Blog

Richmond PAC Promises To Get Realistic

Richmond, Virginia’s proposed new performing arts center has been controversial from the beginning, with critics complaining that the project is far too ambitious and expensive for a small city. The mayor has demanded that organizers scale back by 2/3 their plans for “a $112 million cluster of theatres, music venues and a jazz club on an entire city block,” and while there are currently no plans to comply with that request, the PAC proponents this week agreed to tackle the project in stages, and not to begin construction on any individual part of the project until that component is fully funded.

Richmond PAC Leader Takes A Pay Cut

“Virginia Performing Arts Foundation President Brad Armstrong has taken a $100,000-a-year pay cut in hopes of eliminating a ‘distraction’ for the planned downtown arts center.” The city’s mayor and other critics of the project have frequently made reference to the salaries being earned by the project’s top executives. “Armstrong’s decision to reduce his pay from $275,000 to $175,000 was” completely voluntary, according to sources on the PAC’s board, and the same sources say that the president’s job was never in danger.

Can A Single Painting Do More Than A Whole Exhibition?

Not every museum can afford to bring in the so-called blockbuster shows that have increasingly come to be the financial backbone of the visual arts industry, but smaller institutions do have another option for drawing a crowd: a single, spectacular, and (most importantly) high-profile work borrowed or bought to get bodies in the door. These “destination pictures” not only serve as a draw unto themselves, but unlike a blockbuster show, they sit well in the midst of the museum’s larger collection, inviting patrons to experience all the museum has to offer.

Inviting Shaw Back Into The Room

It’s been 55 years since Irish-born playwright George Bernard Shaw died, but the mark he left on theater and society as a whole has scarcely begun to fade. Shaw, “whose exceptionally long and fecund career as a center of London theatrical and political life is being celebrated beginning tomorrow in a festival of talks, readings and performances at the New York Public Library, titled ‘Man or Superman?'”, was also a particular enigma for fans and detractors alike. “Shaw was cutting a calculated, irresistibly dangerous figure as a firebrand critic, polemicist and soapbox orator long before his plays were first produced in London. It was a fire-breathing persona, stoked over seven decades, that expected, nay demanded, to be caricatured.”

Or Maybe It’ll Just Mean More Unwanted Phone Noise

For those who have been wondering what the big deal is about Apple’s new iPod/phone hybrid, and even more for those who have become more than a little resentful about the whole iPod phenomenon, here’s a pleasant thought: the MP3-playing phones, which come with powerful built-in speakers, may just have the potential to jerk us back into a reality in which music is meant for sharing with others. If the basic iPods “suggest that music is a solitary experience, comprised solely of plugging into your own greatest hits,” the phone version allows for the possibility that music “can once again be something that is not just the soundtrack to your own little world, but which you enjoy with other people.”

America’s Anti-Sweetheart

You need only say the name Mae West to conjure up a world of images remniescent of a particular era in Hollywood’s (and America’s) history. And while she may be remembered today primarily for some of her more acerbic and sexually-charged quips, West was a constant crusader for the right of artists to push the boundaries of society’s moral code, as well as a cutting-edge “social critic, satiriser of the age-old battle of the sexes and advocate of the primacy of the surviving woman. Even bedecked with gems, as Diamond Lil, she remained a model for all those who felt that her sassy rebellion against conventional morality was a precious gift in a prudish, harsh world, which soon plunged into the Depression.”

Mozart: More Than Just Hold Music

No matter where you live, you’re probably going to be hearing a lot of Mozart this year, as the classical music world celebrates the composer’s 250th anniversary. “Mozart is so easy to underestimate. His music chimes in every muzak-infested lift or restaurant or shopping centre, and in these days of the call centre, Mozart’s is among the music you hear most often when on hold. You can claim to know nothing about classical music, but you have heard of Mozart, and heard Mozart. Yet just when you are about to write Mozart off as over-exploited and over-exposed, there is the music, utterly direct, communicative yet emotionally elusive, simple yet infinitely complex, which has been moving listeners for over two centuries, offering different qualities to new generations.”

New York’s New Boldness

The Freedom Tower may be looking ever more like a lost cause, but “four years on, there is an architectural renaissance in New York that would have been difficult to imagine in the weeks that followed 9/11. Since the 1960s, the shape of New York’s skyline has been under the control of savvy developers who made fortunes erecting uniform brick apartment towers and boxy office buildings. Architects wanting to do something new had little choice but to look to Europe or Asia. This is changing: New York is once again becoming a city where adventurous architecture can happen.”

Meet The New Paris Review

Nearly everything about the rickety old Paris Review has been brushed off and upgraded to a shiny new standard as part of a summer-long restructuring led by Philip Gourevitch that makes the new Review seem practically … corporate. The new issue is larger than the old one, slim and elegant and more magazine-like, printed on buttery paper. Rather than featuring graphic artwork, the cover displays a sepia-toned photograph of a solemn little child in galoshes—the adorably plump Salman Rushdie as a boy in Bombay, looking serious beyond his years and cute enough to eat.”