Many UK museums have stopped collecting art. Why? No money. “Of the institutions surveyed, 60% said they were unable to allocate money for purchasing new items last year. The Art Fund has called on the government to adopt a “more positive” approach to funding collections.”
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Daniel Barenboim On Top Of The World?
“Barenboim’s appointment at La Scala, like the CSO’s recent appointment of Bernard Haitink as principal conductor and Pierre Boulez as conductor emeritus, buys the respective institutions time to fill two high-profile posts without rushing to make choices they might regret. Barenboim’s prominent role in La Scala’s future opens the door to a possible ascendancy to Muti’s former post somewhere down the line. A couple of major successes there could cinch it for him.”
Morgan Library Gets Game
“As the Morgan’s longer name indicates, the library’s $106 million transformation is intended to make it more appealing to museum-goers and cultural tourists in a city where the competition from such powerhouse institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art is all but overwhelming.”
Sorting Out What The Louvre Is
“The Louvre is so immense — both in literal space and in image — that it can be hard to fathom that it has struggled to keep pace with the other great museums of the world — and of Paris — that have become hotspots for cultural tourism, bringing people back for more and different art experiences by repackaging and marketing their collections to make them more compelling.”
Great Music – Some Basic Questions
“We need to wake up to the fact that people are now asking basic questions. Why are we musical? Why did people write symphonies? Why do we have the string quartet? They seem child-like, these questions, but they’re there to provide us with the opportunity to enthuse and explain and demonstrate the answers we first stumbled upon in our musical journey and which encouraged us to make that journey in the first place. Figure out our answers to those questions, and it will help us tackle some more simple, yet more terrifying, questions: why should the state spend money on the arts, why do we have opera and why is it so expensive, why should we have so many orchestras in London?”
New Scottish National Theatre Scores High In Awards
Scotland’s new National Theatre picks up 11 nominations in the annual Scottish Critics Awards. “The first few months of the National Theatre of Scotland has proved to be both a popular and critical success. It is in line with its innovative model that all its nominations are the result of partnerships and co-productions with the existing talent pool.”
Sizing Up James levine’s First Season At The Boston Symphony
“The orchestra generally played gloriously for Levine, who has given the guest conductors a new point of departure for their own adventures. The orchestra’s collective technique and sound have changed under Levine: There is more blend, more contrast, better balances, infinitely more refinement, and even more power.”
A Fight To Get gays On The Curriculum
A bill in the California state legislature would “forbid the teaching of any material that reflects adversely on persons due to sexual orientation. ‘One of the things that contribute to a safe or unsafe environment for kids are the teaching materials. If you have teaching material that didn’t say anything at all about gay and lesbian people, it is assumed that they never did anything at all. But if it said anything about gay and lesbian people, the whole atmosphere of the school was safer for gay and lesbian kids, or those thought to be gay and lesbian’.”
Da Vinci Code – The Movie No One’s Seen
“Sony’s strategy with the film has been unusual in that so far, no outsiders have seen Ron Howard’s two-and-a-half-hour opus. Sony has forgone the usual advance press screenings and a splashy stateside premiere, forfeiting some coverage in the interest of keeping the picture under wraps. The studio will unveil The Da Vinci Code at the Cannes Film Festival next week.”
The Chicago Art Institute Code
“Like most museums in the United States, the Art Institute of Chicago owns nothing by Leonardo, but that doesn’t mean its permanent collection isn’t studded with artworks that harbor secrets of their own. In some cases — particularly in works from the Renaissance, the golden age of “coded” art — the images originally were meant to be mysterious. To demonstrate their erudition, the artists packed their paintings with so many symbols, allegories and allusions that viewers were forced to resort to reference books in which the most popular emblems of the day were unpacked and explicated.”