“Princeton University announced on Friday that its art museum had reached an agreement to return eight ancient works to Italy that the Italian government says were looted and illicitly exported. The pact calls for the Princeton University Art Museum to send back four of the objects immediately and to keep four on loan for the next four years… Princeton will keep seven other pieces that had been part of negotiations.”
Author: sbergman
When Artists And Dancers Still Knew Each Other
“To hear the choreographer Deborah Hay talk, there is no overstating the connection between visual art and dance in New York in the 1960s, when the Judson Dance Theater movement was radically questioning the nature of performance… Today’s New York scene, in which the various art worlds and their audiences have largely retreated to their own corners, makes Ms. Hay’s experience — which was just as powerful for many visual artists — sound like an impossible utopia.” But some are working to reacquaint the genres…
Nothing But Good News In Chicago
“The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association not only balanced its books for the first time in four years, as it had projected, but also ended the 2007 fiscal year with a surplus of $113,000 on a $58 million operating budget. [The CSO] also reported a 4 percent increase in donations to its annual fund for a total of $18.6 million, and an increase in ticket sales as well, exceeding 85 percent paid capacity in Orchestra Hall for the second consecutive season.”
Davis Leaving Pittsburgh Early
“Andrew Davis is cutting out early. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra has agreed to let its artistic adviser out of the final season of his three-year contract, leaving five weekends of the current season on the table… Davis said in a statement that he has enjoyed his time here and hopes to find other dates to return as a guest conductor.”
Gustavo & The System
“Gustavo Dudamel, now 26, is the most-talked-about young musician in the world. Sir Simon Rattle, the principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, has called him ‘the most astonishingly gifted conductor I have ever come across.'” His upbringing in Venezuela’s El Sistema music education program and rapid rise through the ranks of the conducting world are already legend within the music business. “As an international celebrity whose career was incubated by the sistema, Dudamel is uniquely able to champion its expansion at home and promote its adoption abroad.”
Striking A Balance In Berlin
There may not be an orchestra on Earth more attached to its own tradition and history than the Berlin Philharmonic, so it’s only natural that change would be a tough sell. But Simon Rattle, the Phil’s chief conductor for the past five years, is all about modernization. “What Rattle and the philharmonic are hoping to do is to build an orchestra of the future. But to achieve this, he also believes the Philharmonic has to find a balance between exploring new music and coming to terms with its musical past.”
Montreal Choir Ordered To Raise Its Standards
Montreal Symphony music director Kent Nagano has laid an ultimatum at the feet of the local amateur choir that sings frequently with the orchestra: get better, or else. “The January performances of Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser are a test the choir must pass. “What the choir had to achieve to satisfy him, and what the consequences were, were not clear.”
Cutting Through The Classical Rhetoric
There seems to be no shortage of books postulating either that classical music has made itself irrelevant, or that it has never been stronger or more popular. Scholar Richard Taruskin has taken the measure of both sides, and finds that “the discourse supporting classical music so reeks of historical blindness and sanctimonious self-regard as to render the object of its ministrations practically indefensible.” Still, “classical music is not dying; it is changing… Change can be opposed, and it can be slowed down, but it cannot be stopped.”
New Kushner Play To Premiere In Minnesota
The Minneapolis-based Guthrie Theater has scored a world premiere by Tony-winning playwright Tony Kushner. Kushner’s newest play, tentatively titled “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures,” will bow on the Guthrie stage in spring 2009.
Fisk Trial Put Off Until February
“A trial to determine whether Fisk University can sell a 50 percent stake in an art collection donated by artist Georgia O’Keeffe won’t begin until February despite the school’s precarious financial situation, a judge ruled Wednesday. Fisk’s lawyers had argued that the trial should be set before the end of the year because the historically black college is projected to run out of cash by Dec. 15.”