“While there’s something inherently contradictory in the notion of a contemporary art museum having a permanent collection, most do… Until last month, [Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art] had no collection. But last week it announced the acquisition of four more pieces, which will be part of a permanent collection put on display this fall… They cover a decent range of media, including video and installation. Yet building a collection, while necessary, presents a challenge. The museum should be wary of getting entrenched as a steward of culture rather than providing a vehicle for the iconoclasm of contemporary art.”
Blog
Leslie Norris, 84
Welsh-born poet Leslie Norris, whose work focused on the power of nature, has died at his home in Utah, aged 84. “Mr. Norris was the first writer to be named a member of both the Welsh Academy and the Royal Society of Literature in England.”
Gerard Reve, 82
“Gerard Reve, considered one of the Dutch postwar literary greats, has died, his partner announced on Sunday. He was 82. Mr. Reve, whose full name was Gerard Kornelis van het Reve, published his first novel, ‘De Avonden’ (‘The Evenings’), in 1947. An account of the staunch, oppressive environment of the lower-middle-class Dutch in the postwar years, it is considered a classic of modern Dutch literature.”
Waves of Redemption
Luxuries are few for America’s prisoners these days, but in Louisiana, radio station KLSP caters exclusively to their needs. It’s only natural: the station, which a 100-watt signal and a $48 weekly payroll, “is the nation’s only licensed prison radio station, [and] finds its most dedicated audience and inspiration for its core mission: spreading the word of Jesus (and an occasional message from the warden) to men doomed to die behind bars… The prison’s Christian-based message has been so successful at keeping the peace that other states have referred to it as a model.”
Gov’t Funding Cuts Threaten Deaf Theatre
“Several deaf-theater groups are struggling to stay afloat after the federal government mysteriously cut funds for cultural programs for the deaf around the country 16 months ago. Officials at the Department of Education, which administered a the program that distributed some $2 million a year in grants, said they did not see the change coming and did not know who in Congress had ordered the cut in December 2004.”
2006’s Forgotten Composers
As everyone even peripherally aware of the world of classical music knows, 2006 is the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. It’s also the 100th for Shostakovich, and you probably knew that, too. But two other influential composers would have been celebrating a century this year, and no one seems to care a bit. How could this be so, in an industry so in love with anniversary celebrations? Well, for one thing, they were both women. Beyond that, “there are, as you might suspect, a clutch of personal reasons, along with a whiff of scandal.”
Band On The Rise
Several years ago, the 42-year-old Philadelphia musical institution known as Concerto Solists changed its name to the more formal Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and ever since, the ensemble has been moving towards becoming a major professional ensemble. “Some of the 2006-07 repertoire, from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 to de Falla’s El Amor Brujo, could easily appear in Philadelphia Orchestra programs across the Kimmel Center plaza. In fact, the 2005-06 season opened with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, programmed the same week the Philadelphia Orchestra played it.”
The Money Man
Palm Beach Opera’s new chief executive, William Ryberg, has spent the last several years developing something of a reputation as a turnaround artist. He cut his teeth on an endowment drive at Michigan’s Grand Rapids Symphony, then helped to stabilize a precarious fiscal situation with the Oregon Symphony. In Palm Beach, he takes on an organization with big plans, but not a lot of money to accomplish them.
London Theatre: Home Of Loose Ends
“What do we want these days from the theater? Increasingly, or so audiences as much as dictate, stories that come to a handy, even cozy conclusion, where life’s knots aren’t so much sentimentally unraveled as they are re- assembled in a nice, neat bow. So the London stage deserves credit this, and virtually every, season for proffering plays that take the harder, more circuitous path, leaving open-ended the fates of characters whom lesser writers would lead to the sort of preordained conclusion that leaves spectators happy but isn’t necessarily true to life.”
They Have Fundamentalist Whackos In Britain, Too!
Lest America have the controversy all to itself, Britain’s Royal Society, the UK’s leading scientific academy, issued a blistering attack on creationism this week. “A leading scientist compared it to the theory that babies are brought by storks,” and the Society warned that allowing the teaching of religious beliefs in science classrooms would irreperably harm Britain’s youth.