A dispute at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in New Brunswick is dragging through the Canadian legal system. So far the legal costs alone are about $1.5 million for the three parties involved in the tug of war: the art gallery and the Canadian and British Beaverbrook foundations. “At stake is ownership of about 200 prized paintings worth at least $100 million, housed at the provincial art gallery in Fredericton.”
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NY Museums To Raise Admission Prices To Cover City Funding Cuts
New York City will likely cut its funding to city museums, and the museums are weighing ways to make up the difference. “Leaders of the 34 city-owned arts groups that make up the Cultural Institutions Group got a face-to-face account of the city’s financial problems in a meeting with Mayor Bloomberg a couple of weeks ago. What officials heard was that they’ll have to absorb the same cuts of 9 percent over 18 months required of all other city agencies. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the city’s top tourist attraction, is upping its suggested donation from $12 to $15 next month.”
Free Admission To Continue At UK Museums
The UK government is announcing that free admission will continue at the nation’s major museums for three more years. “Under today’s package being announced by Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, the big national museums will get increases of a fraction over inflation, while the lion’s share of a £40 million injection of extra cash to arts and heritage will go outside London to modernise regional museums.”
Istanbul Goes Modern
Istanbul has opened a Museum of Modern Art. “Istanbul has been a very important city like New York, London, Paris etc. for centuries. Its only deficiency was a modern arts museum. Now we have one. This museum has added another beauty to the city. Istanbul will be the city of museums and our studies for this will continue.”
NY Phil To Break Performance Record
The New York Philharmonic will set the Guinness World Record for ‘the most concerts performed by a symphony orchestra’ with concert No. 14,000 on Dec. 18. “In the course of our 163 years, we have commissioned 128 new works, and performed 485 world premieres and 443 U.S. premieres, including music that has become a staple of the classical repertoire.”
How Common Is Academic Plagiarism? (Quite!)
We only seem to hear about plagiarism when famous writers get caught. But in academia, plagiarism flourishes. According to one survey, 40 percent of academics believe they’ve been plagiarized. But academia “discourages victims from seeking justice, and when they do, tends to ignore their complaints — a kind of scholarly “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. “It’s like cockroaches. For every one you see on the kitchen floor, there are a hundred behind the stove.”
Bogdanovich: Today’s Movies Are Just Computer Graphics
Director Peter Bogdanovich says today’s movies are lacking. “There isn’t the cumulative effect of beginning, middle and end, and an impact that grows. There’s no craft left. Maybe I sound old-fashioned, but I’m proud of it.”
The Paris Opera Ballet’s Extraordinary School
Tobi Tobias spend a day at the School of the Paris Opera Ballet and comes away dazzled. “On their own, these 16- to 18-year-old ingénues display sparkling footwork that makes you think of water drops set in play by an exuberant fountain. Their extensions fly high, as do their huge cross-stage leaps, yet everything appears unforced. The beautiful alignment in which they’ve been schooled from the start—and can now maintain even when they’re sweeping through space—has become second nature, and they’ve learned to make the correctness that governs their most complicated and difficult feats look like child’s play.”
In Minnesota: Arts Giving Up, Social Services Down
“In all, Minnesota’s 12 largest arts organization — driven largely by proceeds from major capital campaigns — saw total revenue rise 18.1 percent. Meanwhile, total revenue generated by the state’s 29 largest social service agencies — from Lutheran Social Services to Catholic Charities to the Salvation Army — fell 4.4 percent.”
Burned By Branding
Why have so many managers bought into the idea that success is mostly a branding issue? “From dry academic papers to self-help blockbusters, the literature of the branding guru is notable not for clarity or coherence, but for a tendency to lapse into a form of post-modern patois – a managerial gibberish that has infected everything from psychometric profiling and ‘third way’ political discourse to the pseudo-intellectual ‘mission statements’ of conceptual art.”