The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Dali show earlier this year “generated $55 million for the Philadelphia region, including $4.46 million in state and local taxes,” says a new study.
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A New Museum For Paris?
“Canadian architect Frank Gehry has been hired by Bernard Arnault, chairman of the luxury goods group LVMH, to produce designs for a new museum in Paris. If the project goes forward, the new museum would house works from the French billionaire’s contemporary art collection.”
Going It Alone – Artists And The Technology Revolution
The blessing of technology for artists? The ability to make your art and distribute it without the middleman. “New technology means creative types across the board—from filmmakers to visual artists to authors—are finding it easier to bypass traditional middlemen, like record labels or galleries, and reach out to appreciative audiences themselves. The market has become so fragmented and audience tastes so specialized, it’s no longer possible for big companies to cater to every niche. But individual artists can.”
August Wilson’s Last Play
August Wilson’s spirit looms large in all of his works, but never more so than in this production at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. “Radio Golf,” which examines the price of success for blacks in the ’90s, is the long-awaited finale of his 10-part dramatic cycle about African American life. The project, which took nearly a quarter-century to complete, is seen as both a masterwork of the theater and a treasure of American social history. Celebration of the cycle’s completion has been tempered by last month’s announcement that the 60-year-old writer is battling liver cancer.”
Hitting The Right Tone
Fancy yourself a composer? Here’s a website that creates new unique music based on your mouseability…
Pollack Does Gehry
Using a mini-DVD camera Sydney Pollack has made a documentary of architect Frank Gehry. “After many offers from various Canadian, American and British filmmakers, Frank Gehry’s decision to ask Sydney Pollack to consider directing such a documentary occurred when he realized that the filmmaker had taken the best photos of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. At first, Pollack didn’t want the job. ‘I didn’t feel literate as a documentarian. I certainly didn’t feel literate architecturally — this would be a really dumb thing for me to do’.”
Radio-Canada Axes News Show, Sees Ratings Spike
Quebec’s “Radio-Canada this week ended one of the longest traditions in network television by replacing its suppertime newscast with a light-hearted talk show hosted by a popular blond starlet and Chatty Cathy of Quebec’s celebrity circuit. On the one hand, who can blame the network? Radio-Canada’s news broadcasts had been getting hammered for years by the private competition. Replacing the news with Véro, the variety hour hosted by Véronique Cloutier, appears to have been a brilliant move. In its first week, Véro drew almost twice as many viewers…”
Hollywood ’05: The New Misogyny
The good news is that there are plenty of roles for women in the new fall TV season. The bad news is that most of them involve women being beaten, killed, tortured by aliens, impaled, bloodied, assaulted, and kidnapped. Oh, and while they’re still alive, the women of TV tend to be naked, or nearly so. “Trying to get [the Hollywood men who create these delightful female roles] to discuss the Season of Die, Women, Die! can be difficult. Because the men who made the shows, and the suits who ordered them, while not timid about slicing and dicing up the female characters in these drama series, go shy all over when asked about the trend.”
The Great And Mysterious Garbo
Greta Garbo would have been 100 today, and you don’t have to look far to find the celebrations of America’s most elusive diva. “Few personalities are cultural signposts. But in her heyday, Garbo inspired Cole Porter, who sang of her munificent salary in You’re the Top. Madonna paid tribute to Garbo’s giving good face in Vogue. Even fewer personalities become adjectives; Garboesque has come to mean aloof, mysterious, remote… Garbo left the screen in her prime (like Marilyn Monroe, who died at 36), thus the popular image we have of her is radiant, forever young.”
Jones Takes On A ‘National Malaise”
Choreographer Bill T. Jones seemingly exists to make people angry, and some in the dance world believe that Jones’s sort of controversy is exactly the sort of visceral content the genre needs to engage a public distracted by the juggernaut of pop culture. “Mr. Jones has carried himself through the rarefied world of dance with an air of enlivened majesty: speaking out, speaking often and, when speaking of himself, occasionally speaking in the third person. His comportment may partly explain why, during his more than 25-year career, his creative efforts have repeatedly been considered transgressive. But that term mischaracterizes him as an artist and perhaps even as a man, a point rendered clearly in this newest work.”