The Royal Ontario Museum, in the messy midst of a $200 million expansion project, is unveiling ten new finished galleries for public viewing, beginning December 26. Kate Taylor is impressed with ROM’s direction, up to a point: “[The museum’s planners] are exercising a particular museum philosophy here. They wanted to restore rather than hide the heritage building, and the galleries are now being asked not to impinge on the architecture.”
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The Critic Takes The Stage
If anyone was expecting the music world Andrew Porter has spent his career critiquing to turn its back when the famed critic brought his own production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute to the Canadian Opera Company stage this weekend, such hopes were dashed last summer, when the entire run of the show sold out months in advance. “Porter may well be the most eminent living music critic in the English-speaking world, a man who for 50 years has set the standard for erudition, fairness and grace in the writing of music criticism… [He] has no immediate plans to continue his directorial career, but he has a dream — to direct Beethoven’s Fidelio.”
The Next DaVinci. And The Next, And The Next…
When it comes right down to it, imitation is not only the sincerest form of flattery, it’s also a surefire method of marketing success. So no one should be surprised that the publishing world is about to start churning out countless books whose plotlines sound an awful lot like a certain bestselling novel concerning religious sects, freemasons, and old Italian artist/inventors. Some are comparing the rush to duplicate the success of The DaVinci Code to the explosion of the “legal thriller” genre in the early 1990s, which was sparked by the commercial success of author John Grisham.
Fireworks At True Trial
“Tempers became heated [Friday] as the Italian state presented new evidence in its case against Marion True, a former antiquities curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, who is on trial [in Rome] on charges of dealing in looted antiquities. Ms. True’s defense lawyers shouted out objections when Maurizio Pellegrini, a document and photography analyst with the Italian Culture Ministry who testified as an expert witness for the state, began commenting on correspondence between Ms. True and the antiquities dealer Giacomo Medici, a co-defendant in the case who was sentenced to 10 years in prison last December.”
Louis’s Living Legacy
Murray Louis had quite the eclectic upbringing in the dance world, and his dizzying array of experiences made him one of the late 20th century’s most intriguing choreographers. Along with his personal and professional partner, Alwin Nikolais, “he evolved a distinct choreographic signature that came out of the movement technique he and Mr. Nikolais developed. Most choreographers, including George Balanchine and Martha Graham, would extend a dance vocabulary through their choreography and then bring the ‘new’ movement to classroom training. Mr. Nikolais and Mr. Louis did the reverse.” Still, he fears for the future of the form: “Creatively strong leaders are not coming out of dance… There is a lot of splintering.”
Hollywood Wants You(r Butts In Its Seats)
With moviegoers fast becoming a valuable (and comparatively rare) commodity, the film industry is mounting a campaign to get Americans back in the theatres, in part by (finally) addressing longstanding consumer complaints. Cell phone rings interrupting the screening? We’ll ban ’em. Screeching children? We’ll restrict ’em to daylight hours. Pre-show ads? We’ll make ’em less intrusive. Ticket prices? Ummmm, well… how about a snazzy new PR blitz all about the glories of going out to the movies?
Art Theft Writ Large
It can’t be easy to make off with a bronze sculpture that measures 3.5 meters long, and better than one meter high. But that’s exactly what someone (or, more accurately, three someones and a crane) have done with a Henry Moore sculpture north of London. The theft took place Thursday night, and officials at the Henry Moore Foundation are afraid that the thieves could be planning to melt the work down to sell as scrap metal, since it would be difficult if not impossible to sell as is. The sculpture, entitled “A Reclining Figure,” is valued at $5.3 million.
Getaway Vehicle Found
Police have recovered the truck believed to have been used in the Henry Moore sculpture theft. The truck itself was also stolen, and was abandoned by the thieves some distance from the scene of the crime.
Want Butts In The Seats? Make Fewer Seats.
“We’ve tended to lay the blame for the fall-off in classical music attendances on bad programming, lack of excitement, not enough targeting the young and that woeful branding, favoured by the politicians, of elitism.” But could the real problem be something as simple as the fact that major concert halls tend to seat over 2,000 people, whether they are located in a metropolis of ten million or a city of 500,000? After all, the effects of a half-empty hall on audience behavior are well-established, and recent developments in Scotland’s classical music scene suggest that less may, in fact, be more.
The Importance of the Critical Eye
In today’s world of instant information and do-it-yourself media, the world of the critic, based as it is on an assumption of expertise and some vague notion of “the eye,” seems increasingly old-fashioned. But Jerry Saltz writes that the trend towards art criticism that is all ideas and no expertise is a dangerous one. “Having an eye in criticism is as important as having an ear in music. It means discerning the original from the derivative, the inspired from the smart, the remarkable from the common, and not looking at art in narrow, academic, or “objective” ways. It means engaging uncertainty and contingency, suspending disbelief, and trying to create a place for doubt, unpredictability, curiosity, and openness.”