Denver’s makeover of its Opera House was accomplished on a modest budget. But “expectations were too high” writes Mark Swed. “Architect Peter Lucking and acoustician Robert Mahoney had boasted that the Ellie would turn out to be one of the 10 best opera houses in the world. Well, it isn’t, and given its myriad requirements and modest budget, was never likely to be.”
Tag: 02.28.06
Needed: A Better Return Policy For America’s Museums
The Metropolitan Museum is returning a 2,500-year-old krater to Italy. The Getty is negotiating on artifacts in its possesion. And Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts may be next. So are America’s museums, one by one, going to have to make deals to cleanse their collections of items of dubious provenance? What is really needed is a plan to deal with the whole mess in an orderly way…
Duchamp – Fountain Of Grace
The fuss over a bad performance artist who damaged Marcel Duchamp’s iconic “Fountain” last month may have for some obscured Duchamp’s importance. “Duchamp is invariably referred to as an “anti-artist” and an “iconoclast.” This is entirely false. Duchamp was a great art adviser to collectors. He wasn’t against art at all; he was against the hypocritical aura surrounding it.”
NY Workshop Cancels Plans For Controversial Mideast Play
“A New York theatre company has put off plans to stage a play about an American activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza because of the current “political climate” – a decision the play’s British director, Alan Rickman, denounced yesterday as ‘censorship’. James Nicola, the artistic director of the New York Theatre Workshop, said it had never formally announced it would be staging the play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, but it had been considering staging it in March.”
The Cartoon New Orleans Is Back. But Where’s The City?
Mardi Gras, such as it is, is in full swing in the small section of New Orleans that still looks like it did last year at this time. Civic leaders are hoping the weeklong party will demonstrate the city’s resilience to the nation, but the truth is that no one ever really doubted that the bead-throwing floats and drunken revelers would return. “After Katrina, the lingering question is whether the New Orleans cultural traditions that had sprung up spontaneously in African-American neighborhoods would survive.”
Aussie Tapped To Shake Up Edinburgh
Australian composer Jonathan Mills has been named the next head of the Edinburgh Festival, beginning with the summer event’s 2007 season. Mills replaces Sir Brian McMaster, who has been criticised in recent years for his refusal to add a visual arts component to the event, and for what some perceived as the festival’s focus on classical music to the exclusion of other performing arts. It is hoped that Mills will also be able to reverse the festival’s slide into fiscal deficits, which have run as high as £1m on a £7.5m budget.
You Give Us 15 Hours, We’ll Give You Wagner’s World
The BBC has announced that it will do what no live opera company could ever dream of accomplishing: present Wagner’s entire epic Ring cycle in a single day. BBC Radio 3 will air all four of Wagner’s famous operas over a 15-hour period on the Monday after Easter, using recordings made by conductor Daniel Barenboim at the Bayreuth festival in the early 1990s.
DaVinci In The Dock
As opening arguments were heard Monday in the DaVinci Code copyright infringement case in London, the web of plots and subplots had become so tangled as to nearly approximate the book at the center of the storm. But while the details may be confusing, what is at stake in the case is abundantly clear. DaVinci is the greatest money-making machine the publishing world has at the moment, and if it is found to have been illegally cribbed from the work of others, the whole synergistic apparatus could come crashing down.
What’s Really Driving The Battle Over Antiquities?
With criticism coming from all sides over the issue of antiquities acquisition, some of the more prominent people at the helm of America’s great museums are making a concerted effort to explain to the public their role in the art collection process, and to allay concerns that the works on display may be ill-gotten gains. “In large part, [the drive to ‘repatriate’ works of art] has grown out of a growing antiquities debate: is knowledge better served by collecting and exhibiting objects in museums or preserving them in their original archaeological context?”
Foer To Head TNR
The enigmatic political magazine everyone loves to hate has a new editor, and for once, the transition seems as if it will be an easy one. The New Republic, which has regularly drawn the ire of partisans on both side of the American political divide, named Franklin Foer as its newest editor-in-chief, succeeding Peter Beinart, who is stepping down of his own volition.