Category: issues

Ground was broken Friday for Kansas City’s new performing arts center. “Supporters of the center hope the groundbreaking will galvanize fundraising. The $261 million raised so far is about 80 percent of the $326 million required, including a $40 million endowment.”

They include hiring a star architect and building a $100 million arts center. “Citing a litany of star arts alumni – among them novelist Philip Roth, film director Mike Nichols, composer Philip Glass and the writer Susan Sontag – Danielle Allen, dean of the university’s humanities division, said: “We’d like to see a building that will raise the profile of the really exciting – but heretofore stealth – arts world on our campus.”

A new study says video games belong in the classroom. “The strategies for successful game-playing are increasingly complex, sophisticated, challenging and cerebral. This edges games towards the very heart of where learning is headed.”

So the California Attorney General’s investigation of the Getty is done. But the findings of the investigation are unsatisfactory, contends Lee Rosenbaum.

“Design changes down the home stretch, and overtime labor costs incurred during a dash to finish in time for its Sept. 15 opening, have boosted the price of the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall by $25 million to $27 million, leaders of the Orange County Performing Arts Center said Tuesday — a markup of about 13% above the $200-million price tag long attached to the project. The increase leaves the Costa Mesa [California] arts center with about $75 million left to raise to fund the now-$225 million concert hall and a partly built $10-million plaza.”

A new report on culture in California carries some warnings. “Many nonprofit arts organizations, insulated for years from the immediate effects of market shifts, have continued to operate under an outdated understanding of what the general public values.”

Has the “Idomeneo” controversy prompted a worthy discussion in defense of inferior art? “Whether or not the production goes forward next month, issues about artistic freedom and intimidation by special-interests groups – all very important – are being raised on behalf of a production that could well be an embarrassment to other daring opera directors, and to opera in general. … Hans Neuenfels, the Berlin ‘Idomeneo’ director, is among the least credible of Europe’s high-concept directors. Though I haven’t seen this production, his past work has exemplified artistic license so out of control that it becomes high-budget provocation.”

The Trust will be monitored by the state while it enacts reforms. “The report stated that the misuse of funds did not result from fraud and that the value of a settlement between the former president, Barry Munitz, and the trust exceeded the value of the losses from any improper payments. Notably, the attorney general found that a number of actions by Mr. Munitz that were approved by the board were consistent with the trust’s charitable purposes.”

Christopher Knight writes that though the Getty can put the state’s investigation behind it, there is a bigger issue. “Beyond the blot on institutional reputation, the bigger tragedy is that eight years have been squandered… You would be hard-pressed to name many major art initiatives to have emanated from its gleaming Brentwood offices. The trust has mostly been missing in action.”

“The plans for the building, a mass of vast swirling and jutting glass panels unveiled yesterday, make the city’s other controversial edifices – the Louvre pyramid and the Pompidou Centre – look almost staid by comparison.”