The Museum of Modern Art’s decision to hike its single entry fee by a whopping 67% seems like a calculated attempt to play to the museum’s base, even if it costs MoMA in the number of casual gawkers it draws. “The upscaling of MoMA is the clearest example of the ways that the nation’s top art museums are trying to change their business model. With attendance flat in recent years and many costs, like insurance and utilities, growing, museum directors see ticket-price increases as a way both to raise funds and to push more visitors to become members.”
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No, It’s Not Just A Big Pastry
It’s rare that a national government will get directly involved with a major art exhibition, but Denmark’s leaders have apparently decided that the country’s artistic riches offer the best way to promote tourism and knowledge of Danish culture. Thus, Canada’s largest city is now playing host to “SuperDanish: Newfangled Danish Culture, a mammoth showcase that features 13 artistic disciplines, 143 individual events, over 200 artists, and 85 education programs that will reach 3,000 students.” It’s partly about exporting culture, of course, but SuperDanish is also an exercise in extroverted self-discovery for a country that is just beginning to diversify.
Inuit Art: The Final Frontier?
“Instant communication and easier international travel have made the art world more homogeneous than ever, but isolated, overlooked pockets of offbeat creativity still exist. One of the most surprising can be found on or near Hudson Bay in northeastern Canada, where dozens if not hundreds of indigenous artists in government settlements have produced an extraordinarily original body of work.” But it’s only recently has Inuit art begun to garner attention outside of Canada, despite a centuries-old tradition of carved objects and a burgeoning body of work from the modern era.
La Scala Alleging Dirty Tricks in Muti Flap
The war of words between Milan’s La Scala and London’s Royal Opera House ratcheted up considerably over the weekend, with La Scala releasing a raft of correspondence which, it claims, show that conductor Riccardo Muti was not out of line in withdrawing from an ROH production. Meanwhile, the London house has announced that Antonio Pappano has agreed to cancel several U.S. engagements to replace Muti on the podium.
Norway To Overhaul Museum Structure
Norway is planning a major reorganization of its national art collection as part of a modernization effort aimed at the country’s museums. “At the core of the overhaul are plans to merge four existing institutions into one that will give greater prominence to contemporary art, to be called The New National Museum for Art, Architecture and Design… [But] critics of the project fear that the changes could do more harm than good,” and are raising objections to the individual selected to coordinate the reorganization.
What Makes A Metro?
In Washington, D.C., as in so many cities across the U.S., a battle for the soul of the region is being waged between those who live in the suburbs, and those who reside in the urban core. But the combatants may be missing the point: “There is a panache and prestige to being downtown — baseball owners nationwide have learned that, theaters and nightclubs have capitalized on it and retailers who fled cities after the 1960s riots are rediscovering it. And there is an ease and convenience to the burbs — as retailers, football teams and movie theater chains have long known.” In other words, cities and their surrounding areas have changed in the last 50 years, and both sides need each other more than they care to acknowledge.
Has Chelsea Finally Arrived?
It’s taken more than seven years, but New York’s Chelsea neighborhood finally seems to be making good on its claim to being the next great art neighborhood. “It now takes two full days, morning to night, to visit just the best-known Chelsea galleries. But for the first time that I can remember, doing the autumn rounds felt mostly worthwhile. There was real variety on view — of medium, subject matter, approach, scale. More important, there were a few artists and works that didn’t fit into convenient pigeonholes.”
Tony-Nominated Playwright Caught Plagiarizing
“A prominent criminal psychiatrist and a writer for The New Yorker have accused the English playwright Bryony Lavery of lifting parts of dialogue, structure and characters from their work and using them in her drama Frozen, which closed on Broadway last month and was nominated for a Tony Award. [The accusers] say that they have found at least a dozen instances of word-for-word plagiarism in the play, as well as thematic and biographical similarities to a 1997 New Yorker profile… and a 1998 book.” Independent comparisons clearly bear out the claims, and Lavery isn’t commenting.
From ABBA To Atwood: A Director’s Crossover
“There aren’t many directors who would feel equally at home staging the nostalgic ABBA songfest Mamma Mia! as well as the futurist opera based on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.” In fact, crossing between the worlds of opera and musical theater at all tends to be frowned on, but somehow, director Phyllida Lloyd seems to have won over the finicky devotees of each. Having engineered the current Toronto production of Handmaid, her next project is the English National Opera’s Ring Cycle.
Glitter Sneaks In, And Substance Takes A Back Seat
The San Sebastián International Film Festival made its name with a willingness to push the envelope and present works at which more prominent fests turn up their nose. But with reputation comes commercial viability, and Hollywood has begun to “discover” San Sebastián. The result, say observers, is a decided uptick in the festival’s glitter factor, and a noticable downplaying of the feistiness for which it is known. Still, San Sebastián continues to fill a unique role in the development of new and innovative film artists, and no amount of Hollywood involvement seems likely to change that overarching mission.