Producer Cameron Mackintosh says he’ll invest £20 million in fixing up West End theatres in London. “We have a unique treasury of Edwardian and Victorian theatres designed by great architects and we are committed to improving the UK and overseas public’s experience of visiting our theatres and the West End. These are important buildings.”
Tag: 01.10.03
Finders Keepers?
Should big museums be considered “world” museums and be allowed to keep art they hauled off from other countries? Not surprisingly, the big museums think so. They signed a declaration asserting that policy in December. “So far the public debate has been conducted very much in terms of the value of restitution, but there has been much less debate about the importance of the context which a great museum offers.”
The Comfort Factor
“The aesthetic revolutions of the 20th century, in painting, music and literature, reflected the galvanizing cataclysms of the times – the world wars, the Holocaust, the nuclear peril. Now, when the world seems more fragile, dangerously fragmented and morally ambiguous than ever, may not be the time for more form-smashing revolution in the arts. The great artists of our time are like spiders, poised on a web that spans the past as well as the precarious present. They sense vibrations, from now and then, and spin out glittering new strands of connection.”
German Officials Defend Nazi Art Show
German officials are defending the exhibition in Berlin of an art collection owned by the family of a major arms supplier to the Nazis by arguing the exhibit would “help heal the scars of Adolf Hitler’s crusade against modern art.” An official explains: “This altruistic gesture should not be overloaded with politics. It’s a gesture toward a city particularly marked by the history of the last century.” She was referring to the Nazis’ hatred of modern art, which saw many works destroyed and others by the likes of van Gogh and Picasso displayed in infamous ‘Degenerate Art’ shows.
Pearl Memorial Behind Closed Doors
Jan Herman reports that while a memorial to murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl has been decided on, access to it it will be in the WSJ headquarters, where the general public doesn’t have access to it…
Colorado Springs Orchestra Declares Bankruptcy
The Colorado Springs Symphony board of directors has followed through and declared the orchestra bankrupt. The orchestra had demanded wage cuts from the orchestra musicians and gave a deadline of Thursday night. “In a letter delivered to management at 4 p.m., the musicians agreed to discuss the conditions for possible contract renegotiations but did not immediately accept any of the orchestra’s demands. Declaring that this action did not go far enough, the board’s executive committee decided Thursday evening to proceed with the bankruptcy filing.”
City Of Boston To Raise Private Money For The Arts
Boston mayor Thomas Menino has announced a plan where the city’s Cultural Affairs office will raise money privately and redistribute it to arts groups. “The mayor described the campaign as a ‘two-pronged’ public-private partnership that would ‘streamline distribution of Boston resources, generate new revenues to support arts and culture, and raise the visibility of the arts in the city’ at a time when public funding for the arts has been slashed in Boston, throughout Massachusetts, and across the country.” Critics wonder if this now means the city will be in competition with them to raise money for the arts…
Broadway Bottoms-Out – Shows Close, Theatres Empty, Deep Ticket Discounts In Post-Holiday Slump
Happens every year. But this year somehow it seems more dramatic. The post-holiday January drop in Broadway ticket sales is dramatic – 75 percent in at least one theatre. “Broadway producers said they weren’t panicking — it was a good fall and very strong holiday season, after all — but they were rolling out all manner of marketing to combat the cold.”
Reruns Rule
“Rarely does a Hollywood film get made just once. The real business of Hollywood is creating that most desirable of products: the franchise. It’s reaching the point where audiences might not see a film any more unless they’ve watched an earlier instalment.” But are sequels ever as good as the first time around? Not usually. But it doesn’t seem to matter. People will shell out for tickets if they’ve seen it before…
LA Opera Falls Victim To More Illnesses, Cancellations…
Los Angeles Opera is having a rough season. Earlier this year the company had to cancel a Kirov production of Prokofiev’s War and Peace, then saw sets for the replacement production go sailing out of the harbor in a dock strike. The latest is a series of illnesses that have forced cancellations and scrambling for replacements. Tenor (and LA Opera director Placido Domingo) is sick and had to cancel out of a series of January performances. And a much-anticipated new opera by Luciano Berio had to be canceled because the composer was too ill to finish it. Then there was a rush to find replacement programs and singers, a visa scramble and…