Alan Birkelbach has been appointed Texas’ new poet laureate. He’s “a Plano computer analyst whose co-workers didn’t even know he wrote poetry.”
Tag: 05.29.05
Mourning The Corcoran’s Gehry (What Might Have Been)
Las week the Corcoran Gallery In Washington announced it wouldn’t go ahead with a planned expansion by Frank Gehry. Benjamin Forgey is disappointed. “Gehry’s Corcoran joins the short, unhappy list of highly significant modern buildings designed for Washington but not built: Eliel and Eero Saarinen’s competition-winning 1939 design for a Smithsonian Gallery of Art on the Mall; and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Crystal Heights, the stunning mixed-use project he designed in 1940 for the spot where the Hilton Washington stands today. Both of these potential modernist masterpieces were staunchly opposed by the city’s architectural establishment. By contrast, Gehry’s building won widespread approval. Not that it helped.”
The Boston Symphony – Model For America’s Orchestras?
The Boston Symphony, writes John von Rhein, “is a unique orchestra, a unique audience and a unique administrative vision that has made the Boston Symphony Orchestra the business model for other symphony orchestras, at a time when just about everyone in classical music, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, is chanting the same litany of declining ticket sales, rising deficits and aging audiences.”
Chicago’s Difficult Season In the Concert Hall
It was a bit of a difficult season for classical music in Chicago. “There are no easy answers to the difficulties classical music organizations are facing, and endless facets to the questions themselves. Classical music in America is far from dead, but the shape of its future may look quite different from its past.”
The Small Museum Squeeze
So many museums seem to be building new buildings or expanding. But smaller museums are having a tougher time. ”While there is a sense that things are getting better, small museums are certainly seeing no evidence of that. Fund-raising is not increasing. The numbers of school districts able to afford tours is diminishing. The economy does not seem to be turning around for us.”
Court Rules British Musuem Can’t Return Nazi Loot
The British Museum wants to return drawings looted by the Nazis. But a British court has ruled that an act of the British parliament prohibits such returns. So might parliament change the law? Not likely…
Buena Vista Case Moves to Cuba
After video links break down between Cuba and London in the case of disputed copyrights of songs made famous by the Buena Vista Club, the English judge moves hearings to Cuba. “The hearing is likely to take place in September at the British embassy in Havana, with lawyers abandoning gowns and wigs, but not necessarily resorting to Bermuda (or Cuba) shorts – and possibly gaining first-hand experience of local music in bars.”