Some Youth Amongst The Blue Hair

“The two most frequently repeated bits of common wisdom about the theater are (1) Broadway is dead (or at least in a state of serious decay), and (2) there is simply no audience for live theater among the current ‘younger generation’ of twentysomethings… Regarding the youthful audiences, it’s time to take a closer look at the reality.” Hedy Weiss believes that many of the theaters she attends in Chicago do a fine job of luring 20- and 30-somethings to performances, and points out that some theaters consider it a core part of their mission to create theater for the younger demographic.

Attendance Down In Chicago

“Blaming ‘the economy and the Xbox,’ officials said Wednesday that more than half of Chicago’s biggest museums suffered attendance drops last year, with the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry down by double digits.” Some museums which saw increases in attendance could trace the surge to one or more ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions it put on in the last year. Most museum officials seem to agree that the central problem for arts organizations is that people are given so many entertainment choices today that no one organization can count on luring in huge numbers of patrons.

From Enemy Of The State To Official Symbol

Nearly every musician knows Paul Robeson’s story – the son of a former slave, educated at the best schools America had to offer, grew up to become one of the most admired singers in the world, until he began to speak out on behalf of civil rights for African-Americans, at which point he was very nearly run out of the business. The U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp honoring Robeson’s contributions to American culture and society in February, possibly the first time that a branch of the U.S. government has cast him in a positive light.

A Story To Make Every Violinist Wince

You would think that, the more valuable your musical instrument, the tighter you would make your death grip on its case whenever you had occasion to transport the thing. But even great musicians can be distracted, and this week, world-renowned violinist Gidon Kremer, preoccupied with a colleague’s cancellation of an upcoming tour, stood up and walked off a train in Baltimore, leaving behind his nearly 300-year-old Guarneri del Gesu, valued at $3 million. The violin was recovered in Washington by Amtrak officials, and transported north to Baltimore in time for Kremer’s next performance.

Looking For Respect (And Some Cash, Please) In Louisville

It hasn’t been a good year for the arts in Louisville, what with the local orchestra making cuts, and countless other arts groups struggling mightily in the new, and frequently donation-less, economy. The city already has a Fund For The Arts, but larger groups in the area complain that they don’t get their fair share of the fund’s allocated dollars. So what can be done? A conference of arts leaders and supporters came up with a number of ideas to boost the city’s cultural scene, and the first order of business seems to be convincing more Louisvillians that they have an arts scene worth supporting.

Training Your CEO

It has long been the dirty little secret of the arts world that the majority of the people running the show don’t actually have any particular training in how the arts world works, or how running an orchestra differs from running, say, a textile mill. It’s not that most of these leaders are incompetent people, merely that they are almost forced to learn their job through trial and error. A new program in the UK is aiming to make better administrators out of the folks who run the country’s arts groups, and possibly to attract better leaders to the industry.

Janet Frame, 79

“New Zealand writer Janet Frame, who was reportedly short-listed for the Nobel Prize for Literature last year and drew on her experiences in mental hospitals for her fiction, has died aged 79. Frame, who had leukemia, was regarded internationally as New Zealand’s finest writer since Katherine Mansfield, who died in 1923. A recluse for much of her life, she was wrongly diagnosed as schizophrenic when young and spent eight years in mental hospitals, where she was reportedly given shock treatment 200 times. She was saved from a scheduled lobotomy in 1951 when a hospital superintendent learned that her first book, The Lagoon And Other Stories, had won New Zealand’s leading award for fiction.”

Saving The Whitney, Holistically

When Adam Weinberg was announced as the new head of the Whitney Museum of American Art, observers could only wonder at the task ahead of the soft-spoken man who had just accepted the top job at one of the world’s most tumultuous museums. “After more than a decade of crises and turmoil… the Whitney has entered what Mr. Weinberg said was a ‘period of healing.’ And while he said he did not want to appear to be a ‘New Age director,’ curators say his two favorite words are holistic and synergy.” Still, Weinberg can’t play Mr. Nice Guy forever, and most expect that some major personnel changes are in the offing.

The Whitney Biennial: Now With Sunshine!

“When the 2004 Biennial opens this spring, the often controversial survey of contemporary art will extend well beyond the walls of the Whitney Museum of American Art. There will be art from one end of Central Park to the other, including grotesque sculptures of werewolf heads, a ferocious life-size tiger, a bronze bust of Michael Jackson and a 50-foot-tall inflatable pink rubber ketchup bottle topped with a snowmanlike head.”

Construction Delays Force ENO Cancellation

“At a cost of £282,000 in lost ticket sales, English National Opera was forced yesterday to swallow its pride and cancel all performances of its re-opening show, Nixon in China. The Coliseum, its London base, will now open after its £41m rebuild on February 21, a date already postponed by a fortnight, for an as yet undefined ‘special event’ – which may just be a grand party with a few songs from the stage. The theatre will then close again and the first performances of The Rhinegold, the opening of the first new production in English of Wagner’s Ring cycle in 30 years, will probably not happen until early March.”