Blog

Enough With The Literary Navel-Gazing Already!

Jon Carroll has had it with the trend of writers writing about writers and writing and expecting the rest of the world to give a damn. “Writing is not an inherently interesting profession. It’s very boring to watch. Writers do not dress well, and they frequently mumble. Periodically, a writer goes into rehab or opens an antique store; it’s not exactly cinematic. It’s not like freeing the virtuous farmers from the yoke of oppression by wearing a mask and engaging in swordplay. It’s the life of the mind. It’s paint drying.” But then, people in nearly every profession seem to be obsessed with their own importance these days…

Like Sundance, Only Colder

“The Whistler Film Festival, which launches its fifth-anniversary edition today in Whistler, B.C., is one step closer to becoming the Sundance of Canada with an aggressive new industry component that will sled in a slew of hot-shot sales agents and distributors from New York and Hollywood. And coming next year, China.”

By Chicago, For Chicago

Chicago is a fabulous museum town, but some residents believe that the city’s world-renowned museums frequently ignore the art that’s right under their nose. Enter the Chicago Art Foundation, founded a year ago with the mission of building a new museum to showcase Chicago-based art. Such endeavors take huge amounts of time and money, of course, but the foundation has made impressive progress in a relatively short period of time.

The ENO’s Continuing Mess

Sean Doran’s quick departure from English National Opera this week is only one indication of the company’s deep problems. “So now what we are left with is more of the same mediocrity, with everyone keeping their backs to the wall and nobody in the mood for tackling the radical underlying problems that ENO faces. What, for example, was the point of spending over £40 million on restoring the Coliseum if the theatre is no more productive or efficient than it was? How can ENO reach out to new audiences and restore the buzz it had in the 1980s?”

Now If Only The People Could Afford Theatre Tickets…

“Moscow is experiencing a boom in theater construction, a testament both to the importance Russian leaders place on the nation’s capital as a cultural showcase and to the money from oil and other commodities flowing through the city’s coffers… The theater construction boom is part of a general real estate boom in Moscow fueled by the success of Russia’s raw materials and commodities market, which has allowed the city to lavish money on things like the Moscow International Performance Arts Center, a performing arts complex intended to be the city’s answer to Lincoln Center, and all the theaters sprouting up around town. There are more than a half-dozen other major construction or reconstruction projects slated for next year.”

Controversial Library Auction Yields An Underwhelming Result

“Defying high anticipation, one of two portraits of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart that have been in the New York Public Library’s collection for more than a century failed to sell at Sotheby’s yesterday in an auction that had generated advance controversy.” The other portrait sold for considerably less than the auction house had expected. “The works are among 16 paintings, watercolors and sculptures that the New York Public Library put on the block yesterday to raise money for its endowment. The decision, announced in April, drew protests from many art lovers and museum curators who said they felt that the library was jettisoning treasures central to the civic history of New York.”

Aberdeen Starts First Scottish Literary Center

Scotland’s Aberdeen University is establishing the country’s first center dedicated to study of the novel. “It will be Britain’s first dedicated centre for the study of novels and novelists from the English-speaking world, including Scottish, Irish and American fiction, and will use as its main resource the university’s own collection of fiction, said to rival that of any university in the world.”

Good News/Bad News at Milwaukee Sym

The Milwaukee Symphony is still in the red to the tune of $2.61 million for the 2004-05 season, but taken in a larger context, the deficit may actually be good news for the ensemble. The shortfall is actually less than the MSO’s board and management budgeted for the year, and easily met the goal for the first year of the organization’s three-year recapitalization plan. Under that plan, the budget would be back in the black by the end of the 2006-07 season. The MSO has been hurting financially for quite some time, and a new executive director made severe cuts in the organization this past season to get the budget under control. The orchestra’s musicians also accepted a temporary pay cut.