The Wildenstein family has one of the world’s biggest art collections, “worth an estimated €10 billion, and connections that have allowed them to broker some of the Louvre’s biggest purchases.” Now “Alec and Guy Wildenstein, whose father Daniel died four years ago, will challenge a French court ruling in favour of their 71-year-old stepmother Sylvia to break up the huge private collection, believed to include Renoirs, Monets and Manets.”
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An Orchestra Goes For Performance-Based Pay
“The Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, one of Japan’s top-tier orchestras, has its own financial challenges, and in its recent negotiations it suggested a radical fix: performance-based contracts, under which musicians’ raises and promotions – or, perhaps, their departures – would be based on “objective” evaluations by management. The criteria for judging the musicians are still being discussed, but in addition to straightforward musical performance, they’re likely to include attendance, onstage manners, teamwork and helping to publicize the orchestra. Current members can elect to remain in the traditional lifetime-employment system, but about 70 percent have chosen the new contracts. That’s no surprise: while poor evaluations could lead to a musician’s contract’s not being renewed, the top salary under the new system is about $72,000 a year versus $62,600 under the old.”
Finnish, the Musical Stars
Finland has become a hotbed of classical music. “The Finns’ recent emergence as a power in classical music is another case in which they have mastered a lingua franca. Defying a trend in many Western countries, where audiences are dwindling and the tradition itself seems in retreat, Finland has in the last 15 years developed first-class classical musicians out of all proportion to its size. Steady investment in music education by the government has created generations of avid listeners and, according to official figures, more orchestras per capita than anywhere on the globe.”
St. Louis Symphony Still Struggles To Get Past Strike
Last winter’s strike by the musicians of the St. Louis Symphony left a lot of hard feelings. Months later, relations between the orchestra and its musicians are still a bit raw. But there’s also perhaps “an even more significant split between the orchestra’s negotiating committee and the officers of the local musicians union.”
Don Quixote – Recreating A Work In Progress
Suzanne Farrell takes another look at Balanchine’s Don Quixote. The piece hasn’t been performed since 1978. “During the 13 years of its life, Balanchine made numerous changes to the ballet, adding dances, taking out divertissements, cutting sections. There never was a true “finished” version, so she has had to decide what to keep, what to cut, what to preserve.”
Tate Modern At Five
The Tate Modern has been a huge success, currently drawing about 4 million visitors a year. With the neighborhood around it growing up, the Tate looks at expansion. But how does the museum stay ahead with its collections?
40 Sue Art Storage Company Over London Warehouse Fire
Forty galleries, collectors and artists have sued the art storage company Momart over a warehouse fire in London last year that destroyed millions of dollars worth of art. “The list of litigants includes some of the most powerful figures in the industry: the artists Damien Hirst and Gillian Ayres; the sculptor Barry Flanagan; five Royal Academy of Arts trustees, including the celebrated architect Sir Nicholas Grimshaw; and a host of galleries.”
In Virginia – A Performing Arts Center Is Derailed
A year ago there was much excitement in Richmond, VA, as a campaign to build a new $168 million performing arts center kicked into gear. But the project has bogged down and “what so many had hoped would become Richmond’s saving grace — a grand music hall that would complete a renaissance on East Broad Street — has been derailed. For the arts center, the going won’t get easier anytime soon. If fund-raising was already difficult in part because of negative publicity, as the foundation asserts, it promises to get worse as Wilder continues his assault on the business community, making the performing arts center his personal punching bag of taxpayer waste.
Sanctions: Iraq Symphony Plays Under Tough Conditions
The Baghdad Symphony is performing, even though life is tough. “The orchestra knows all about survival. The first in the Arab world, it struggled through two wars and economic sanctions under Saddam Hussein. The best talent fled Iraq. Musicians who stayed earned $1 a month and instruments fell into disrepair. Still, the group, somehow, played on. And after Saddam’s fall, life — and salaries — improved. There were also gifts of new instruments and a trip to America — all funded by the former U.S. authority in Iraq — highlighted by a concert in Washington, D.C., attended by President Bush.”
The Big-Box Bookstore Dilemma
“A new bookstore such as the latest Barnes & Noble behemoth — 36,000 square feet spread out across two floors — that opened a week and a half ago in the Chicago Loop neatly encapsulates the 21st Century booksellers’ problem: Is it all about the classics — or the cappuccino? And how can an establishment that sells books — each one a rectangular homage to intellectual independence — be cogs in a bland, homogenous corporate machine that has been accused of mashing smaller independent bookstores into goo?”