The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is 200 years old this year, and it has been a year of great change at the venerable Philadelphia institution. Bigger isn’t always better, of course, but thr Academy’s considerable expansion seems to have increased its artistic viability as well. “The museum benefits enormously from the addition of six large gallery spaces, with more to come in a few years. The new galleries not only enable the museum to display considerably more of its permanent collection; they have also produced an unexpected dividend. This is a more agreeable marriage between art and architecture, especially in the institution’s historic building.”
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Something Rotten In The Opera House Of Denmark
Copenhagen’s much-anticipated new opera house opens this weekend with near-unprecedented fanfare, but a lot of people aren’t at all happy with the finished product. First on the list of malcontents: the architect, who claims that his vision was forcibly altered by the project’s lead donor.
DaVinci’s Workshop
Leonardo DaVinci’s Florence workshop may have been discovered by researchers at an Italian military installation. “Italian museum officials are hoping that the discovery of the frescoes and five small rooms where Leonardo might have lived and worked, in a building just off the Piazza of the Santissima Annunziata in central Florence, will help flesh out the life of the artist, inventor and scientist.”
Strathmore Nears Completion
The Music Center at Strathmore, in suburban Washington, D.C. is very nearly ready for its close-up, and if successful in its mission, it will change the face of the arts in the Baltimore-Washington corridor. “The state-of-the-art building is unique in the way it embraces art from its tiniest beginnings to its loftiest expressions. Five-year-olds learn how to hold a violin correctly; 3-year-olds can take tap dance with their mothers or fathers. When the concert hall opens next month, cellist Yo-Yo Ma will be center stage; later, Sauvion Glover will bring his thrilling kind of tap to the hall.”
Architect To The Bureaucracy
For most of his career, Thom Mayne has been known as the architect whose work nearly everyone admired, but with whom almost no one wanted to work, due to his fiery temper and insistence on having his way in all matters of creative and artistic decision-making. And yet, Mayne has risen in recent years to become one of architecture’s most in-demand names, and even more surprisingly, he appears to be the go-to guy when a building needs to be designed for that most inflexible and creativity-stifling of all bureaucratic institutions, the U.S. government.
Jarvi In Newark: Where To Begin?
It was a major coup when the New Jersey Symphony announced that Neeme Jarvi would become its next music director. But what will the legendary Jarvi need to accomplish to put the NJSO on the map? “The [major] task will be to make the woodwind and brass players perform with the polish, subtlety, warmth and cohesiveness of the string players, newly empowered by the orchestra’s acquisition of a cache of valuable string instruments… [Jarvi,] with his obvious taste for Nordic music and with a readily available stable of maestros to extend the Nordic range… seems to be ideally placed to develop a specialty with this orchestra much the way Charles Dutoit did in French music with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.”
Those Lonely, Lonely Germans
Something about the sight of a lone figure wandering along a remote road was an irresistable inspiration for countless German artists of the mid-1800s. “The early 19th century in Germany was tough on intellectuals; in the wake of the Napoleonic wars and the Congress of Vienna came a fierce persecution of democratic ideas and those who held them, so that to assert one’s ‘German-ness’ as an artist, one’s allegiance to folk culture and local history, was in some ways a radical act.” Inherent in the theme of the lonely exile was “an inwardness, whispering and pleading to be let out.”
Health Care Cut Off For St. Louis Musicians
The work stoppage at the St. Louis Symphony has been remarkably civil thus far, but tempers are beginning to flare over the issue of health insurance, which was cut off to the musicians when they rejected management’s final contract offer. The SLSO had prepaid the musicians’ premium, and received a rebate from the cancellation. Meanwhile, the 2-year-old son of an orchestra cellist had a seizure last week, and his mother found herself stuck with a major hospital bill when her insurance was found to have been terminated. The musicians claim that their health insurance was never affected during previous work stoppages.
More Concerts Canceled
A third week of concerts has fallen to the St. Louis Symphony’s work stoppage. This time, the scheduled soloist and conductor was Itzhak Perlman, and the SLSO chose to cancel several days sooner than usual, due to the unusually large number of tickets sold, and the possibility of patrons coming great distances to see the famous fiddler.
A Phoenix Rises In Texas
The San Antonio Symphony was supposed to be dead and buried by now, the victim of endless deficits, questionable management, and meager community support. Instead, SAS officials are in a jubilant mood after meeting the requirements of a major challenge grant, and are preparing to launch a major PR initiative designed to increase ticket sales and make the orchestra more attractive to high-rolling donors.