Cleveland Museum Director Steps Down Katharine Reid is stepping down as director of the Cleveland Museum of Art after five years in the job. Reid's surprise announcement comes "a month before trustees are to vote on going ahead with a major expansion and renovation. She said she was stepping down for personal reasons and in the best interests of the museum. She wants to give the institution a chance to find fresh leadership if it begins a construction project that could last five years or more." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 02/02/05
Posted: 02/03/2005 6:03 am
What Contemporary Art In New York Looks Like A team of curators has been tramping all over New York for the past twn months looking for art that represents the city. "From more than 2,400 submissions, museum directors and curators will choose the work of 175 artists who they say best capture the city's contemporary art scene for "Greater New York 2005," a giant survey show opening on March 13 at P.S. 1. For curators, the studio forays are an exercise in discovery - a chance to break away from the routine of organizing exhibitions by proven names. For the artists, they are a nail-biting exercise, not unlike a callback audition for an Off Broadway production." The New York Times 02/03/05
Posted: 02/02/2005 8:58 pm
Europe's Big Museums Hurt As Governments Pinch Pennies "Europe's flagship museums -- the Uffizi, the Musee du Louvre in Paris, and the British Museum in London -- are feeling the pinch. Thrifty governments facing European Union deficit limits are capping cultural handouts and compelling museums to make money on the side by seeking sponsors, hiring out halls and selling snacks and knickknacks. As a result, even as museums draw record crowds -- the Louvre hosted 6 million visitors last year, half the turnout at EuroDisney, Europe's largest theme park -- they increasingly rely on sponsors." Bloomberg.com 02/02/05
Posted: 02/02/2005 4:22 pm
Seattle Gallery Owners Upset Over "Conceptual" Art Thefts Art stolen from Seattle galleries that was presumably going to be part of a conceptual show has gallery owners unhappy. "There's real money involved and real reputations. We reconfigured our space to make sure the front room is always visible to staff and spent a lot of time worrying if we needed a better security system. We felt like saps who couldn't keep an eye on the art." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 02/01/05
Posted: 02/02/2005 3:03 pm
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A New Direction For BBC Orchestra? Jiri Belohlavek on what he wants to accomplish as new director of the BBC Symphony Orchestra: "I came to the evaluation that I can offer a focus on the mainstream repertoire, the mastery of playing, sound quality and ensemble playing, qualities that I have focused on over a career of more than 25 years. And I will have a colleague who is focused on contemporary music. But we will not be putting up artificial borders, so that he does only Steve Reich and I do only Beethoven." The Guardian 02/03/05
Posted: 02/03/2005 5:48 am
A Theatre Plan To Help Scottish Opera "Glasgow City Council meets next week to consider a financial package to pass control of the Theatre Royal to the Ambassador Theatre Group, one of the UK’s largest stage entertainment companies. The complex deal is designed to rid Scottish Opera, which currently owns the building, of the heavy burden of maintaining it. But it also promises to bring high-profile touring works to Glasgow." The Scotsman 02/03/05
Posted: 02/02/2005 9:17 pm
New Music... Or Whatever It's Called Frank Oteri edits a web magazine on contemporary music. But what to call that music? "For better or worse, everything has a name. Everything, that is, except the music we feature in this web magazine. Sure, we give it names like "contemporary classical" or "post-classical" or "new music" but usually we preface the name by clearing our throats or doing some other sort of mea culpa. For years, we've bemoaned our music's lack of a name in articles, conversations, editorials, you name it (pun intended). And many of the big names in our field have weighed in: Milton Babbitt with "cultivated music," David Lang with "other music," and on and on. I even posited Ivor Darreg's one-time "neoteric music" a few months back. (Hey, I can dream, can't I?)" NewMusicBox 02/05
Posted: 02/02/2005 4:54 pm
A Cure For Waning Opera? Look To The Royal Ballet Opera fortunes have gone stagnant lately. But over at the Royal Ballet the company is flying high - "packed houses, rave reviews, and high internal morale are fuelling a run of triumphs that has put the company right back at the top of the international ratings." So maybe there are some lessons for opera? The Telegraph (UK) 02/02/05
Posted: 02/02/2005 4:02 pm
Lebrecht: Why Is There Still A BBC Orchestra? The BBC Symphony Orchestra has a new music director (and a good choice it is, too). But, asks Norman Lebrecht, did anyone think to ask whether there there is still a need for a radio orchestra? "Broadcast orchestras belong, it could be argued, in the Natural History Museum alongside the dinosaur and the whittled stick. They came into being in the early 1920s as the cheapest means of filling airtime in an era when the best orchestras operated a broadcast ban and symphonic records were full of scratches and had to be changed every three minutes. But what, you many wonder, is the point of maintaining two orchestras in London and one in Manchester at a time when the BBC is making 15 percent cuts in all other areas as it battles for charter renewal?"
La Scena Musicale 02/02/05
Posted: 02/02/2005 3:52 pm
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Rich: The New American Censors Welcome to the Culture Wars, Part 36. Writes Frank Rich: "Public television is now so fearful of crossing its government patrons that it is flirting with self-immolation. Having disowned lesbians in the children's show "Postcards From Buster" and stripped suspect language from "Prime Suspect" on "Masterpiece Theater," PBS is editing its Feb. 23 broadcast of "Dirty War," the HBO-BBC film about a terrorist attack, to remove a glimpse of female nudity in a scene depicting nuclear detoxification. Next thing you know they'll be snipping lascivious flesh out of a documentary about Auschwitz." The New York Times 02/06/05
Posted: 02/03/2005 3:48 pm
Cost Of War (Can't Tell It From American Culture) "What's startling about American culture in wartime today is how much it resembles American culture in peacetime. If earlier wars soaked deep into the fabric of the nation, Iraq has become a sporadically demanding background, popping into the nation's consciousness at times of extreme carnage, and then politely making way for other stories, from natural disaster to the foibles of teenage celebrities." Newsday 01/28/05
Posted: 02/03/2005 6:00 am
Philly Mayor Working On Major Arts Funding Plan Philadelphia mayor John Street says "arts and culture groups in the region need a new revenue stream that he estimates would be between $50 million and $100 million each year, and he is working quietly on a mechanism for putting that funding in place." Philadelphia Inquirer 02/03/05
Posted: 02/03/2005 5:51 am
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Kurtz Fights Bioterrorism Charges University at Buffalo professor Steven Kurtz is in court trying to get charges against him dismissed. "The attorney for an artist accused of illegally obtaining bacteria for his artwork is asking a judge to throw the case out, saying authorities have sought to portray his client as a bioterrorist." Newsday (AP) 02/02/05
Posted: 02/03/2005 3:02 pm
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UK Facing Theatre Funding Crisis (Some Theatres Will Have To Close) National funding for theatre in the UK is going down in the next couple of years. But funding from local governments will also decline too, warns the chair of the National Association of Local Government Arts Officers. “This is devastating for the arts. There will certainly be closures [of companies]. This is a slow, downward spiral at a period when there is so much that is positive." The Stage (UK) 02/03/05
Posted: 02/03/2005 5:55 am
West End: TV Guide At The Theatre "Films have become bankable entities in the West End, sure-fire brands ripe for conversion into hot-ticket shows. It's hard not to confuse today's theatre listings with a Christmas TV guide: here are Mary Poppins, The Producers, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Saturday Night Fever, Grand Hotel and The Lion King. Even "difficult" movies are getting the treatment." The Guardian (UK) 02/03/05
Posted: 02/02/2005 8:30 pm
Seattle's Empty Space Theatre Rises From The Ashes Seattle's Empty Space Theatre will resume operations after raising enough money to continue. "Crippled by debt and non-existent financial reserves, the board decided in October that unless $350,000 could be raised by Jan. 31, the Space would go out of business. As of yesterday, $403,865 had been raised." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 02/02/05
Posted: 02/02/2005 3:08 pm
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Remote Autograph? We Don't Want It! Margaret Atwood is working on a device that would allow her to sign autographs remotely and cut down on traveling. But autograph collectors reject the idea. "We quite understand the idea behind Margaret Atwood's invention because, as she says in interviews, she is an old-age pensioner [who doesn't want to face the rigours of book tours], but the intriguing thing we found is that it's not so much the signature that fans care about, it's meeting the author in person, that's the real thrill," The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/03/05
Posted: 02/03/2005 6:25 am
Report: Textbook Price Increases Outpace Inflation A new study says textbook publishers have hiked the prices of their books at a rate much higher than inflation. "Textbook prices have increased at four times the average rate of inflation in their category, finished goods, over the past 10 years, according to figures from the Producer Price Index maintained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The wholesale price of textbooks increased 62 percent over that decade while the average price for all finished goods increased by just 14 percent. Prices for general books increased 19 percent in the same period." San Jose Mercury-News 02/03/05
Posted: 02/03/2005 6:16 am
Is Evolution Disappearing From US Classrooms? "Though the teaching of evolution makes the news when officials propose, as they did in Georgia, that evolution disclaimers be affixed to science textbooks, or that creationism be taught along with evolution in biology classes, in districts around the country, even when evolution is in the curriculum it may not be in the classroom, according to researchers who follow the issue." The New York Times 02/02/05
Posted: 02/02/2005 5:06 pm
Buy The Book, Hunt The Treasure Michael Stadther's new book includes a treasure hunt. Readers are given clues to a dozen tokens hidden throughout America. "The tokens can be redeemed for $1 million in jewels. So far, none has been found, but there's plenty of time. The hunt won't officially end until Dec. 31, 2007." Yahoo! (USA Today) 02/02/05
Posted: 02/02/2005 3:14 pm
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Farewell To Arms - Weinraub's Hollywood Farewell Causes Furor "Rarely has one article caused such a commotion on both coasts as journalist Bernie Weinraub’s goodbye to the Hollywood beat in The New York Times on Sunday. It was as if narrator Nick Carraway were given space in The Paper of Record to write honestly about the swell set, only this time he surprises us by revealing that he longed for the green light of status and money as much as Jay Gatsby did." LAWeekly 02/03/05
Posted: 02/03/2005 7:45 pm
Satellite Radio Transcends Radio "It may blow your mind to think that over four million people are now paying $10 or $13 a month just to listen to the radio. Truth is, though, that what they're getting isn't very much like radio at all. They're getting 65 music channels, free of commercials and endless teenybopper-top-10 repetition, and 40 to 50 talk channels. Because they don't have to appeal to a mainstream audience to attract advertisers, the expert-fanatic channel hosts can "narrowcast" tightly targeted musical styles (like pop, acoustic, hip-hop, country, movie soundtracks, classical) and nichey talk topics (like comedy, sports, advice, old-time radio dramas, audio books, religion and children)." The New York Times 02/03/05
Posted: 02/03/2005 3:16 pm
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From PBS To PBT Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre has tapped the former COO of the city's public television station to serve as its interim managing director. Robert Petrilli is credited with helping station WQED out of a serious fiscal hole, a relevant bit of experience, since PBT is running a $1 million deficit and recently asked its pit musicians to take a 50% pay cut. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 02/02/05
Posted: 02/02/2005 6:44 am
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