Conctruction costs for an expansion of the Portland Museum of Art have ballooned from $33 million to $45 million. “The troubled project has prompted a lawsuit against the project architect, tensions among museum trustees and a dose of uncertainty for the institution just as it is getting serious about hiring a successor to John Buchanan, the museum’s departed executive director.”
Tag: 07.04.06
See The Trailer, Buy The Book
Movie trailers are effective at building hype for movies. So why not for books? “HarperCollins has produced close to a dozen trailers since early February. The motivation is ‘to drive early word of mouth’. To that end, the publisher submits the videos to book bloggers, as well as sites like Google Video and YouTube.com.”
Portland Opera Finishes In The Red
Portland Opera has finished its season with a $1 million deficit, after nine years of balanced budgets. The loss is blamed partly on the fact that the company didn’t have a development officer for much of the season.
Gimme A Break! (Do We Really Need Intermissions?)
“While we will never see a return to the time when people dined at the halfway mark of a four-act play, the more traditional midway break is time for any technical busywork (such as scene changes) and to heighten a sense of suspense, expectation or time having passed. Time to make sense of the staged world before returning to a possible changed set of circumstances.”
Honolulu Symphony Rebuilds
Last year several executives and board members of the Honolulu Symphony resigned after the musicians themselves audited management practices. The orchestra is still looking for a new music director, but a new manaqgement team is beginning the task of rebuilding the organization.
Twin Cities’ New Guthrie A Gem
“Rising at the edge of the Mississippi, its confident forms are rooted in a vision of a muscular industrial America, and its structural bravura will certainly please the techno-fetishists. As a thoughtful response to the American city’s evolving role as a haven for cultural tourism, it also coaxes new meaning out of a haggard landscape.”
Koolhaas Re-imagines The Serpentine
Each summer London’s Serpentine Gallery has commissioned an architect to imagine a new space. “The architects commissioned so far have taken the idea and run with it, invariably assisted by the structural know-how of Cecil Balmond, co-chairman of Arup. But even by the Serpentine’s standards, this year’s design should be something else. It is the brainchild of Dutch visionary and long-time Londoner Rem Koolhaas.”
NY City Opera’s House-Hunting
New York City Opera has had a rough few years. High among those problems is the company’s stymied search for a new home. “Over just the last few years, the company has publicly debated renovating the State Theater (a plan abandoned after differences with the ballet); building a new home in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center (vetoed by the Metropolitan Opera and Beverly Sills, then Lincoln Center chairwoman); moving downtown near the World Trade Center site (where it lost out to other arts groups); and moving into a reconfigured City Center building (deemed too small for the necessary scenery fly space).”