Tag: 01.04.04

Framed (Lucratively)

It wasn’t too long ago that old picture frames were regarded as junk with little or no value. “Today the same frames that dealers once gave away sell for $10,000 to $35,000. (The record for a single sale is $947,000, for a 17th-century amber frame auctioned at Sotheby’s in 1991.) Eli Wilner & Company has grown to 17 employees and does roughly $3 million a year in business. His collection has expanded to 3,000 frames, mostly 19th-century, but some dating back to the 1600’s.”

Opera From The Streets

A London opera company that uses professionals and homeless people for its productions is gaining notice. “Matthew Peacock first had the idea of a company that mixed homeless people with professional performers three years ago, when he was an assistant editor of the London-based magazine Opera Now. A former singer with a social conscience, he had begun to do voluntary work for a London night shelter and found that it was taking over his life. ‘Some of the people there were what you’d expect – difficult, drunken, drugged. But others weren’t. They were ordinary guys just like me, except they’d had a stroke of bad luck and couldn’t cope.”

That Balanchine Ballerina At 45

Kyra Nichols on dancing for Balanchine: “You’d do what he taught you, but you’d let your personality come out. Also he’d give you a role, and you were expected to go into the studio and work by yourself. It was the best thing for me. It would give you time to think of how you could do it within the restrictions of the choreography.”

Making Up History For London Buildings

London has not always been good about preserving its best buildings. As a consequence, “London’s older buildings are often invested with associations that do not belong to them. For instance, there is a 17th-century house just upstream of Shakespeare’s Globe that is commonly said – on no evidence at all – to have been the home of Sir Christopher Wren while St Paul’s Cathedral was being built across the water…”

The New Arts Landscape

Tighter funding, changed attitudes – it’s tough to run an arts organization these days. Chicago-area arts administrators reflect on the new cultural climate: “There’s a strong current of anti-intellectualism around these days, which becomes antielitism, and arts groups tend to be tarred with that charge unfairly. There should be some recognition of the arts as a socializing force. But at least the historical lack of government support for the arts in America means that we have not become dependent on it.”

Jose Cura, Jack Of All Trades

“The Argentinian-born tenor can rightfully boast of being a jack-of-all-trades, and contrary to the expression, becoming the master of every last one: singer, conductor, composer, arranger, instrumentalist (guitar, piano, winds, strings), rugby player, photographer and businessman. But instead of receiving unqualified encouragement for his artistic reach, Cura often finds himself criticized for his craven ambitions.”

Scotland’s Closed Door To The Rest Of The (Literary) World

“In the heydey of Scottish literary openness – the early to mid-nineteenth century – there was eager reciprocity between nations with, say, Walter Scott producing the first English translation of Goethe, along with other German ballads, and German literature in turn being influenced by Scott’s own fiction.” Sadly, that’s no longer true, and it’s very difficult to find translated literature on Scottish shelves.