“Under the agreement…, the city will give SFMOMA the existing fire station on Howard Street. In exchange, the museum will build the city a state-of-the-art fire station on Folsom Street, a deal that essentially translates to a $10 million gift from museum leadership to San Francisco, the mayor’s office said.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Gardner Museum Had A Strong Financial Finish To 2009
“The renowned art museum in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood said its investment portfolio closed out the year valued at $161.6 million — some 53 percent higher than at the end of June, the close of its last fiscal year.”
The Powerful Link Between Touch And Behavior
“Momentary touches, [researchers] say … can communicate an even wider range of emotion than gestures or expressions, and sometimes do so more quickly and accurately than words.” Evidence suggests that those touches “can lead to clear, almost immediate changes in how people think and behave.”
How A London Ballet Company Flourished In Birmingham
“At a time when [Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet] was floundering in London…, Birmingham City Council made an offer the company couldn’t refuse.” Now “the 58 dancers enjoy the kind of fabulous facilities their predecessors could only dream about at their old home in London,” and their work is “a magnet for dance in Britain’s second city.”
In Three Nations, The Downturn’s Effect On Arts Funding
In this economy, “the list of US cultural casualties is large and growing,” while Irish arts have seen major cuts, and France’s “cultural powerhouses boomed” even as “lesser-known institutions, often outside Paris, had their funding slashed.”
Metropolitan Opera Hikes Its Ticket Prices
“The cost of an average individual ticket will rise by 11 percent, while subscriber tickets will go up an average of 6 percent. The Met said it had not made ‘across the board’ increases in four years,” and general manager Peter Gelb “said that while administrative cost cuts remained in effect, ‘We are not skimping on our presentations’ for the coming season.”
Placido Domingo To Have Surgery After Abdominal Pain
“He is hoping to miss no more than six weeks of performances, returning for a late-March run in the title role of ‘Simon Boccanegra’ at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, said the spokeswoman, Nancy Seltzer. … Mr. Domingo, 69, suffered ‘intense pain and discomfort’ while singing and conducting in Tokyo [last week], Ms. Seltzer said. “
Christopher Wheeldon Quits Morphoses
“In an interview Sunday evening Mr. Wheeldon said there was not enough of a cadre of full-time dancers to work with. … The company’s executive director, Lourdes Lopez, a former principal dancer at New York City Ballet who danced for George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, said on Monday that Mr. Wheeldon did not give enough time to his company.”
LA Times Names Book Prize Finalists; Eggers Gets Honor
Tracy Kidder, T.R. Reid and Kate Walbert are among the finalists. Graphic novels will compete in a category of their own for the first time this year, while “the LA Times will present its first Innovators Award to author and publisher Dave Eggers for his multifaceted, spirited commitment to literature.”
European Chain Refuses To Show Disney’s 3-D Alice
“The move is in response to the Disney studio’s plan to reduce the period in which it can be shown only in cinemas from the standard 17 weeks. The plan would allow Disney to release the film on DVD at the end of May,” which the Odeon chain said “would ‘set a new benchmark, leading to a 12-week window becoming rapidly standard’.”