Category: today’s top story

“Aside from slashing prices or deepening discounts, art dealers across the city have been coping not just by laying off employees but by dropping artists with poor sales records, creating partnerships with other galleries and reaching out in desperation to tried-and-true customers, many of whom were priced out of the market during its peak. Still, with the exception of several blue-chip galleries who show well-known artists, foot traffic in Chelsea and other gallery precincts has thinned markedly where crowds jostled just a year ago.”

“If nonprofit cultural organizations were run like corporations – in which chief executives are, at least in principle, held accountable for financial performance – the chairwoman of New York City Opera, Susan L. Baker, might well be out of a job.”

“North Shore Music Theatre, which during its heyday was the largest nonprofit theater in the region, announced yesterday that it failed to raise enough money to reopen this summer and will close for good.” The shuttering of the 54-year-old company “leaves a huge hole in the arts scene on the North Shore, where as many as 350,000 people a year attended the theater’s slate of lavishly produced musicals staged in the round.”

“Psychologists say many of their patients are plagued by a harsh Inner Critic — including some extremely successful people who think it’s the secret to their success. An Inner Critic can indeed roust you out of bed in the morning, get you on the treadmill (literally and figuratively) and spur you to finish that book or symphony or invention. But the desire to achieve can get hijacked by harsh judgment and unrelenting fear.”

“Parts of the White House became an elaborate rehearsal room, where students from 8 to 18 absorbed the feeling of jazz and the blues from those who know it best. The entire Marsalis family — father Ellis and sons Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason — participated…. The Obama administration plans to continue its hands-on program in arts education in the future, but it was jazz, America’s indigenous art form, that got the first turn in the spotlight.”

“Audiences for the arts in the U.S. continue to decline and age at significant rates, according to a report released Monday by the National Endowment for the Arts. But the Internet holds out hope, as more people are going online to experience culture. … Surprisingly, the largest drop in arts consumption comes from people ages 45 to 54, which has traditionally been the most dependable group of arts participants.”

“It’s hard to find scholars who react with anything less than blunt outrage at the headline-garnering “Million-Word March,” which was begun in 2003 by Paul JJ Payack, the president and chief word analyst of Global Language Monitor. They point to the frequently revised predictions of the fateful word’s arrival, perhaps to coincide with the publication of his book about the project.”

“The Public Broadcasting Service Thursday instituted new staff cutbacks, as well as temporary reductions in salaries and benefits. It is all part of trying to close a $3.4 million budget deficit in 2010, according to a PBS source, who said the cutbacks were announced at a staff meeting.”

Jim Leach, tapped by President Obama to lead the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Rocco Landesman, Obama’s pick to head the National Endowment for the Arts, “are probably not the choices initially expected from a president who was being lobbied just a couple of months ago to do something as bold as create a cabinet-level department of arts and culture. These are the choices, rather, of a president who doesn’t want this to be a political fight.”

“At a time when other major orchestras are giving ground in a sour economy, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra has a new contract that contains modest gains and no givebacks from the musicians union. … The new contract [also] gives management the ability to broadcast concerts on local radio and public television without permission from, or payments to, musicians.”