Minnesota Opera Looks Ahead

Minnesota Opera had a great year. “Not only did it boost revenues by 11 percent over the previous year, sell 92 percent of its seats and report an overall contributions increase of more than 15 percent, but it has raised $10.6 million of a $20 million endowment initiative called Opera at the Ordway.” But what about the small overcrowded theatre in which the company performs?

Hughes: Serra Is Our Greatest Artist

Robert Hughes writes that Richard Serra is one of Amer’ica’s three greatest sculptors. Ever. In fact, Hughes says, Serra’s new installation at Guggenheim Bilbao makes Gehry’s architecture seem pale by comparison. “Let’s come right out with it: on the basis of his installation of one old and seven new rolled steel sculptures at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, we can call Richard Serra not only the best sculptor alive, but the only great one at work anywhere in the early 21st century.”

Getting As Good As He Gives

The actions of Corporation For Public Broadcasting chairman Kenneth Tomlinson continue to come under fire as further details of his partisan political activites come to light. The latest revelation, that a supposedly independent researcher hired by Tomlinson without the approval of the corporation to investigate supposed liberal bias in PBS’s newsmagazine, Now with Bill Moyers, “worked for 20 years at a journalism center founded by the American Conservative Union and a conservative columnist,” is being investigated by CPB’s inspector general. Meanwhile, one sitting U.S. Senator is openly calling for Tomlinson’s resignation.

Wordsworth In Cumbria

“A new center was opened this month by the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney to offer scholars access to a collection of manuscripts, books and other material that gathers 90 percent of Wordsworth’s known papers. The new Jerwood Center, named for the charitable foundation that pledged the first $925,000 of its $5.9 million building costs, represents a victory of architectural innovation and scholarship over those eager to keep England’s Lake District free of anything but the most traditional of building designs.”

Standing Up For Modernism

New York’s Museum of Art & Design is planning to reclad and renovate a modernist structure on Columbus Circle to serve as its new home, but the World Monuments Fund is protesting, arguing as part of its new list of endangered architectural sites that “the 1964 building represents a turning point in Modernist design. In an era of growing calls for the preservation of Modernist architecture, the 2006 watch list includes nine 20th-century sites.”

A Bad Year In Tinseltown

You can blame poor plotlines, online piracy, those infernal ads, or anything else for it, but the fact remains: fewer people than ever are going to the movies these days. “Compared with last year, box-office receipts have been down every weekend since late February; the last time comparable business was off for such a long span was in 1985. This summer’s movie season has been especially brutal. North American theater attendance from early May to June 19 was off nearly 11% from a year ago, tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co. estimated Monday… Although the final accounting for 2005 releases cannot yet be determined, their domestic runs indicate the prospects are decidedly dim.”

Toronto AuthorFest Looks To The New

“This year’s International Festival of Authors [in Toronto] will be the year of the wunderkind. The preliminary lineup for the country’s premier authors festival released yesterday revealed a slate packed with next-generation stars such as Jonathan Safran Foer, Helen Oyeyemi and Diana Evans.” Last year, the festival celebrated its 25th anniversary, and this year’s lineup represents a conscious effort to move forward with a new generation of writers.