Native Art Fight Comes To A Head "Thursday morning in New York, Sotheby's auction halls will be the stage for a historic struggle, the final chapter in one of the more fascinating and tortuous negotiations between a private collector and his courting museums. The Dundas Collection of Northwest Coast American Indian Art is up for grabs," and Canadian museums want to see the works come home. But the collection's owner has been playing coy with the Canadians and others for the better part of two decades, and no one really knows where the Dundas is likely to end up by week's end.
The Globe & Mail (Canada) 10/04/06 Posted: 10/04/2006 6:29 am
Prominent Chicago Architect Steps Out On His Own Adrian Smith, designer of some of the tallest skyscrapers in the world, is leaving the prestigious Chicago architecture firm Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill to start his own company. SOM apparently offered him an extension of his contract, but Smith declined.
Chicago Sun-Times 10/04/06 Posted: 10/04/2006 6:21 am
Boston's ICA Almost Done, But Not On Time Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art isn't putting a firm date on it yet, but it's clear that the museum's new building on the city's harborfront won't be ready to open in late October or early November, as hoped. "Events scheduled for October in the ICA were either moved, canceled, or postponed... Museum officials say they don't want to announce an opening date without being sure they can be ready on time. There are signs, though, that the building is moving closer to completion."
Boston Globe 10/04/06 Posted: 10/04/2006 5:54 am
Stealing Mexico Blind Mexican churches have suffered a wave of art robberies. "Looters have picked through Latin America’s archaeological sites for centuries. These church robberies are newer, arising as the taste for colonial religious art has grown in the international art market. Every country in the region has experienced thefts, but the scale is larger in Mexico because of the country’s wealth of colonial art."
The New York Times 10/03/06 Posted: 10/03/2006 9:45 pm
Hermitage Art Thefts Roil Russia Thefts from the Hermitage Museum have rocked the Russian art world. "The fallout from the heist includes public outrage, long-winded tirades in the media deploring the deteriorating moral fabric of the country, and a museum community in turmoil. No longer are curators trusted absolutely. At a recent emergency session of Russia’s museum union at the Hermitage, the fallout was called the Chernobyl Effect."
ARTnews 10/06 Posted: 10/03/2006 7:20 pm
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SF Opera Gets $35m, No Strings Attached "At a time when the San Francisco Opera is looking to shore up its finances, the company has received $35 million from longtime patron and supporter Jeannik Méquet Littlefield, a donation believed to be the largest to an American opera company from a single benefactor... The money comes with no restrictions on its use." San Francisco Chronicle 10/04/06
Posted: 10/04/2006 5:49 am
Toronto's Ring Suddenly In The Red Richard Bradshaw's ambitious (and critically acclaimed) production of Wagner's Ring Cycle with the Canadian Opera Company is over, and the director ought to be basking in the afterglow of his accomplishment. "Despite being tested by one crisis after another, Bradshaw enjoyed a spectacular triumph. So at this point you would think the political and cultural leaders would hoist him on their shoulders and ride down University Ave. while crowds chant his name. Well, not quite. Bradshaw's troubles are far from over." To begin with, the Canada Council has reneged on a $500,000 pledge to help defray the costs associated with the Ring... Toronto Star 10/04/06
Posted: 10/04/2006 5:13 am
Selling Less, Making More U.S. concert promoters have been in a ticket sales slump for the better part of three years now, and many are saying that sales will likely never return to the levels of five years ago. "Nevertheless, the concert industry is taking those lemons and learning to make lemonade. Despite the decline in ticket sales, Pollstar reports that last year the industry saw a 10.7 percent increase in profits over the previous year's total of $2.8 billion, for a record $3.1 billion." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 10/04/06
Posted: 10/04/2006 4:45 am
Defending ENO's Sean Doran Sean Doran has plenty of detractors who are making life difficult. But, writes John Rockwell, Doran is responsible for some excellent work. "His few, lonely supporters in London see him as the victim of byzantine, not to say operatic, machinations within the English National Opera, abetted by hostile critics still loyal to Mr. Payne." The New York Times 10/04/06
Posted: 10/03/2006 10:25 pm
How Online Is Revolutionizing The Music Biz "The popularity of social networking sites such as Rupert Murdoch's MySpace, which last night won the award for best innovation, has turbocharged the rate at which artists get their first break and has democratised the A&R process." The Guardian (UK) 10/04/06
Posted: 10/03/2006 7:17 pm
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Orange County PAC Price Tag Grows "Design changes down the home stretch, and overtime labor costs incurred during a dash to finish in time for its Sept. 15 opening, have boosted the price of the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall by $25 million to $27 million, leaders of the Orange County Performing Arts Center said Tuesday — a markup of about 13% above the $200-million price tag long attached to the project. The increase leaves the Costa Mesa [California] arts center with about $75 million left to raise to fund the now-$225 million concert hall and a partly built $10-million plaza." Los Angeles Times 10/04/06
Posted: 10/04/2006 6:35 am
California Culture Gets A Grade A new report on culture in California carries some warnings. "Many nonprofit arts organizations, insulated for years from the immediate effects of market shifts, have continued to operate under an outdated understanding of what the general public values." Artful Manager (AJBlogs) 10/03/06
Posted: 10/03/2006 6:12 pm
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Carnegie Hall's British Bundle Of Enthusiasm Clive Gillinson has had enough careers for three musicians, and the new director of Carnegie Hall shows no sign of slowing down. "Little more than two decades ago, Gillinson had no idea he would make the transition from musician to arts manager," and he says that running a classic venue like Carnegie has been a major change from running an orchestra. "When you are running an orchestra, you're hearing everything in relation to your own orchestra. Now it's a wonderful experience, and quite relaxing, when you don't have the responsibility for everything happening in that orchestra." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 10/04/06
Posted: 10/04/2006 5:04 am
The Composer As Inveterate Wiseass What frequently gets lost in discussions of great classical composers is their actual personality, and in no case is that a greater shame than that of Johannes Brahms. "Cutting irony was a prime Brahmsian mode, and he wielded his wit with special gusto when skewering friends. He was master of the quick putdown... Brahms' wounding irony, his obliqueness in all things, were part of the armor of a relentlessly private man." Slate 10/03/06
Posted: 10/04/2006 4:56 am
Ayckbourn After The Stroke Six months ago playwright Alan Ayckbourn suffered a stroke. "After a summer of recuperation, Ayckbourn, on a sofa at his Scarborough townhouse with a view of sun-glittered sea, is recognisable as the friendly, energetic presence of interviews before his illness, although his enthusiastic, actorly voice occasionally snags, like a tape played on dodgy sprockets in his long-ago days as a studio-manager for BBC radio." The Guardian (UK) 10/04/06
Posted: 10/03/2006 7:26 pm
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Wilson Fest On Tap In D.C. Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center plans to mount a "boldly comprehensive showcase" of August Wilson's plays exploring the African-American experience in the spring of 2008. "The month-long event... will present each of the 10 plays as a staged reading in the center's Terrace Theater, under the artistic leadership of Kenny Leon, the Atlanta-based director who staged the premiere of the last Wilson play that the dramatist was to see on Broadway." Washington Post 10/04/06
Posted: 10/04/2006 6:52 am
Something's Happening Here, And You Don't Know What It Is, Do You? A new Broadway collaboration teaming choreographer Twyla Tharp with the music of Bob Dylan is going through more than the usual share of pre-opening night growing pains. Several cast members have been fired over the last few weeks, and now, the show's female lead has been replaced by her understudy. "The show is in such flux, theater writers have repeatedly been asked to postpone their visits. Even cast members aren't always clear about what's going on." New York Post 10/04/06
Posted: 10/04/2006 6:38 am
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Funerary Viol In The What Now? "It seems to be just another esoteric historical tome published to appeal to an academic audience: An Incomplete History of the Art of the Funerary Violin, by Rohan Kriwaczek, a nonfiction account of a little-known genre of music that was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church and almost wiped out by the Great Funerary Purges of the 1830’s and 40’s... Except for a few niggling details. There is no such thing as a funerary violin. [And] there were no Great Funerary Purges." A literary joke? Sure looks like it, and the book's publisher apparently wasn't among those in on it. The New York Times 10/04/06
Posted: 10/04/2006 5:36 am
Giller Looks Beyond The Obvious This year's Giller Prize finalists for Canadian writers are less-known than those who usually make the list. "Pascale Quiviger's A Perfect Circle, which won the Governor General's Award for fiction in French in 2004, is perhaps the most acclaimed of five books selected for the list, announced in Toronto Tuesday." CBC 10/03/06
Posted: 10/03/2006 5:31 pm
- Giller - The Year Of Not Being Alice Munro "For an award that tends to favour well-established and high-profile writers, most of the big shots of the 2006 fall season were conspicuously absent from the long list." CBC 10/03/06
Posted: 10/03/2006 5:14 pm
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Pleas To FCC To Stop Media Consolidation Hollywood talent pleaded with FCC commissioners to slow down media conglomerate consolidation. "Producers described difficulties getting shows on television networks unless they relented to demands to change actors or storylines. They urged the FCC to require 25 percent of primetime programming come from independent producers." Yahoo! (Reuters) 10/03/06
Posted: 10/03/2006 6:43 pm
Report: "News Hour" Too White, Male, Republican "PBS' "NewsHour" tilts too heavily toward Republican white men in its sources and needs to do a better job promoting diverse points of view, a watchdog group said in a report issued on Tuesday." Yahoo! (AP) 10/03/06
Posted: 10/03/2006 6:41 pm
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Critical Issue - How To Put A Frame Around Dance? Dance is so all over the map, how do you pick your points of reference? "Critics don't have to agree that every goal is fine - that's usually what we're wondering when we're irked: 'Is it or isn't it?' - but we do need to understand the difference between the artist's project and how she's executing it. We need to know what we're criticizing." Foot in Mouth (AJBlogs) 10/03/06
Posted: 10/03/2006 5:24 pm
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