It can cost $40,000 to rent Carnegie Hall for the night. What drives up costs? Partly it’s the stagehands’ union. For example, “in the fiscal years ending June 30, 2001, 2002 and 2003, Carnegie stagehand and properties manager Dennis O’Connell made between $309,000 and $344,000 annually, second only to former executive and artistic directors Franz Xaver Ohnesorg and the late Robert Harth. That’s more than some principal players in major symphony orchestras. Three stagehand colleagues came in third, fourth and fifth, earning more than, say, Carnegie’s senior staff or director of development.”
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Writing Right In Pittsburgh, City Of Asylum
Huang Xiang “earned international attention in 1978 when he and friends traveled 1,500 miles to Beijing and posted his political poems on a wall in the street. The Democracy Wall Movement, as it became known, put him at odds with the authorities. For the next 20 years, he was jailed numerous times, blamed for inciting a riot and sent to labor camps. It was only when a Beijing company revoked a long-awaited publishing contract because of governmental pressure that Huang saw a way out of China.” Eventually he got to America, where he became part of the City of Asylum project in Pittsburgh…
Kramer: New MoMA Is Cold, Elephantine
Hilton Kramer registers his disappointment with the new Museum of Modern Art: “The first and gravest of our disappointments is with the ill-conceived architecture. Yoshio Taniguchi’s redesign has at every turn in its cold and elephantine structure the look and feel of a Japanese parody of the kind of American modernism that has itself long outlived its expiration date. Thus the galleries are essentially an architectural assemblage of—what else?—bleak, oversized white boxes in which the scale of the interior space and the unrelieved whiteness of the walls conspire to discomfort the viewer while diminishing the aesthetic integrity of works of art marooned in an environment remarkably hostile to the pleasures of the eye.”
MoMA In Middle Age
The Museum of Modern Art reflects a change in the museum’s character. “MoMA is no longer the edgy institution of its youth, a place of argument, sharp elbows, and missionary zeal. It remains a vital museum, but one whose energies now seem older and more contemplative. In its early days, the museum’s celebrated garden was a place of retreat—not just from the hurly-burly of the city but from the metaphysical racket within the museum. Now, in this new building, Taniguchi has imbued the entire museum with the spirit of the garden, creating a light-filled temple.”
A Band With An Internet Career
The the band Wilco’s recording company wanted changes in the band’s latest album, the group decided to leave and make its work available over the internet. It’s been a good business move as the group has built a following. Why don’t more musicians embrace downloading? “What if there was a movement to shut down libraries because book publishers and authors were up in arms over the idea that people are reading books for free? It would send a message that books are only for the elite who can afford them. Stop trying to treat music like it’s a tennis shoe, something to be branded. If the music industry wants to save money, they should take a look at some of their six-figure executive expense accounts. All those lawsuits can’t be cheap, either.”
Pittsburgh To Nonprofits: Help Us Out, Or Else
Pittsburgh is asking nonprofit corporations in the city to kick in $6 million towards its financial recovery efforts, and warning that groups refusing to participate could face political retribution down the line. Among the threats from city and state lawmakers are that non-participating nonprofits could have state grants withheld, or even face the loss of their nonprofit status, which allows them to operate tax-free.
Public Theatre Picks Its Next Chief
“The board of the Public Theater, [New York’s] signature nonprofit theater company, is expected today to hire Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, R.I., as its next producer. If approved, Mr. Eustis, 46, will succeed George C. Wolfe, the current producer, and become just the fourth person to hold a job that is considered one of the most prestigious in the American theater… Mr. Eustis will probably face considerable challenges as the Public Theater producer, a job that often requires one to be equal parts diplomat and dictator, artist and administrator.”
But She’s Been Such A Paragon Of Journalistic Integrity!
Celebrity biographer Kitty Kelley is being sued by an Alabama writer who claims that she plagiarized parts of her recent book on the Bush family from an article he wrote for a web site. Kelley’s publisher doesn’t deny that parts of the article were reproduced verbatim in the book, but claims that “it was not protected by copyright, was of minimal scope, did not damage Mr. Wilson and was covered under the legal doctrine of ‘fair use.'”
Handle With Extreme Care
MoMA’s move from Manhattan to Queens and back to Manhattan may have been a public relations triumph, but it was a logistical nightmare the likes of which would cause the most experienced moving company to break out in a collective flop sweat. The woman who has single-handedly overseen the moves is named Jennifer Russell, and her job over the past two years has demanded the combined skills of curator, stagehand, travel agent, and international diplomat.
Raphael As A Product Of His Environment(s)
A new exhibit of the work of Raphael, as well as the work of those who influenced him, is a new way of looking at an artist whose impact on the art world is immeasurable. “‘Influence’ scarcely covers the relation to Raphael’s work not only of Michelangelo and the other titan of the High Renaissance, Leonardo, but also of Raphael’s father, Giovanni Santi; Perugino, who may have been his teacher; Pinturicchio; and Fra Bartolommeo. The show, which incorporates works by most of those elders, demonstrates that the prodigy from the Marches extracted the formal essence of each man’s art to feed a synthetic style that would become a beau ideal of Western painting for the next four centuries.”