Category: today’s top story

34-year-old Johannes Debus thrilled audiences and musicians alike when he conducted Prokofiev’s War and Peace this fall. Now the company has snapped him up to replace Richard Bradshaw, who died suddenly in 2007. (COC has also announced its upcoming season, which features a new Stravinsky triple-bill staged by Robert Lepage.)

“As far as I could tell, Betty Freeman did not have a sentimental bone in her body. An arts patron like no other, she supported an extraordinary contingent of important composers… but she immediately lost interest in them after they died. She cared about the living, about new work, about the future, not the past. Once someone was gone, she moved on. Now she’s gone.”

“With the recession and credit crunch licking at our boots and high heels, many more artists will be joining the ranks of the starving or cash-poor, while every penny goes on paint, canvas, paper, pen, music sheets, strings, rosin, film or video. … What we need is not more artists, nor fewer, but more saints – such as the Carnegie or MacArthur foundations – willing to sprinkle a little seed money into the path of deserving artists, that their tiny hands may not be frozen.”

“This morning, I was about to eat my breakfast cereal from a robust, plain blue bowl…. And then I heard on the radio that Waterford Wedgwood, makers of Britain’s best-known ceramics, as well as Ireland’s most famous crystal and glassware, was in the hands of receivers and, effectively, up for grabs.” Jonathan Glancey on the significance of Waterford Wedgwood.

More than 30 works, worth about €180,000, were taken from the Fasanengalerie in central Berlin over the New Year’s holiday. “The etchings, prints and sculptures included Profil au fond noir, a 1947 work by Picasso; Nude in a rocking chair, a Matisse print from 1913; and Le Boupeut, a 1962 color print by Georges Braque.”

“Overseas operations of the six major studios — Paramount, Warner Bros., Universal, 20th Century Fox, Sony and Disney — each bagged more than $1 billion in revenue for the second consecutive year, according to preliminary estimates from each distributor.”

In the face of a spending freeze brought on by California’s budget crisis, the Los Angeles Unified School District has stopped all work offered by the Arts Community Partnership Network, the widely admired organization of performing arts professional that provides programs for the city’s public schools.

“Characters depicted in Newbery winners are more likely to be white, male and come from two-parent households than the average U.S. child, according to a Brigham Young University study. The trend has accelerated even as the U.S. has diversified, with fewer black and Hispanic main characters in the past 27 years than in the Civil Rights era of 1951-79.”

“To get the house in order, start with the reason MOCA — or, for that matter, any art museum — exists: Start with the permanent collection,” Christopher Knight counsels. “MOCA’s commitment to building a collection … has not been matched by a commitment to showing it.”

In light of the recent troubles at the National Academy Museum and MOCA, “[w]hy, several experts ask, is it so wrong for a museum to sell art from its collection to raise badly needed funds? And now that many institutions are facing financial hardship, should the ban on selling art to cover operating costs be eased?”