Chicago has long had a reputation for great architecture… home of the skyscraper, and all… Now a new generation of great Chicago architecture is going up, and boy, is it sexy…
Blog
Telstra Underwrites Free Admission for Sydney Museum
After Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art got a grant in 2000 to drop its admission charges, the museum saw a dramatic increase in visitors. Now Telstra – the free-admission underwriter – has agreed to continue the sponsorship for three more years. “Telstra will inject more than $500,000 annually into the MCA in a three-year arrangement to underwrite the free-entry policy. The deal continues an original sponsorship arrangement that allowed the gallery to scrap its $12 admission fee in mid-2000.”
Discovering Italy’s Jewish History
“Dozens of Jewish sites, artifacts, documents, rare books and manuscripts are being discovered, analyzed and restored in southern Italy and Sicily. This work by scholars and government authorities is beginning to flesh out the largely unknown story of vibrant yet long-lost communities of Jews that inhabited the region from Roman times to the end of the Middle Ages. Jews were expelled from southern Italy, known then as the Kingdom of Naples, in the 16th century. Few returned even after the ban was lifted in the 18th century.”
Munich’s Big-Bucks Play For Culture Capital
Munich is spending big to sign up stars to direct its music institutions. The city is vying to be a cultural capital. “But music is not one of those spectator sports whose results can be rigged by wealth. It is a mind-game, often a minefield, in which sprightly left-wingers run rings around the sorry hulks of expensive defensive walls, and dinky British orchestras have a gratifying habit of outmanoeuvring the mighty spenders. Munich’s mistake was to play by a set of rules that has been rendered obsolescent by the collapse of classical recording. Today, when hardly any maestros get past studio security, orchestras are trapped between picking a fossilised relic of distant recorded memory or risking an unknown prospect.”
All Sealed Up And No Place To Go – But It Wasn’t Always That Way
“Contemporary architecture has erected innumerable barriers between inside and outside, building and nature. It’s there and we’re here, and that’s that. It wasn’t always so. Access to light and air were starting points and first principles of 19th- and early 20th-century buildings, rights instead of accidents. Until air conditioning and tinted glass made them seem passe, sunscreens, deep windows and natural ventilation were standard features, as though architecture itself were a living, breathing thing.”
The FBI’s Extraordinary Harassment Of Aaron Copland
The FBI investigated composer Aaron Copland for 20 years. Yes he was political, but he has also, for decades, been considered one of America’s most recognizeable musical voices. “The extent of Copland’s political engagement is neither a secret nor a surprise. Copland never hid his essential political sympathies. But what these documents tell about the US treatment of Copland is as much the story of the harassment of 20th-century composers as anything that happened to Dmitri Shostakovich in the Soviet Union or to Kurt Weill or Ernst Krenek in Nazi Germany. “
Why Museums? Because They Teach Us
“Over the past decades, museums have come to play multiple roles in our lives, but surely none is more important than their ability – in the current period of international turmoil and political realignments – to connect each of us with what other people value culturally and artistically.”
Russian MPs Protest McCartney Concert
Members of the Russian parliament are protesting a planned concert by Paul McCartney in Red Square next week. “More than 100 have signed a petition protesting at the place where the Soviet leaders Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev, and the pioneer cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, lie buried in Moscow being used for a rock concert which carries, they say, ‘a covert political meaning’.”
A Musician Without An Orchestra
Nick Dargahi is a cellist. Or, rather, he was. Or maybe he still is. It’s hard to tell these days. When you are an orchestral musician, and your orchestra is suddenly pulled out from under you, it becomes difficult to know what you are for sure. Dargahi has left the music business, at least temporarily, and is training to be an engineer. Author Richard Florida thinks that stories like Dargahi’s are an unnecessary tragedy, and says that orchestras need to redefine their mission and reenergize the public to prevent a sustained crisis.
Columbus Running Deficit
The Columbus (Ohio) Symphony Orchestra is the latest regional ensemble to announce a substantial deficit for the current season. The CSO is reportedly seeking ways to alleviate a $300,000 shortfall, but is in no imminent danger of shutdown. The Columbus deficit is significant because the orchestra has been a model of fiscal reponsibility in recent years, even while paying its musicians relatively well and keeping a high artistic standard as its top priority. CSO officials are blaming the down economy and a slump in program advertising and corporate giving as the main reasons for the shortfall.