The Joy Of Painting Painting became the unloved orphan child of the art world in the 20th century, derided by critics as passe and insufficiently adaptable in an age when everything in art had to be new and exciting. But these days, painting is hot again, to the extent that it seems absurd for anyone ever to have suggested its impending demise. The Telegraph (UK) 01/08/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 9:02 am
Breitweiser Gets Two Years Art thief Stephane Breitweiser was sentenced to 26 months in prison this weekend, one day after attempting suicide in his jail cell. Breitweiser will have to pay significant damages for works ruined by his ax-wielding mother, who was also sentenced to prison. The Guardian (UK) 01/08/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 8:55 am
Frankly Suburban "If Fallingwater in Pennsylvania is Frank Lloyd Wright's greatest work, then a house he designed in this Cleveland suburb is one of his most livable. Owner Paul Penfield has opened up the Louis Penfield House to guests after spending four years restoring it to the architect's original vision. It is one of three Wright houses in the United States — and the only one outside of Wisconsin — that allows visitors to spend the night." Toronto Star 01/08/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 7:26 am
Grand Opening Set For Baltimore Museum Baltimore's much anticipated new museum of African American art and culture finally has an official opening date, after months of delays and setbacks. The Reginald F. Lewis Museum will open to the public on June 25 as the second-largest museum of its kind in the U.S.. The state of Maryland will pick up the tab for 75% of all operating costs for the museum's first year of operation. Baltimore Sun 01/08/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 6:30 am
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Rachmaninov Ruckus "A legal battle will begin this week to determine who owns an autographed manuscript of Sergei Rachmaninov's best-loved symphony. The work was found last year after being lost for almost a century. Relatives of the Russian composer will argue that they are entitled to the manuscript of the Second Symphony in E Minor, Op.27, which is worth up to £500,000 and was to have been auctioned by Sotheby's last month. Sotheby's, however, is expected to say that it was entitled to sell the manuscript on behalf of a private European collector." The Telegraph (UK) 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 8:13 am
Is St. Louis A Canary In The Coal Mine? The work stoppage at the St. Louis Symphony may be indicative of a larger systemic problem that no one in the industry wants to face: orchestras are very, very expensive, and the majority of cities may simply no longer be able to afford them as they now exist. "Intense and often divisive contract negotiations consumed three of the nation's top orchestras last fall: Chicago, Cleveland and Philadelphia... [and] close to 90% of the country's orchestras ran a budget deficit last year." Los Angeles Times 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 7:50 am
Tsunami Benefit Goes On Despite Work Stoppage This week, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra will perform a benefit concert to aid the victims of the Asian tsunami. The event is notable because the SLSO is still technically on strike. (Or locked out, depending on whom you ask.) However, anyone hoping that the concert could lead to a reconciliation between musicians and management will probably be disappointed: the benefit, which was organized entirely by the musicians, won't be held at the orchestra's home at Powell Symphony Hall, and the official SLSO web site contains no information on the benefit. St. Louis Post-Dispatch 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 7:32 am
Babes In The (Chinese) Wood Touring China with a symphony orchestra is a tricky undertaking, but doing so with a youth orchestra has to be considered a Herculean task. But last month, Toronto's Royal Conservatory Orchestra spent 18 days touring the world's most populous nation, playing in conditions that would make professional orchestras blanch, adapting to culture shock after culture shock, and generally having the time of their lives. William Littler went along for the ride... Toronto Star 01/08/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 7:17 am
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And It's All For Your Convenience Between the endless maze of automated phone menus and the do-it-yourself ticketing websites, you wouldn't think that Ticketmaster and its fellow national ticket brokers would even need to employ human beings anymore. So why, exactly, does every ticket still come with a hefty "service fee" slapped on top of the admission price? "Tack-on fees are wrapped up in the larger world of live-entertainment deal-making, which gets particularly shady when it comes to concerts. The service charges are determined not just by Ticketmaster but also the promoter, venue and act, all of which can share in the revenues -- and increasingly want to." Chicago Tribune 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 8:43 am
Atlanta Arts Exec Salaries Raising Eyebrows Atlanta's two largest arts organizations, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the High Museum of Art, have been slashing budgets and negotiating wage freezes in recent years, desperately working to balance their books. But the fiscal austerity apparently doesn't extend to the executives in charge of the troubled arts groups: High Museum director Michael Shapiro's salary has jumped $155,000 since 2000, and ASO President Allison Vulgamore's pay has ballooned from $275,000 to $440,000 in the same period. Atlanta Journal-Constitution 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 8:16 am
- The Growing Budget Gap Atlanta's arts scene is rapidly losing its middle class. Some organizations seem to be flush with cash, mounting hundred million dollar expansions and bolstering already-sizable endowment funds, while the city's have-nots see their budgets shrink and donations dwindle. Atlanta Journal-Constitution 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 8:10 am
Promoting The Arts Takes A Backseat To Controversy "San Diego's cultural tourism program – an aggressive effort to promote the arts community and its creativity as a tourist destination – isn't quite what it used to be. About a year ago, the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau shut down its cultural tourism office, and its manager, Rick Prickett, moved to Hawaii... A city audit of ConVis' finances took issue with bonuses, car allowances and how ConVis spent money on entertaining clients... Amid the controversy, the bureau's budget was slashed by more than 20 percent and it was stripped of responsibility for marketing the San Diego Convention Center." San Diego Union Tribune 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 7:46 am
Name-Brand Tragedy When celebrities donate their abundant cash to charitable causes like tsunami relief, it's usually assumed that they are calling attention to their own regular-guy generosity as much as genuinely trying to help out. But does the motivation even matter? "Is this charity-plus, a kind of righteous one-upmanship with public relations benefits? Or is it smart fund-raising, recognition that in a society saturated with pop culture even tragedy sells better with a name brand attached." The New York Times 01/08/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 7:03 am
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Writing For Hollywood: A Lesson In Art & Politics John Logan is Hollywood's hottest scriptwriter of the moment, "a true author who creates from scratch in an era of sequels and adaptations... As with much in Hollywood, however, the honors mask a more complicated reality, [with Logan standing] on the shoulders of others who contributed material and either received no credit or have had to fight for recognition in a dog-eat-dog scramble for a place on the film. And his rise to the top - in which Mr. Logan was caught up in a spat over his contributions to The Last Samurai - appears to illustrate a cardinal rule of contemporary film writing: success depends on the fine art of positioning, as well as a way with words." The New York Times 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 9:07 am
Jarvi In The Garden State As Neeme Jarvi prepares to leave the Detroit Symphony after 15 years, he has already taken up his next challenge as music director of the embattled New Jersey Symphony. Most observers would consider the NJSO a significant step down from Detroit's higher-profile orchestra, but for Jarvi, Newark offers a chance to wind down his career with an enthusiastic group of musicians who don't mind taking a few chances in the programming department, and to do so without all the inherent pressure of a world-famous ensemble. Oh, and he gets to live in Manhattan, and see his grandchildren nearly every day. Detroit Free Press 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 8:04 am
Social Reporting, With Word Balloons Comic artist Will Eisner, who died last week, was more than a pioneer of an underappreciated art form. He was, in his own words a "social reporter", a politically engaged artist who made a point of digging out a side of modern reality that would otherwise have been hidden from much of the world. Furthermore, Eisner was notable for the longevity of his creative impulse - the work he created in his 80s was as dynamic and rebellious as the graphic novels that first made him famous. Chicago Tribune 01/08/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 6:35 am
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Broadway Of The Midwest Five years ago, it seemed that the out-of-town pre-Broadway trial run was dead, the victim of high production costs and increasingly devastating critical reaction. But these days, nearly every big-budget Broadway show is getting a trial run outside the Big Apple, with Chicago having replaced the various Northeastern cities that used to host tryouts. "With a metro area of about 9 million, it has the requisite population base. It has a sophisticated theater audience with a track record of interest in new work. It has an ample supply of technical crew and stagehands who, due to union concessions, come considerably cheaper than their counterparts in New York." Chicago Sun-Times 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 8:48 am
Or You Could Just Rent The Movie For $4 How popular is Chicago's pre-Broadway run of the Monty Python-inspired musical Spamalot? Tickets are going for as much as $450 on ticket-swap web sites, and the best way to get a decent seat may actually be to get a pricey hotel room for the night, and then leave your ticket order in the hands of a professional concierge. "In its first seven-performance week, the show did $778,599 in business, selling virtually every seat." Chicago Tribune 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 7:57 am
Nobody Cares If They Can Act, Right? "It's been a rough couple of years for Broadway musical revivals, with a series of high-profile financial failures, including Gypsy, Man of La Mancha and Wonderful Town. What each of those shows had in common were stars like Bernadette Peters, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Donna Murphy, all of whom had respected theatrical résumés but lacked lasting box office punch. Theater fans might have cared, but the general public, it seemed, did not." So the producers of two of this year's most anticipated revivals are going outside the traditional theatre world for stars, hiring jazz singer Harry Connick and sitcom actress Christina Applegate in an effort to boost ticket sales. The New York Times 01/08/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 7:12 am
Even With A Turkey That You Know Will Fold... Whose fault is it when a theatrical production bombs? Actors tend to blame directors, who have ultimate control over what goes on onstage. Directors fault bad casting, uneven acting, and lack of money for flops. And when all else fails, everyone can always get together and blame the writer. Minneapolis Star Tribune 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 6:55 am
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Live Nude College Students Boston has always been a cutting-edge college town, and the student-run publications put out by the Hub's universities have long been the envy of the world. So what's the latest trend in student publishing? Well, in a word, porn. Washington Post 01/08/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 7:28 am
NaNoWriFreaks The 35,000 people who participated in the 2004 edition of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, as it's popularly known) are a unique bunch. Call 'em obsessive, call 'em overly ambitious, call 'em hopeless dreamers, they don't mind. Just don't ask them to leave their keyboards - for anything - when November rolls around. Minneapolis Star Tribune 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 6:47 am
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Springer Opera Scores In The Ratings, Sort Of BBC2 broadcast a live performance of Jerry Springer: The Opera this weekend, and the results were predictable. There were protests, disapproving critical reaction, and at the end of the day, 1.7 million viewers had tuned in to watch the spectacle, nearly double the normal audience for opera on the BBC. Nonetheless, Springer was trounced in the ratings by a popular comedian and a tabloid-style action drama, so the natural order of things seems not to have been disturbed by the choruses of "Jerry ! Jerry!" BBC 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 8:34 am
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Rockwell On Dance Longtime New York Times arts writer John Rockwell is preparing to take on a new position as the Grey Lady's chief dance critic, and he sees much to recommend a corner of the arts world which seems always to be on the edge of fiscal collapse. "Dancers are paid less than other performing artists. Dance companies, even the big ballet troupes, must furiously run in place, like terpsichorean hamsters, just to sustain themselves. But that means dancers do it for love, not fame or fortune, though some are famous, and a very few earn modest fortunes. Dance critics can still cover any and all forms of dance without feeling that they're sullying themselves." The New York Times 01/09/05
Posted: 01/09/2005 9:11 am
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