The Ordway Center for the Performing Arts is a prominent jewel in the Twin Cities’ cultural crown. It hosts touring Broadway shows, and is home to the renowned St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. But the Ordway, which has never been on firm financial footing, is now at crisis level, with its endowment depleted and sponsors pulling out of events they have long funded. Further complicating the fiscal situation is the fact that the Ordway receives a portion of its budget from the State Arts Board, which is now targeted for a funding cut of 40%.
Tag: 03.13.03
Libraries To Stay Open
Bucking the recommendation of its own director, the Minneapolis Library Board has voted not to close four of its branches for the rest of the year. The closings had been proposed as a cost-saving move for the city in the face of a staggering state budget deficit. The Library Board will make a series of one-time cuts in services rather than go through with the closures.
A Warhol Stolen While On Loan?
How did a valuable Andy Warhol painting on loan for a traveling Guggenheim exhibition in 1998 end up in the collection of a Guggenheim trustee a year later? The painting’s lender is crying theft.
Where Are The Peace Songs?
“Whatever the actual effect of anti-war songs on global politics, they have long been a staple of pop culture. As evidenced by Bob Dylan’s ‘Masters of War’, Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On?’, the Clash’s ‘Straight to Hell’ and U2’s ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, the heavyweights of rock and pop have never been slow to let us know where they stand. But, with war on Iraq now apparently imminent, where is the song to rally round the white flag?”
An ENO Rescue Plan That Provokes Questions
The hard-up English National Opera has got a plan to reinvent itself and restore its finances. But Charlotte Higgens writes that “the filleted document that has been released prompts as many questions as answers. It is full of management-speak and empty of figures. The story that has hit the headlines is about redundancies. A hundred jobs out of 500 are to go. But will this deliver sufficient savings? Redundancy deals for 100 people could cost at least £2m. Freelance singers and musicians will be hired for the bigger shows, which suggests that there will be fewer of them when times get hard. Yet it is massive shows, such as The Capture of Troy, or Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, that ENO does especially well, and come off best in the Coliseum, London’s biggest theatre.”
When Pictures Aren’t What They Seem…
“One of the most successful – if bizarre – cases of overpainting a great artist’s picture came to light earlier this week, when it was disclosed that a Rembrandt self-portrait had been hidden under layers of concealing paint for 300 years. An unnamed pupil changed the 28-year-old Rembrandt into a flamboyantly dressed Russian aristocrat in a red hat, earrings, long hair and dashing moustache. For the next three centuries it was regarded as a portrait by an anonymous minor Dutch artist.” These things happen more often than one thinks. How?
Weakening World Heritage Site Protections
An organization that helps advise on World Heritage Sites says proposals being considered by the international body would severely weaken protections for the sites. “Among the changes the world heritage committee, which runs the world heritage scheme, will discuss are: Allowing states to veto any criticism of them for damaging or neglecting sites within their borders. Allowing states to prevent the creation of new sites in their borders if they stand in the way of development.”