Save This House "In a last-ditch effort, a consortium of preservation groups has assembled a plan to save the Ennis House, a striking 1924 building by Frank Lloyd Wright in the Los Feliz Hills above Los Angeles. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, together with the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy and the Los Angeles Conservancy, has created a foundation to raise the millions of dollars needed to rehabilitate the house, which suffered critical damage in a 1994 earthquake and again in heavy rains last winter." The New York Times 08/04/05
Posted: 08/04/2005 6:00 am
San Francisco's New Museum Row San Francisco is getting three new museums on the doorstep of the SF Museum of Modern Art. "It has been a long road for the Contemporary Jewish and Mexican museums and the Museum of the African Diaspora, struggling to raise funds in the post-Sept. 11 world as well as deal with design and construction challenges that have delayed opening in the Yerba Buena area." San Francisco Examiner 08/03/05
Posted: 08/03/2005 7:58 pm
Thieves Steal Fake Munch Paintings Thieves broke in to a hotel that has 12 Edvard Munches in its collection. "Two unarmed men burst into Oslo's Hotel Continental, threatened staff and removed three pictures from the walls. But the hotel had swapped the originals with duplicates after two real Munch works were stolen from the Munch Museum in the city almost a year ago." BBC 08/03/05
Posted: 08/03/2005 7:53 pm
Fighting Over Michelangelo's Mountain? An Italian quarry wants to lop 300 feet off the top of a mountain. But it's been said Michelangelo quarried marble from the place and so a dispute has ensued. The historical record, including Michelangelo's own abundant correspondence, shows clearly that he never took any marble from Monte Altissimo. He did open two quarries farther down the Serra gorge and nearly lost his life extracting enormous columns and blocks. But he never got to use any of them; the project for which they were intended, an overambitious façade for Florence's San Lorenzo Church, was aborted and his hard-won marble scattered and purloined. OpinionJournal.com 08/03/05
Posted: 08/03/2005 7:42 pm
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Doesn't That Bank Already Have A Ballpark, Anyway? Boston Mayor Tom Menino is trying to block the city's historic opera house from slapping a new corporate name on its facade. Citizens Bank paid $4 million to buy the naming rights to the recently reopened venue, but the mayor and several other elected officials have objected, saying that the theatre should continue to be known simply as the Opera House. Furthermore, Clear Channel, which bought and renovated the venue with considerable assistance from Menino, says that it "owes" the mayor, and may be amenable to squelching the naming deal. Boston Globe 08/04/05
Posted: 08/04/2005 6:23 am
Dodging Trouble In Pittsburgh The Pittsburgh Symphony is in a tricky situation. It's running deficits again, ticket sales aren't up to snuff, and the orchestra is in the unenviable position of trying to remain in the top world ranks following the departure of renowned music director Mariss Jansons. Oh, and the musicians, who took a big pay cut a few years back, are due an unheard-of 25% raise this fall, the result of a contract which pegs their salaries to orchestras in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Cleveland. Still, subscriptions are up, and previous deficits have been wiped out by last-minute contributions, so no one's panicking yet. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 08/04/05
Posted: 08/04/2005 5:41 am
Is US&O's Financial Ship Starting To Turn? The Utah Symphony & Opera's embattled CEO, Anne Ewers, insists that the troubled organization is well on its way to recovery, despite huge deficits and an in-house revolt this past season that saw the orchestra's musicians mount a public campaign to expose what they saw as mismanagement. Ewers's offered to reduce her own salary by $25,000 to help the US&O cut expenses, and overall, the organization spent $250,000 less in the 2004-05 season than it had the year before. Other measures designed to stabilize the group include an end to the regular practice of engaging substitute musicians to fill out the orchestral ranks, and a mandatory $10,000 gift for each of the US&O's 40 board members. Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) 08/04/05
Posted: 08/04/2005 5:30 am
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New Mellon Chief Could Have Big Impact on Humanities "University of Chicago President Don Michael Randel's decision, announced last week, to leave next July to become president of the New York-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has import for more than scholars in Hyde Park. Randel will be heading the leading funder of the humanities among U.S. philanthropies. The humanities always have scratched for foundation support but usually could count on a handful of old reliables. According to a 2004 report by the Foundation Center and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, five foundations accounted for a quarter of the $335 million in grants to the humanities in 2002, the most current year for such data. Mellon was the leading provider that year, with $25.9 million in grants (representing about 12 percent of its total giving), as it was for much of the prior decade." Chicago Tribune 08/04/05
Posted: 08/04/2005 6:32 am
South Bank's New Maestra Does Jude Kelly know what she's got herself in for, running South Bank's artistic offerings? "So anxious were the Board to get her initials on a contract that they have allowed her to carry on directing shows elsewhere, a license that will eat into her time at the desk. Still, look on the bright side: making plays will give her interactive access to the artists she needs to enliven the South Bank, and it will signal that the centre at last has a creative director who can do something more than sign off budgets and dine for England. It will be no small plus if she also feels a sneaking need to outshine Nick Hytner's rampantly autonomous National across the Waterloo Bridge, giving the South Bank a novel will to win." La Scena Musicale 08/03/05
Posted: 08/03/2005 7:34 pm
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The Continuing Saga Of Gilbert And George The artistic duo known as Gilbert and George can occasionally seem less like artists than like impish schoolchildren, even thirty years into their impressive career. "For more than three decades Gilbert and George have made a profession out of being naughty. Their art has dealt with politics of all types: economic, social, sexual. Combining photography with performance, they have embraced pornography, pandemic diseases like AIDS, vaudeville and scatology." Their act seems to be wearing well: their recent exhibition at the Venice Biennale was a huge hit, and many of the works from that show have already been snapped up by major museums. The New York Times 08/04/05
Posted: 08/04/2005 6:02 am
Cellist Donald White, 80 The first black musician to play in the Cleveland Orchestra has died. Donald White, who was hired by music director George Szell in 1957, played 39 seasons in Cleveland, and participated in a groundbreaking tour of the American Deep South in the 1960s, during which the orchestra threatened to cancel concerts if White was barred from segregated venues. He died this past weekend, aged 80. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 08/04/05
Posted: 08/04/2005 5:18 am
Chicago Tribune Moves Critics The Chicago Tribune is reassigning some of its critics. "Movie critic Michael Wilmington is scaling back his reviewing duties, at least for now. Theater critic Michael Phillips will shift to reviewing films, and is being eyed as a possible permanent movie critic. Meanwhile, long-time television critic Steve Johnson will switch to writing about the Internet, according to sources at the paper." Chicago Sun-Times 08/03/05
Posted: 08/03/2005 7:50 pm
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London Theatre Bucks Bombs, Posts Gains London's West End doesn't seem to have suffered much in the wake of the 7/7 bombings. Attendance at West End shows is ahead of last year's pace, and an immediate 6% drop in ticket sales in the days after the attacks was short-lived. BBC 08/04/05
Posted: 08/04/2005 6:17 am
Outlook: More Theatre That Engages "Five years ago, if you had looked at the programme for the Edinburgh Festival, you would have been overwhelmed by the amount of "up-your-bum experimentalism". Now, though there is still an unconscionable amount of that sort of thing, plus a lot of other general silliness, there are also more plays than I can ever remember that engage with the big issues of the day." The Telegraph (UK) 08/03/05
Posted: 08/03/2005 9:04 pm
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Niche Publishing Gone Wild It seems that no niche is too small to have its own magazine these days. Among titles launched in recent years: "Face Painting International", "Russian Bride of New York", and "Modern Ferret". Of course, launching a mag is comparatively simple. Keeping it afloat for more than a few issues is another matter entirely... Minneapolis Star Tribune 08/04/05
Posted: 08/04/2005 6:41 am
Chrysalis Sheds Staff The publisher Chrysalis is shrinking. "Chrysalis is to cut a quarter of the staff from its unprofitable books division in an attempt to improve its balance sheet. The media company revealed yesterday that 46 of the 160 jobs in its books arm would go as part of a restructuring exercise. Chrysalis employs a total of 700 staff." The Guardian (UK) 08/03/05
Posted: 08/03/2005 8:12 pm
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Homolka Film Canceled In Montreal The Montreal World Film Festival has canceled plans to screen the premiere of a new Hollywood film based on the horrific killings perpetrated by Canadian serial killers Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo after half a dozen sponsors threatened to pull their funding. Lawyers representing the families of some of Homolka and Bernardo's victims had previously tried to stop the screening by invoking Canada's child pornography laws, but in the end, it was good old-fashioned capitalism that forced the festival to bow to pressure brought by the people writing the checks. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 08/04/05
Posted: 08/04/2005 6:35 am
A New News Network For Scotland? The Scottish executive has endorsed a controversial BBC plan to form a new news network to cover Scotland. "BBC Scotland's head of news and current affairs, set out proposals for local news services which involve splitting Scotland into six regions covered by a network of 36 video journalists, who will shoot and edit their own reports." The Scotsman 08/03/05
Posted: 08/03/2005 9:38 pm
Will Actors Unions Stay In AFL-CIO? The the entertainment industry-friendly Teamsters union pulling out of the AFL-CIO, will small unions like the Screen Actors Guild follow? Backstage 08/03/05
Posted: 08/03/2005 9:30 pm
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PBT Called Arrogant, Dishonest The editors of one of Pittsburgh's two daily newspapers are underwhelmed by the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre's decision to replace its live orchestra with recorded music, and accuse the organization of shoddy business practices and arrogance. "Subscription sales started in February. But when the board decided in June to roll tape, it did not tell the public until August. And there still is no official refund policy for victims of the bait and switch. This, after customer outrage last year terminated the Premiere Circle Seating program. The board had choreographed an extra licensing fee for subscribers of $150 to $250 for the privilege of keeping their choice seats." Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 08/04/05
Posted: 08/04/2005 5:38 am
Why Cuban Ballet Jumps So High Cuban ballet is at an extraordinarily high level. "The question is how such a small, impoverished country can produce such a huge quota of talent. Acosta claims it's all due to the national temperament - the music on every street corner, the heat, the vibrancy, the instinct for rhythm. Cubans dance as soon as they can walk. But the primacy of ballet also has everything to do with the vision of Cuba's prima ballerina, Alicia Alonso, and its president, Fidel Castro." The Guardian (UK) 08/03/05
Posted: 08/03/2005 8:54 pm
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