Baltimore’s American Visionary Art Museum gets a major upgrade this month with the unveiling of the “Jim Rouse Visionary Center, a sweeping, $9.3 million expansion of AVAM that will open to the public in a week and a half. Set in a 28,000-square-foot historic building that was originally a whiskey warehouse, the three-story center will double [AVAM’s] footprint.”
Blog
Should Smithsonian History Museum Be Representing Current Events?
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has put up a new display dealing with the current war in Iraq. Some historians disapprove. “Treatment of current events without benefit of historical distance and analysis is a risky enterprise… the choice to include the operations in Iraq under the “Price of Freedom” title “presents a partisan view of the current war and is counter to our neutral public mission.”
Chicago Symphony Has A Deal
The musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra have overwhelmingly ratified a new three-year contract which will raise their base salary to $114,000 by 2007, keeping them among the ranks of the highest paid orchestras in the world. The deal also provides retirement incentives for older members of the ensemble, and allows the CSO to reduce the full complement of musicians from 111 to 106 through such attrition. There will be no reduction in the number of musicians on stage for any given concert. The musicians also agreed to pay a higher share of health insurance costs. The agreement comes a week after the musicians had cleaned out their lockers in anticipation of a possible strike.
Philly Mayor Brokers “Framework” For Orchestra Deal
The musicians and management of the Philadelphia Orchestra have agreed on what Mayor John Street is calling a “framework” for a new collective bargaining agreement, following a week of intensive negotiations mediated by the mayor himself. The details have yet to be filled in, but Street says he expects a deal to be done within the next 7 to 10 days.
Expanding Opera’s Reach
Back in 1996, the Houston Grand Opera decided that it was high time for it to acknowledge the demographic shift underway in the U.S., and premiered a new opera, Florencia, written in Spanish and focused on Latin American sensibilities. “Drenched in the seductive atmosphere of Magic Realism, it became a surprise hit which has not only been revived in Houston but staged as well in Los Angeles, Seattle, Mexico City and even Manaos,” the Brazilian opera house where Florencia was set. Now, the company has commissioned a second opera from the same composer, leading to talk of a new place for Hispanic culture in the operatic literature.
Hollywood Pushing Out Indies In Foreign Markets
The indie films and B-movie flicks that once constituted the bulk of the American presence at foreign theaters are rapidly being replaced by big-name Hollywood movies. “As [DVD] sales have been replacing video rentals, globe-spanning media conglomerates have begun using ‘specialty’ film wings like Disney’s Miramax, Sony’s Screen Gems, News Corporation’s Fox Searchlight and Warner Independent Pictures to fill the demand of foreign markets with their own products, leaving less room both for independent sellers and for the small local distributors.”
Politics & Profit
Political polarization may make for a country full of angry people, but for publishers of politically themed books, the currently inflamed passions of the U.S. voting population are nothing short of a financial windfall, as readers snatch up blatantly partisan tomes by the dozens. Of course, the predominence of such aggressively one-sided books is coming at the cost of more serious and even-handed political analysis, but as one publsher puts it, “To publish for the middle of the road right now would be suicide.”
A Hoosier Surplus
The Indianapolis Symphony ended the 2003-04 season with a balanced budget after two consecutive years of red ink. The orchestra eked out a $5,466 surplus on a budget of $24 million, following a year in which the ensemble’s musicians agreed to contract concessions and the annual fund increased by $400,000.
Just So Long As They Don’t Play That Awful “We Deliver” Jingle
A band called Postal Service (so named because the members lived in different cities and mailed each other snippets of music as part of their songwriting process) recently received a cease-and-desist letter from, you guessed it, the U.S. Postal Service. It could have been just one more story of overaggressive copyright enforcement in a situation in which no one was losing money or getting hurt, but instead, the band and the mail carriers worked out a deal. As a result, the band gets to keep its name and its stock of albums, and the U.S. Postal Service has a brand new way to promote itself.
Authenticity and Politics Hurting Cuba Dance Fest
Cuba’s International Festival of Ballet is featuring the work of George Balanchine this year. Or is it? The festival only has official permission to perform one of the seven Balanchine ballets it is presenting, and copied the rest from videotapes. “The debate over the authenticity of these productions has emerged at a festival already hurt by the United States government’s restrictions on travel to Cuba. Nine dancers from the New York City Ballet and one from the Dance Theater of Harlem were barred from attending, making this the first time in 30 years that an American has not performed at the festival.”