The Barnes Collection, a stunning private-turned-public accumulation of Renoirs, Mattisses, and other masterpieces housed in a Philadelphia suburb, has been in dire financial straits for quite some time, and a new book details the chaotic mess that has led the Barnes to such a desperate state. But author John Anderson is not interested in merely laying out a history of mismanagement. His book also points towards what is yet to come – the likely appropriation of the Barnes treasures by the city’s political and cultural elites, who have a history with this sort of thing, and who have long been strangely irked by the legacy left behind by Alfred Barnes.
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Schultz Still Guilty Of Dealing In Stolen Goods
“In a long-awaited decision, a US federal court has rejected an appeal by a New York antiquities dealer who argued that he should not be convicted of violating US law for having dealt in Egyptian antiquities. The objects are claimed as Egyptian property under Egyptian law. The dealer, Frederick Schultz, was sentenced in June 2002 to 33 months in prison for conspiracy to receive stolen property, but argued that Egypt’s claim to own the objects under its patrimony law did not make them ‘stolen’ in the U.S.”
Balancing Past, Present, And Future In Cincinnati
Despite the large number of news stories devoted to the financial crunch facing the orchestral industry, plenty of orchestras are doing just fine, thank you. Case in point: the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, which is using a combination of cutting-edge marketing strategy and reverence for the history of the industry to stay on the right side of the financial ledger. And budget-slashing boards at other major American orchestras also might want to make note of the fact that the CSO is accomplishing all this while continuing to make recordings, appear on nationwide TV broadcasts, and mount extensive (and expensive) national and international tours.
Cincinnati By The Numbers
Even with an orchestral success story like Cincinnati, the continued economic malaise has taken its toll. “Since the stock market decline, the CSO endowment has shrunk from more than $94 million to $61 million. To help make ends meet, the CSO has increased its endowment spending rate from 6 percent to 8.35 percent… Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on the players’ two-year contract.”
Seattle Opera Stays In The Black
“Despite a shortened season and fewer ticket sales than usual, the Seattle Opera ended the season on a high note… For the 11th consecutive year, the opera has ended the season in the black. For 2002-03, the opera spent exactly what its budget projected: $14.3 million.” Not all the news was bright – slumping ticket sales are always a concern – but the company’s board says that prospects for the future are brighter because of the financial conservatism the company has adopted for the present.
Guggenheim Expanding Again
“The Guggenheim Foundation and the mayor of Taichung, Jason Hu, have unveiled a proposal for a new Guggenheim Museum in Taichung, Taiwan. Plans for a spectacular new building have already been designed by the world-renowned deconstructionist architect Zaha Hadid… [T]he museum would be part of a larger cultural complex to include an opera house designed by Jean Nouvel, who designed the proposed Rio de Janeiro Guggenheim, and a new Taichung City Hall to be designed by Frank Gehry… This is the Guggenheim Foundation’s fifth attempt to open a museum in Asia, four plans for Japan having failed, and is the latest of a series of proposed Guggenheim’s throughout the world.”
The Museum As Amusement Park: Where Has All The Intellectual Curiosity Gone?
There was a time when science museums, children’s museums, and the like were thought of as teaching tools, as a chance to impart important details about the workings of the world into the minds of visitors, especially children. But no more. “Museums aren’t there to teach a systemic body of information in some prescribed manner, the current ideology goes. Nor, as studies show, are they very good at it — people retain very little data from their visits. Instead, museums offer a kind of neutral platform where visitors explore the drift and dimension of their own curiosity as much as they do the accumulated knowledge about a particular subject or field.”
High Priestess of Bach Dies
Rosalyn Tureck was one of the leading Bach interpreters of her generation, and a celebrated keyboardist who also embraced contemporary music, making her Carnegie Hall debut not on the piano or the harpsichord, for which she would become so well known later, but on the strange and eery electronic instrument known as the theremin. Brash and opinionated, she once snapped to a colleague, “You play it your way; I play it Bach’s way.” She passed away at her New York home this weekend, at the age of 88.
Shakespeare on Tape: An Unexpected Treasure Trove
Shakespeare himself could never have imagined a project of this scope, but Clive Brill wouldn’t give up on it. The result of Brill’s efforts is a new 98-CD set featuring the complete dramatic output of William Shakespeare, as performed by some of the great actors of the era. “Produced in London recording studios between 1996 and 2000, and featuring many of the most accomplished classical actors on the British stage, the full set feels like one of those astonishing feats of engineering that result in mile-high towers or friezes chiseled into the sides of mountains.”
For All That Reading, They Sure Can’t Write…
“Scholars in the humanities spend much of their time writing, and are forced constantly to read the work of superb writers. Yet they pour out streams of gnarled and barbarous sentences and don’t even know they are doing it. Professors in English departments, after lives spent close to the best literature, usually produce the worst prose.” How could this be?