Frank Gehry will unveil his plans for the Art Gallery of Ontario this week, and the pressure is mounting. “Unlike any of Gehry’s other projects, the Art Gallery of Ontario is a two-headed client: There’s AGO director Matthew Teitelbaum and then there’s the publishing magnate Kenneth Thomson, who has donated not only his massive collection of art but also $70-million in cash to a reinvented art gallery. Added to the froth is a residual expectation that maybe, if everybody tries a little harder, $200-million — the estimated budget for the project — will buy the architectural ecstasy of Bilbao.”
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Thinking Small(er)
Some days, it seems as if every museum in America is mounting a major expansion, or at least talking about it. But at The Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver, the desire for more space is tempered by the realities of the marketplace, and the museum’s directors are anxious to do more with less. Rather than attempt a massive new building project, MOCAD is planning a modest expansion with a price tag of less than $4 million, which it hopes will generate buzz without endangering the institution financially, or alienating the public with demands for government subsidies in a notoriously conservative state.
Grilling The New Guy
As James Cuno prepares take over the leadership of the Art Institute of Chicago, he faces not only the scrutiny of the local critics, but the pressure of leading a major art institution at a time when much of the industry is looking for a way out of the “blockbuster” trend, without risking irrelevancy in the eys of the public. Cuno seems unfazed by the challenge: “Increasingly, people come to museums at different times of their life. We shouldn’t only think of the learning museum as something for young people. Increasingly it’s for older people. Our generations have been aging differently. So we need to be responsive to young and mature and senior learners as much as anything.”
Why Crossover Singers Almost Always Sound Stupid
From the first time the Three Tenors stepped up to a microphone and began belting Broadway tunes, discriminating listeners have known that there is a serious disconnect between the vocal styles of classical musicians and, well, everyone else. In fact, the real failure of the “crossover” genre is not that it has dumbed down the classical market, but that the singers almost always sound like fish out of water, says Richard Dyer. “Too many opera singers have had the wrong tonal quality, the wrong diction, the wrong rhythm — and the wrong arrangements. There is a kind of arrangement that knows no period; Las Vegas lies in a land beyond time and place, and that’s where the hearts of too many arrangers lie.”
Sony Not-So-Classical
Casey Stratton is a talented singer-songwriter from Michigan, who recently got himself a record deal. But the record company he signed with is Sony Classical, which has never marketed a pop singer before, and observers have been left wondering exactly what Stratton and Sony think they’re doing. The truth is, of course, that classical labels are willing to try anything to stay afloat these days, and if that means trying to balance the books on the back of a talented non-classical performer who would never have been given a chance by the increasingly risk-averse pop labels, then so be it.
The Dangers Of Copyright Protection
The current push by musicians, writers, and publishers for ever-increasing levels of copyright protection seems to have taken on a life of its own, and it may just be threatening everything we take for granted about the freedom of information. “In less than a decade, the much-ballyhooed liberating potential of the Internet seems to have given way to something of an intellectual land grab, presided over by legislators and lawyers for the media industries.”
Blaming The Audience
If classical music is really dying, or at least becoming a culturally irrelevant fringe entertainment, we have no one to blame but ourselves, writes Bernard Holland. “An implicit contract has been signed but is not necessarily being honored. It states that if I understand a piece of music, I’m likely to like it, too. This is not true. No amount of experience and analysis can by itself induce the stab of communication between art and its beholder… The consumer, it would seem, bears the fault. The product is rarely held accountable.”
The Best 95-Year-Old Filmmaker You’ve Never Heard Of
Unless you’re a real amateur film buff, the odds are that you’ve never hard of Sidney N. Laverents. But as filmmakers go, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more influential or prolific amateur. “Now 95, Mr. Laverents is a distinctively American artist: a rec-room tinkerer with the can-do optimism of someone who got through the Depression and found comfort in the suburbs. Following his own whims rather than any cultural movement, he turned himself from a one-man band into a one-man independent movie studio.” This week, 34 years after the release of his award-winning special-effects feature “Multiple SIDosis,” Laverents has earned an L.A. retrospective.
Why Not Anne?
The idea of a woman conducting an orchestra is no longer revolutionary by any stretch, but there still has never been a woman who has approached “major” status in the profession. Generally, the top candidates to bust through the glass ceiling are said to be those who promote themselves most skillfully, but the quiet competence and determination of Anne Manson makes her an attractive candidate as well. In fact, in a profession still plagued by sexist notions of women’s abilities, Manson is a calm and non-threatening rebuttal. Her unwillingness to be cutthroat may hurt her career in the short term, but in the long run, it may just be what vaults her to stardom.
Goodspeed’s Dilemma
Connecticut-based Goodspeed Musicals, which for years has made its home in the town of East Haddam, has been planning to build a new 700-seat theater across the street from its current stage. But last year, the nearby burg of Middletown came calling, offering a better site, a tax abatement, and loads of other perks if Goodspeed would move its base of operations. As yet, Goodspeed’s board has made no decision on where the new theatre will go, but the spectacle of two cities battling over a cultural jewel is a bit sickening, says Frank Rizzo. And besides, how exactly is Middletown planning to make back its investment in Goodspeed if it wins the battle?