Tag: 02.20.04

Why Barenboim Is Leaving

Why is Barenboim leaving the Chicago Symphony? One official suggested that “there have been ongoing conflicts with the administration and trustees regarding the ‘non-artistic’ side of his directorship, including questions about his taking a firmer hand in fundraising, community outreach and maintaining a more regular community presence.”

Comedy Nation – It’s The UK

The comedy industry in Britain has grown enormously in the past decade with more than 150 new clubs opening. Now “with its top stars eyeing America and other overseas markets and its audiences more numerous and knowledgeable than ever before, live comedy can truly claim to be one of Britain’s fastest-growing forms of entertainment.”

The Art Of Ethical Industry

“Over the past couple of decades, the ethics industry has kicked into high gear. We now have a growing number of professional ethicists who are prepared to act as superegos for hire to the various professions. Indeed, take any given profession and there is another profession called the ethics of that profession. (Think bioethics, medical ethics, legal ethics, computer ethics, and so forth.)”

Scottish Opera Ring Won’t Hit Disk

Last year’s acclaimed Scottish Opera production of Wagner’s Ring cycle is blamed for helping precipitate the company’s financial crisis. There was a recording made, but it appears the company isn’t likely to release it. “Making and releasing a recording of the Ring Cycle, with its four separate parts, would be a major undertaking in a shrinking market for new classical recordings. But it is clear that a recording would have been widely welcomed by opera fans in Scotland and worldwide.”

UN To Expand Its HQ

The United Nations headquarters in New York was an architectural trendsetter when it opened in the 1950s. Now it’s time for expansion and “plans for extensive renovations and the addition of a new administrative building, to be designed by Fumihiko Maki, have once again put the UN at the forefront of design – this time the struggle to reconcile security features with aesthetics and openness.”

Meeting The Modern In Stockholm

The Moderna Museet in Stockholm is “the largest and most important museum of contemporary art north of Dusseldorf.” But two years ago it closed, a “sick” building that need to be closed and extensively repaired. “So, 27 months after its closure, the building has re-opened. The museum has come home. But home has changed quite a lot. The place looks different. The place feels different. The art is organised in quite different ways too.”

Keep Focused – Tracking Down Looted Iraq Art

Last year Col. Matthew Bogdanos led the US team trying to recover art looted from the Iraq National Museum. “Now, after recovering more than 4,000 stolen artifacts, Bogdanos’s team is in shambles, its members recalled to other projects or done with their tours of duty. The Marine colonel himself will be returning to civilian life at the end of March. So this winter he’s touring the world, pleading with government officials, military experts, and antiquities specialists to continue his effort to recover more than 9,000 missing treasures dating back to the birth of city life, the invention of written language, the world’s first laws.”