With only two months to go before the opening of its new concert hall, the Orange County (CA) Performing Arts Center is still frantically raising the money it needs to complete construction and manage the facility. The effort got a big boost this week with the announcement of a $5 million gift by a longtime OCPAC board member’s family. The center has thus far raised $138 million for the concert hall since 1999, on a total goal of $200 million.
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Musée du Contradiction
Paris’s new Musée du quai Branly has been absorbing plenty of body blows from critics since opening last month, but Lisa Rochon points out how seldom the city of light has even attempted architectural provocation, and says that the Branly “a scandalous and necessary aberration that drags its jagged edge over the lousy, looting history of the French colonial era… And herein lies the great dilemma of the museum — its very existence is an assault on aboriginal peoples around the world.”
Native Museum To Go It Alone
“After nearly 30 years together, Kendall College and the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian are going their own ways. On Sept. 1, Kendall plans to give title to the museum’s land, building and collection, all in northwest Evanston, Illinois, to a non-profit formed to assume them.” The split has been years in the making, as “Kendall wanted assurances that the new non-profit — which was named after the museum — had the wherewithal to sustain the Mitchell.”
But It’s Educational Porn, Right?
Student magazines used to trend either to the ultra-serious or the supremely satirical. But these days, there’s a new campus publishing trend in the mix, and it’s enough to make the boys at the Harvard Lampoon blush. Student-run sex magazines have been around for years, but never before have such erotic publications gained such legitimacy as they now have on college campuses across the U.S.
Paperback Boom
Why would a book that sold only modestly when it first hit stores suddenly become a huge hit in paperback? The answer is complicated, but suffice to say that book clubs, word of mouth, and the influence of big-box retailers all have something to do with it.
Met To Hike Entrance Fee 33%
In an attempt to compensate for an operating deficit that has been averaging $3 million per year, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is hiking its suggested admission fee to $20. The Met’s admission charge has always been voluntary, but the museum doesn’t go out of its way to call attention to that fact, and some are already complaining that the hike will discourage many lower-income individuals from seeing one of New York’s great museums.
Talk About Suffering For Your Art…
“The body of the world’s most famous castrato singer, Farinelli, has been exhumed to try to find out how his virtuoso voice developed. Scholars in the northern Italian city of Bologna will measure his skull and bones and perform DNA tests… In 17th and 18th Century Italy, up to 4,000 boys a year, often from poor families, were castrated from the age of eight upwards. They became opera singers and soloists in church choirs and royal palaces. Very few actually went on to achieve success, but those who did became the pop stars of their day, and they behaved as such.”
Changes Afoot In Chicago
The League of Chicago Theatres has undergone twin shifts in recent weeks, shutting down production of its four-year-old program book, Chicagoplays. Then, at the end of June, the League’s CEO quit after less than a year on the job, saying that with the demise of the program book, “an executive with technical and marketing expertise would better serve the organization as it refocuses on its longtime primary missions of selling tickets and marketing.”
Why Is Art Supposed To Be Easy?
“According to current wisdom, listening to music, reading poetry or contemplating a painting should not be thought of as work, least of all as hard work. Works of art that demand serious attention, time and effort are treated with suspicion because they might not appeal to a significant section of the population.The official politics of culture of our time stigmatises such art for not being inclusive. Inclusive art is that which is readily accessible since it does not require much effort or understanding on the part of the public. From this standpoint, the engagement with art is not seen as a challenge but as an easily digestible act of consumption.”
Disney Slashing Production, Jobs
Disney is slashing jobs and reducing the number of movies it produces in a year from 18 to 8. “Disney’s move reflects a trend in Hollywood to cut costs amid increasing overhead, production budgets and marketing bills. Disney has said for some time it was going to cut its total number of films and concentrate on Disney-branded offerings, which make more money that those released on the studio’s Touchstone label.”