Staff at three leading UK museums are planning to strike Wednesday. “Curators and other workers at the Science Museum in London will take part in the protest over a below-inflation wage offer and cost-cutting measures. The National Railway Museum in York and the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford will also be hit by the action.”
Tag: 02.14.05
What’s Wrong With Orchestras
What’s wrong with modern-day symphony orchestras? How about “icompetence, naivety, venality, snobbishness, dishonesty and amateurishness”? (and those are just the mean things they say about themselves)
Is Palm Beach The Next Maastricht?
Art Basel Miami has become an art sensation in Florida for contemporary collectors. Now Palm Beach wants to the same for Old Masters. First though, to settle on a name: The fair has “changed its name twice in the past two years, the latest version being Palm Beach! America’s International Fine Art & Antique Fair. The exclamation mark caused some hilarity in the art market and there were rumours that an outside consultant had been paid $500,000 to come up with the idea. The fair’s organisers deny the latter suggestion and say that it was dreamed up in-house, but there is no doubt about their strategy.”
Grammy Ratings Dive – Have We Lost Interest?
Ratings plummeted for Sunday night’s Grammy show. “An estimated 18.8 million people watched Ray Charles’ swan song clean up with eight awards Sunday night, a startling 28 percent drop from the 2004 Grammys. After two years on an upswing, Grammy ratings sunk to their lowest level since 1995.”
Broadway Goes Jukebox Mining
Broadway shows made up of pop songs seem to be getting more popular. “The rise of the jukebox musical comes at a time when Broadway producers seem increasingly unable to consistently strike gold with either overtly campy new work (“Taboo,” “Bombay Dreams”), high-minded, chamber-opera fare (“Caroline, or Change”) or movie-inspired shows (“Never Gonna Dance,” “Footloose”). Add to that the near-complete inability of contemporary Broadway songs to crack the Top 40 list, and the appeal of the jukebox musical becomes even more apparent: here, it seems, is a prepackaged score guaranteed to be hummable and requiring no expensive stars.”
Scottish Arts Council Chief: Football Is Art Too
“Foortball should be regarded as an equal art form to opera and ballet, according to the newly appointed chairman of the Scottish Arts Council. In his first statement since taking the helm of the SAC, Dr Richard Holloway, 71, criticised the “snobbish” associations that surround the Scottish art scene and insisted sports such as football and shinty deserve recognition by the nation’s cultural community.”
Plundering Iraq
“Tens of thousands of objects have just gone completely missing From Iraq in the past two years. It’s a cultural disaster of massive proportions. A senior counterterrorism official said the trade in illicit antiquities was increasingly run by organized rings of professional thieves, who use poor Iraqis in rural areas as diggers. Objects are funneled out of the country in concealed shipments along smuggling routes that have been plied for centuries, in a system in which artifacts are sold for cash or sometimes for weapons that wind up in the hands of insurgents in Iraq. Some archaeological experts estimate that the illegal antiquities trade may pump tens of millions of dollars into the underground economy in Iraq.”
Business: Cheering For Christo
New York businesses are cheering Christo and Jeanne Claude’s The Gates. “City officials said they expected tens of thousands of people to show up for the exhibition, which is to be up for only 16 days, and whose $20 million cost is being borne exclusively by the artists. By the time the 7,500 gates are taken down in two weeks, the city expects to generate $80 million in business, with $2.5 million in city taxes alone, according to the city’s Economic Development Corporation.”
Welsh National Opera Ups The Stakes With New Home
The Welsh National Opera is moving into a big new home – the Welsh Millennium Center. Hopes are high the move will help restore the company’s fortunes. WNO has “endured a number of setbacks in recent seasons: several flops, the unpopular organisational overhaul and the “sudden departure” last summer of the inexperienced young music director Tugan Sokhiev among them. Is the long-serving general director Anthony Freud thinking of moving on? Can the magnificent facilities of the WMC restore the company’s fortunes?”