Unable to gain traction in New York galleries, artist Patricia Cronin created a sculpture for a cemetary north of Manhattan. “At Woodlawn, often called ‘America’s Père Lachaise,’ or ‘our most prestigious cemetery for men and women of accomplishment,’ Cronin’s strategy of not fitting in turns fascinating. Cronin’s is now the third most visited grave site at Woodlawn, behind only Miles Davis and Duke Ellington.”
Blog
When Merce Meets Radiohead
It didn’t rock, reports Joan Acocella. “You can find dancing that is more poignant, or easier to watch, than Merce Cunningham’s, but I don’t think any choreographer in the world gives us a closer look at the truth. Beauty without reasons, and without anxiety over the lack of reasons: that may be what life was like before we started making it up. Sometimes, when I look at Cunningham’s stage, I think I’m seeing the world on the seventh day, with everything new and just itself—before the snake, and the tears, and the explanations.”
Seat Of Power: Running Two Of Britain’s Most Innovative Theatres
In another life, Michael Grandage – who is artistic director of London’s Donmar Warehouse and associate director of the Sheffield Crucible – might have “made an excellent soccer manager – but he is better off where he is. He’s not only programming two thriving theatres in London and Sheffield. He has also proved that it is possible to be preoccupied by power without being corrupted by it.”
File-Sharing That’s Legal?
“Two students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a system for sharing music within their campus community that they say can avoid the copyright battles that have pitted the music industry against many customers.”
Valenti: We Will Fight Them On The Beaches! (And Then Compromise)
Jack Valenti explains why the Motion Picture Academy proposed not sending copies of movies to Academy Award voters this year. And why he finally compromised on the issue. “The digital world with its zeroes and ones and perfect copies of originals has changed the movie landscape forever, which is why the movie world’s priorities have been permanently altered. The industry wants to use the Internet to dispatch films to consumers. But as we do, we must also challenge piracy and defeat it with every weapon we can summon–and we will succeed, I am convinced–or one day we will sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the decline and fall of America’s greatest artistic triumph and an awesome engine of job and economic growth.”
Arts Giving Down Sharply In US
For the first time in 12 years, charitable giving in the US was down last year. But cultural groups took a big hit, reports the Chronicle of Philanthropy. “A large, one-time gift in the 2001 fiscal year from the Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund to two arts and cultural groups in this year’s survey had the effect of causing donations to arts groups to decline steeply last year in percentage terms. The 14 arts organizations in the survey saw their aggregate gifts fall 26.5 percent in 2002. Some arts groups, however, say that they expect to raise at least as much in 2003 as they did last year, in part from capital campaigns.”
Musicians’ Union Accuses Fund Director of Embezzlement
The American Federation of Musicians has fired the executive director of its Sound Recording Special Payments Fund, which doles out money to unionized musicians around the country in payment for commercial recordings, and is accusing him of having embezzled more than $400,000 from the union. According to the AFM, no determination has been made as to whether a criminal complaint will be filed against Enex Steele, but the union has issued a formal demand that Steele immediately return the full amount he is charged with having taken. [Editor’s Note: The link for this story is to a formal press release from the AFM, and not to an objective and independent news source.]
That’s No Way To Balance A Budget
“The Museum of North Arizona has elected a new board of trustees and named an acting director after revelations that the former director and trustees had sold 21 weavings and paintings from the permanent collection to help pay for the institution’s operating expenses caused an uproar among museum members.” Worse, the sale of the objects netted the museum far less than what the objects were actually worth, according to a museum donor who spearheaded the protest against the board’s actions. The new acting director of the museum is Max Oelschlaeger, who says that his top two priorities will be to shore up the museum’s finances, and find a permanent director.
Kaiser Gets A Surprise For His 50th
Michael Kaiser, president of Washington’s Kennedy Center and recently the foremost star of the arts management world, does not surprise easily. But somehow, his friends and supporters managed to pull off a massive surprise party for Kaiser’s 50th birthday this week. “The entertainment was provided by Barbara Cook, Harolyn Blackwell, Patti LuPone and dancers from the Alvin Ailey troupe and American Ballet Theatre. The 136 guests included [Stephen] Sondheim, Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, World Bank President James Wolfensohn, and lots of other A-list political, business and diplomatic bigwigs.”
The Right To Withhold Your Name
As a rule, newspaper readers don’t pay a lot of attention to bylines. So a ‘byline strike,’ when it occurs, is the sort of semi-private protest which doesn’t raise many eyebrows, except within the industry. Still, when journalists at the Montreal Gazette withheld their bylines two years ago, they were ordered to reinstate them by the paper’s corporate owner, CanWest Global, and forbidden from talking to other journalists about the issue. Yesterday, a Quebec tribunal ruled that journalists have an absolute legal right to withhold their bylines, and though the ruling may go unnoticed by most Canadians, Antonio Zerbisias says that everyone who prizes independent thought should be celebrating.