“Donors, Dan Monroe says, have been receptive to the idea that it’s far more important to have an impact on people’s lives than it is to put their name on a building.”
Month: January 2013
Streaming Music Services Grow But Musicians’ Cut Shrinks
“As the companies behind these digital services swell into multibillion-dollar enterprises, the relative trickle of money that has made its way to artists is causing anxiety at every level of the business.”
Oddity: People Cough More During Classical Music Concerts
“What may be more surprising to the disgruntled concert-goer whose outings have been plagued by the coughs of others is that certain types of music appear to attract more coughs.”
A Tale Of Two Arts Cities (And Countries)
Seattle and Vancouver – their arts scenes say much about approaches to building culture…
Can Benjamin Millepied Fit In At The Paris Opera Ballet?
“Millepied may be French, born in Bordeaux, but at 16 he left to study at the School of American Ballet and spent most of his dancing career with New York City Ballet – a company whose style and repertory are predicated on the stripped-down, very American modernism of George Balanchine.”
Retreating Rebels Burn Priceless Timbuktu Archives
“Islamist insurgents retreating from Timbuktu set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless historic manuscripts, according to the Saharan town’s mayor.”
Olivier’s Unproduced Macbeth Screenplay Found
“Laurence Olivier’s screenplays for a 1950s film version of Macbeth that was never made have been found at the British Library. … Prior to this, the manuscripts were thought to have been lost because Olivier recalled all of the distributed copies after the film was shelved during the final stages of production in 1958.”
Steven Soderbergh On His Impending Retirement (He Won’t Be Playing Mah-Jongg)
“It’s a combination of wanting a change personally and of feeling like I’ve hit a wall in my development that I don’t know how to break through. … Just to be clear, I won’t be directing ‘cinema,’ for lack of a better word. But I still plan to direct – theater stuff, and I’d do a TV series if something great were to come along.”
Barnes & Noble Plans To Close One-Third Of Its Stores Over Ten Years
“Barnes & Noble plans to close about 20 retail stores a year over the next ten years – meaning it would have 450 to 500 stores in the next decade, down from 689 stores today.”
Could This Be A New Business Model For US Art Museums?
For most American museums, annual contributions are the biggest source of revenue – and that source tends to dry up when the economy turns sour. At the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., director Dan L. Monroe seems well on the way to making endowment income the biggest revenue source, ahead of both annual contributions and earned income.