“After seasons of offering discounts to college students and hosting preconcert social events, the [Boston Symphony Orchestra] this season is trying to throw open its doors even wider, selling $20 tickets to anyone under the age of 40. Those concertgoers would be spring chickens for the BSO, where the average age of attendees is 49 and the average season-ticket holders is 54.”
Tag: 03.02.09
Protesters Take Over Stage During Playwright’s Talk
“Protesters invaded the stage at London’s National Theatre to object to what they view as ‘racism’ in the new play England People Very Nice. Two men carrying placards interrupted a talk by the playwright Richard Bean for 10 minutes until removed by security. … The protesters plan to picket the sponsor of the comedy, described by the theatre as ‘a riotous journey through four waves of immigration’.”
At The Theatre, Risk = Good; Anxiety = Bad
“Anxiety kills theatre. I reckon that audiences are almost always willing to embrace risk, just as long as they are confident that they are in safe hands and have faith that the company is taking them somewhere interesting, and for good reason. … But anxiety is something else entirely….”
How Did Bronzes’ Bidder Evade Suspicion Of Christie’s?
“No one has ever backed out of a winning bid to make a political statement before, art experts say. … Christie’s, like all auction houses, screens potential bidders and checks their financial credentials. [Collector Cai Mingchao], though, may not have set off red flags because he has purchased at international auction before. He paid Sotheby’s $15 million for a Buddha sculpture from the Ming dynasty two years ago, and owns a smaller auction house in China.”
150 Years On, Reconsidering The ‘Jewish Mark Twain’
“When Ukrainian-born writer Sholem Rabinovich died in New York City in 1916, throngs gathered in three boroughs to greet his funeral cortege. Rabinovich, who went by the pen name Sholem Aleichem (‘peace be with you’), was a humorist and a champion of the Yiddish language — in the words of his New York Times obituary, a ‘Jewish Mark Twain.'” People today are more familiar with his work than they might realize.
In Online Excerpting, What Constitutes Fair Use?
Generally, websites’ excerpts of other organizations’ original content “have been considered legal, and for years they have been welcomed by major media companies, which were happy to receive links and pass-along traffic from the swarm of Web sites that regurgitate their news and information. But some media executives are growing concerned that the increasingly popular curators of the Web that are taking large pieces of the original work … are shaving away potential readers and profiting from the content.”
Jeff Koons’ $25 Million Train For LACMA Most Expensive Ever
“The project, in development for two years, is about to move into the fabrication stage. The projected cost would make Train the most expensive artwork ever commissioned by a museum, surpassing Richard Serra’s $20m sculptural array, The matter of time, 2005, in the Guggenheim Bilbao.”
Australian Gang Movie Pulled From Theatres After Fighting Erupts
“The makers of a new Australian film about guns and gangs in Sydney’s west are devastated that it has been pulled from Greater Union cinema screens on the grounds that some members of the audience turned violent.”