Category: today’s top story

The Center for Future Audiences, launched with a $20million gift and planning for a $60million endowment, will subsidize free tickets for youths 18 and under and steeply discounted tickets offered online for 18-to-34-year-olds. One goal is for the Cleveland Orchestra to have, by its centennial in 2018, the youngest audience in the country.

“Widely circulated rumors of the demise of the original-style Walkman player, which uses cassette tapes, seem to have stemmed from two words on the Japanese Sony Corp. site for the device. It said, ‘Production finished.’ But as it turns out, that meant only that the player would no longer be sold in its home country of Japan.”

Queensland is, in Australian terms, sort of a cross between Texas and Florida, and the Sydney and Melbourne elites have long dismissed its capital city. But an arts-loving state premier, a wave of funding and building, and a general feeling of optimism are buoying Brisbane’s cultural scene.

“The 29.6% cut will see ACE’s current government grant of £449m drop to £349m by 2014. National museums will take a cut of 15% and will remain free to enter. The Arts Council is also being asked to make a 50% cut in its administrative costs.”

Peter Dobrin: “When orchestral musicians feign perplexity on the question of why orchestras aren’t more diverse – but we use audition screens! – the disingenuousness is insulting. But the orchestra regularly asks us to accept an equally ludicrous proposition: that when auditions draw hundreds of aspirants, the most qualified musician just happens to be related to someone already in the organization.”

Controversy and online protests have arisen over rumors of a plan by the Cunningham Trust to close, or drastically shrink, the Cunningham Studio next June, as the Merce Cunningham Dance Co. winds down its existence. Current and former Studio students argue that Cunningham technique is valuable in itself, whether or not there’s a professional all-Cunningham company.

“There are just five arts groups on the list (Met, Lincoln Center, BSO, Kennedy Center, and San Francisco Opera). The Met, the largest on the list at No. 188 with $104.2 million, is down 35.1% from last year. The BSO, No. 339, is up 103.9% over last year with $52.3 million.”

“More than 30 paintings, thought to be by artists including Max Ernst, Raoul Dufy and Fernand Léger, have been unmasked as forgeries, the Observer has learned. The fakes have duped leading figures in the art world into parting with at least £30m.”

“As June Cleaver, Billingsley was the personification of an Eisenhower-era stay-at-home mom – at least one residing in fictional Mayfield, U.S.A.: a mild-mannered, perfectly coiffed housewife who typically wore dresses, high heels and a strand of white pearls even while vacuuming or baking cookies for her boys.”