Category: issues

“More than $182 million has been raised for the [downtown Newark] arts center’s endowment, operations, upkeep and cash reserve.”

“Completion of the AT&T Performing Arts Center and the start of construction on the deck park over Woodall Rodgers Freeway have given the Arts District plenty of location, location, location. What it doesn’t have for commercial development is timing, timing, timing.”

“New York’s largest performing arts institutions have come through the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression relatively unscathed. … the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic boasted of record attendance and beating their budget forecasts.” Even the endangered New York City Opera says it’s exceeding expectations.

Rocco Landesman, on the participation of the now-departed NEA communications chief in a conference call regarding President Obama’s United We Serve project: “This isolated incident, undertaken without agency approval and prior to my tenure, should in no way tarnish [the agency and its achievements].”

“Artists in the five boroughs could gain access to new exhibition and performance space and receive entrepreneurial training as part of a series of five initiatives city officials unveiled Wednesday to bolster the cultural sector in the five boroughs.”

The consensus at Crain’s Future of New York City: Performing Arts conference: “A lack of money sure can bring out the creative qualities in a person.” E.g., if a bank has less money but an empty branch office, it could donate the space.

A matter-of-fact commission of ceramic art for a new public building in Orlando has been jeopardized in the course of an upcoming political campaign, as local commissioners/candidates jockey to “save the taxpayers’ money.” The cost of the artwork: $55,000.

“For the Kimmel, the capture of the Merriam resolves an issue that simmered long before the new arts center opened in 2001: what size its halls should be.” (Verizon Hall holds about 2,500; Perelman Hall, 650.) “The Merriam’s 1,870 seats give the Kimmel the medium-size venue important to its business model.”

“The unanimous approval [by the Bethlehem, Pa. city planning council] of the land development plans sets the stage for construction to begin this fall on the $25 million, four-story performing arts center that will sit just south of the old blast furnaces.”

“In appreciation, the center’s new visitors’ and ticket space on Broadway – scheduled to open Nov. 24 – will be named the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center.”