Even when you’re spending $225 million for an “extension” of a museum, there are trade-offs. Will the Cleveland Museum get its money’s worth? “For me, the answer at this point is a resounding yes. Rafael Vinoly’s design, which would cost $225 million to build, is undergirded by a precise, diamond- hard logic that mar ries dramatic physical changes with a new vi sion about the muse um’s potential. The key is whether Vinoly can follow through with details big and small that will make all the difference in the final product. This is no minor question.”
Blog
San Francisco Opera’s New Tune – A Good One
No one likes cutting back, but San Francsico Opera is making the right move in scaling back its budget for the next few seasons. “The courageous decision by General Director Pamela Rosenberg and the board to finally get real about the company’s perennial financial difficulties represents that classic first step in the breaking of any bad habit – admitting you have a problem.”
Why The Colorado Springs Symphony Fell Apart
How did the Colorado Springs Symphony get to the edge of bankrupcty and see its musicians revolt and start their own orchestra? Management of the orchestra says it was a “downturn in the economy, lack of a sustainable donor base and low market demand.” Musicians say it’s been poor management and a string of questionable decisions…
Architects Buzzing Over Muschamp’s Flip-Flop On Libeskind
Last December New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp wrote of Daniel Libeskind’s plan for the World Trade Center site that “If you are looking for the marvelous, here’s where you will find it. Daniel Libeskind’s project attains a perfect balance between aggression and desire. It will provoke many viewers to exclaim that yes, this design is actually better than what was there before.” Then this past Friday he wrote that “It [Libeskind’s idea] is an astonishingly tasteless idea. It has produced a predictably kitsch result.” Architectrue watchers are wondering what happened, and some are angry…
A Poll On The Finalists Says…
So which of the two competing finalists to design a replacement for the World Trade Center do people like? Hmmmmn…one poll says neither (by a wide margin).
Painting Confirmed As Van Gogh Sells For $500,000
A painting thought to be anonymous, but revealed to have been by Van Gogh has sold for $500,000. A Japanese auction company was “planning to auction off the small portrait of a peasant woman for between 10,000 and 20,000 yen ($83 to $167) after struggling to establish the identity of the artist. But a last-minute fax from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam confirmed that the picture was an early work by the Dutch impressionist master.”
What’s Wrong With Canadian Filmmaking?
Producer Ivan Reitman has some ideas. “The Canadian producer has been trained and encouraged to focus on qualifying for a range of content rules and points set by an ever-changing platoon of politicians and bureaucrats. Unfortunately, this intense focus on technical criteria sometimes means that creating films for the real world is ignored. The audience is forgotten. Navigating the minutiae of this hermetically sealed world of institutionalized filmmaking genetically selects Canadian producers for failure.”
Artist Mails Himself To Tate
An unemployed actor had himself sealed up in a box and mailed to the Tate Museum. He said he had “turned himself into living art to explore the way that artists are seen as objects.” A number of people from the Tate came out and applauded as the box was opened.
Mandela, Artist
Nelson Mandela is enjoying a surging art career. He has been making drawings in charcoal and pastel of his time as an inmate at the brutal Robben Island prison. “In just five months, the 84-year-old former South African president and Nobel Peace laureate has sold more than 1,000 lithographs of five drawings. The inspiration for the new career came when art publisher Ross Calder saw Yoko Ono was using John Lennon’s sketches to raise money for charity. He took the idea to Mandela, suggesting he could do the same. ‘I may be artistic, but it’s in the back, far recesses of my mind. It will take a lot to get that out’.”
Art Thief Sentenced To Four Years
The French waiter who stole millions of dollars worth of art over six years has been sentenced to four years in prison for the thefts by a Swiss court. Why did he take the art? “He believed he was one of the very few people sensitive enough to appreciate the true beauty of works of art.”