The Oregon Symphony has become the latest in a long line of North American orchestras to announce severe fiscal problems and a series of deep cuts to deal with them. Over the past few years, as the American economy has nosedived, the orchestra’s endowment has lost fully 50% of its value. To make up the difference in revenues, Oregon will cut several staff positions, slash salaries, and even reduce the pay of its conducting staff (including legendary outgoing music director James dePriest) by 10%. The ensemble is also asking next season’s guest performers to voluntarily reduce their fees, and although no cuts are immediately being made in the salaries of the orchestra’s musicians, the subject is sure to come up when their contract is renegotiated next year.
Tag: 04.15.03
Colorado State Arts Budget Depends On Cigarettes?
The Colorado legislature, which had been debating whether to cut state arts funding, voted to restore some of it, but there’s a but (or is that “butt?”). Funding for the interlibrary loan program and the arts council would be contingent on the state receiving its tobacco payments.”
Florida Contemplates Eliminating Arts Funding
Florida arts groups are barcing for the worst – that state arts funding will be eliminated. “Even in the dark days of the early 1990s, when the National Endowment for the Arts was under attack, no state government joined the chorus to eliminate arts funding within its own borders. Florida in particular was among some that increased support to compensate for the reduced role of the NEA. But that was before the economic shudders of the dot-com bust, the Sept. 11 attacks, Wall Street scandals and wars on terrorism and Iraq caused tax revenue collections to plummet.” However, “this is not an economic issue. The legislators have turned it into a policy issue.”
When Is It Okay To Deface Art?
“In Paradise Square, Baghdad, tearing down a giant bronze Saddam is seen as moving, heroic and symbolic. Bad art about bad people deserves all the abuse it gets, we might argue, but where do the lines of acceptability lie when an artist wilfully wrecks another artist’s work? Jake and Dinos Chapman are in trouble again for defacing a complete set of Goya’s 80 Disasters of War etchings. Goya worked on the series for a decade from 1810 and never saw it printed in his lifetime.” But strangely, the defacement is moving…
The Art Saddam Liked
“The art in Saddam’s palaces is very emphatically the embodiment of ideas and appetites, and as such, it is not really that funny. The erotic art is particularly recognisable as the sort of thing you’d see in Hitler’s private collection – right down to the Aryan types. But Saddam is less elevated in his taste than Hitler. The Fuhrer was more pretentious. By contrast, there are no high cultural allusions whatsoever in the Saddamite paintings. They are from the universal cultural gutter – pure dreck. They look spraypainted, in a rampant hyperbolic style where all men are muscular, all women have giant breasts and missiles are metal cocks. These are art for the barely literate, or the barely sentient, dredged from some red-lit back alley of the brain.”
Lascaux Cave Painting Threatened
The cave paintings at Lascaux in central France survived 20,000 years. But the prehistoric wall paintings are threatened with irreparable damage by modern man’s attempts to save them.
Classical Brit Nominees
Nominations for this year’s Classical Brit awards offer few surprises. “There are three nominations for a serial winner, the conductor Sir Simon Rattle, two for last year’s outstanding contribution award winner, Andrea Bocelli, while last year’s album of the year recipient, Russell Watson, is vying for the same award for his third album, Reprise.”
Librarians Fighting The Patriot Act
Librarians across America are debating how to protect the privacy of their patrons as the government demands to see borrowing records. “There’s a huge concern in the library profession about it. The idea that you’re free to read, to think, without government looking over your shoulder is sacrosanct.”
ENO – The Payne Connection
The troubled English National Opera could use some help from Opera Europa, a “powerful European opera forum with a dynamic new director.” Unfortunately that director is Nicholas Payne, whom the ENO fired last year. Oh well…
Is Museum’s Destruction So Bad?
The destruction of the Iraq Museum is a disaster. “Some objects will doubtless be recovered, and a few of the most remarkable may turn out to have been hidden away. Even so, when the news about the museum emerged some people over here began talking about how the Iraqi people had ‘lost their past’. A museum like the one in Baghdad, they argued, gives a people a sense of who they are, and where they come from. Is this true? There is a lot of sentimentality attached to archaeology by outsiders.”