Category: issues

“My favorite critics are not art critics, but dance critics. Especially Edwin Denby. I like to read them best–not for stylistic reasons, but because the subject they are writing about is a very ephemeral thing. It basically doesn’t exist beyond the performance.”

“Housing one of the world’s most encyclopedic collections of Islamic art, it is the cornerstone of a monumental effort by Qatar to transform itself into the arts hub of the Middle East.”

Budget hawks have “attacked the museum this week as a kind of localized earmark project that does not belong in legislation Congress passes to jumpstart the flailing economy.” Las Vegas boosters say the museum is exactly the kind of project that should be funded in a stimulus program.

“While other theaters and arts organizations around the country are downsizing or closing due to the stormy economy, New Orleans’ storm-damaged Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts will reopen this week after a $22 million renovation, the first of the city’s three major theaters to reopen since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city.”

“Yesterday the Kimmel announced that Mehta’s eighth season of importing symphony orchestras, dance companies, jazz bands and world music groups, plus staging the center’s signature all-night Summer Solstice festivities, will be his last… [he] will be replaced by Tom Warner, who was among the Kimmel’s earliest hires, starting there in 1999, two years before the center opened.”

“The new watchword must be consolidation, rather than expansion; we’ve had an unprecedented level of investment in bricks and mortar for the arts, now we need to hunker down and make the most of them. The £100million-plus grands projets still on the drawing board – such as the ambitious developments of the Tate, British Museum and V&A sites – will have to be shelved, and pie-in-the-sky fantasies like the free theatre ticket scheme and the Royal Opera House’s annual sojourn to Manchester should be dumped.”

“Some people may not like it, but the arts has to live in the real world too. Nobody is immune from what is happening. Everybody needs, in this time that we’re in, to plan prudently and allow themselves maximum room for manoeuvre, because we all don’t know what 2009 will hold.”

“GM has already notified about a dozen arts and cultural groups, including the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Music Hall, the Michigan Opera Theatre and the Detroit Institute of Arts, not to expect any annual support from the company in 2009.”

“This year’s festival has a budget of $6.2 million – down from last year’s $8.4 million, said festival spokeswoman Paula Edwards. Last year’s festival was staged just as the national economy soured and ended the season $372,000 in the red – the first deficit for the festival in 13 years.”

The natural history museum’s endowment lost $95 million in the past six months, “leading to salary cuts, layoffs and buyout offers to scientists and other employees.” In addition, the Field has cancelled this fall’s exhibition of Lucy, the 3.2 million-year-old hominid fossil.