Moscow has been tearing down much of its Soviet-era architecture. But now “Moscow is seeing a rash of cool industrial conversions that draw inspiration from projects like London’s Tate Modern. It has yet to turn the tide of destruction but embattled preservationists believe it’s a sign of hope for the future:”
Tag: 02.08.06
What Killed Oakland Ballet?
The most painful part of the demise of Oakland Ballet may have been how predictable it was, says Allan Ulrich. “For those of us who experienced the Oakland Ballet in action during its heyday… the mourning is mixed with rage. This didn’t have to happen… The saddest — and truest — observation you can make about the Oakland Ballet is that it expired because, in its 40th year, it had so little reason to live.”
Getty Launches Katrina Relief Fund
“The Getty Foundation’s Fund for New Orleans — to be announced today in New Orleans by officials of the Getty Foundation, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the city — will allow nonprofit arts organizations to apply for financial support of two types: conservation grants, to be applied toward preserving art collections, archives, historic buildings and landscapes, and transitional planning grants, for ‘longer-term organizational effectiveness and realization of an organization’s mission.'”
New Director For Colorado Ballet
The cash-strapped and beleagured Colorado Ballet has named former American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Gil Boggs as its new artistic director, replacing the fired Martin Fredmann. Boggs, who hasn’t worked in the dance world since retiring from ABT in 1999, inherits a troubled company with an accumulated debt of $700,000.
India’s Sexual Problem
India is modernizing itself at a breathtaking rate, and while the economic benefits of embracing technology and Western culture have been obvious for some time, the inevitable culture clash has begun. “What is happening now, at least for India’s moneyed younger class, is a cultural shift akin to what happened in the 1950s and the 1960s in the United States. The topic of sex is coming out from behind closed doors and drawn shades… The result is a growing gap between affluent, urban young people who embrace the idea of sexuality and a prevailing society that still idealizes virgins; between a country struggling with an AIDS epidemic and the refusal by many men to even contemplate the use of condoms.”
Amazing What $14 Million Can Do
“Troubled” does not begin to describe the history of the Chicago theatre recently known as the Shubert (now renamed for a corporate sponsor.) “Producers coveted it for its scale, which is similar to Broadway houses, but many theatergoers groaned at the thought of an evening at the 100-year-old Shubert, with its drab colors, its paucity of bathrooms and its congested, claustrophobic bottleneck of a lobby.” But a $14 million renovation has not only opened the theatre up, it has revealed some striking architectural details not seen since the building’s earliest days.
Classical Music’s Online Future Looks… Bright? Really?
The ambitious online venture Andante.com may have lost its battle to drag the world of classical music into the digital age last week, but Anne Midgette says that there is plenty of reason to believe that the war will eventually be won. “Classical music is thriving on the Internet. It is just that, like many other things on the Internet, it is not thriving in the form people in the 1990’s or early 2000’s expected it to take.”
Crumbling Tombs = Cultural Crisis
Rome’s Non-Catholic Cemetery may be small, but it houses the remains of a stunning array of internationally known individuals, from authors John Keats and Mary Shelley to Communist crusader Antonio Gramsci. These days, though, the cemetery is in serious disarray, and has been placed on the World Monument Fund’s 2006 Watch List of the 100 most endangered sites on earth. “Many of its important monuments are crumbling like the bones they mark, damaged by pollution and years without archaeological maintenance.”
Shopping Spree – Europeans Buy US
European companies are buying up US publishers. “Why do foreign media firms find American publishers attractive even as U.S. media conglomerates look to dump them? For American companies, book publishing is a slow-growth niche business. For the Europeans, it’s something quite different. These foreign companies that now own U.S. publishers generally lack the scale of U.S. media conglomerates.”
All This Over A Cartoon? Yes, And Get Used To It.
The Danish cartoons currently sparking so much violence in the Muslim world have put Western authorities in a tough spot. On the one hand, “they’re callous and feeble cartoons, cooked up as a provocation by a conservative newspaper exploiting the general Muslim prohibition on images of the Prophet Muhammad to score cheap points about freedom of expression.” But “the new Molotov cocktail of technology and incendiary art has hastened the speed with which otherwise forgettable pictures are now globally transmitted.” As a result, unthinkable violence results, and the West is left scrambling to mitigate the damage.