“[W]hen a tiny upstart, such as the Claremont Museum of Art, gets a $10-million windfall, it isn’t merely an enhancement. It’s a ticket to transformation.” In this case, however, it comes with a catch. “The bulk of the money will arrive in the form of annuities, trusts and real estate after the donor’s death. Until then, the museum will reap about $250,000 a year.” Given that, how to plan for the future?
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Verbal Cherry Bombs Go Off As PEN Gala Turns Political
“Poet Amiri Baraka railed that the choice is between Barack Obama or that ‘patient from the Vietnam War.’ But it was [Terry] McMillan (‘Waiting to Exhale,’ ‘How Stella Got Her Groove Back’) who eviscerated the GOP ticket with deadpan sarcasm….”
How Bootlegs Affect The Way We Think About Art
“Bootlegging is, of course, a long artistic tradition. It’s one Shakespeare himself alludes to in The Winter’s Tale….” With the release of the eighth volume in Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series, Ron Rosenbaum argues that “Dylan culture, especially Dylan bootleg culture, figures into the way we assess ‘authorized’ and ‘unauthorized’ work by other great artists such as Shakespeare and Nabokov.”
If NYC OKs Whitney Expansion, Can Museum Pay For It?
“The Whitney Museum of American Art is expected to get final city approval today for its downtown expansion plan, just as the economic turmoil has made the museum’s $680 million fund-raising goal more daunting than ever.”
Russian Clients Keep Gagosian Gallery In Green
“Buyers from Russia and other republics of the former Soviet Union account for almost 50 percent of total global sales at Gagosian Gallery, the art world’s global leader in exhibition space, said one of its directors. Four years ago, it had almost no Russian buyers.”
Weak Economy Threatens China’s Fake-Art Industry
“In a village in southern China, Wu Ruiqiu is worried about the effect of an economic slump on the art market. He should be. Wu represents artists that make 60 percent of the world’s oil paintings.” Their product? Fakes. “While employees in the city make cheap DVD players, computers and T-shirts, workers here produce Rembrandts, Monets and Warhols — by the millions.”
Met Opera Puts Audio, Video Online
“The Metropolitan Opera plans to introduce an online service providing video and audio recordings of its operas. The service, Met Player, is scheduled to begin on Oct. 22. It will allow users to hear 120 audio recordings and watch 50 full-length operas collected from the Met’s archives, with more to be added in subsequent months.”
Juilliard Names A.D. Of Early-Music Program
The Juilliard School’s new graduate program in historical performance will begin next fall. “The artistic director will be Monica Huggett, an English violinist steeped in period performance. … Ms. Huggett had a hand in choosing the faculty, she said, and ‘about 50 percent are people I know and love.’ Several will also be familiar to early-music fans in New York.”
Report Card: Congress Scores Higher On The Arts
“Support for the arts in the House of Representatives increased appreciably during the soon-to-conclude legislative session, according to Americans for the Arts, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization, which released its Congressional Arts Report Card Sept. 22.”
Young Adult Writers Get Political — Together
“Attention political strategists: don’t forget to court the Young Adult (YA) writing community. Author Maureen Johnson started the social networking site YA for Obama after she realized many of her friends from the YA community supported the senator, and thought (in true YA fashion), ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we all had a place where we could write about Obama? And if we invited everyone to join?'”