Blog

They’re Big – Are They Practical?

There are similarities between all the proposals for replacing the World Trade Center. “Surprisingly, the appetite for gigantism that inspired the original WTC – impractical, inefficient, and ultimately hubristic – still runs strong. Of course this partly reflects a popular sentiment that yearns for restoration. ‘Rebuild the towers exactly as they were to show the terrorists they haven’t won,’ was a frequent person-on-the-street response in the months after the attack.”

Art In Vacant Places

San Jose realtors trying to fill vacant storefronts in downtown were tired of looking at empty windows. So they came up with the idea of getting artists to show their work there. “People walk by and some of them like something and some of them hate it, but at least they’re talking about art.”

The Myths Of Dying Orchestras

Yeah, there are gloomy stories about symphony orchestras these days. But “as we enter this new age of musical anxiety, let’s not lose sight of the many signs of health in the orchestra world – the surprisingly widespread commitment to developing new repertoire, the sense of ownership listeners feel, the renewed awareness of the value of arts education. We’ve been down this road many times before: expansion, contraction, repeat. So let’s equip ourselves for the coming neurotic convulsions by shooting down some oft-recited but mistaken beliefs.”

Preserving A Voice In The International Machine

“The extent to which musicians from a particular ethnicity involve themselves with Western producers and Western tastes has sometimes led to hysterical fear, fear in the musical realm akin to that of the anti-globalization forces in the political and economic realms. The fear is of the obliteration of the world’s indigenous peoples, languages, economic and political independence, culture and, yes, music. All that will remain will be a faceless, gray, corporate anonymity, McDonald’s meets Orwell in the land of synth-pop. Except, at least in music, it hasn’t worked that way at all.”

A Brilliant New Plan For An Arts Library

“Here’s a good cause for the New Year: a design by Enríque Norten/TEN Arquitectos for the proposed Brooklyn Library for the Visual and Performing Arts. Sleek, curvaceous, colorful and alive, this is New York’s first full-fledged masterwork for the information age. More than any other recent New York project, Norten’s design captures the spirit of the contemporary city.”

Mikhail Baryshnikov Talks About His New Arts Center

“There should be a kind of discovery of the unexpected here [New York]. After all, this city is the most cosmopolitan of American cities and should be able to attract and display emerging talent. Otherwise, we lose creative artists to countries that are able to fund the arts more generously, and with each loss the inner life of our city is poorer. Just like a person, a city without an artistic life is a pretty dismal thing.”

Art In Groups

Art made by teams is popular again. “The collective impulse has never died out in American art; and now it is surfacing again, for the most part outside New York. In cities like Milwaukee, Providence, R. I., St. Louis and Philadelphia, as well as several in Canada, an old countercultural model, often much changed, is being revived, in some cases by artists barely out of their teens. Many of the new art collectives are virtual: they reside on the Internet, that intrinsically collective medium. They are fluid in size, and members may not even know the identity of other members.”

Opera Companies Go Back To The Tried And True

In response to a tighter economy, more and more opera companies are turing away from adventurous fare and returning to audience favorites. “You have to consider what the public wants, because they have every opportunity to choose not to go. This isn’t a court theater – this is populist entertainment. We’re trying to appeal to a broad general public.”