The jazz label is 70 years old this year. “The quandary for Blue Note is how it can remain the pre-eminent jazz label while surviving as a profitable business.”
Tag: 02.06.09
National Gallery Pays $10M For Bagpipe Player
“After a week of rumor and speculation, the National Gallery of Art in Washington confirmed that it was the buyer of Bagpipe Player in Profile, a 1624 painting by the Dutch master Hendrick ter Brugghen. Richard Feigen, a New York dealer, purchased the painting at Sotheby’s New York sale on Jan. 29 for $10.2 million.”
Why Is Congress Attacking The Arts?
“Faced with an economic downturn of staggering proportions, some attack any help for the arts as waste, ignoring the millions of Americans who earn their livings and support their families through their artistic endeavors and arts-related enterprises. The economic stimulus bill currently under consideration on Capitol Hill shouldn’t neglect these Americans.”
The New President Gets The Peter Max Treatment
“Longtime pop artist Peter Max has done Obama times 44, in honor of the 44th president. This large installation – 15 feet wide and 6 feet tall – incorporates two Obama photos painted 44 ways by Max in his familiar brightly colored, neo-impressionistic style.”
A Yiddish Gutenberg Project
“More than 10,000 works in Yiddish – perhaps more than half of all that was ever published in the language – are now accessible online as part of a joint project between the National Yiddish Book Center, based in Amherst, Mass., and the Internet Archive in San Francisco, the two institutions announced on Friday.”
Edinburgh OKs Festival Theatre Extension
“Edinburgh Festival Theatre’s £2 million extension scheme has been given the green light by the local authority. Edinburgh City Council has agreed to guarantee a loan of £250,000, to help make up a shortfall in funds.”
Olga Raggio, 82, Longtime Met Curator
She was “an internationally known scholar and curator who in almost 60 years with the Metropolitan Museum of Art organized some of its best-known exhibitions, scoured the world for treasure and coaxed rarely seen artworks from places as far flung as the Vatican and as close at hand as a New Jersey abbey.” She retired only at the end of 2008.
New York, Where Immigrant Composers Get Eaten Up Or Spit Out
Tarik O’Regan, a 31-year-old Briton with a burgeoning composing career, considers the travails of some of his predecessors – Mahler, Bartók, Britten, Prokofiev, Stravinsky (who moved into a fancy Fifth Avenue Apartment and promptly died) – who’ve been drawn across the ocean by the bright lights of the big city.