The Columbus (Ohio) Symphony Orchestra is the latest regional ensemble to announce a substantial deficit for the current season. The CSO is reportedly seeking ways to alleviate a $300,000 shortfall, but is in no imminent danger of shutdown. The Columbus deficit is significant because the orchestra has been a model of fiscal reponsibility in recent years, even while paying its musicians relatively well and keeping a high artistic standard as its top priority. CSO officials are blaming the down economy and a slump in program advertising and corporate giving as the main reasons for the shortfall.
Tag: 05.09.03
Monet, Giacometti – Artists Caught On Film
The Artists on Film Trust has collected rare films of famous artists at work. The collection “constitutes a virtually unknown body of art historical sources. These films are certainly a fascinating historical source for the techniques of artists.”
Rethinking The British Museum
Neil MacGregor has been director of the British Museum since last August. He says the museum’s relationship with the government is better. And that the museum is thinking on new ways of displaying its collections. “It is clearly possible to construct many different narratives. One of the questions is where the universal story should begin: where do you site prehistory? Do you then want visitors to move from prehistory into Mesopotamia? Or, as much of our material is British, do you want to start the sequence of British archaeological galleries? Or do you want to go on to the hunting societies of North America?”
Le Monde In Crisis
“For the past few months, France’s newspaper of reference and flagship of the world’s francophone press has been engaged in a crisis unheard of since it was founded after the liberation in 1944. The house of Colombani has been shaken by the publication of La face cachee du Monde (The Hidden Face of Le Monde), a 630-page ‘investigation into an institution above all suspicion’. The book has raised profound questions about the power the newspaper wields in France, and about the ethics and methods of those at its helm. The Hidden Face accuses Le Monde of everything from trafficking influence, running secret campaigns for favoured politicians and harassing businessmen for commercial gain to publishing anti-French propaganda, stifling internal debate and misrepresenting the group’s sales figures and financial results.”
Detroit’s Remember-We’re-Here Tour
Instead of traveling abroad, the Detroit Symphony is spending $900,000 to tour the state of Michigan. “While international touring is about building prestige and flexing the orchestra’s artistic muscles, the 2-week swing through Michigan has another agenda: reminding audiences statewide that they, too, have a stake in the DSO.”
“Handmaid’s Tale” American Premiere In Minnesota
Minnesota Opera is staging the American premiere of Poul Ruders’ “A Handmaid’s Tale (based on the Margaret Atwood book). Company officials have already cast “The Handmaid’s Tale” as a “financial bath. They couldn’t attract a corporate sponsor, and while the opera comes from a popular book, it’s not from a beloved one. ‘Maybe it was just a backlash of the times, with the war and all, but make no mistake, we created something extremely volatile and controversial. You have illicit sex, perversion, betrayal, hope and love and such heartbreaking loss. But if audiences are going to be trapped for three hours, you have to grab and entertain them, and this does that quite well’.”
Brooklyn Museum Closing This Summer To Save Money
The Brooklyn Museum is closing for two weeks this summer to save money. “Closing the Brooklyn Museum from Aug. 4 through Aug. 19 will save $250,000, said Robert S. Rubin, chairman of the museum. The nearly 300 union and nonunion employees will rotate shifts for the two weeks so that everyone will be on furlough for at least a week, he said.”
Will Movie Goers Buy Online?
Buying movie tickets online has been slow to take off. “While online sales tripled over the last few years, they comprised just 2 percent to 4 percent of roughly $9 billion in movie-theater ticket revenue last year, or about $300 million. That will probably rise to $400 million this year. Buying [movie] tickets in advance is not something Americans do. It’s an entrenched consumer behavior to not plan that far in advance when you’re thinking about movies.”
Dancing The Road To Recovery
“Six years ago, Marc Brew survived a car accident in South Africa that killed his girlfriend, her brother and a friend. It left him a quadriplegic, although he has since regained the use of his arms, and spelled the end of his dancing career – or so he thought. After extensive rehabilitation in Australia, he began dancing in his wheelchair and formed his own dance company, DanceAbility. He moves elegantly: sitting backwards and forwards, swaying and moving himself out of his chair and onto the floor.”
The Real Digital Film Revolution – Tiny Cameras
Digital equipment is changing not just the technology of how films are made, but the styke in which they’re made. “You can take as many takes as you want, so you don’t have to force anything. We are seeing more and more of this ‘in-the-moment’ kind of thing. This technology offers a much more intimate kind of movie.” For one thing, new tiny digital cameras are so small they don’t intrude on or dominate scenes as they have.