The Rev. Paul R. Shanley is one of the Boston priests who has been charged with child sexual abuse, and he is living in the trendy Cape Cod burg of Provincetown while awaiting trial. The new arrival didn’t sit well with one Provincetown artist, who was very nearly one of Shanley’s victims as a child. So when Mike Ware “heard of a proposal to create site-specific art installations in the Meadows Motel… he decided to furnish a room for ‘this one person who really affected my life.’ So Ware designed his contribution to the exhibit, which opens tomorrow in Provincetown: a jail cell for the Rev. Paul R. Shanley.”
Tag: 10.16.03
Staying Solvent, While Holding On To Your Soul
With deficits becoming the rule rather than the exception, and public interest in classical music stagnant at best, American orchestras are searching for ways to reinvent their product without alienating their core audience. No one’s done it successfully yet, but many people in the industry are betting that Deborah Card, the Chicago Symphony’s new executive director, may eventually lead the way. “Our responsibility as administrators is to make sure that people have the best possible access to those concerts. We have to step up to the challenge of understanding that we’re in a marketplace, and the marketplace must be attended to. We have to be sure that our product — that sounds so crass — is delivered in the way people want to receive it.”
Chicago Balances The Budget, Sort Of
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which stunned the orchestra world when it posted an unprecedented $6 million deficit last year, has officially balanced its books for the 2002-03 season. The CSO cut $2.5 million from its annual budget and took an additional endowment draw of $1.3 million in order to stay out of the red, while ticket sales and contributed income remained flat. However, the orchestra anticipates a return to large deficits for the current season, when it will not be able to repeat the endowment overdraw trick.
Cleveland Posts Large Deficit
Even the most prestigious American orchestras aren’t safe from the wave of deficits and cash flow problems which has swept the nation in recent years. This week, the Cleveland Orchestra, thought by many to be the best symphony orchestra in the U.S., reported a deficit of nearly $2 million on a budget of $36 million. This is the second consecutive deficit for the group, and orchestra execs are projecting a $4 million deficit for the current fiscal year. The struggle to stay in the black appears to be twofold: “The fundamental problem is the presence of a world-class symphony orchestra in a relatively small city,” and the orchestra’s endowment was hit hard by the recession, losing more than $50 million over three years.
Universal Slashes Workforce
“Universal Music, the world’s largest record company, is to slash 1,350 jobs – or 11% of its workforce – in order to cope with a protracted slump in sales. Global music sales have been in decline for more than three years, with the industry laying the blame on illegal song swapping over the internet and home CD burning. Universal says the cuts will save it $200 million a year and leave the firm in a good position to take advantage of any turnaround.”
Keeping An Eye On The One With The Cash
The UK’s arts minister ran afoul of some of the nation’s most prominent arts groups this week, when published rumors spread that she was planning to divert government funds away from large national groups such as the British Museum and the National Gallery, in favor of funding smaller, regional organizations. Estelle Morris is sharply denying that she has any such plans, and insists that she merely wants to increase the accessibility of great art. Still, wary arts execs will be watching Morris’s next moves closely.
Music And Dance Schools To Merge
Two major English arts schools are planning to merge. “Trinity College of Music and Laban, which have international reputations, are to become a fame academy for the classical world from next autumn. The move has been hailed as a breakthrough for the two disciplines, which have always been taught separately in Britain despite their long shared history.”
Aussie University Strike
Teachers at Australia’s universities have gone on strike. “Classes were cancelled and libraries closed as staff picketed outside universities to protest against government moves to link higher education funding to industrial conditions.”
National Book Award Finalists
This year’s National Book Awards finalists have been named. They are: Shirley Hazzard’s “Great Fire,” Marianne Wiggins’s “Evidence of Things Unseen” (Simon & Schuster), “The Known World,” by Edward P. Jones, “A Ship Made of Paper,” by Scott Spencer, and “Drop City,” by T. C. Boyle.
In His Own Words – Booker Winner On His Colorful Past:
DBC Pierre knows what it’s like to experience “90 flavours of trouble riding on his ass,” having been addicted to cocaine and run up such huge debts that he ripped off a friend to the tune of £30,000. Winning the most prestigious literary award in the country worth £50,000 will not counter the lesson of Pierre’s past 20 years: that life is “a hard bastard” and “we should count ourselves lucky for just about everything, including drawing breath.”