“Now it has emerged that one of the two experts who refused to authenticate the score later tried to persuade the owner of the piece to part with it for just €900 (£757), less than one per cent of the value put on it by the auction house.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Occupy Museums Is Doing A Project About Artist Debt For Its Whitney Biennial Project
“In the U.S., we’re citizens of our debt,” the collective, which grew out of the Occupy Wall Street movement, told me. “Almost everyone has some kind of debt. If artists don’t organize around it, [the debt] is going to gobble us up.”
Tyler Cowen: Maybe Government Arts Policy Under Trump Might Get Better?
“Whatever problems you might have with the idea of a Trump administration, it opens up the prospect of a real improvement in American arts policy.”
The Ghostwriter’s Dark Arts
“She went from sort of daffy and inattentive to intimately involved with her client’s world. Her head cocked, her timbre lowered, and she understood everything. A client could have sat down and told her they were going to murder their parents and she would have said, “Well, they have been very mean to you.” With her, the clients felt heard. They’d open up their lives, reveal deeply buried trauma. She was a truly fantastic interviewer.”
Conventional Wisdom Is That Orchestra Subscriptions Are Dead. But Are They?
“One positive story the classical music field has to tell is a multi-tiered membership approach developed by The Cleveland Orchestra. Instead of building a one-size fits all membership program, the Cleveland Orchestra team identified distinct audience segments that fell through the cracks of their existing loyalty programs. Then, they went about crafting a targeted membership initiative for each of those groups: college students, young professionals, and “gap audiences” that hadn’t responded to traditional subscription offerings.”
A Lot Of Knowledge Has Been Hiding In Plain Sight. Intelligent Search Engines Are Changing That
“With the ubiquity of the internet and the rise of machine learning, a new kind of solution is beginning to take shape. The infrastructure of the web, built to link one resource to the next, was the beginning. The next wave of information systems promises to more deeply establish links between people, ideas, and artifacts that have, so far, remained out of reach—by drawing connections between information and objects that have come unmoored from context and history.”
Misleading Headlines About Orchestras
The headline in this morning’s ArtsJournal touted the “bombshell” report by the Toronto Symphony that it had avoided what looked like a likely $4-6 million deficit to instead post an $831,000 surplus AND reduce its long term accumulated debt of almost $12 million by about $5 million. Great news, right?
But read down into the Musical Toronto story and the news is more sobering. In fact, it looks like the “surplus” barely masks yet another shaky financial year for the orchestra, which has been carrying accumulated deficits for decades. How long? The orchestra has carried debt continuously since… 1979.
To put this year’s results in the black, the orchestra drew a hefty $4.9 million on its ~$33 million endowment. And then this curious notation:
The rest of the $5M reduction in accumulated debt comes from the historical musical instrument collection, which the orchestra valued at $4.2M and is unlikely to depreciate, due to its historical classification.
Since presumably the orchestra wouldn’t sell its valuable instruments(?) how did the instruments help reduce the accumulated deficit?
While the overall financial picture doesn’t seem really to have improved, the orchestra does seem to have adroitly avoided what was looming as a financial crisis after former CEO Jeff Melanson left last year. And the TSO did report that individual contributions to the orchestra were up impressively by more than 20% over the previous year, and the number of donors was up 15%.
The TSO’s books showed fundraising hitting an all-time high at 37.7%. Tickets contributed 27.5%, Government grants at 17.3%, Foundation contributions at 15.5% and an additional 4.9% from other sources such as parking and concession sales.
Still – there are an awful lot of unfilled seats in Roy Thomson Hall these days. For whatever his faults as an administrator, Melanson had a big vision for the orchestra. With the TSO looking for a new CEO and a new music director, some compelling idea about what the orchestra should be will be a high priority.
- Douglas McLennan
NPR Critics Pick Their Favorite Music Of 2016
Okay – so we don’t quite know how Solange beats out Beyonce’s Lemonade for best album of the year. But the bigger question is how this eclectic hodgepodge of styles and genres gets sorted out into a big list that features Barbara Hannigan, Miranda Lambert, Rihanna, Chopin mazurkas, Kaytranada and Christopher Rouse. Just what is the aesthetic through-line here?
All About The Flash: Why Museum Buildings Are Upscaling
“The old world of museums as quiet, cavernous halls displaying collections of objects for those willing to make the trek is having to adapt. While perhaps branding was once sniffed at in cultural institutions as the dark arts of commercial witchery, today it is a key part of the show. In an age of flashy soundbites and stories told dramatically, most commonly on a digital platform, museums recognise the need to stretch well beyond their physical boundaries.”
Musicals Performed Live On TV – They’re A Ratings Hit, And This Year It’s “Hairspray”
“After years of making use of elaborate renderings on one New York soundstage, NBC is taking a cue from Fox’s recent production of “Grease: Live!” and, for the first time, is staging the production in Los Angeles including a live studio audience and will mount some of the production outside.”