone who has built an impressive reputation in Quebec, but who is virtually unknown in the country's English-speaking regions. She has been publishing poems, mainly in French, since 1975. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/18/04
Posted: 11/18/2004 8:16 pm
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Well, It Beats Dragging Them Into The Street By Their Ears A New York theater is trying a new technique to get audience members to turn off their rage-inducing cell phones. Staffers at the Brooks Atkinson Theater noticed that the public had become fairly immune to a simple prerecorded announcement asking for the phones to be shut down, so just before curtain, they've begun playing an obnoxious recording of cell phone rings so realistic that people all over the house dive for their phones in horror. "And so a new front may have been opened in the long, hard war against the rude and the clueless... With some of those people, polite appeals are a waste of time." The New York Times 11/19/04
Posted: 11/18/2004 8:40 pm
Latinos Making Gains, But Will It Last? There is a Latino theater boom going on all across America, and while the works of Latino playwrights may not exactly be exploding onto the stages of the nation's most prominent companies yet, many major regional theaters are recognizing the importance of the Hispanic audience. Still, Latino playwrights are a bit suspicious of the new embrace of legitimacy, and are reacting cautiously, wanting to avoid becoming token minorities in the still overwhelmingly white theater world. Boston Globe 11/18/04
Posted: 11/18/2004 8:00 pm
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The Morality Cops Look To Expand Their Jurisdiction "With support from both Republicans and Democrats, the Federal Communications Commission is poised to get even more aggressive about enforcing moral values throughout broadcasting, even putting cable television in its cross hairs and taking aim at Howard Stern's right to talk dirty on satellite radio." Still, there's a fairly decent chance that many aspects of the FCC's decency crusade will eventually face court challenges, and judges, even conservative ones, have historically been loath to allow limits on the First Amendment. Wired 11/18/04
Posted: 11/18/2004 9:20 pm
- Will The New Puritanism Last? Even if a majority of Americans claim to agree with the government's recent crackdown on supposed indecency on the national airwaves, their viewing choices make it fairly clear that risk-taking television isn't going away anytime soon. "The cold truth is, what viewers say they want -- in polls, through organizations and elsewhere -- rarely jibes with what the majority of us actually sit down to watch." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 11/18/04
Posted: 11/18/2004 9:00 pm
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A Match Made In Balanchine Heaven Peter Boal may have George Balanchine to thank for his new job as artistic director of Pacific Northwest Ballet. While Boal has never led a company before, he is known for his devotion to the choreographer, which meshes well with PNB's tradition. "One of the things that attracted Boal to PNB was its strong commitment to Balanchine. His ballets constitute about a third of its repertory, the largest commitment of a major company outside New York City Ballet." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 11/19/04
Posted: 11/18/2004 10:49 pm
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