How’s the Milwaukee Art Museum doing since opening its new Calatrava building last year? “Our annual expenses since the Calatrava addition opened have gone up by about $3 million – and so has income, by a like amount. Membership is up from 13,000 members before the expansion to 30,000 now; admissions are running at 360,000 visitors a year, or double levels before the expansion; annual donations and a successful museum store account for the rest.”
Month: August 2003
A Lament For The American Musical
What’s happened to the Broadway musical? Has it lost its ability to capture the imagination? Today’s most succsessul shows are derivitive or revivals. “Even today’s very few legitimate musical theater stars seem exhausted or ambivalent.”
Ballet Sobers Up At The Bar
“Dancegoers who associate ballet with enchanted lakes and moonlit glades may be surprised to find choreographers fascinated by bars. Yet, over the years, several successful works have concerned bars, saloons, nightclubs or cafes.”
American Culture – Winning Hearts And Minds?
America is going on a culture offensive in the “War on Terrorism.” Singer Toni Braxton is “in a new kind of army, standing at attention with Celine Dion, Eric Clapton, Ace of Base and the rapper Coolio, making up a Trojan-horse brigade drafted to seduce young Arab adults into admiring the United States. Their staging ground is Radio Sawa, a Washington-based Arabic-language radio network heard in most Middle Eastern countries. This is the funky side of America’s war on terror.”
Black Like Me
For a long time Hollywood has this idea about what constituted a “black film.” But that idea has begun to change as African-Americans take on new roles both in front of and behind the cameras.
Chicago Dance Companioes Fear For Theatre
Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre is a big grand old historic theatre that has been the center of the universe for dance companies visiting the city. But recent management changes have many in the dance community fretting about what might happen to their piece of the performing world…
The Creativity Factor
A new study by Ann Markusen and David King argues that the arts are a core piece of a local economy. “Good schools, parks, recreation and housing are important, but also lively streets and ample opportunities for entertainment and artistic enrichment. It’s not surprising, then, that cities with high concentrations of artists – San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis-St. Paul – tend to be better economic performers than cities with lower concentrations – Dallas, Cleveland, Pittsburgh. Markusen is right to suggest that nurturing clusters of artists is a sound investment for governments, foundations and other donors.”
Get Diverse Or Lose Your Funding
Arts organizations have often struggled to draw diverse audiences, and it can be even more difficult to achieve true diversity within the ranks of performers and managers. Ordinarily, this is one of those problems that everyone talks about from time to time without really doing anything to solve it. But in San Diego, where the city takes the diversity of an arts organization into account when divvying up available funds, the lack of ethnic and racial diversity on area arts boards is becoming a big financial problem, particularly for the city’s celebrated Old Globe Theatre.
Union Rejects Pay Cuts
The union representing performers at America’s opera and ballet companies says it is ready to help managements address ongoing budget problems within their organizations, but says that pay cuts should not be on the table. According to union officials, too many companies think that their fiscal woes can be solved simply by slashing payroll, and do not have an adequate long-range plan for financial success.
Edinburgh Fringe Opens
“The 57th Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the world’s biggest arts event, is under way. Thousands lined the route as the traditional opening cavalcade snaked past the castle walls in an eruption of colour. The city’s streets filled with festival goers, performers, celebrities, tourists and the media as the spectacular procession got into full swing. This year’s three-week programme offers more than 1,500 shows across the spectrum of the performing arts.”