Category: people

Vincente Todolí is the Tate Modern’s new leader. “I have come from a small corner of Europe to a great metropolis and an institution which must talk not only to the local community but to the world. That is exciting for me. In Valencia [where he was director of the Institute for Modern Art from 1988 to 1996] and in Porto I was a one-man orchestra – conductor, soloist, back-up vocals. But I have left my ego behind. Now I want dialogue, confrontation, to be part of a team, which is what Tate is all about.”

Luciano Berio has died in Rome. He “was regarded as one of the most important contemporary avant-garde composers, with major influence as a teacher and conductor as well as a composer.” He was “an outstanding orchestral and vocal composer who was perhaps most remarked upon for his works with solo voice.”

Picasso lived in France for 40 years but never became a citizen. Why? “When he sought French nationality in 1940, he was turned down on the ground that he was an anarchist with communist tendencies. The extent of French misgivings about Picasso’s politics have just become known with the discovery of the artist’s police files from 1901 to 1940. They were among millions of French documents seized by German occupation forces in 1940 and transferred to Berlin. After the defeat of Germany in 1945, they were taken to Moscow. Only since the collapse of the Soviet Union have they been gradually returned to France.”

A Bay Area artist upset about George Bush’s war on Iraq got into a heated political argument in an Emeryville furniture store. When he mentioned the words “kill Bush” it was the “wrong move in a place filled with American flags and run by military veterans who support the president. Store employees called police, who alerted the Secret Service. Hours after entering the furniture store to buy cubicle partitions for a fellow artist’s project, Barry Schwartz was sitting in a small room in the Emeryville police station, being interrogated by two Secret Service agents.” He spent the next two days in jail.

George Orwell’s wife Sonia, whome th author married three months before his death, “was completely demonized,” says a new biography. Previous biographers have created “a hardhearted, mercenary gold digger who looked like a painting by Renoir and married a skeleton on his deathbed.” By contrast, the new book portrays Sonia as “the most generous person – for her to be reimagined as a monster of cold-heartedness and greed is staggering and extremely distressing.”

Florida billionaires Daniel and Peter Lewis are hands-on arts patrons. Daniel pledged $16 million towards the Florida Philharmonic’s $64 million endowment campaign. But when the orchestra failed to raise supporting capital, he insisted the orchestra be shut down. “The Lewis brothers share a conviction that the arts and other nonprofits must be financially sound – an elusive ideal to nearly every arts group – or be dramatically reconfigured, or even shut down. It is an ideal on which neither of the Lewis brothers seems willing to budge.”

Vincente Todoli is the new director of the Tate Modern. He’s a “Catalan by birth and the latest in a growing line of international curators heading Britain’s museums. Aged 45, fast talking, fast moving, fast thinking, he shoots from the heart and smiles winningly. Stamina seeps from every pore. His strong accent, a year in New York as a Fulbright scholar notwithstanding, introduces an element of enigma to what he is saying (we spend several moments disentangling the sibilants of ‘thresholds’).”

When Sean Doran was hired to run the English National Opera, everyone was asking who he is. “Indeed, the circumstances surrounding his hiring could hardly have been less auspicious. The selection process looked like a dog’s dinner, with well-qualified potential candidates refusing to apply for the position. All this amid chorus strikes, the apparent near-bankruptcy of the company and a bid for a large-scale injection of cash from Arts Council England. Into this smouldering car crash of a company Doran has now ventured. Fresh from the job of director of Perth festival in Western Australia, the 42-year-old has been at his desk for six weeks, during which time the acting executive director, Caroline Felton, has prematurely exited stage left. You can’t help feeling sorry for Doran.”

“An Australian-born artist based in Wales has won this year’s £30,000 Jerwood Painting Prize. Shani Rhys James, best known for her colourful self portraits, beat fierce competition to receive the honour – the UK’s biggest single award for painters… Ms James was up against shortlist of established and talented artists – John Hoyland, John Wonnacott, Marc Vaux, Alison Watt and Suzanne Holtom.”

Valery Gergiev is one of the world’s busiest conductors. Presently he’s involved in a whirlwind of concerts celebrating St. Petersburg’s 300th anniversary. But he hints at taking a vacation. “A vacation? Gergiev? The two seem mutually exclusive. But maybe there are other signs that, having reached the magic age of 50, as he did at the beginning of this month, he has been tempted to slow down, or at least to go less fast.”