Montrealers get their first look at plans for a much awaited new concert hall. So what’s it look like? “The design selected for the Montreal Symphony Orchestra looks like a cross between an office building and a big-box store. Music is imaginative and airy, qualities that many concert halls try to evoke architecturally. But this design squats rudely on de Maisonneuve Blvd. and Jeanne Mance St. like a massive whoopie cushion.”
Tag: 07.03.03
McLennan: Why Classical Music Has Fallen Off The Cultural Literacy Menu
What do you need to know to be considered culturally literate these days? Certainly a knowledge of current movies, an idea of what books are hot this season, maybe a passing interest in what’s wowing Broadway and an awareness of the latest blockbuster show to hit the local museum. But where once classical music was a core art, it is now no longer essential, one of those things educated people believe they ought to know something about in order to be considered educated.
Dia – Will They Come?
The new Dia home in upstate New York is big and comodious to large-scale art, writes Peter Plagens. And at the start it will get many curious visitors. But the flow will diminish and the question remain: Is there really an audience for the kind of art Dia advocates?
Should Foundations Be Required To Spend More?
A proposal before Congress would increase the amount of money foundations are required to give away each year. The foundations are opposed. “At root, the bill exposes the conflict over whether foundations exist to make an impact quickly and divest themselves of assets, or whether they exist to perpetuate themselves—and enrich the executives who run them.”
FCC Releases Details Of New Media Ownership Rules
America’s Federal Communications Commission has released details of its new regulations on media ownership. “The rules as released yesterday – bound in a 257-page document that includes a historical survey of the 20th-century media industry – represent Powell’s belief that the FCC has little role in regulating media content. The language in the rules is likely to inflame opponents, who say that the agency cares more about enriching big media companies such as Viacom Inc. and NewsCorp Inc. than fostering equal access to the airwaves and encouraging minority viewpoints.”
Impact Of California Arts Cuts Would Be Severe
“The 27-year-old agency is best known for its grants to local organizations, and much of the funding is used to send artists and performers into public schools. In the fiscal year that ended Monday, the Arts Council spent almost its entire budget of $18.2 million on grants.”
Jazz’s Greatest Flautist Exits Stage Left
“Herbie Mann, the versatile jazz flutist who combined many musical styles and deeply influenced genres such as world music and fusion, died late Tuesday. He was 73… Mann will be remembered for playing different styles of jazz and then combining them. He did bebop and cool jazz, and toured Africa, Brazil and Japan searching for new sounds.”
Guggenheim Returns To Its Roots
It hasn’t been a good year for Thomas Krens and his Guggenheim empire. The Las Vegas outpost so gloriously hyped when it opened has closed, and is likely to be demolished soon, and the plans for a massive new Gehry-designed home in Manhattan are on indefinite hold. The Guggenheim’s latest exhibit of “classics” of modern art could be seen as just one more example of how the museum is being forced to retreat from the bold, avant-garde stance it adopted in the 1990s. But, says James Gardner, there’s more to this new-old approach than just a reflection of hard times: “It’s hard to find a single work among the 100 odd pieces in this show that is anything less than exemplary.”
Slim Shady, Master Poet?
By all the usual measures, the rapper Eminem should be despised by the cultural elite. His lyrics are violent, misogynistic, and homophobic, and he has systematically dismissed all suggestions that a musician with his talent doesn’t need the bigoted gimmickry to make it big. So how is it that young Marshall Mathers has come to be hailed as the next great poet of the music world by no less an authority than Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney? “The endorsement is just the latest indication that Eminem’s public image has completed the transition from obscene thug to gifted lyricist… The star from the trailer park is becoming, in the words of Britain’s The Independent, ‘the new darling of the liberal establishment.'”
Assessing The Sea Change In Arts Funding
It’s not easy being in charge of a big museum in the middle of a major expansion while, all around you, budgets are being slashed and legislators are calling you an expendable piece of the state funding puzzle. Eugene Gargaro, Jr is a month into his new job as board chair at the Detroit Institute for the Arts, and after only a few weeks, he’s feeling the legislative pinch. “There’s been a significant change in state funding. Ten years ago, the museum received about $16 million. It’s possible that we’ll only receive $2 million or less next fiscal year. We’ve come a long way since the early 1990s, and yet we still need that vital state support, and we have to get better at making our case.”