Corcoran Hikes Admission, Moves To 5-Day Schedule Washington, D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery of Art is raising admission prices 18% and closing on Mondays in an effort to deal with an ongoing deficit problem. (The museum is also closed Tuesdays.) "The changes come weeks after an upheaval at the museum, which has been struggling with deficits for years. Fundraising problems caused the gallery to cancel an ambitious project to build a new wing, designed by the internationally known architect Frank Gehry. The project excited city leaders and museum officials, but not the necessary donors... The museum's director, David Levy, resigned as part of the shakeup. And the board announced that it was developing a series of strategic plans for the 136-year-old institution." Washington Post 06/29/05
Posted: 06/29/2005 7:01 am
Ground Zero, Take Two The newly redesigned Freedom Tower that New York officials are hoping to build on the ruins of the World Trade Center was unveiled this morning with a number of architectural changes and a major security upgrade. "While the original plan called for a parallelogram base, eight isosceles triangles now rise out of a cubic base to a perfect octagon in the new reinforced middle of the tower, which supports a glass parapet. The tower will be capped with a mast incorporating an antenna, meant to suggest the torch of the Statue of Liberty." The building's actual location on the lot has also been changed as part of a plan to make it more resistant to truck bombs. New York Daily News (AP) 06/29/05
Posted: 06/29/2005 6:43 am
The Chelsea Transformation The New York art world's migration to Chelsea continues unabated, and the formerly unfashionable neighborhood now sports twice as many galleries as SoHo had at the height of its own art boom in the 1990s. With the trendy galleries, of course, come upscale restaurants and hip nightclubs, which is exactly the fast-moving gentrification process that causes New York artists to seek out a new (and affordable) neighborhood every decade or so. But for now, Chelsea is unquestionably the place to be in the Big Apple. Dallas Morning News 06/29/05
Posted: 06/29/2005 6:21 am
Danish Really Modern (A New Opera House) Tobi Tobias comes back from Copenhagen's Bournonville Festival with vivid impressions of the city's new Opera House. "The Opera is masterly in its command of space and light and typically Danish in its harmonious juxtaposition of materials: glass (miles of it, it would seem), stone (in subdued shades of grey and sand that give it an eerie lightness), steely metal, and lovingly treated wood. The interior of the building continually echoes the curved shape of the façade. At the hub of the public space is a gigantic bowed form clad in glowing maple veneer. Fantasy suggests it’s the work of a violin maker operating on a Brobdingnagian scale." Seeing Things (AJBlogs) 06/28/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 11:27 pm
Art Of Corporate "Large companies have been buying art as never before, and for a very particular purpose: to make the workplace — from the smallest and most intimate of meeting rooms to the most grandiose of lobbies — a more stimulating environment in which to work. This week an exhibition opens in London that will show off some of the art acquired in recent years by some of the top corporations in the UK..." The Times (UK) 06/29/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 10:45 pm
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Tickets So Expensive, You'll Need A Mortgage Tickets to see the world's great orchestras on tour in South Korea are becoming ridiculously expensive. A ticket to the Berlin Philharmonic's concert in Seoul, for instance, will run you between $87 and $450, which the promoter insists is necessary to recoup the fees paid to engage the orchestra. But the public complaints are getting louder... Chosun Ilbo (South Korea) 06/29/05
Posted: 06/29/2005 5:13 am
Proms On Trafalgar Big Screen For the first time, the First Night at the Proms will be telecast live in Trafalgar Square. "A big screen will be erected, beaming live footage from the concert at the Royal Albert Hall." BBC 06/28/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 8:54 pm
Met Plans Mozart On A Diet The Metropolitan Opera is planning a reduced 90-minute version of Mozart's "Magic Flute". "The short version (the full version runs more than three hours with intermission) is a test of what could become a new way of attracting audiences, said Joseph Volpe, the opera house's general manager. The performances, to take place in the winter holidays of the 2006-7 season, will be aimed at both children and adults." The New York Times 06/28/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 8:40 am
- Met Opera Signs Deals With Musicians, Singers... The Metropolitan Opera has new contracts with the unions that represent musicians, singers and dancers. "Both are five-year contracts that freeze wages for two years, then provide for a 4 percent increase in the third year and 2 percent increases in the fourth and fifth years." Backstage (AP) 06/28/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 8:29 am
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Sirota Leaving Peabody For MSM "Composer Robert Sirota, who has directed the Peabody Conservatory for 10 years, has been named president of Manhattan School of Music, succeeding Marta Casals Istomin... Sirota, who has written solo and chamber music works, studied at the Juilliard School, the Oberlin Conservatory and Harvard, where he received his Ph.D. in composition. He has been a member of the composition faculty at the Peabody Institute since 1995, when he became director." Newsday (NY) 06/29/05
Posted: 06/29/2005 5:34 am
Novelist Historian Shelby Foote, 88 "The Mississippi native and longtime Memphis resident wrote a stirring, three-volume, 3,000-page history of the Civil War, as well as six novels." Yahoo! (AP) 06/28/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 9:18 pm
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South Florida's Ambitious New Troupe Miami has a new children's theatre company, and it's no small-time operation. "The PlayGround Theatre for Young Audiences has been up and running only since April, but it has already made a deal for its own permanent playground. The ambitious young company has taken over the lease on the long-struggling Shores Performing Arts Theater, a spacious former movie house," thanks to a major grant from a foundation with family ties to the company's founders. In addition to presenting serious children's theatre, the company intends to offer theatre classes and summer camp experiences to kids throughout South Florida. Miami Herald 06/29/05
Posted: 06/29/2005 6:32 am
Columbia Starts Producer Fellowship Columbia University has announced a new fellowship program for theatre students. "Producer Harold Prince said the new program, which will invite one or two students a year to follow a specific study and producing plan, was created for fledgling producers who 'want to nurture new work, encourage new artists, and take chances' but 'recognize that the current climate on Broadway makes that almost impossible.' The Fellowship "will emphasize that the creative producer's role is to be the instigator, the collaborator, and the leader who gets art on the stage and to the public." Playbill 06/27/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 9:24 pm
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Carey: UK Shuts Out Foreign Lit The chairman of the International Man Booker Prize jury John Carey says that "foreign literature was "neglected" in the UK, and to an outsider the British publishing industry could "seem like a conspiracy intent on depriving ... readers of the majority of the good books written in languages other than their own". The Guardian (UK) 06/28/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 10:38 pm
Big Thefts At France's National Library; Curator Questioned About 30,000 books (including about 2000 classified as rare) are missing from France's Biblioteque national, and the library's chief curator is being questioned. "The curator, who has denied the allegations, is the subject of one of half a dozen police inquiries into suspected thefts at the institution, which was founded in the 16th century and, as France's principal copyright and legal deposit library, holds some 35m books, documents, manuscripts, maps, plans and photos." The Guardian (UK) 06/28/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 8:08 am
Charge: France's Literary Prizes Rigged The integrity of France's major literary awards were called into question this week by a government anti-corruption probe. "There is an evident risk of a conflict of interest. Moreover, the conditions in which the jury members are recruited or co-opted, often for life, are not exactly transparent, which makes them suspect as a matter of principle. France's major literary awards such as the Prix Femina, the Prix Médicis and - most prestigious of all - the Prix Goncourt have long been accused of rigging their votes, taking it in turns to reward big publishers." The Guardian (UK) 06/28/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 8:05 am
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The Great 2005 Film Slide: It's The Economics, Stupid! Lots of film aficionados would like to make the argument that movie ticket sales are down because of a decline in quality, but that's a tough sell, since Americans have embraced cinematic mediocrity (and worse) for years. A more likely explanation has to do with the steadily rising cost of tickets, a trend which stands in stark contrast to the dropping price of DVD rentals and on-demand movies. A family of four wanting to see this summer's big blockbusters can expect to drop at least $34 ($23,971 if the family lives in New York,) and that's before popcorn and soda pop. Baltimore Sun 06/29/05
Posted: 06/29/2005 6:00 am
Court Ruling Will Only Delay The Inevitable Turning away from the immediate legal implications for a moment, the Supreme Court's ruling holding Grokster liable for the actions of its customers may hurt the very industry that is celebrating victory. "By helping maintain the status quo, the ruling could further delay the death of the old way of doing things and postpone the birth of new strategies that successfully build on unstoppable peer-to-peer technologies... It's time for the entertainment industry to accept the inevitable and stop trying to use the courts to put a leash on unpredictable new technologies. In the end, the business model in the entertainment industry is going to change, and these companies can either find a way to insert themselves into the new order, or risk finding themselves frozen out forever." Wired 06/29/05
Posted: 06/29/2005 5:47 am
- Is Anyone Safe? Coverage of the Grokster ruling has focused almost exclusively on peer-to-peer file sharing networks. But other corners of the online media world could be in trouble, too, notably Apple's new podcasting hub... Wired 06/29/05
Posted: 06/29/2005 5:46 am
Hollywood - Direct To Classroom In Australia, "big film distributors are paying a professional teachers organisation to create study guides based on the latest blockbusters, bypassing the NSW Department of Education or the Board of Studies. The study packs - about films such as Kingdom of Heaven, Robots and Ice Age - are emailed directly to tens of thousands of teachers, who are also offered free entry to special screenings." Sydney Morning Herald 06/29/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 10:59 pm
Did Big Media Really Win In Filesharing Case? "Recent history is littered with examples of the entertainment industry panicking about technologies that ended up proving harmless - and which might not exist today had they been subject to a ruling like this one. "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone," Jack Valenti, then head of the Motion Picture Association of America, said in 1982. Those arguments don't apply here, the court said." The Guardian (UK) 06/29/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 10:25 pm
TV Reality? Working On These Shows Sucks "While the reality genre has matured, creating shows that commonly compete in the ratings with scripted entertainment, conditions for those who work on the shows have worsened, not improved, those workers say. Although the most popular reality shows compete with scripted entertainment, the genre remains a seat-of-the-pants culture, with some shows taking only weeks, rather than months, to be bought, produced and appear on the air. This has made for intense competition among reality-show producers." The New York Times 06/29/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 10:05 pm
Filesharing - Friend Or Foe? (Maybe Both?) So Big Media has decided that filesharing networks are a threat to their existance and the courts hav backed them up. "Six years after Napster arrived, it should be clear that geeks and fans are simply going to bypass a legal framework that was built for sales of sheet music and discs. As they did with radio and television, copyright holders should make those volunteers their allies in marketing because, try as they may, they're never going to find the Off switch." The New York Times 06/29/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 9:58 pm
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PBT Orchestra "Stunned" By Contract Proposal Negotiations between the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre and its orchestra have broken down in the wake of the company's latest proposal, which includes a 25% pay cut and would give PBT the right to substitute recorded music for the live orchestra on a case-by-case basis. "The orchestra took a 12 percent pay cut in 2002 and an additional 5 percent pay cut in October 2003 to help offset red ink for the financially troubled ballet." No new talks are scheduled between the two sides. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 06/29/05
Posted: 06/29/2005 5:29 am
SF Ballet Finds A New Stickman The San Francisco Ballet has tapped frequent guest conductor Martin West to be its new music director, replacing Andrew Mogrelia, who stepped down after only two years in the post. West "is the former principal conductor of the English National Ballet and has served as music director of the Cambridge Philharmonic Society. He has also conducted the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Halle Orchestra, the London Concert Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra." San Francisco Chronicle 06/26/05
Posted: 06/29/2005 5:20 am
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