Troubled Times For Seattle Museums

Regina Hackett trains a tough eye on Seattle-area museums and finds a troubled landscape. The Bellevue Art Museum is still hoping to reopen this fall. The Henry Gallery is struggling with a reduced budget. The Seattle Art Museum, planning a major expansion of its home and hoping to open a large sculpture park, plans to close for a year during construction…

Who Needs Friends When You’ve Got Tony Back?

In a mildly surprising twist on the usual Hollywood bluster, today’s announcement of the nominations for the 56th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards did not include a nod to the just-concluded NBC blockbuster, “Friends.” The sitcom probably didn’t deserve to be nominated, but that rarely has anything to do with it when a hit show is leaving the air. Instead, the nominated comedies are “Sex & the City,” “Arrested Development,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Will & Grace.” On the drama side, HBO’s mob hit “The Sopranos” once again leads the pack after being ineligible last year.

Another Score For Potemkin

Sergei Eisenstein’s silent film masterpiece, Battleship Potemkin, has twice inspired composers to pen complete scores to accompany it, and now a third soundtrack is in the works. But whereas the first two musical accompaniments were created by the eminent composers Edmund Meisel and Dmitri Shostakovich, the latest version is to be recorded by pop group The Pet Shop Boys. The score will be mainly instrumental, but will include a few new songs.

Klein Comes To New Jersey

Stephen Klein, a former executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra who has spent most of the last decade running the Pittsburgh Public Theater, has been named the new managing director of the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. The New Jersey troupe is considerably less well-known than the Pittsburgh company Klein left last summer, but Klein has always seemed to like a challenge, and has never shied away from taking a job perceived to be less prestigious than his last one.

Private Funding Partnership Working in UK

A program designed to bring private investment to the arts in northwest England seems to be having a real impact. “Companies in the region have pumped £500,202 into arts projects under the Arts & Business New Partners scheme, up from £107,840 in the 2002/3 financial year. And Arts & Business North West, the not-for-profit organisation which runs the project and offers to match business contributions, itself invested £277,061, compared to just £80,670 a year ago.”

Why Barenboim Left Chicago

Daniel Barenboim’s impending departure from the Chicago Symphony had been long-expected, and the perception is that his relationship with the CSO management had soured. The conductor, who has never been shy about expressing himself, admits as much in a recent interview, and in between questions about the affair he had while married to Jacqueline duPre, he insists that he isn’t the least bit tired of conducting, merely of what always comes with the job in America. “I can’t stand going out to one more dinner with some Mrs So-and-So who might leave a million dollars to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when she dies.”

Offenbach Score Unearthed

“A handwritten copy of the original score for Jacques Offenbach’s last opera has been discovered a century after it was thought lost in a fire. The manuscript for the Tales of Hoffman – which premiered in 1881, a year after Offenbach’s death – was found when the Paris opera library was re-organised.”

Roman Glass Sets Auction Record

An exceptionally crafted Roman bowl cut from a single block of glass has set a record at auction in London this week, fetching £2,646,650. The sum is the most ever paid for a piece of ancient glass. “The Constable-Maxwell cage-cup dates from the third century and is decorated with a delicate lattice design. It has survived intact for 17 centuries. It is the third time the item has set the record for the highest price paid for a piece of ancient glass.”

RSC Returns to London

“The Royal Shakespeare Company is to return to central London in November for a six-month season at the Albery theatre in Soho… The company transferred none of its plays to London last year because it could not get enough financial backing from producers – the first time it had not had a London season since the 1960s.” The RSC will offer special discounts to theatergoers under 25 at the London shows, in a bid to reinvigorate and expand its core audience.

File-Sharing Turns To Film

Even as the music industry continues to kvetch over illegal file-trading, it seems that mere songs are no longer the only files on the block to be swapped. In fact, the popularity of online trading of complete films and “other files larger than 100MB” is close to overtaking that of music on peer-to-peer networks. It’s all illegal, of course, but while the music industry has been touting the success of its anti-piracy campaign, it seems that what has actually occurred has been a shift in focus, from music to film, and a shift in technique, from large well-known file-trading enablers like Kazaa to smaller, more surreptitious programs.