Peter Hinton is the new director of Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Theatre. “A new artistic director should be an opportunity for a theatre to look at itself, to re-examine what it’s doing. My appointment to the place begged a lot of questions about what kind of future there would be.” Since it opened in 1969, the NAC has never done an all-Canadian season, notes Hinton. “That’s really interesting to me. It speaks to the brevity of our history and the way new-play development has grown and reached its own ceiling.”
Blog
Montreal Symphony Back On Stage
The Montreal Symphony plays its first concert since ending a strike that started last May. “Montreal’s Salle Wilfred-Pelletier seemed to be bathed in the warmth of a great big homecoming. After a long and bitter feud it was forgiveness and laughter, and even a few teary eyes in the audience, as Montrealers roundly applauded their orchestra even before Kent Nagano had taken the stage.”
Miami PAC: Designed In Public
It has taken 27 years to get a performing arts center built in Miami. The building is still under construction, late, and $100 million over budget. Designing the project was a particularly public process. “The competition process was very unusual. We moved a whole design team into the host hotel for nearly a week. We had one of the conference rooms downstairs as our design studio, we moved our desks, our lamps, our materials, our supplies, and essentially designed the building in front of the community. It was almost completely open to the public.”
The Next Threat To Recording Industry – Magazines?
“As if the record business doesn’t have enough problems, the coming trend in magazine publishing may be free CDs. While magazine publishers tout the arrival of authentic interactivity and deeper connections with readers by adding free CDs to every issue, the music industry worries that yet another route has been found around buying records to obtain music, even though most of the free magazine CDs are compilations.”
Of Art And A Cult Of Celebrity
“Celebrity demands a suspension of judgment; there are no objective criteria and it is meaningless. Famous for being famous is circular and nowhere does that circle touch the real world. Art, though, demands judgment, belongs in the real world and promises meaning. For that reason, contemporary art has developed an industry of spurious commentary.”
Do-Over TV
Time Warner Cable is offering its customers the ability to “rewind” shows. “With Start Over, digital cable customers who miss the beginning of certain shows, but who tune in before the end, can push a button and go back to the start. They also can pause and rewind the show — but can’t fast-forward through commercials. The service lets viewers act on impulse or because of unexpected delays. They don’t have to plan ahead to record a show, as they do with digital video recorders.”
Looking At This Year’s Canadian Poetry Award Shortlist
Traditionally, Canada’s Governor General’s Award poetry shortlist “offers a mix of old hands and new faces, a modest range of styles and at least one what-were-they-thinking title. Extravagantly experimental work seldom gets a mention, but inventively tweaking the standard lyrical narrative often helps a book stand out from the crowd. (And it is a crowd: the 2005 jury read 144 collections.) This year’s list follows suit, though there’s neither an oddball choice nor a brand-new ‘It’ poet to be found.”
Some Authors Side With Google Against Publishers
Publishers are suing Google over the company’s plans to digitize libraries of books. Says Google: “The world would be a much worse place if the card catalog in a library only contained the books that the publisher had come by and put in” Some authors agree with the search giant, and believe that making their work freely searchable online will boost their stature and sales.
Munitz On Things Getty
Getty president Barry Munitz sits down to address the controversies swirling around the institution – the Italian artifacts case, morale, his salary and the infamous Porsche. Are staff jumping ship? “There hasn’t been a massive outflow. There hasn’t even been a major outflow of people. The museum director resigned and one other person who was her closest partner and colleague went at the same time. Not a single person left the museum in the year since she left. Everybody stayed. We went from a search (for a new curator) and hired the No. 1 candidate on everybody’s list, Michael Brand.”
When Museums Sell Their Art (It’s Worrisome)
A number of American arts institutions are selling off some of their art. “The scale of such selling – by institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art – is renewing debate. ‘History will make a fool of these museums. It always happens. Often the things that are sold are based on inherited prejudices that will be overturned in the future’.”