Tag: 06.21.06

Joffrey Celebrates Rebirth In Chicago

It’s been ten years since the Joffrey Ballet moved to Chicago, and the company’s in fine shape. “The gala was already a confirmed sellout, with more than 1,100 guests and an estimated $1.6 million raised for the Joffrey. But it also was a grand reunion of 130 dancers who had, at one time or another, been part of the Joffrey company, and who still, after all these years, ‘looked mahvelous’.”

CBC Kicks National News For Reality Show

Canada’s CBC is bumping its nightly network news broadcast one night a week in the fall for… an American reality show. “The CBC, which unveiled its upcoming season last week, is rumbling through a populist reinvention. New executives have been strapped into the sputtering rocketship as the network attempts to modify its trajectory to avoid more crash landings on Planet Yawn.”

Royal Ballet Steps Out/In To The Past

London’s Royal Ballet tries to revive a glorious past with “Sleeping Beauty.” “Nostalgia is the key word, and American audiences are probably fortunate to have less of it, in regard to this production, than English ballet lovers. The English have fussed over this ballet, and this production, for 60 years now. Would it hamper the company if it were addicted to the popular, big-production story ballets? Can the company grow if it is constantly looking back to a rose-tinted vision of the past?”

Getty Will Return Art To Italy

The Getty has agreed to return dozens of antiquities in its collections to Italy. As part of the proposed deal, Italy will lend the Getty objects “of comparable visual beauty and historical importance,” according to a joint statement released late today. A final agreement, “which will include mutual collaboration, research and the exchange of important antiquities,” is expected to be concluded in early summer, the statement added.

Report Recommends Reforms In Canadian Media Landscape

“The Senate transport and communications committee is to unanimously recommend that Ottawa pay closer attention to media consolidation. The report will pay particular attention to proposed deals that would allow a single company to gain a dominant, multimedia position in an individual geographic market, particularly in smaller communities where there are fewer editorial voices.”

FBI Concluded Arthur Miller Was A Communist

The FBI investigated Miller from almost the time of his first production. “A 34-page FBI report, compiled in 1951, states Miller was ‘under Communist party discipline’ in the 1930s and was a member of the party in the 1940s. The FBI was relying on information from informants. Miller, who died last year at age 89, was a longtime liberal who opposed the Vietnam War, opposed nuclear weapons and supported civil rights.”

Minneapolis’ New Guthrie Theatre Is “Poetic Exercise”

“If ever a building deserved to be called sexy-ugly, it’s this one. Somehow sleek and ungainly at the same time, a brooding, preening pile of geometric forms that could hardly be less photogenic, particularly on the outside, the design manages to slide naturally into its industrial riverbank context and feel utterly up-to-date. Its completion caps off a mini-boom for the city’s cultural institutions, which began with a remarkable addition to the Walker Art Center by Herzog & de Meuron, which opened in April 2005, and has continued this spring with a pair of disappointing buildings: Cesar Pelli’s mall-like central library and an entirely forgettable new wing for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts by Michael Graves.”

How A Klimt Sold For $135 Million

The deal to buy a Klimt painting for $135 million this week took much negotiating between a motivated buyer and a shrewd seller. And what about the other four Klimts owned by Maria Altman? “Experts have speculated that the four Klimts, sold together or individually, could bring as much as $150 million collectively. Then again, after all the attention paid to the ‘gold portrait,’ they might be seen by some status-minded collectors as a consolation prize.”

Paris Indigenous Art Museum At Cross Purposes

Paris’ new museum for indigenous art has been mired in controversy for 11 years. “The Musée du Quai Branly – the biggest museum to be built in Paris since the Pompidou centre in 1977 – is Mr Chirac’s attempt to cast himself as the defender of art from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. A long-time fan of indigenous artefacts, he also wanted to leave Paris with an architectural imprint to rival François Mitterand’s legacies, such as the glass pyramid at the Louvre.”