Some Literary Product Placement That Backfired A pharmaceutical group thought it would hype its products by commissioning a novel. "The plan was to commission a fictional thriller to hype the dangers of buying prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies. But now the authors have rewritten their novel to make a drug company the villain, and PhRMA wishes it had never heard of the idea." Slate 11/30/05
Posted: 11/30/2005 6:31 pm
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Corcoran Taps A Scholar The Washington, D.C.-based Corcoran Gallery of Art has selected British art historian Paul Greenhaulgh as its next president. "The appointment is part of a wrenching overhaul at the 136-year-old Corcoran after five years of bold plans and occasional turmoil." Greenhaulgh currently runs an art school in Nova Scotia, experience which should serve him well at the Corcoran, where he will also be in charge of the gallery's College of Art & Design. "He succeeds David C. Levy, the Corcoran's director for 14 years. Levy resigned suddenly in May as the board of trustees suspended efforts to build a wing designed by acclaimed architect Frank Gehry. Fundraising for the project had stalled, and the Corcoran had accumulated deficits in 17 of the past 21 years." Washington Post 12/01/05
Posted: 12/01/2005 6:55 am
By Chicago, For Chicago Chicago is a fabulous museum town, but some residents believe that the city's world-renowned museums frequently ignore the art that's right under their nose. Enter the Chicago Art Foundation, founded a year ago with the mission of building a new museum to showcase Chicago-based art. Such endeavors take huge amounts of time and money, of course, but the foundation has made impressive progress in a relatively short period of time. Chicago Sun-Times 12/01/05
Posted: 12/01/2005 6:32 am
Controversial Library Auction Yields An Underwhelming Result "Defying high anticipation, one of two portraits of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart that have been in the New York Public Library's collection for more than a century failed to sell at Sotheby's yesterday in an auction that had generated advance controversy." The other portrait sold for considerably less than the auction house had expected. "The works are among 16 paintings, watercolors and sculptures that the New York Public Library put on the block yesterday to raise money for its endowment. The decision, announced in April, drew protests from many art lovers and museum curators who said they felt that the library was jettisoning treasures central to the civic history of New York." The New York Times 12/01/05
Posted: 12/01/2005 6:08 am
Whitney Biennial Goes Dark "The 2006 Biennial will have a title for the first time, 'Day for night', which the curators believe sums up a dark mood in contemporary culture. They say that many of the works that will be included in the show reflect a sense of foreboding, dread or anxiety which emerged as a recognisable theme from the hundreds of artist studios they visited." The Art Newspaper 11/30/05
Posted: 11/30/2005 6:26 pm
Troubled Times For Tate? "These are troubled times for the Tate. Behind the scenes, the critically-acclaimed series of 13 paintings, said to be Ofili's take on the Last Supper, is at the centre of a row that has engulfed some of the biggest names in Britain's artistic establishment. At the heart of the affair is the fact that, when The Upper Room was purchased from him for £705,000 earlier this year, Ofili was himself a Tate trustee. This, critics say, represents a major conflict of interest. The matter is so serious that, last week, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said it will investigate." The Independent (UK) 11/30/05
Posted: 11/30/2005 6:21 pm
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Good News/Bad News at Milwaukee Sym The Milwaukee Symphony is still in the red to the tune of $2.61 million for the 2004-05 season, but taken in a larger context, the deficit may actually be good news for the ensemble. The shortfall is actually less than the MSO's board and management budgeted for the year, and easily met the goal for the first year of the organization's three-year recapitalization plan. Under that plan, the budget would be back in the black by the end of the 2006-07 season. The MSO has been hurting financially for quite some time, and a new executive director made severe cuts in the organization this past season to get the budget under control. The orchestra's musicians also accepted a temporary pay cut. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 12/01/05
Posted: 12/01/2005 5:53 am
Chicago Music School May Drop Music The Choir Academy of Chicago, a charter school serving underprivileged minority youth and operating in a model based on the Boys Choir of Harlem Academy, is "perilously close to dissolving its music-based curriculum, if not the whole institution." The school, which opened in 2001, has had financial problems from the beginning, and relations with the Chicago Childrens' Choir, which oversees the school, have been strained in recent years. The board collapsed in 2004, and as the school desperately tries to stay open, those in charge now appear willing to scrap the music that has always been at the core of its educational approach. Chicago Tribune 12/01/05
Posted: 12/01/2005 5:30 am
Rediscovered Beethoven Manuscript Sells for Nearly $2m "A unique manuscript by Ludwig van Beethoven that was lost for more than a century was sold at auction on Thursday for £1.13 million ($1.95 million) to an anonymous buyer. The final price was at the low end of the pre-sale estimates of up to £1.5 million... Discovered in July at the bottom of a dusty filing cabinet at a religious school in Philadelphia, the manuscript sold Thursday is a work in progress for the Grosse Fuge in B flat major -- one of Beethoven's most revolutionary works... Sotheby's said it was the most important Beethoven manuscript to have come to market in living memory and would prompt a complete reassessment of the German composer's works." CNN 12/01/05
Posted: 12/01/2005 5:26 am
Dead Wrong? Faced with virulent opposition from its fans, the Grateful Dead is reconsidering its decision to disallow free downloading of its concerts... The New York Times 12/01/05
Posted: 12/01/2005 5:05 am
- Previously: Who Knew Deadheads Could Move That Fast? Bootleg recordings are a mainstay of the jam band genre, with bands regularly encouraging fans to tape their concerts and trade the resulting recordings amongst themselves. But now, the very band that led the jam band explosion, is angering its fans by cracking down on a website that offered such bootlegs for free download. The Grateful Dead, which exists these days primarily as a business in charge of marketing old product, wants the bootlegs to be available only for online listening, rather than downloading. Already, the international Deadhead community has roared into action, circulating a petition protesting the action and threatening a boycott. The New York Times 11/30/05
Haven't Made It Big As A Pianist? (Invest In Yourself) "At the make it now or never age of 33, Simone Dinnerstein is among the numerous talented classical concert artists who are learning the realities of creating a career without the cachet of being a child prodigy or major competition winner. That means raising funds herself for recordings and concerts. Having begun a successful series of concerts playing J.S. Bach's 80-minute keyboard Everest, the Goldberg Variations, in Philadelphia in December 2002, she financed her own recording of the piece in February to circulate among the music industry (it has been featured on XM satellite radio)." She followed that up with a recital at Carnegie Hall..." Philadelphia Inquirer 11/30/05
Posted: 11/30/2005 6:01 pm
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Arts Buildings To Save Downtown? How About Killing It? "Large scale arts buildings have recently been opened in Madison, Dayton, Denver and Omaha; new ones are in the pipeline in Miami, Dallas, Orange County and Nashville. Given the economics, it seems likely that these buildings will have a major adverse impact on wider ecology of the arts in these communities as they preempt and siphon off existing audiences and philanthropic resources rather than generating new ones. This is hardly the regenerative function that the planners will have had in mind." The Platform 11/05
Posted: 11/30/2005 7:01 pm
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Pinter Pulls Out Of Nobel Ceremony Playwright Harold Pinter has pulled out of giving a speech at his Nobel ceremony. "The Nobel Foundation said a lecture pre-recorded by Pinter will be shown on a big screen at their Stockholm academy on 7 December. The British playwright, 75, has been treated for cancer in recent years." BBC 11/30/05
Posted: 11/30/2005 6:17 pm
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Boston To Lose Theatrical Landmark? Boston's venerable Wilbur Theater may go dark next year after Clear Channel Entertainment declined to extend its lease beyond summer 2006. The venue was booked for only 15 weeks over the past year, and Clear Channel has had great difficulty selling tickets to events there. Boston Globe 12/01/05
Posted: 12/01/2005 6:28 am
Now If Only The People Could Afford Theatre Tickets... "Moscow is experiencing a boom in theater construction, a testament both to the importance Russian leaders place on the nation's capital as a cultural showcase and to the money from oil and other commodities flowing through the city's coffers... The theater construction boom is part of a general real estate boom in Moscow fueled by the success of Russia's raw materials and commodities market, which has allowed the city to lavish money on things like the Moscow International Performance Arts Center, a performing arts complex intended to be the city's answer to Lincoln Center, and all the theaters sprouting up around town. There are more than a half-dozen other major construction or reconstruction projects slated for next year." The New York Times 12/01/05
Posted: 12/01/2005 6:10 am
Giles Worsley: A Golden Age Of Children's Theatre "We are entering a golden age of children's theatre. The impulse that has piled bookshops with brilliant novels for children, and packed cinemas with well-made, enticing movies, has swept across Britain's stages, filling them with more varied and attractive shows for young people than I can ever remember seeing there before." The Telegraph (UK) 11/30/05
Posted: 11/30/2005 6:54 pm
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Enough With The Literary Navel-Gazing Already! Jon Carroll has had it with the trend of writers writing about writers and writing and expecting the rest of the world to give a damn. "Writing is not an inherently interesting profession. It's very boring to watch. Writers do not dress well, and they frequently mumble. Periodically, a writer goes into rehab or opens an antique store; it's not exactly cinematic. It's not like freeing the virtuous farmers from the yoke of oppression by wearing a mask and engaging in swordplay. It's the life of the mind. It's paint drying." But then, people in nearly every profession seem to be obsessed with their own importance these days... San Francisco Chronicle 12/01/05
Posted: 12/01/2005 6:52 am
Narnia Author Opposed Movie Of His Books It turns out that "CS Lewis, the author of the Narnia stories, with which Disney hopes to establish a blockbuster movie franchise to rival Harry Potter, was 'absolutely opposed' to the idea of a live action version of the stories, it has emerged. The author made clear his distaste for the idea in a hitherto unpublished letter to a BBC producer..." The Guardian (UK) 11/30/05
Posted: 11/30/2005 6:50 pm
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Like Sundance, Only Colder "The Whistler Film Festival, which launches its fifth-anniversary edition today in Whistler, B.C., is one step closer to becoming the Sundance of Canada with an aggressive new industry component that will sled in a slew of hot-shot sales agents and distributors from New York and Hollywood. And coming next year, China." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/01/05
Posted: 12/01/2005 6:40 am
Launch Of NPR Podcasts A Big Winner "It took only six days after launch for NPR's 'Story of the Day' podcast to reach the coveted No. 1 spot on iTunes for most downloaded podcast. On Nov. 21, NPR's podcasts held down 11 spots on the iTunes Top 100, more than any other media outlet. But NPR has done much more than simply repurpose its own material for podcasts. The radio giant is hosting podcasts for member stations, and selling and splitting underwriting revenues with them." Online Journalism Review 11/30/05
Posted: 11/30/2005 6:13 pm
Salon magazine Turns Ten "Although it still teeters on the edge of financial viability, the progressive online publication is very much alive, while other boom-era magazines, like the Industry Standard, Upside and Red Herring, are dead or reinvented as leaner versions of their former selves." San Jose Mercury-News 11/30/05
Posted: 11/30/2005 6:08 pm
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