“Telemundo, the nation’s No. 2 Spanish-language network, which was bought by NBC three years ago for $2.7 billion, has been unfolding a plan to produce all its own prime-time entertainment instead of buying it from elsewhere. In the process, it is fostering a whole new Spanish-language TV industry, clustered around the city of Miami.”
Blog
Are Orchestras Hurting Themselves By Pandering To Audiences?
Symphony orchestras in North America are notoriously conservative in their programming choices, and if a glance at the history of American musical criticism is any indication, critics have been complaining about the lack of daring for as long as orchestras have lacked it. “Mainstream musical organizations in general and symphony orchestras in particular still prefer — allegedly for box office reasons — to comfort their listeners with the familiar rather than challenge them with the new… [But] repetition tends to stifle curiosity and it is curiosity that needs to be encouraged in the listening public if our concert halls are to be more than museums to past greatness.”
DaVinci‘s Long Coattails
How popular is The DaVinci Code? So popular that there are actually authors other than Dan Brown getting rich off it, apparently. Books about the book have been flying off the shelves, and now, two writers are about to come out with new books dedicated to speculating about what the upcoming DaVinci sequel might be about.
Famed Director Leaves Chicago Lyric
“Peter Hall, the eminent British director who oversaw four productions at Lyric Opera of Chicago, including a stellar new Otello in 2001, has withdrawn as director of a new production of Michael Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage. The opera is scheduled to open Nov. 19. According to the Lyric, the move comes ‘on doctor’s orders’ for the 75-year-old director. Hall has not been feeling well over the past few days, and he leaves for his home in London today for medical tests.”
MFA Reverses Course On Art Theft Inquiry
Days after Italian prosecutors announced to the world that they have clear and unimpeachable evidence that Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is in possession of stolen art, the museum is reaching out to Italian authorities in an effort to head off serious legal trouble. Originally, the MFA had planned to wait for officials to come to them in the controversy surrounding dealer Robert Hecht and Getty Museum curator Marian True, but when press coverage intensified at week’s end, the museum decided that it could not afford to wait. MFA officials also issued a statement promising to return any objects which could be proven to have been stolen.
Ousted CPB Boss May Face Criminal Charges
Details are beginning to emerge of the soon to be released internal report that led to controversial Corporation for Public Broadcasting chairman Kenneth Tomlinson’s ouster from the CPB board on Thursday. Tomlinson, who was already under fire for his unapologetic efforts to force PBS to air conservative opinion programs, is accused in the report of a serious misuse of corporation funds and the invention of phantom employees when it served his purposes. The inquiry crosses over into Tomlinson’s work as a member of the largely unknown but highly influential Broadcasting Board of Governors, and insiders believe that he could face criminal charges before all is said and done. And then, there’s the inevitable Karl Rove connection…
Art + Science = The Future?
“California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, or Calit2, a $400 million research consortium assembled over the last five years,” is in the process of nurturing a groundbreaking collaboration between science and art, housing a team of artists in what is primarily a research facility and encouraging them to collaborate with in-house scientists on all sorts of projects. “The juxtaposition of digital art with next-generation science and technologies like wireless networks, biosensors and optical supercomputers gives Calit2 a degree of panache that has largely been lost in the American scientific and corporate research worlds in the face of financial cutbacks over the last decade.”
The Franco-Louisianan Ties That Bind
They may have given it up for pennies an acre back in 1803, but the French have always maintained a certain affection for Louisiana. “That attachment paid off for Louisiana, in money and relief supplies, after Hurricane Katrina, and on Friday it took a more symbolic turn in the form of a quick but apparently heartfelt visit to this stricken city by the French minister of culture, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres. The minister came to announce a series of cultural initiatives: a planned exhibition here with the help of the Louvre and other French museums, and benefit concerts across France. But since he was the highest-ranking foreigner to come to this city since the storm… his visit was just as much the reaffirmation of a link that has never quite disappeared.
MoMA’s Man Among Architects
“As one of the few to follow in the footsteps of Philip Johnson at the Museum of Modern Art, Terence Riley has had an important platform in the world of architecture and design over the last 14 years. He helped raise awareness of foreign architects like Rem Koolhaas, Kazuyo Sejima and Herzog & de Meuron in the United States. He made architecture shows a high-profile staple of the museum’s exhibition program. He served on the juries of several major architecture projects and on countless panels discussing architecture. And he was instrumental in the creation of the new Modern, the redesigned building by Yoshio Taniguchi that opened last year. Now someone else will fill Mr. Riley’s shoes; he announced on Thursday that he would step down as the museum’s chief curator of architecture and design in March.”
The Getty In Crisis
“Today the Getty Museum is under siege. Its former antiquities curator faces an indictment in Italy, and allegations of lavish travel by [museum president Barry] Munitz have led to a wide-ranging investigation by the California attorney general into the trust’s finances. Overlooked in these controversies, some of Mr. Munitz’s critics say, is the harm suffered by the museum itself, including acquisitions, curatorial choices and departures by talented staff members who bridled at Mr. Munitz’s decisions and style.” In fact, some observers believe that the Getty’s problems can be traced all the way back to 1982, when it received the bulk of oilman J. Paul Getty’s fortune and became a major player on the international art scene.