In Kansas City, Mo., “the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art unveiled in November a new suite of ‘wow’ galleries in its original building: More than 6,000 square feet of completely redesigned space for what has suddenly emerged as one of our most important museum collections of American Indian art.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
WNO’s Shorter Season Will Be More Conventional, Too
The five operas in Washington National Opera’s 2010-11 season “will be repertory staples that sell tickets…. In short: As the company trims its budget from $32 million to $26.5 million, this is not a season for risk-taking.”
What Happened To The Fresno Metropolitan Museum?
“The museum appears to be the latest cultural victim of the current economic downturn. It joins a growing list of about 20 U.S. museums of various types and sizes that have folded in the last year,” and its demise leaves a void in a city that doesn’t have a wealth of other cultural options.
It’s Official: Sitting In Front Of The TV Shortens Your Life
“Researchers found that each hour a day spent watching TV was linked with an 18% greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, an 11% greater risk of all causes of death, and a 9% increased risk of death from cancer.” The risks, which are “irrespective of a person’s exercise level,” have implications for computer use as well.
Two Architects, Now Blind, Navigate Their New Reality
Christopher Downey, a Northern California architect, “said he and Lisbon’s Carlos Mourão Pereira joke that their meeting three months ago was the ‘first-ever International Blind Architects Conference.’ But the questions that engage the men are deeply serious: What makes a building beautiful if you can’t see it, and how can you create beautiful structures if you’re blind?”
Shirley Rich, Casting Agent Extraordinaire, Dies at 87
“Ms. Rich specialized in casting nonstarring roles. She combed her voluminous files of head shots and haunted Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway to find exactly the right person for a part that might comprise just a few lines.” In the process, she gave some actors who would become stars their first big break — and also assembled John Travolta’s gang.
Why Is MOCA Putting An Art Dealer In The Director’s Chair?
The selection of Jeffrey Deitch as MOCA’s new director “is inevitably framed as daring and audacious, but the appointment of a businessman to run a nonprofit in fact feels reactionary — a profoundly conservative response to the fiscal mismanagement of the museum’s prior administration, which nearly toppled MOCA in 2008.”
Royal Opera House Signs On To Serve The Military
Covent Garden says it will “dedicate a whole day in support of Tickets For Troops, a charity that wants to mark the contribution of those who have served or are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan by organising free tickets to big sporting and cultural events.” Numerous sports organizations have joined the effort, but the ROH is the first big arts institution to do so.
New Chiefs At LA MOCA, Cooper-Hewitt Signal A Shift
In one week, both the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York named new leaders from outside the museum world. Together the appointments “represent a kind of wake-up call for museums in general. They point to a return to basics in American museum culture.”
Will This Economy Force American Museums’ Reinvention?
“With financial windfalls no longer papering over systemic problems, museums are considering moves that were unthinkable, or just unnecessary, in frothier years. Behaviour modification may be the silver lining of this crisis. The result may be museums better equipped to confront 21st-century realities.”