Tag: 05.19.06

Big Changes In The Antiques Trade

“A profound change has taken place in the antiques market. In the past only one or two openly acknowledged sales of dealers’ stock would be held each year, often with dire results. Dealers were reluctant to pay premiums at auction when they could buy from their colleagues in the trade.” Now big auction sales are big successes.

God Wanted: Must Be Humble And Good At Fundraising

For arts groups in search of leadership, times are changing, and increasingly, a thorough knowledge of the art involved is not always a prerequisite for the job. “More typically, organizations seem to be looking for a do-it-all type — a fundraiser, a visionary, a seasoned manager and a respected scholar in the field. Increasingly, though, fiscal responsibility is a major part of the job.”

Gioia: The NEA’s Back

National Endowment for the Arts chairman Dana Gioia says the agency has left its sometimes controversial past behind. “Some of artists the NEA supported in the late 1980s and 1990s prompted conservatives to try to destroy the agency. Its detractors argued it was funding art that was obscene and offensive. Its budget was cut by 40 percent. Today, it is far less controversial and there is little public criticism of its offerings, which include Shakespeare, poetry and opera.”

Classical Music Jumps On the Digital Bandwagon

“Three years ago it seemed that classical music producers did not care about digital downloading. Well, that impression was wrong. Classical music, as many have noted recently, is doing very well on the Internet: a bigger proportion of sales on iTunes than in conventional retail stores. The classical establishment is now moving with uncharacteristic speed to get onto this bandwagon.”

Podcasting The Museum Experience

“In the spring of 2005, when a professor and a group of students at Marymount Manhattan College made waves by creating their own, unauthorized MP3 audio tour for the Museum of Modern Art, few art institutions were even exploring the idea of podcasting as an alternative to official audio tours, created by companies like Acoustiguide and Antenna Audio. But in the short time since then, museum podcasts — both do-it-yourself versions and those created by museums themselves — have taken off, changing the look and feel of audio tours.”

Those Book Tours… They’re Brutal

“There is a quality of melancholy to sitting alone at a little table with your ego and a year’s work piled in front of you and no one paying a lot of attention. Some authors have no trouble selling themselves, but I’m not a born book hustler. I sit there like an abandoned dog, waiting for someone to buy the book, at which time I sign it.”

Jorma Goes A-List

Jorma Elo is “a dancemaker who has rocketed onto ballet’s A-list by virtue of choreography that is a thrilling blend of classical technique and contemporary dance. Jorma Elo has an affinity for the startling: Ballerinas with their legs stretched out to tomorrow, choreographic effects enhanced by mysterious lights and shadows, and undulating set pieces that intertwine or interrupt the ballerinas’ patterns of movement.”