Blog

Philly Heads To Asia

The Philadelphia Orchestra is about to embark on a massive three-week tour of the Far East, and there’s little question that they’re going all out to impress the concertgoers of South Korea, Japan, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Superstar soloists Yo-Yo Ma and Lang Lang will be the featured attractions, and an exhausting set of three complete Mahler symphonies will form the backbone of the tour repertoire, as well as the core of a live-to-tape recording the orchestra intends to release after the tour from concert tapes taken in Tokyo. The cost of the tour, large even by major orchestra standards, is $3 million.

Mountain Laurel, Take Two

The $35 million Mountain Laurel Performing Arts Center in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains was a grand plan that quickly became an unmitigated disaster, going out of business less than a year after opening amid accusations of incompetence and misuse of public funds. But “the complex, which was built with the help of a $15 million state grant, is reopening with a fresh infusion of public money, including $500,000 from the state and $750,000 in projected annual revenue from a new hotel tax in Pike County.” Gone, however, are most of Mountain Laurel’s original grand plans, such as playing summer host to the Pittsburgh Symphony. This summer’s lineup includes mostly “blues, pop, rock, country, jazz and Latin music, genres that typically attract healthy audiences, in hopes of meeting ambitious attendance goals and buying more time to stabilize the center’s finances.”

Surrealist Paintings Tied Up In Mexican Court

Three dozen paintings by esteemed surrealist Remedios Varo are in legal limbo in Mexico. “The dispute centers on who owns 39 paintings first lent and then given to Mexico City’s Museum of Modern Art in 1999 by Walter Gruen, an Austrian and also a World War II refugee who was Varo’s supporter and lover the last 11 years of the artist’s life. Varo’s niece Beatriz Varo Jimenez of Valencia, Spain, has contended in a Mexico City family court that she is Varo’s rightful heir and that Gruen had no right to give the works to the museum. The niece won a crucial judicial round in March. But Mexico’s National Institute of Fine Arts is claiming that the works are state patrimony and is appealing the verdict.”

New Jersey Arts Center To Be Shuttered

Facing a possible zeroing out of the state funds that keep it afloat, the South Jersey Performing Arts Center located on Camden’s waterfront has announced plans to shut down by June 30. The SJPAC was to be the crown jewel in Camden’s civic rebirth, but the plan has fallen far short of expectations, with the city continuing to struggle, and the arts center never attracting the audiences organizers had hoped for. The center, on the Delaware River just across from Philadelphia, has been open for nine years.

Movie “Sanitizers” Rile Industry

“The business of cleaning up movies has sparked a round of skirmishing in the culture wars and launched a patent brawl in the technology industry as well. Hollywood directors say that removing swear words and bare breasts compromises their artistic vision and violates their copyrighted material. Meanwhile, a Florida company claims that a technology used to skip over the dirty parts steals from its own patented method used to skip right to the dirty parts.”

Where’s The Conservative Backlash?

“After the forced closure of Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s play ‘Behzti’ in December, two things were widely predicted. One was that theatres would become more conservative in their programming of potentially contentious Asian work (particularly on religious and sexual themes). The other was that it would be more difficult for theatres to retain an already fragile (and tiny) non-white audience.” In fact, neither has happened…

How The Internet Is Changing Class Dynamics

With students now able to instantaneously check on the internet what teachers teach in their classes, the dynamics of the classroom are changing. “The immediate availability of vast amounts of information, and the ability to make perfect infinite copies, to communicate, and to distribute instantaneously will, by necessity, alter the ways we learn and teach. Transparency holds out the promise of a deeper, richer and more democratic educational experience, but also an implied challenge to the traditional academic order.”

A Vote On NEA Money This Week?

The US Congress may vote this week on a budget for the National Endowment for the Arts. The proposed budget calls for no increase. “The bipartisan Congressional Arts Caucus, composed of House members who support the arts, is prepared to introduce an amendment from the floor calling for a minimum increase of $9 million for the NEA. The House Appropriations Committee reallocated about $6.5 million to the new American Masterpieces initiative from the Challenge America arts program, and the caucus’s amendment would restore the Challenge America funding.”

Virginia Museum Gets $100 Million Present

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has received a gift of $100 million in art and cash from collectors James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin. “The McGlothlin assembly includes works by American artists from the 19th and 20th century: George Bellows, Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, Childe Hassam and Martin Johnson Heade. The art ranges from oil paintings, pastels and watercolors to sculptures, and it forms “one of the most important American art collections still in private hands,” Brand said. The art is valued at $70 million.”