Recording labels have generally been ruthless in dropping artists that haven’t sold as well as expected. Now the tables are being turned. “These days, with the entire music biz in flux, a growing number of major-label artists, from Pearl Jam to Natalie Merchant to Jimmy Buffett, are biting the hand that doesn’t feed them enough. They’re finding that they can start their own record labels and do just fine outside the big-label structure, that going independent and using technology to their advantage can pay off both financially and creatively.”
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Remaking London’s National Theatre
Fresh into the job as director of London’s National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner has changed the way critics think about the institution. “The season has been risky, adventurous, yet critically acclaimed and popular. Hytner has the near-superstitious look of one who can’t quite believe it is happening. ‘All the shows that have opened so far are full at the box office. We can’t do any better. It is all that I could have hoped for. We can only go downhill from here’.”
Zeffirelli – An Energetic 80
“Reports of director Franco Zeffirelli’s decline – physical, artistic and mental – have been exaggerated. He may be 80, and suffering balance problems – the result of an inner-ear ailment, contracted after a botched hip operation – but in the past six months alone, he has completed a film about Maria Callas, staged opera productions in Italy and the US, and had a huge success with Luigi Pirandello’s Absolutely! (perhaps) in London. He is now back at Covent Garden, for the first time in nearly 40 years, to direct Pagliacci.”
Gangs And Amateurs Rip Off Museums
Theft from European museums is becoming a bigger problem. “Harried police investigators and heartbroken museum curators blame lackluster security guards, insufficient budgets and lenient laws for the rise in thefts. Problems have plagued not only grand institutions like the Louvre in Paris, but also lesser-known regional museums, churches and stately private homes. Thieves have increasingly targeted displays of diamonds, antique clocks, sculptures and rare furniture that can sometimes be sold more easily than well-recognized paintings by master artists. The trade is lucrative – some pieces of rare furniture are valued at $1 million or more.”
Museum Board, Director, Resign In Selling Scandal
The Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff was facing a $1 million deficit this spring, so its director and board decided to sell artifacts to finance operations. That has led to the forced resignation of the museum’s board and director. “The museum’s leadership came under fire after 21 of the museum’s artifacts were sold to raise operating money, its geology department was closed and paleontologist David Gillette and his research staff were fired. Director Robert Baughman told members in June that the sale was necessary because the museum was so broke it had funds for only three weeks of operation.”
Wave Of Personal UK Galleries Opening
The success of Charles Saatchi’s new gallery in London has spurred others, including Sir Elton John, to build and open their own public galleries. “Opinion is divided in the art world over the reasons for this sudden wave of philanthropy. While there are few who do not welcome the thought of these eclectic collections being made public, sceptics sense that the scale of investment being bestowed on the new galleries owes as much to vanity as it does to charity.”
Whistler – So Tough He Responded To His Own Obituary
In 1902 James McNeill Whistler collapsed from a heart attack and hung on to life for a week before recovering. But a local Dutch paper printed a premature obituary, promting a letter from Whistler: “May I therefore acknowledge the tender glow of health induced by reading, as I sat here in the morning sun, the flattering attention paid me by your gentleman of ready wreath and quick biography!” He recovered enough to go on to Amsterdam to see one of his paintings in the Rijksmuseum before returning home to London. And while never entirely well again, the world-famous artist lived another year, finally expiring 100 years ago this week, on July 17, 1903.
A Movie That Gets Inside Dance
A new film by Robert Altman about the Joffrey Ballet puts a new spin on filming dance. “Working with director of photography Andrew Dunn, Altman often shoots from unusual angles, tracking gracefully from head to toe, for instance, or elsewhere using noteworthy crane shots and other devices to bring the viewer arrestingly, literally inside the dance.”
Rebranding German Culture
Is German culture stolid, dull and humorless? “To counter their stereotyping as humorless, rude, know-it-all, perfectionist workaholics with a historic tendency toward murderous chauvinism, Germans will soon be portrayed in advertisements across Europe as hedonistic, with-it, athletic sexpots. Think Claudia Schiffer, not Helmut Kohl.”
Reality Bombs, Reruns Soar
Last summer reality TV dominated American TV screens, and reruns of winter shows died. So this summer networks flooded screens with new reality shows and the reruns (mostly) disappeared. So what’s popular? “Thirteen reality programs had premieres during May and June, and not one has cracked the Top 10 list, according to the most recently available A.C. Nielsen Co. ratings (for the week ending July 6). Reruns of sitcoms and dramas, meanwhile, have dominated the upper echelons of the ratings.”