A rare book featuring illustrations by Matisse has been stolen from a Greek museum. “The book’s cover was left behind and replaced with an art magazine that contained images of the French master. Because of its identifying number and missing cover, the stolen material would be difficult to sell at auction.”
Tag: 02.05.03
Cleveland Museum To Get Big Upgrade
The Cleveland Museum of Art will unveil a major expansion plan this week, as designed by architect Rafael Viñoly, whose proposal “calls for demolishing nearly half of the museum’s existing complex before rebuilding and expanding the museum’s “footprint” and gallery space.” The renovation will cost $225 million and is scheduled to be completed in 2008. But the museum will have to delay the project if it cannot raise at least half of the money by the end of next year.
More Than $2 Trillion, But Nothing For PBS?
The budget that President Bush sent to Congress this week tops $2 trillion, and is already being criticized for being overly generous to to many constituencies, given the current state of the national economy. But public television stations nationwide are wondering where they can sign up for some of the president’s fiscal generosity, after discovering that the budget calls for the elimination of funds designed to ease the transition of such stations to digital broadcasting, as mandated by the FCC. Without the funding, many public stations in rural areas have claimed that they will be forced off the air.
Thinking Big In Toronto
“The Toronto Arts Council yesterday unveiled an ambitious, 10-year program designed to raise the level of awareness of the arts in Toronto and, more important, to put the city’s struggling arts organizations on a more financially stable keel.” A recent study revealed that there is a gap of almost CAN$45 million between what arts groups in the city have, and what they need to function. The new program will create an ambitious and large-scale fundraising structure which will hopefully close that gap by 2012, if all goes according to plan.
How Do You Beat Piracy? Go Analog.
Record companies have been known to become apoplectic when advance copies of new releases given to critics wind up in the hands (and computers and MP3 players) of the public. Many companies have resorted to handing out self-destructing CDs and threatening critics with legal action if they distribute the music early. But the V2 label has come up with a unique way to prevent advance copies of the highly anticipated new White Stripes album from being converted to tradable computer files: they put it on vinyl.
That’s Why They’re Called “Non-Profit,” Isn’t It?
Everyone knows that the American economy is in the tank, and that such times call for belt-tightening all around, particularly at non-profits. But John van Rhein is frustrated by the recent slew of defeatist cost-cutting measures at arts institutions across the country. “Arts groups get into trouble once they allow their marketing departments to shape their artistic programs. To pull back and stop taking calculated risks can only be counterproductive in the long run.”
Wild-Man Critic
Leslie Fiedler [who died last week at 85] “made his name, in the late ’40s, as a lit-crit prodigy in the grim-faced Cold War literary establishment known today as the New York Intellectuals or “the family.” He could easily have set himself up simply as an Upper West Side sage. He was charismatic and leonine and had the credentials — an outsized oeuvre, ease with languages (Japanese, Italian), lecture gigs all over the world. Crowing was his natural idiom. He was a master of hectoring overstatement…”
Mayhew To Run Covent Garden
“[London’s] Royal Opera House has appointed a woman to its top post for the first time, announcing Tuesday that Dame Judith Mayhew will succeed Sir Colin Southgate when he retires as chairman in August. New Zealand-born Mayhew, currently chairwoman of the University of London’s Birkbeck College, will join the Opera House board next month.” The Opera House is coming off a financially successful run of the Nicholas Maw’s much-discussed operatic adaption of Sophie’s Choice.
As Slow As It Gets – The World’s Slowest Piece Of Music
The first three notes of the slowest/longest piece ever written was being played on a German organ this week. It’s written to last 639 years. “The three notes, which will last for a year-and-a-half, are just the start of the piece, called As Slow As Possible. Composed by late avant-garde composer John Cage, the performance has already been going for 17 months – although all that has been heard so far is the sound of the organ’s bellows being inflated.”
The Woman Who Was Already There
A flurry of media interest greeted the news in January that the notoriously exclusive Vienna Philharmonic had finally hired its first female musician, a violist named Ursula Plaichinger. The strange thing is, Plaichinger has actually been a member of the orchestra for nearly two years, a fact which no English-language publication known to ArtsJournal bothered to mention. The media blitz came after the worldwide broadcast of the Vienna Phil’s famous New Year’s concert showed a brief glimpse of Plaichinger as she played with her section, the first time the orchestra had ever allowed a woman to be shown on its television broadcasts.