One of Andrew Motion’s jobs as British Poet Laureate is to compose a poem to comemorate Prince Charles’ Royal wedding. “Every single time, it’s an impossible job. One’s not entirely clear why anyone bothers to do it.”
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LA County Museum In A Leadership Void
What does Andrea Rich’s sudden retirement running the LA County Museum mean? “Everybody is trying to put the best face on the sudden “retirement.” LACMA still has tens of millions of dollars to raise for construction and endowment in its multiphase expansion plan, and now there are two big jobs to be filled, not just one. (Perhaps the nascent deputy will be promoted.) For that, unfortunately, LACMA will have to go to the back of a lengthy line; major director searches are already underway at heavy-hitters such as the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Cleveland Art Museum and the Minneapolis Art Institute. But what ended badly, started badly. The vacuum in professional conscience from both the boardroom (expected) and the director’s suite (unexpected) means LACMA has been a rudderless ship for longer than a decade.
Do Pulitzers Proclaim The Best In American Music?
What to think about Steven Stucky winning this year’s Pulitzer for music? Particularly after last year’s decision to broaden the definition of music eligible for the award? Frank Oteri chews on it: “I do think in some ways, we music folk are a little too obsessed with other people determining for us what the best is—residue from Beethoven and the gang, which is the same “masterpiece syndrome” that keeps so many in the classical community from ever paying attention to any new music in the first place. I sincerely wonder if novelists and poets scratch their heads in dismay every year when their favorite writer fails to win a Pulitzer. So then, what to make of the results of the 2005 Pulitzer jury?”
Kaiser Fires Back At GAO
Kennedy Center chairman Michael Kaiser defended his organization’s construction cost overruns and fire safety plans before a Congressional committee yesterday, taking issue with a General Accounting Office report which harshly criticized the performing arts complex. “Kaiser argued that the center overhauled its management of construction finances in 2003, after the GAO first found accounting problems.” The Kennedy Center is accountable to Congress rather than to a city entity, because Washington, D.C.’s civic budget is largely controlled by the federal government.
Architects, Pop Stars: Who Can Tell The Difference Anymore?
How do you know when the whole architect-as-superstar phenomenon has gotten completely out of control? When Frank Gehry shows up to play himself on an episode of The Simpsons…
Whatever Happened To Sondheim?
Stephen Sondheim is as legendary as it gets in theatre circles, yet he hasn’t had a bona fide hit in more than a decade. Yet “even as his own creative powers appear to dim, Sondheim is enjoying a golden age of revivals, reassessments, retrospectives and tributes.” In fact, many Sondheim shows now being revived to great acclaim were popular and critical failures the first time around (Assassins, for instance.) “Wise and mortality-haunted beyond his years, he’s made a career exploring themes that others on Broadway rarely touch — emotional ambiguity, moral ambivalence, the impermanence of love, the terrors of connection, death. But somehow now, more than ever, Sondheim seems a man out of joint with his time.”
Possible New Mozart Work Found In Vienna
Austrian state television is reporting that experts are examining newly discovered sheet music found in Vienna’s famed Musikverein concert hall to determine if they could be part of a previously unknown composition by Mozart.
If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Regulate ‘Em
“Armed with colour-coded charts that show an embarrassingly small amount of truly Canadian programming on TV or Canadian feature films in our theatres, [two prominent Canadian actor-directors] lambasted the federal government yesterday for doing next to nothing to support or promote Canadian culture.” The union representing workers in the Canadian film and TV industries is demanding that Ottawa institute new regulations which would more or less require cinemas, video stores, and television networks to devote a certain percentage of their space to homegrown content. CanCon laws, as they are known, have been on the books for decades, but the regulations have been loosened in recent years, just as many see the threat of creeping Americanism growing stronger.
Dancing Into Tomorrow
The National Ballet of Canada is quietly shaking up its repertoire and reassessing its focus during a trip to New York. Artistic director James Kudelka wants the company to focus on new works that can bring an audience to a deeper understanding of contemporary dance and solidify the company for the future, despite the mostly conservative bent of its home audiences. But the initial steps don’t seem to be going so well – today’s New York Times includes a scathing review of the National’s appearance at the cutting-edge Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Idiocy Is The New Intellectualism
“We live in a curious age of relettering (‘Hi! I’m Cyndee!’), reversals (Red Sox = world champions), and rejiggering. Paid flacks are the new journalists, fiction is the new truth, war is the new peace. The New York Times announced this week that Kiev is the new Prague. Does that mean we have to start drinking Ukrainian beer? I hope not. Osama bin Laden has famously declared that America is the new Rome… Perhaps you are familiar with the ladies’ apparel phenomenon known as vanity sizing. Here is all you need to know: Size 6 is the new 8.” And of course, absolutely everything is the new black. Whatever happened to the world just being itself?