Category: today’s top story

“The union accuses Ramon Tebar, who is music director of the symphony and [also of] Florida Grand Opera, of replacing the majority of the symphony’s orchestra with the opera’s musicians, without telling the musicians he was dissatisfied with their performance or giving them a chance to improve.”

“On the face of it they are wildly different: ecclesiastical architecture, a 1960s girl band performance and a terrible furniture store blaze that helped change UK fire laws. But Elizabeth Price’s powerful fusion of the three elements to make a 20-minute film seemed to grip audiences and led to her being named winner of the 2012 Turner prize.”

“There can be no doubt that, as Maria Miller insists, many Conservative ministers do cherish the arts in their own lives. They are not materialistic brutes so much as selective philistines, content for Newcastle, having pitted art against survival, to embark on its own version of the Dark Ages, while Downing Street’s connoisseurs blag £888 Wagner tickets.”

“The RPO board voted Wednesday to keep him only until August – just two years into his four-year contract. No reasons were given for the sudden action,” though clashes between the conductor and the Philharmonic’s CEO had become so frequent and fierce that an outside mediator warned that the conflict could endanger the entire organization.

Jesse Sheidlower: “An article … in The Guardian … highlighted the claim that Robert Burchfield, the editor of the four-volume Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary published from 1972 to 1986, ‘covertly deleted thousands of words because of their foreign origins.’ This claim is completely bogus.”

These “fan-to-fan ticket exchanges”, as they prefer to call themselves, have created a lucrative market for themselves, with a standard commission rate of 10% from the sellers and 15% from the buyers.

“Beginning Jan. 21, the Dallas Museum of Art will take the unprecedented step of offering an unusual one-two punch: Free general admission and free memberships, making it the first art museum in the country to do so.”

“At a Monday news conference, Tim Zavadil, leader of the musicians’ negotiating team, questioned the board’s ‘hiding large deficits’ during the recession so as not to negatively affect fundraising for a new hall and a bonding request before the Legislature.”

In Boston, “a total of 26 paintings, including the marquee Dance at Bougival and Madame Roulin, have been sent to exhibitions in Italy organized by a private company called Linea d’Ombra, for a large, undisclosed fee. The combined loans and rentals have resulted in what Malcolm Rogers, the MFA’s director, readily admits is a ‘traffic jam’ of missing masterpieces.”

“Royal Opera House chief executive Tony Hall has been appointed as director general of the BBC, just a week-and-a-half after the hapless George Entwistle resigned from the job – in a secret, emergency process aimed at restoring stability to the crisis-hit broadcaster.”