Robert Hurwitz has run Nonesuch for 30 years. “At other record company parties, you’re expected to do cocaine with the Rolling Stones or something. At this company party, you listen to the record company president play Satie beautifully on his living room piano.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Why Is It So Difficult For Theatre To Make Good Plays About The Art World?
As an art critic in the theater reviewer’s seat, I found myself wondering why the art market continues to hold dramatic appeal, and why so few people get it right. Of course biographical plays have always appealed, whether done straight, like the play “Red,” about Rothko, or more dreamily, like the Seurat-refracting “Sunday in the Park With George.” Yet the big-money domains of the auction houses and the largest galleries remain stubbornly beyond most writers’ faculties.
Why DC’s National Symphony Had To Go To Play In Moscow
“On one level, these performances can be seen as an act of homage. The Russians are certainly noting the symbolic implications of an American orchestra coming to honor a Russian, playing literally under a banner emblazoned with Rostropovich’s portrait above the Conservatory stage… On another level, the NSO’s performances can be seen as a viable alternative to political diplomacy, showing people from different societies brought together by a common love.”
Hong Kong Artists Struggle With Expressing Their City’s Angst, Apprehension
“Local artists are struggling to find meaning in the city’s upheavals, art professionals said in interviews. And while some of their recent works are more overtly political than others, many are infused with a sense of helplessness toward what is widely seen here as the city’s increasing subjugation to Beijing’s authoritarianism.”
In Praise Of… Indexers?
“It would be a cliche to say that indexers are the unsung heroes of the publishing world. But unsung they generally are: no indexer usually expects or receives credit by name in books where everyone from the font designer to the snapper of the author photograph tends to get a solemn shout-out. And heroes they are, too: the index is, in any nonfiction book, more useful than almost anything else in the apparatus. It is a map of the text; a cunningly devised series of magical shortcuts that can in the good case save a scholar many hours of work, and in the bad one save a bookshop-browsing cabinet minister from having to buy a former colleague’s memoirs.”
Harry Potter Festival Canceled After Massive World-Wide Interest Overwhelms Organizers
“The festival has been cancelled amid concerns that it had got out of hand. Mr Hamilton, one of the co-ordinator’s of the Bearsden Festival, said people had been planning to travel from all over Europe and some had compared it to T in the Park, a music festival that attracts 80,000 a day. He said it was a small, local event that had been held for five years.”
LA Philharmonic Names Interim President
“Gail Samuel, a native Angeleno, has worked at the Minnesota Orchestra, Yale University, the Tanglewood music festival and the Young Musicians Foundation. She has been with the L.A. Phil for 25 years in various capacities, starting as orchestra manager and assuming her current role, in which she runs Hollywood Bowl operations and programming, in March 2015.”
Getty Gets Massive Trove Of Frank Gehry Archives
“The content of the contribution, which was part purchase and part gift, is massive: about 1,000 sketches, more than 120,000 working drawings, more than 100,000 slides, 168 working models, 112 presentation models and hundreds of boxes of office records, personal papers and correspondence.”
Museums Have Dramatically Increased The Number Of Shows They’re Presenting
“The average number of shows increased by 7.4% between 2007 and 2015 (from an average of 8.8 shows per year to 9.5), according to an analysis of 2,360 exhibitions at 29 US museums conducted by The Art Newspaper. Institutions are also keeping shows running for longer periods of time. We found that the average number of exhibition days increased by almost 25% during this period.”
Why Do Your Friends Insist On Forcing Their Favorite TV Shows On You?
“Watching TV is fun, talking about TV is fun — it’s all great fun. But I’ve begun to dread these four words: Wait, you haven’t seen —-? Fill in the blank with the current or classic prestige show of your choice: Mad Men, The Wire, Stranger Things, whatever. The second someone says this, the TV banter takes on an irritatingly insistent tone, with everyone present who has watched the show piling on the person who admits that they have not, until this poor soul agrees that, yes, okay, they’ll finally start watching Westworld. This weekend. Promise. It’s supposed to rain, anyway.”