Charlie Wright is chairman of timber and development company R.D. Merrill is known in art circles for restoring solvency to the New York-based Dia Foundation. Now he’s turning to another big interest – poetry – and starting a new publishing house. “We’ll be focused on mid-career American poets. There will be some exposure to emerging poets, also reprints and translations – sort of a mixed bag.”
Tag: 02.08.05
NY Comics Smiling About Raises
In December New York comedians got together to form an organization to negotiate higher pay from comedy clubs. “Two months ago it sent letters to the owners of 11 clubs around the city asking for raises, and as of last week all but 4 of the clubs had acquiesced and submitted proposals for a new pay scale. Yesterday the union made contact with the four remaining clubs and today will meet with their representatives.”
Oscars Change Presentation Procedures
The Oscars are changing the way some of its awards are presented. “Some winners will not go on stage to pick up their awards – while in other categories, all five nominees will get on stage before being told who has won. The traditional system where the winner walks up to the podium after their name is read out will also still be used.”
Kipen: New American Lit Awards Have A Conflict
So there’s to be an Oscars for the book world – the Quill Awards. Televised on TV too. But David Kipen has a problem with one of the overseers of the awards – Reed Business International, the company that owns Publishers Weekly: “Now, PW is a pleasant and frequently useful publication. Unaccountably — maybe by mistake? — it’s even hired a gifted and energetic literary journalist, Sara Nelson, to become its new editor. But still, in co- administering an annual awards ceremony honoring the very industry PW covers, the magazine’s conflicts of interest are, not to put too fine a point on it, ripe for the plucking.”
SF Opera Gets New Director
The San Francisco Opera has named David Gockley, the longtime head of Houston Grand Opera, as its sixth general director. He will succeed Pamela Rosenberg in January, six months earlier than planned.
Bringing Opera Out Of The House
San Francisco Opera’s new director has some big challenges to solve. But David Gockley is looking outside the box: “In Houston, we’ve done a lot of outdoor performances and performed in smaller suburban theaters. One of the first things I want to do here is take an inventory of all the performance spaces in the Bay Area, both outdoor and indoor. I want to try to come up with a formula that would access those audiences and give them a taste that would make them want to come downtown, because this is where it really happens.”
Haas: Maestro Of The Radio
Karl Haas’s syndicated program, “Adventures in Good Music,” for many years attracted the largest audience of any classical music radio program in the world and was carried by hundreds of stations in the United States, Canada, Australia, Mexico and Panama and on Armed Forces Radio. “Karl Haas had the unique knack of being able to convey his love and knowledge of classical music to an audience that, for the most part, wasn’t all that familiar with it. But instead of bringing the music down to them, he brought them up to the music. He was like Leonard Bernstein in that respect.”
Chicago’s Millennium Park – No Photos Allowed
“Chicago spent $270 million on its Millennium Park, placing a big public sculpture by Anish Kapoor in the middle of it… Woe betide any member of the public who tries to photograph this sculpture, though: it’s a copyrighted sculpture and Chicago is spending even more money policing Chicagoans who try to photograph it and make a record of what their tax-dollars bought.”
Moscow Biennale – Art Of Protest
“The buzz of the first Moscow Biennale is not the dozens of critically acclaimed international artists represented, some of whom swooped down for the opening last week. While the organisers said they saw record crowds of 2,000 visitors a day on the first weekend, the Lenin Museum had the calm, slow atmosphere of a library by midweek. Rather the beating heart of the festival is Russia’s protest art, which is experiencing a boisterous resurgence in Moscow.”
Bush Proposes No Arts Funding Cuts
With 154 federal agencies in line for budget cuts in George Bush’s proposed new budget, the arts did pretty well, as Bush held funding steady…