Civic leaders in Atlanta are backing a proposal for a $100 million civil rights museum in the city’s Olympic Park neighborhood. “The center would showcase the papers of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which Atlanta acquired last summer, and would recognize contributions of Atlantans and other Georgians to the civil rights movement.”
Author: sbergman
Severed Heads Are The Least Of It
Anne Applebaum was in attendance this week when Deutsche Oper’s controversial production of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” premiered, severed prophet heads and all, and she writes that the supposedly inflammatory scene isn’t really the issue. “If one were trying to understand German society, or Western culture, or even Mozart by watching this production, one would have been seriously confused… Why did the first scene take place at a black table, for example, around which sat corpses? Why did the satyrs wear phalluses on top of their furry costumes?”
“Composer For The Masses” Dies At 83
“Daniel Pinkham, a composer who had shared his music with peers and students at the New England Conservatory and the King’s Chapel since the late 1950s, has died of leukemia, according to colleagues… He was a prolific and generous composer concerned with making his music accessible to the masses.”
Famous Lilies Blooming Anew In Paris
When Paris’s Musée de l’Orangerie reopened earlier this year, it marked “a kind of Second Coming in the art world, 80 years after [Claude] Monet, near the end of his days, donated his supreme achievement to the people of France.” Monet’s Water Lilies series, among the painter’s best-loved works, are again viewable at the museum following a hellish 6-year renovation that “turned into a complicated nightmare involving the subterranean world of Paris.”
High Hopes For A Downloadable Future
As orchestras begin to wade into the vast world of online music, most acknowledge that the investment likely won’t pay off big in the short term. Still, the Philadelphia Orchestra, which recently launched an in-house, online store offering downloadable recordings and live concerts, “hopes that one day the orchestra can earn 10 percent to 15 percent of its budget through its online store – including not only recordings but also advertising and sponsorships.”
Big Year For Public Radio
25.5 million people a week listened to public radio in 2006, up 1% from the year before. That number becomes more significant when you take into account that radio as a whole has been losing listenership for years. In fact, terrestrial radio has lost 12% of its listeners in the last decade, while public radio has seen its fortunes rise steadily.
Paramount Poised For A Big Awards Season
Most movie buffs don’t spend a lot of time tracking which Hollywood studios garner the most awards nominations each year, but you’d better believe that the studios themselves care a great deal. This year, a perennial also-ran, Paramount, is leading the awards race, causing no small amount of consternation within the industry.
Canada Signals Major Shift In Museum Funding
“For decades, the [Canadian] government has funded the operation of museums and art galleries in Ottawa only, and then doled out the meagre Museums Assistance Program support to help other levels of government keep the rest of the country’s heritage institutions up and running. Now the Harper government is changing how museums and art galleries will be funded: simultaneously trying to devolve responsibility for operational support to the private sector while at the same time contemplating creating or designating ‘national’ institutions outside of Ottawa.”
Making Peter Pan Pay
Peter Pan has been a staple of children’s literature for as long as anyone currently alive can remember, and the stage version of the story has been not only a popular attraction for families, but a crucial moneymaker for the UK hospital that was granted the royalties by author JM Barrie. But when the copyright to Peter Pan expired, and the royalties dried up, the hospital had to scramble. The answer? A sequel, of course.
Conductor Acquitted Of Involvement In Cult Deaths
“A French appeals court acquitted a Swiss orchestra conductor Wednesday of charges of criminal involvement in a doomsday cult that lost scores of members in ritual killings in France, Switzerland and Canada. The court in Grenoble upheld Michel Tabachnik’s 2001 acquittal by a lower court.”