Category: AJBlogs

When Free Is Insufficient
They won’t even come when it’s free! That lament from an arts administrator, with eyes rolled and hands thrown up, demonstrates a profound lack of connection with the subject of the exclamation. It is usually … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2017-02-28

Who Should Lead the Met? Tom Campbell Decamps
Ever since he was named to the Metropolitan Museum’s directorship, I’ve had serious qualms about whether Tom Campbell embodied The Peter Principle … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-02-28

Propwatch: the watches in Hamlet
The insanely awaited production starring Andrew Scott is so very sold-out that buying even one ticket felt like a triumph. … There’s lots to say about the genius line-readings and surprising additions. But I just want to think about the watches for a bit. … read more
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2017-02-28

Recent Listening (And Viewing) In Brief
The incoming albums that pack my big mailbox several times a week belie frequent claims in the press and on the air that jazz is dying. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-02-28

 

Are Orchestras Better than Ever? Why Riccardo Muti is Wrong
Are orchestras better than ever?  Riccardo Muti thinks so. Recently, … he said: “The level of the orchestras in the world – especially in the seventies and eighties — has gone up everywhere.” … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2017-02-26

Burying the Bad News: Sotheby’s Earnings Call Ignores 30% Drop in 2016 Adjusted Net Income
“I feel good,” Tad Smith repeatedly declared during Sotheby’s earnings call with securities analysts this morning. Buoyed by New Year’s hopes for better performance in 2017 after a lackluster 2016, Sotheby’s president and CEO enumerated … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-02-27

The Serene Eye of a Storm
Danspace Project presents Julie McMillan in Benjamin Kimitch’s KO-BU. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2017-02-27

 

WHAT’S GOING ON IN OPERA?
The news that Darren Keith Woods was summarily fired after a sixteen-year extraordinarily successful career as General Director of Fort Worth Opera added to some odd news from Vienna a short time ago seems inexplicable. … read more
AJBlog: OperaSleuthPublished 2017-02-23

The stories we weave are incomplete…
It’s Black History Month again, and though I haven’t blogged about it, it’s been on my mind. I’ve thought of it when I’ve gone to the Kennedy Center, and seen that their most visible gift … read more
AJBlog: SandowPublished 2017-02-23

Music and Design
WHY do we talk about “seeing” bands or orchestral groups? How did album jackets and photography of musicians — whether Francis Wolff’s shadowy shots of jazz musicians smoking in the shadows or Astrid Kirchherr’s … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrashPublished 2017-02-23

Music and Design
Why do we talk about “seeing” bands or orchestral groups? How did album jackets and photography of musicians … become important parts of music’s aura? Is a rock video a betrayal of what music is really about? … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2017-02-23

The stories we weave are incomplete…
It’s Black History Month again, and though I haven’t blogged about it, it’s been on my mind. I’ve thought of it when I’ve gone to the Kennedy Center, and seen that their most visible gift shop this month features Chinese New Year. … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2017-02-23

What’s Going On in Opera?
The news that Darren Keith Woods was summarily fired after a sixteen-year extraordinarily successful career as General Director of Fort Worth Opera added to some odd news from Vienna a short time ago seems inexplicable. … read more
AJBlog: OperaSleuth Published 2017-02-23

Portland Jazz Festival: Hearing The Home Folks
In addition to presenting big national names, an appealing aspect of the PDX Portland Jazz Festival is that it taps into the deep reservoir of talent in the Pacific Northwest. Two cases … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-02-23

 

The “Leveraging Effect”: Why Small Grants from the Endangered NEA & NEH Matter
Arts and humanities constituents rose to the challenge of meeting Monday’s deadline to gather more that 100,000 signatures on a petition to the White House calling for the federal government “to support the arts by … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-02-22

Back When Everyone Believed in the NEA and the Creative Life
As the National Endowment for the Arts once again finds itself a punching bag on the chopping block (summon that mixed-metaphor image), it seems like a good time to take a step back and reflect … read more
AJBlog: New Beans Published 2017-02-22

Many Miles To Go To See Art
I don’t know all that many people, aside from curators doing research and wealthy collectors, who hop on a plane a fly overseas mainly to see an art exhibition. But that is what has been … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2017-02-22

Dance in L.A. Museums Unleashes the Spirits
If you haven’t seen dance at a museum lately, some good news. Gone are the days when dancers were brought in like bulky decor to inhabit dead gallery space. Synchronicity abounds, tickets are still low-cost … read more
AJBlog: Fresh Pencil Published 2017-02-22

Juggling Ideas About the Avant Garde
So much art is called “avant garde” these days that my tireless staff of thousands wonders whether it’s just a label. Some think that the entire culture, no matter how far out, has gone mainstream … read more
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2017-02-22

 

Engagement Is Not . . .
There are, of course, many things that community engagement is not. High on that list is “a magical elixir to cure all of the nonprofit arts industry’s ills.” … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2017-02-21

Portland Brings Kids To Jazz
In the windows of a Target store on a busy street corner in downtown Portland is a display of art inspired by jazz. Scattered among classic album covers, the paintings are by … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-02-21

Spring break with Budapest jazz, photos
I went to Budapest for spring break — to introduce a photo exhibit by my Transylvanian-born friend  Sánta István Csaba and help jury the 10th annual Müpa Budapest Jazz Showcase/Talent Exchange, … read more
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond Jazz Published 2017-02-21

 

On Entrepreneurialism and Publicness (or Whose Theatre Is It, Really?)
I was disquieted when I encountered [Richard Swedberg’s] discussion of cultural entrepreneurship a few years ago; however, it took completing a case study on the Margo Jones Theatre last year for me to identify the source of my unease. … read more
AJBlog: Jumper Published 2017-02-20

The president who hated Marcel Duchamp
A historian friend of mine reminded me the other day that Theodore Roosevelt attended and wrote about the 1913 Armory Show, the first major exhibition of modern art to be held in America. What’s more, … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2017-02-20

PDX Jazz Festival: Heath Bros, Jackson, Ulmer
Jimmy Heath is 90 years old. His kid brother Albert (Tootie) is 80. They don’t act or sound their ages. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-02-20

Larry Coryell Is Gone
Guitarist Larry Coryell died over the weekend in New York City. He was 73. A pioneer of jazz-rock and fusion, throughout his career Coryell was capable of delicacy and softness in guitar … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-02-20

 

2017 Portland Festival Report No. 1
The Branford Marsallis Quartet and singer Kurt Elling combined in the first major concert of the 2017 Portland, Oregon PDX Jazz Festival. A packed audience in the capacious Newmark Theater heard a … read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2017-02-18

The Martha Graham Dance Company’s New Visions
The Martha Graham Dance Company commissions works by Annie-B Parson, Pontus Lidberg, and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Members of the Martha Graham Dance Company in Annie-B Parson’s I used to love you. (L to R): Anne … read more
AJBlog: DancebeatPublished 2017-02-18

What conservatories should do
What they should do to prepare students for classical music’s future. These are things I said in my talk at the Jacobs School at Indiana University. First, conservatories should make the future of classical music a … read more
AJBlog: SandowPublished 2017-02-17

Your Mood is Understandable, but Unacceptable
I haven’t worn a Mood Ring since the late 1970’s but it’s time for that fad to return. I know, I know…  they never really worked all that well.  Regardless of how I was feeling … read more
AJBlog: Audience WantedPublished 2017-02-17

Finally, A Botticelli Exhibition in the U.S.
The Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Va., has pulled off another noteworthy show, again eliciting important loans from Italy that other, larger museums would covet. … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2017-02-16

Propwatch: the dummy in The Pitchfork Disney
Philip Ridley is that rare writer whose work alternately snares decadent adult and innocent child. PG to certificate 18 with nothing in between. … read more
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2017-02-16

What Will Have Happened in the Woods?
Vim Vigor Dance Company presents the New York premiere of Shannon Gillen’s FUTURE PERFECT. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2017-02-16

Salves for Trump Bumps: Getty’s Direct Salvo vs. MoMA’s Discreet Indirection
One of the two major museum stories that broke while I was [away] involved the Museum of Modern Art’s decision to respond to the Trump travel ban … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-02-16

 

Is The Institutionalization Of Our Arts A Dead End? In his essay looking back on Lincoln Center on its 50th birthday, Joe Horowitz suggests that the cultural citadel built optimistically to be a launching pad for the American performing arts, might have turned out … read more
AJBlog: diacritical | Douglas McLennan Published 2017-02-16

Is artistic leadership at America’s arts institutions lacking? Is this at the root of declining relevancy?  Joe Horowitz has written a stirring essay on the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, and New York Philharmonic on the … read more
AJBlog: Jumper Published 2017-02-15

Lincoln Center 50 Years On – An Experiment In American Dance? Reading Joseph Horowitz’s essay, “Bing, Bernstein, Balanchine,” and then re-reading the passages that apply to ballet at Lincoln Center, I’m suddenly thrown back to the 1960s and a different view of tradition and innovation. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2017-02-15

Uh-Oh: Trouble at the Brooklyn Museum?
I’m not sure, but I just received an email announcing that Nancy Spector, who had joined the Brooklyn Museum just last April as Deputy Director and Chief Curator, is moving back to the Guggenheim Museum … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2017-02-15