The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth has been a big hit since it opened in December. “Drawn by rave reviews in the press and by word of mouth, devotees of art and architecture are streaming here. More people turned up in one two-day period after Christmas than came in any entire month of 2001, when the museum was still in its 1954 building nearby. Taxis from the Dallas-Fort Worth airport bring passengers who have arranged layovers so they can spend an hour at the museum.”
Blog
English National Opera Barely Avoided Shutting Down Last Week
The British government’s emergency bailout of the English National Opera came just in time. “For some time the ENO has been chronically sick. The company would have died last week had the Arts Council not intervened.”
Pavarotti To Sing Opera Again
Many though Pavcarotti had sung his last opera performance after canceling two performances of “Tosca” at the Metropolitan Opera last May. But he’s scheduled another “Tosca” at the Deutsche Oper Berlin next June. The performances are expected to cause a run on tickets, just as they did last May.
Tomalin Wins Whitbread
Claire Tomalin wins the £30,000 Whitbread book of the year award for her biography of Samuel Pepys, “just as her husband Michael Frayn [also nominated] had predicted all along.”
Is UK Losing Its Masterpieces?
More and more of Britain’s great art treasures in private ownership are being sold abroad. “Experts fear that many other masterpieces in private hands will emerge on to the market and be sold to overseas collectors because owners are noticing the vast sums being fetched. Museums and galleries with paltry acquisition budgets are unable to compete.”
One Kind Of Art – Why Artists Specialize
“Most contemporary artists remain specialists, and the reasons are plain to see. The intensity that we want from art usually emerges only when an artist knows a medium or a kind of structure or a certain vocabulary inside out. This has certainly been true in the past few months in New York.”
Model Behavior – Building Imagination
Architects spend much time and money on models of projects they propose to build. Richard Meier says his firm spent more than $100,000 on its model for the World Trade Center site. “Drawings are abstract and precise – the medium of proportion and detail – and computer modeling engages the cinematic dimension of time, of fluidity, of movement through space. Only models, however, provide the “God’s eye view,” the luxurious sensation that a complex object like a building, or an entire development like the World Trade Center site, can be comprehended as a whole.”
Art Or Money – Can’t We All Just Get Along?
The struggle between the vision of art and the business of art is neverending. But in tighter economic times, the battles seem more dramatic, more public. “What conclusion can be drawn from this eternal square dance between the powers of money and the powers of art? Artistic directors can’t be slaves to money, but they can’t be defiantly unrealistic, either.”
Tuition Hikes Could Discourage Arts Studies
Critics say that the British government’s plan to raise university fees for students will make arts courses unaffordable. Students will be encouraged not to study the arts because their earning potential after graduation is lower. “The colleges will find themselves in a dilemma because arts courses – with expensive materials and practical tuition – are inevitably costly to run, and yet by charging more affordable fees to attract more students, colleges stand to get less government support.”
Broadway’s Fight Over Music
“In what are expected to be the most bitter contract talks on the Great White Way in recent history, show producers are pushing to eliminate a longstanding union rule that compels Broadway theaters to hire a minimum number of musicians, currently 3 to 26, depending on the size of the venue. And vowing that the shows must go on in the event of a strike, producers are turning to a high-tech offshoot of taped music known as virtual orchestras, capable of simulating the subtle variations of tempo and tone in live music.”