The Hidden Cost of High Admission With MoMA now charging $20 just for the privilege of getting in the door, other museums are sure to follow with higher admission charges of their own. But such hikes are not only inconvenient, says Jeff Weinstein, they threaten to undermine the very mission of art museums. “Without dependable government grants, museums think they must be run like Wal-Marts in order to survive,” but by setting their price scale according to what the high rollers will pay, museums run the risk that no penniless youth will ever set foot inside. And assuming that today’s penniless youths are tomorrow’s millionaire entrepreneurs, as some of them certainly are, MoMA is risking the interest of an entire generation for short-term profit. Philadelphia Inquirer 12/01/04
Posted: 12/01/2004 8:26 am
Sotheby's To Sell Off Camelot More than 600 paintings and assorted trinkets from the home of President John F. Kennedy & Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis will be auctioned off by Sotheby’s this week, with the full sale expected to bring $1 million or more. “Among the most prominent items, Kennedy will offer the paintings done in 1968 by Aaron Shickler in the living room of her mother's Manhattan apartment, Portrait Of Jacqueline Kennedy With Caroline And John Jr. and John And Caroline Reading, A Study, that likely will sell for $3,000 to $12,000.” Toronto Star 12/01/04
Posted: 12/01/2004 7:30 am
France Puzzled By Louvre's Expansion Plans Why did the Louvre decide to expand in "one of France's most impoverished regions, due to be built on the site of a derelict coal pit. Lens is currently a cultural desert, famous only for its football team and its deserted coal mines. The city, around 40 miles inland from Calais, was badly hit by industrial crises in the 1990s and unemployment stands at 12.7%, or three percentage points above the national average." The Guardian (UK) 12/01/04
Posted: 11/30/2004 9:52 pm
King Tut Returns For the first time since 1979, the treasures of Egyptian King Tutankhamen are visiting the United States. "The exhibit, which is now touring Europe, would open in June at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and go on to at least three other American cities. The exhibit will allow the American public the first glimpse in a generation of the ancient Egyptian treasures." The New York Times 12/01/04
Posted: 11/30/2004 9:40 pm
Will Stedelijk Museum Keep Its Maleviches? Is Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum in danger of losing its important collection of 14 Malevich paintings? "The heirs of the Russian avant-garde artist, who have successfully claimed works from the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Busch-Reisinger Museum of Harvard University, are now in pursuit of a significant part of the largest collection of Malevich’s works in the West. They say that the Stedelijk bought the works from someone who didn’t own them and had no right to sell them." ARTnews 11/04
Posted: 11/30/2004 6:56 pm
Click here for more Visual Arts stories...
Another Surplus In SF, But Red Ink In Sight “The San Francisco Symphony finished its 2003-04 fiscal year with an unexpected $700,000 surplus on an operating budget of just over $50 million, according to a report presented at Monday's annual board meeting. The black ink was the result of some timely cost-cutting combined with stronger-than- anticipated ticket sales… But management isn't expecting the good times to last: The budget for the current year includes a planned deficit of more than $2 million.” San Francisco Chronicle 12/01/04
Posted: 12/01/2004 8:29 am
Union Performers Sue San Francisco Opera Union performers are suing San Francisco Opera in part over performances at a birthday party for music director Donald Runnicles. "The suit, brought by singers, dancers and production staff members, accused the opera of refusing to go to arbitration or to follow grievance procedures over the charges. 'They blatantly ignore us. They just kind of do what they want to do, and if it happens to violate the contract, 'Oops!' " The New York Times 12/01/04
Posted: 11/30/2004 9:35 pm
Downloading Continues Despite Threats New research indicates that despite legal threats and aggressive anti-downloading efforts, the rate of downloading hasn't declined in the past year. "While some people would have been scared off by the legal actions, others will be all the more determined to do it." BBC 11/30/04
Posted: 11/30/2004 7:15 pm
Click here for more Music stories...
Congress Rebuffs Bush Effort To Boost NEA Funding A new appropriations bill is set to be approved by the U.S. Congress without an $18 million special allotment to the National Endowment for the Arts that President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush had specifically lobbied for. "'American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius,' was meant to be a chance to reacquaint people with the best of American dance, theater, jazz, classical music, literature and other arts, extending the NEA's reach into communities all over the country, giving members of Congress bragging rights about how they were bringing home artistic pork and insulating the agency from political critics." But Congress has allotted only $2 million for the project, which will have to be scaled back considerably. Washington Post 12/01/04
Posted: 12/01/2004 8:31 am
Bigger May Not Be Better For The Arts The city of Richmond, Virginia, is contructing a beautiful new performing arts center as part of an effort to revitalize its downtown. But not everyone is happy about the project - two local writers have created a weblog called SaveRichmond.com, which takes aim at the PAC as an expensive plaything for the elite, and asserts that the city "should work with its artists, musicians and entrepreneurs to build a vibrant and diverse 'street-level' arts scene." The critics also claim that the planners of the PAC don't know anything about arts administration, and accuses the center's board of using "dodgy finances" to hide its inability to raise money. Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch 12/01/04
Posted: 12/01/2004 5:47 am
Fund All You Want, We'll Make More Canada has a long history of government support for the arts. But "over the past 20 years, as activity in the arts has grown, federal funding has remained fairly stable. The result has been that the proportion of federal funding in the revenues of Canadian arts organizations has dropped by half." It's an uncomfortable situation - can you ever really have too much art, and even if you can, how do you decide who is worthy of support and who isn't? Governments don't generally like to be in the business of making value judgments, but without a serious increase in arts funding, many fear that Canada will soon have no other choice. Toronto Star 12/01/04
Posted: 12/01/2004 5:37 am
Chicago Sued For Intentional Mutilation of Flowers A 72-year-old Chicago man who designed, planted, and maintained a massive wildflower garden on the city's North Side, is suing the city for destroying his creation to make way for the increased foot traffic to the new Millenium Park. The lawsuit contends that the wildflowers were not merely a garden, but a work of art, and as such, they should have been protected under the Visual Artists Rights Act, a federal law prohibiting "'intentional distortion, mutilation, or other modification' of public artwork without permission of the creator." Chicago Sun-Times 12/01/04
Posted: 12/01/2004 5:24 am
New Lobbyists Lobby For Fairer Copyright A new lobbying group has been formed to argue for copyright laws that are fairer to consumers. "IPac pledges to support candidates and elected officials who fight for a balance in copyright law: The group will support those who advocate for laws that will pay creators without limiting political expression, innovation or research and education, and back laws that foster new creativity. The group says it believes that intellectual property laws should be clear so technologists can innovate without being sued." Wired 11/30/04
Posted: 11/30/2004 8:43 pm
Did Vikings Discover America? A controversial parchment map might rewrite the historical record of who "discovered" America. "The map, which is said to date from 1434 and was found in 1957, is believed by some to be evidence that Vikings who departed from Greenland around the year 1000 were the first to discover America." Discovery 11/30/04
Posted: 11/30/2004 8:39 pm
Click here for more Arts Issues stories...
Canada's Most Canadian Canadian Dies "Journalist, author, pundit, personality — for more than 50 years Pierre Berton dominated print and broadcast media in Canada." The author of 50 books and countless newspaper and magazine columns died yesterday at age 84, and his legacy as author, commentator, and benefactor to other writers is being celebrated across the country. How important was Berton to Canadians? The CBC's flagship evening newscast devoted the first ten minutes of its program to him last night, relegating a major visit by the American president to page 2 status. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/01/04
Posted: 12/01/2004 6:20 am
Click here for more People stories...
Intermissions Are Just Better In Pittsburgh A New York Times critic recently penned an article extolling the virtues of the intermission-less one-act play, concluding that one-acts offer a “purer” theatrical experience. Christopher Rawson doesn’t dislike one-act plays, but doesn’t agree that they are necessarily superior to more traditional two- and three-act fare. “What's pure about theater? That's like insisting all churches be white. The proof is really in the individual pudding. And although I understand [the critic’s] irritation at New York intermissions, where theaters are crowded with strangers, a Pittsburgh intermission still has social pleasures that need not conflict with the play.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 12/01/04
Posted: 12/01/2004 8:28 am
Will Las Vegas Be The New Broadway? "About 2,500 miles to the west of Times Square, another major U.S. tourist Mecca, Las Vegas, is now being referred to by some as "Broadway West." Could a growing live-theatre industry in this glittery playground for gambling aficionados and lovers of flashy thrills pose a threat to the Great White Way and to the national theatre-tour market?" Back Stage 11/30/04
Posted: 11/30/2004 7:11 pm
Click here for more Theatre stories...
Taking On The Big Guys Where They Live A plucky young Canadian editor is mounting what might be considered the ultimate Quixotic challenge of the book world: building, opening, and running a major new independent bookstore in the heart of New York City. "She knows that the city's independent booksellers have been dying off, squeezed out by skyrocketing rents and stiff price competition from large chains, such as Barnes and Noble, which gives no quarter in the town where it began." But Sarah McNally comes from a family of experienced indie booksellers, and her family is throwing its considerable financial weight behind her new two-level, 7000-square-foot store in downtown Manhattan. The store opens this week with a staff of two dozen, and will stock 40,000 titles. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/01/04
Posted: 12/01/2004 6:26 am
Requiem For A Bookstore Boston's independent WordsWorth bookstore closed this fall, offering yet one more reminder of how much is lost to a community with the failure of an institution that everyone had assumed would always be there. "Sitting among the litter, among posters of authors such as Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jack Germond and not far from a dracaena that looked dried out and defeated, [the store's owners] pondered what they'd lost to bankruptcy -- the bookstore at 30 Brattle Street that had led to their meeting and, eventually, their marriage, their two children, and all the exhilaration derived from nearly three decades of doing what they loved, which is living among, or... just touching books." Boston Globe 12/01/04
Posted: 12/01/2004 6:05 am
Best Of Nothing Who looks at those best-of-the-year book lists? "Every year, literary editors feel that there is nothing their readers want more than a group of superannuated literary types telling them what they have enjoyed during the previous 12 months. There is no evidence that anyone reads these self-satisfied musings, but the papers persist anyway, competing desperately for the glitziest names." The Guardian (UK) 12/01/04
Posted: 11/30/2004 9:56 pm
Issue: Does A Critic Own Review Copies He's Been Sent? When Greg Gatenby was director of Toronto's Harbourfront Centre's literary programming, he collected review copies of books. Thousands of them. Now he's planning to sell about 28,000 volumes worth an estimated $2-million, amassed in part during his time as director of Harbourfront. The issue (and the controversy): "When publishers send out free review copies of a book for promotional purposes, are they sending them to the individual or to the institution the individual works for? Gatenby maintained that the publishing industry sends them to the person and that the books then become that person's property. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/27/04
Posted: 11/30/2004 11:09 am
Click here for more Publishing stories...
Major Film Protest Planned For Toronto "An estimated 100 trucks and trailers are expected to circle Queen's Park in Toronto today as more than 5,000 workers in the Ontario film industry descend on the provincial legislature to demand increased tax credits to help revive the industry's flagging fortunes... The demonstration -- involving a united front of studios, unions, equipment suppliers and service companies called the Keep Ontario Cameras Rolling Coalition -- is the latest step to pressure the Ontario government to raise the tax credit for domestic film and TV shoots to 33 per cent from 20 per cent and, most crucially, the credit for non-Canadian producers using Ontario labour, to 16 per cent from 11." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/01/04
Posted: 12/01/2004 6:33 am
Greek Lawyers Withdraw Threat To Sue Over Alexander Greek lawyers who had threatened to sue to keep the movie "Alexander" from being shown in Greece (because it depicted Alexander as gay) have withdrawn the threat. "The lawyers have withrawn their demand to have the film's opening on Friday delayed, so they can watch a preview screening of it." BBC 11/30/04
Posted: 11/30/2004 7:21 pm
When Is A French Film Not French? A movie made by French and shot in France has been declared not French by a Paris court. "The film, which lands in theatres in North America on Friday, was shot in France using French actors and a French crew. However, the administrative court ruled that the film does not qualify as Gallic because the production company behind A Very Long Engagement, 2003 Productions, is backed by the Hollywood studio Warner Bros." CBC 11/27/04
Posted: 11/30/2004 6:07 pm
Tivo: Commercially Yours So Tivo is finding ways to hit us with commercials, even as we fast-forward past them in programming. "TiVo officials contend that the new features will not be any more intrusive than the "thumbs-up" icons that already appear during some commercials and shows. But to some customers, the impending advertising changes smack of betrayal from the innovators whose hard drive-based gizmo lets TV viewers record programs, fast-forward through ads and pause at will." Wired 11/27/04
Posted: 11/30/2004 6:03 pm
Click here for more Media stories...
Dance Theatre Of Harlem Reopens School Dance Theatre of Harlem is reopening its school, a few months after the company shut down to reorganize. The reopening is made possible by $1.6 million raised in the past month. A third of that amount is attributed to New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. "This remarkable institution has represented the best of New York. With its shutting down, "you could immediately sense the void." The New York Times 12/01/04
Posted: 11/30/2004 9:26 pm
Boal Takes On PNB Peter Boal is taking on a big challenge as new director of Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet. PNB has big financial challenges and the leadership team he replaces are long time institutions with the company. Seattle Weekly 11/30/04
Posted: 11/30/2004 9:02 pm
Click here for more Dance stories...
