New York’s Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue, “home to art and antiques fairs, is to be turned into a visual and performing arts centre in an ambitious $50 million renovation.”
Blog
Guggenheim Hires Its First Curator Of Asian Art
“The Guggenheim has been seeking to open a branch in Asia, exploring partnerships in Hong Kong and Singapore, among other possibilities, and the creation is an indication of the institution’s commitment to expanding Asian programming and acquisitions.”
An Overhaul Of Scottish Arts Policy
The Scottish government abolishes the Scottish Arts Council, and creates “Creative Scotland, to develop an ‘escalator’ for talent in the arts.” The arts are to get £20 million in extra funding a year, and the Scottish Executive will fund Scottish Opera and other projects directly.
Sundance – The Road To Fame And Fortune? (Maybe Not)
“The festival, celebrating its 25th year as a champion of independent cinema, has certainly helped launched the careers of several top directors (Steven Soderbergh, for one) and marked the debut of numerous hit films (“Napoleon Dynamite” and “The Blair Witch Project”). But over that time span, only a handful of Grand Jury Prize winners have parlayed their honors into fame and fortune.”
Will Disney Buy Pixar?
The two companies have had a tense business relationship, and their distribution deal is coming to an end. “Citing unnamed people familiar with the plan, the Wall Street Journal said Disney would pay a nominal premium to Pixar’s current market value of $6.7 billion under the deal being discussed in a stock transaction that would make Pixar chief executive Steve Jobs the largest individual shareholder in Disney.”
Jimmy’s Brother
Tom Levine is an artist. As the brother of conductor James Levine, though, he’s not the artist who gets most of the attention in the family. “For the last 15 years or so, Levine has been working the grid. He often takes multiple canvases, some square, some rectangular, and attaches them in back to create a larger, human-size painting surface. He works along the borders of the smaller, latched-together squares most of the time, effectively painting within the boxes. These oils remind people of windows, though Levine says that is not intended.”
A Place For August Wilson’s Legacy
“For reasons ranging from grief and mourning to awe and admiration — and including some celebrity exploitation and publicity grabbing — the world was suddenly full of Wilson proclamations, events, tributes and dedications. Just before he died, a Broadway theater was renamed to honor him. There is a move afoot to rename a Seattle street to commemorate him. Inevitably, there has been speculation about Wilson’s place in history. Will he become a permanent icon, like Eugene O’Neil?”
The Man Who Fixes Theatres
Kent Phillips is the theatre doctor. “Kent is the great healer for theaters. He chops costs big time, throws out big ambitious shows, presents smaller-cast shows, cuts payrolls — but theaters then do survive.”
What Dance Means In Japan
“By now there are Japanese ballet dancers and Japanese tap dancers and Japanese ballroom dancers. Perhaps there soon won’t be, or there already isn’t, a viable category of ‘Japanese dance’ that can be described and categorized; perhaps all that will be left will be globalized individuals.”
Morris: Mozart To Move To
Mozart is not the first composer you think of when you think dancing. Mark Morris disagrees: “When I hear Mozart I do hear dance. I maintain that Baroque and early Classical music is almost all dance rhythms. What’s more of a dance than Così fan tutte? Is it easy to choreograph to? That’s the reason I didn’t do much of it when I was young: it seemed too simple. Why bother, you think, the music is square, in straight eights, it’s repeating. But it’s not!”