The president of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra has announced that he is stepping down from his position and leaving the organization, effective the end of this month. The quick timetable makes the unknown reason behind Steven Ovitsky’s departure of interest, but the board insists he was not forced out. However, it may be significant that Ovitsky was a very popular executive with the MSO’s musicians: “He brought musicians into the governing and planning structures of the orchestra, and his palpable love of music impressed them.”
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WTC Choices On Target
There seems to be general satisfaction with the choice of finalists for the World Trade Center site. “The process of deciding what will replace the destroyed World Trade Center has produced a unique cultural moment. In previous years, when there has been a major cultural issue playing itself out in public, people largely rallied to make clear what they didn’t want. The debate about the World Trade Center site has turned all that on its head. Not surprisingly, there is an unprecedented level of public engagement with and emotional investment in this project. And that involvement has driven the project forward but led it to embrace the most ‘cutting edge’ designs – Mr. Libeskind’s and THINK’s.”
Made To Order (But Whose Orders?)
A good building is the result not just of a good architect, but a good client. The two finalists for the WTC site have interesting proposals, but whether or not either one is able to actually build what they propose over the next decade will be complicated by just exactly who the client is – and there are competing jurisdictions…
American Butts Too Big For West End Seats?
Are Americans discouraged from going to London’s West End theatres because the seats are too small? “The seats were built for backsides of a Victorian era, not of a modern era – or indeed an American size – and many of the bars are dingy and overpriced and haven’t seen a lick of paint since Oscar Wilde was last there.”
Another “Cultural Strategy”…blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…
This week, London’s mayor Ken Livingston delivered a proposal for the city’s “cultural strategy.” And…. “I spent a dreary weekend ploughing through ‘London: Cultural Capital’s’ 170-odd pages, all of them replete with the cliches of the current culturespeak. Meaningless pleas for excellence, creativity and access abound. Innocent trees have been felled to provide the paper on which Ken laboriously explains how he wants London to be green and prosperous, and its cultural diversity to be respected. The art of stating the bleeding obvious lives on in strategies and this one is jumping with it. Beyond the waffle, what is proposed?”
The Right Celebrity To Impress (Even At Covent Garden)
Frank Johnson goes to the ballet at Covent Garden and is amused at the buzz generated by a pair of celebrities in the audience. “It is not easy for people from popular culture to impress, amuse or interest people gathered for purposes of high culture. They must make us pleased that they share our pleasures or are taking the trouble to try them. Celebrity is not the same as fame. Posh and Becks are celebrities. So is — to choose just another example from popular culture — Sir Elton John. Miss Hurley, say, is just famous. Her presence at Covent Garden would interest, but not fascinate or delight, us.”
Can 50 Million Music Downloaders Be Wrong?
A recording company executive says his industry must change its attitudes about consumers trading music files or else their business will die. As Thomas Jefferson wrote: “If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it.”
Getty Passes On Masterpiece
For years the J Paul Getty Museum in LA has been able to buy whatever art it wanted – and has. But at the recent Old Master auctions in December the Getty failed to even bid on an important work that would have been a natural for its collection. “The decision of the world’s richest museum not to even bid on one of the last great narrative pictures of the Renaissance (one arguably of even greater rarity and importance than the $50 million Northumberland Raphael) is incomprehensible.”
UN Covers Up “Guernica” Reproduction
The United Nations has covered up a reproduction of Picasso’s “Guernica” that has hung outside the UN Security Council since 1985. “U.N. officials said last week that it is more appropriate for dignitaries to be photographed in front of the blue backdrop and some flags than the impressionist image of shattered villagers and livestock. ‘It’s only temporary. We’re only doing this until the cameras leave’.”
Vatican Gives Blessing On Potter
The Vatican has given its blessing to Harry Potter. Why should the Vatican even care? Some evangelical groups have protested the books for “glamorizing magic and the occult.” But a spokeman for the Vatican says: “If I have understood well the intentions of Harry Potter’s author, they help children to see the difference between good and evil. And she is very clear on this.”