After two years of big deficits, the San Francisco Opera has finished its most recent fiscal year in the black with a tiny surplus of $27,000 on an operating budget of $54.6 million. “The result, contained in a recently concluded financial audit, marks a striking step forward after consecutive budget deficits of $7.7 million and $4. 4 million.”
Blog
Lost Shelley Letters To Be Sold
“A newly discovered set of letters written by the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley are to go on sale after being found in a trunk at a house in London. The correspondence, written by Shelley and his friend and biographer Thomas Jefferson Hogg, was destined for a car boot sale before being identified.”
OED To Embrace ‘Wife-Beater’?
“Coming soon to a dictionary near you: ‘wife-beater.’ Not the abusive husband, mind you — but the sleeveless, white undershirt. The ‘wife-beater’ — frequently spotted on Kid Rock, available at your neighborhood Gap — is soon to be immortalized in the Oxford English Dictionary. It’ll likely be added, somewhere between ‘whip’ and ‘women’s lib,’ next month.”
Stratford Festival Founder Dies
Tom Patterson, the founder of Canada’s Stratford Festival, as died. He was 84. “Without Tom Patterson, there would be no Stratford Festival of Canada. His was an extraordinary vision at an extraordinary time.”
Why McBank Architecture Is Bad For Us
“Banks used to be about ritual and permanence. They resembled Greek or Roman temples, with the banker playing the secular priest, dispensing loans instead of benedictions. Banks inspired awe, though their built-for-the-ages classicism was salesmanship, designed to convince depositors that their money would be safer in the vault than stuffed in a mattress. No more. Now banks want to look like Starbucks, not the Parthenon.” As branch banks approach omnipresence, can their new designs balance customer-friendliness with character?
Barenboim’s Successor? Symphony Takes The Question To The People
“At Tuesday night’s packed Chicago Symphony Orchestra town meeting, the dominant tone was exceedingly civil — more akin to placid chamber music than a crashing symphony. The gathering at Symphony Center’s Buntrock Hall was called to let the public sound off on the CSO’s search for a new music director to replace Daniel Barenboim after the 2005-06 season. … Many had specific names in mind — Pinchas Zukerman, Erich Kunzel — to fill Barenboim’s podium. One man delivered a prepared paean to National Symphony Orchestra conductor Leonard Slatkin.”
Smithsonian’s Small, Prosecutor At Impasse Over Sentence
“More than a year after he pleaded guilty to buying tribal art made from the feathers of endangered birds, Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence M. Small has not started the 100 hours of community service he was sentenced to by the federal court, in part because of a disagreement with the U.S. attorney over what he should do.” Small became Smithsonian secretary two years after the 1998 purchase.
Arts Leaders Beg, But Is Anyone Listening?
Minnesota artists and their supporters gathered at the state capitol in St. Paul this week for an annual day of organized lobbying designed to bring legislators around to the idea that cutting the arts to balance a budget is not a good way to run a state. But even as organizers declared the day a success, some observers are wondering whether such efforts make any real difference. Two years ago, when Minnesota was in the throes of a budget crisis, more than 1,000 people participated in Arts Advocacy Day, and the legislature still slashed the arts budget by 32%.
Aussie Arts Groups Fight Changes To Federal Funding
Australia’s federal Arts Council is preparing to undergo a major restructuring which would see grant money parceled out based as much on an applying group’s business plan as on its artistic product. “The council itself would decide on funding for strategic projects, rather than leaving it to the boards of individual art forms. The council has faced outrage from staff and arts organisations about the lack of consultation on the changes,” and now, the revolt is gaining some serious momentum.
Trimming Overhead… Permanently
One of the toughest challenges of managing an arts organization is dealing with the high fixed costs of doing business: office rental, computer costs, security, etc. So it’s worth asking just how many of these “essentials” are actually still essential in the digital world. “Of course, arts organizations need control of many assets to do what they do…since often what they do requires lots of physical space. But there are signs in the world that new options are available, if an organization is really serious about rethinking its fixed costs, its overhead, and the ‘stuff’ it thinks it needs to do its work.”