Blog

Cleveland’s Arts Problem

“While the arts and cultural base clearly falls among Cleveland’s top three comparative advantages, we haven’t adequately embraced this area in our region’s economic strategy. Arts and culture have an enormous impact on our economy, and yet our region has one of the lowest rates of public support for this sector in the country.”

Dancing In Chicago

“Dance Chicago began 10 years ago to showcase about 40 local dance companies and foster new audiences for dance. Still based at the Athenaeum but featuring more than 200 Chicago troupes in every imaginable genre, from ballet to hip-hop, the festival could easily be known as Choreography Chicago.”

Power Play – Making Fun Of Vettriano

Scottish painter Jack Vettriano made this year’s list of “most powerful” people in the art world. But “Vettriano, a former miner whose popular paintings have earned record-breaking prices at auction in recent years, is given a sarcastically critical entry which begins by claiming the 53-year-old first made his living by ‘copying Old Masters’ and ends by noting that no major public gallery had so far chosen to invest in his work, ‘thank Heaven’.”

Voigt Out Of Another Strauss Production

Deborah Voigt was supposed to sing her first-ever Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier at Vancouver Opera this month. “The diva arrived a week late for rehearsals but everyone understood. A resident of Florida, she had just come through some terrifying hurricanes. What everyone did not understand was her unpreparedness. It soon became apparent that she was not ready to sing what could become one of the most important roles of her career. And so, her management announced that she would be withdrawing from the production, stating in a news release that she had stretched herself too thin, a singularly unfortunate turn of phrase considering that she had been released from a production earlier in the year by London’s Royal Opera, Covent Garden for being too fat.”

What’s Next For The Met?

What does the appointment of Peter Gelb to run the Metropolitan Opera mean for the country’s artistic future? “What will his artistic priorities be? This question can’t be answered without knowing what James Levine intends his own role to be now that his title has been downsized from artistic director to music director. Will Mr. Levine, busy in his new job as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Mr. Gelb divvy up the artistic responsibilities? It’s not yet clear – not even, I suspect, to them.”

Begging For Art

“Tate Modern, one of the most popular art galleries in the world, fears for the future. Last week the Tate organisation was forced to beg 23 artists, including David Hockney and Damien Hirst, to donate works it can no longer afford. The Tate is hopelessly outgunned by big spending foreign rivals in the acquisition of important work… The Tate estimates that, given the cuts or freezing of its government funds year after year, and inflation in market prices of as much as 1,000 per cent, the organisation’s buying power is now about 5 per cent of what it was 20 years ago.”

Shostakovich Looking For Home

A home is being sought for Shostakovich’s collections of thousands of recordings and manuscripts. “The collection was owned by conductor Roman Matsov, a close collaborator of Shostakovich. The recordings are stacked in the Estonian apartment where Matsov lived before his death in 2001, aged 84. Matsov’s son, Mark, is having trouble paying rent on the flat and fears the collection could lose its home.”

No Solutions Yet For Montreal Film Fest

“Telefilm Canada and Quebec’s film agency SODEC have rejected the four proposals submitted to receive funding for a Montreal film festival… Unhappy with the Montreal World Film Festival and its director, Serge Losique, the government agencies called for proposals Sept. 7. The call came after a study highlighted several problems with the existing festival, compared to others run in Toronto, Vancouver and Halifax.”