When Don Bacigalupi arrived as director of the San Diego Museum of Art in 1999, the museum was considered a difficult job. “What a difference four years and new leadership makes. The museum has risen to national respectability by generating high-quality exhibitions touching on all areas of the collection, revitalizing the collection itself through judicious acquisitions, and establishing a collegial relationship with other museums in Balboa Park, across town, across the United States and beyond.” Now Bacigalupi departs to head up the Toledo Art Museum.
Blog
Growing Pains – The Morgan Gets Bigger
Charles Pierce, director of the Morgan Library in New York, has just moved into temporary offices while the library is being expandedIt’s now so common to see museums shut, turn into construction sites and reopen a few years later that one can easily assume that the whole process is that simple. Yet as I surveyed my new office, I realized how complex, unsettling, and even difficult the last three years have been. There were, as I learned only after we had started, four major challenges involved in our goal of remaking the Morgan Library.”
Scottish Ballet, Visual Artists Call Truce
“A Row between Scottish Ballet and Scotland’s visual arts community showed signs of being defused yesterday, following what was called a ‘positive’ meeting of the two parties. The meeting was the first sign that Scottish Ballet may be willing to compromise on its plan to take over Glasgow’s Tramway arts venue.”
Carded – Orange County Arts
Orange County arts groups introduce an arts card. “The OC Arts Card, sponsored by Arts Orange County, will provide 10-40 percent discounts at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, South Coast Repertory and about 40 other local arts institutions. Discounts will range from savings on admission and tickets to reductions on classes and gift-shop items. Proceeds will support arts education in the county and help fund arts grants.”
The Rise Of “Illegal Art”
“Around the country, copyright concerns are fueling a grassroots movement that brings together artists frustrated by the corporate lock on popular-culture icons, musicians pondering the distribution of their work in the era of sampling and Napster, and technophiles worried about the ways that new digital copyright-protection technology is fencing in the formerly wide open electronic frontier. More than protecting those who create, this growing chorus of critics says, the current copyright system serves to enrich big corporations, stifle innovation, silence social criticism, and impoverish the culture.”
Money To Burn Crashes And Burns
The new musical Money To Burn has closed in London after only two performances. The show closed between it’s matinee and a planned evening performance, making it one of the shortest-lived runs ever in London’s West End. “The notices were unusually savage, especially in a town where theatre critics tend to couch their harsher observations with the occasional leavening word. Not so this time. Charles Spencer in The Daily Telegraph called the musical “jaw-droppingly dreadful.” In The Guardian, Michael Billington was one of several critics to give the show one star out of five: ‘Faced with such dross as this, one’s first inclination is to run screaming into the night’.”
Booker Winner’s Improbable Win
D.B.C. Pierre’s Booker win seems improbable. Pierre is “the pen name of Peter Finlay, 42, a cartoonist, and a reformed gambler and drug addict. He now lives in a remote part of Ireland. The initials stand for Dirty But Clean.” He says he absorbed the dialects for his his first-ever book by watching Jerry Springer on TV.
Critics Attack Hytner’s Broadway Deal
Director Nicholas Hytner is winning cheers for his direction of London’s National Theatre. But his deal to transfer National plays to Broadway has angered some Broadway producers. And others are wondering if Hytner will be able to deliver on promises to superstar playwrights.
Donor Demands Princeton Return $525 Million
A donor who gave Princeton’s business school $525 million to help train talent for the US government, is demanding the money back. “Princeton has known for decades that the goal of our foundation is to send students into federal government, and they’ve ignored us. Princeton has abused the largest charitable gift in the history of American higher education, and that’s embarrassing. They will lose the money.”
Adelaide Fest Goes European
“The indigenous content of the 2004 Adelaide Festival was a vexed question given the emphasis put on it last year by Los Angeles’ modern opera impresario Peter Sellars before his spectacular resignation over disagreements with the Adelaide Festival board. Seemingly to avoid the issue altogether, artistic director Stephen Page, an indigenous man and artistic director of the Bangarra Dance Theatre, has programmed a strongly European festival in the conventional arts mode.”