Miami is filling in its skyline at an alarming rate, and it promises to change the very character of the city. “As of April, there were 261 development projects in motion (this is to say somewhere between preliminary application and recent completion) in the city of Miami. For Miami this means a mind-boggling 69,039 residential units, which is basically the equivalent of building a medium-sized city. Not all of this is what might be considered ”prime” residential development, along the bay or in or near downtown, but a significant percentage is.”
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The Pompidou Rehangs
The Pompidou Museum in Paris is doing a radical rehang of its permanent collection for the first time in 28 years. The museum will “display its permanent collection in thematic sections rather than chronological order. The new hang is entitled “Big bang: destruction and creation in 20th-century art.”
Art – A Wild West Marketplace
Art is touted as the great investment now as the market soars and stocks settle. But “the art trade is the last major unregulated market. And while it always involved large sums of money, there was never the level of trading and investing that we have now.”
The Vilar Legacy
Philanthropist Alberto Vilar is not a sympathetic figure, no matter all the money he gave to opera. But “whatever the outcome of the charges against him, only a blinkered diva worshipper could deny the vast amount of good that Alberto Vilar has done. Setting aside his $45 million to the Met, which went mainly on braindead productions, and another $10 million or so to Placido Domingo enterprises, Vilar will go down in the records as the man who installed seatback surtitles in major opera houses, introduced young singers’ programmes all over the place and generally gave a hard-pressed art a chance to step back and take stock of itself. His greatest benefice, and the least acclaimed, was his saving of Covent Garden.”
Network TV Audience Stabilizes
For the first time, Fox won the network ratings race for a season. More significant though, is that the total network TV audience staying steady this season for the first year in a dozen. “The broadcast networks in general had virtually the same number of prime-time viewers this season as they had in 2003-04, which is significant because viewership had dropped every year since the 1993- 94 season.”
St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Looks For New Home
The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, tired of sharing a concert hall, are exploring the possibility of building their own hall. “The concert hall idea faces tremendous financial hurdles and long odds. The orchestra would be trying to raise money from arts benefactors whose philanthropy budgets already are stretched thin. Asking taxpayers for help would be sure to spur fervent debate.”
Minnesota Governor Vetoes Poet Laureate
Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty has vetoed a bill that would have created the post of state poet laureate. “While respectful and appreciative of the arts, I do not believe Minnesota needs an official state poet. We can benefit from the richness and the diversity of all the poets in Minnesota and recognize and embrace their work as merit and circumstances warrant.”
Sydney Symphony Finishes With Large Surplus
The Sydney Symphony Orchestra has closed out its 2004 books with a $582,000 surplus. “Also last year, Gianluigi Gelmetti replaced Edo de Waart as the SSO’s artistic director. The change had almost instant success – the concert that launched Gelmetti’s tenure, a gala performance of Verdi’s Requiem, won a Helpmann award for Best Classical Concert Presentation of 2004.”
One View Of The Atonalists…
Schönberg, Babbitt and Carter et al. were failures as compoers, write Miles Hoffman. “They have either grossly overestimated or willfully ignored the limits of the auditory perceptual abilities of most human beings, and somewhere along the way they have either forgotten or willfully ignored the reasons most people listen to music in the first place. They, or their boosters, may write detailed, not to say impenetrably turgid, analyses of the structural underpinnings of their works and the strict mathematical relationships inherent therein, but to the extent that those relationships remain completely unapparent to the human ear—as they so often do—they’re meaningless, and what we actually hear is . . . noise.”
Canadians Cash Out On Culture
Canadians are spending more and more on culture. A new government report say that “consumer spending on cultural goods and services grew 36 per cent from 1997 to 2003. Over the same period, the Consumer Price Index, which gauges all spending, increased 14 per cent. The 2003 amount, pegged at $22.8 billion, was more than Canadians spent on alcohol, tobacco and gambling ($20.8 billion) or RRSP contributions ($16.3 billion). Consumer spending on culture was more than triple government contributions to culture nationwide, which topped out at $7.4 billion.”