It’s $25 million. “The gift – not the more usual pledge, but money that is available now – is mostly unrestricted and will go immediately toward plugging any deficit this season, a figure that at the moment is expected to be several million dollars, Joseph Volpe, the Met’s general manager, said.”
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Selling To Buy More? Hmnnn…
“Now that we have become such meticulous conservators of the past, museums and galleries have become overloaded with objects they lack the space to display and which have apparently minimal significance. Major national institutions are constitutionally forbidden to sell items, and laws relating to charitable bequests exert further restrictions. But elsewhere, if the trustees see fit, there is nothing to prevent the disposal of such stock – euphemistically described as ‘deaccession’.”
Brits Using Libraries Differently
“In 2004/05, visits to public libraries rose for the third year running, with the number of visits up by a total of 17m since 2001/02. However, the fact that the number of books borrowed is on the decline appears to suggest that visitors are using their local libraries for research or for multimedia facilities rather than for their traditional purpose of book lending.”
Wigmore Hall Gets A New Lease
The lease on London’s Wigmore Hall has been renewed for 300 years. “The previous lease was to expire in 2012 and there were fears that rising rents could reduce the hall’s activities. Of the £3.1m cost of the lease, £500,000 has already been raised.”
BBC Bach A Hit
In the ten days before Christmas BBC Radio 3 broadcast the complete works of JS Bach. It was a hit. The BBC “website received a record number of hits in December, with 3.1m page impressions during the season itself and 2.4m in the runup to it. Precise listener figures will not surface, however, because Rajar, which measures radio audiences, does not monitor the period around Christmas.”
Harlem Boys Choir Evicted
“After more than a decade based at a public school at Madison Avenue and 127th Street, where it helps run the Choir Academy of Harlem, the Boys Choir and its lesser-known sister chorale are being evicted by the city’s Department of Education for what the agency describes as a host of financial and managerial improprieties. Although it has always had difficulty raising funds, the choir now faces its most serious crisis since it was founded in the basement of a Harlem church nearly four decades ago.”
NY Galley Owners Fight, Then Get Busted On Tax Evasion
“A feud between Upper East Side gallery owners whose clients include some of New York’s wealthiest collectors has resulted in both admitting to tax violations.”
NY Curator Named To Head Miami Museum
Terrence O’Tiley, chief curator of architecture and design for the Museum of Modern Art, has been named director of the Miami Art Museum. “He inherits a museum about to embark on its biggest mission to date: building a new home in Bicentennial Park and expanding the museum to fulfill the prominent cultural role voters and civic leaders envision. In 2004, Miami-Dade voters approved $275 million in county bond money to fund two museums — MAM and the Museum of Science — at Bicentennial Park.”
Are Real-World Indictments The New Crime Novels?
“This is a golden age for the turgid and stultifying, a wave of indictments, plea bargains and ‘informations’ interspersed with three Supreme Court justice nominations in a five-month period, with all of the poetic briefs, memos and opinion-writing those can yield.” What are we talking about? Why, those delightfully lurid and informational indictment documents now being handed down in Washington with almost as much frequency as new Scott Turow books, of course. In fact, the interest in such legal docs is so intense as to provoke the question: are these court filings now officially a form of entertainment for wonks and news junkies? And if so, could they even be considered… gulp… literature?
Berklee Goes Bluegrass
Boston’s Berklee College of Music has long reigned as America’s preeminent conservatory for non-classical musicians. Jazzers and rockers alike have emerged from Berklee, which has always cultivated an image that falls somewhere between the sophistication of Wynton Marsalis and the populist appeal of Sting. Now, the school is branching out to include a genre it has long disdained – bluegrass. “Berklee administrators credit interest in bluegrass to a growing appetite among students for a range of musical styles, spurred by the Internet. It also parallels the growing popularity of the style nationally.” Appointing a new president with a Deep South upbringing didn’t hurt, either.