Washington’s Olney Theatre Center artistic director Jim Petosa plans to leave the theatre at the end of next year to concentrate on running Boston University’s theater school. Since Olney’s new main stage opened in 2005, “it’s been about how do you function now as a fully completed facility,” he says. “Nothing does that better than a search for new artistic leadership. . . . The most potent and creative act I could do on the part of the institution was to allow it to start to ask these questions.”
Tag: 07.05.07
Report: Laid-off Journalists Thrive
In 2004 and 2006, the Dallas Morning News laid off more than 200 journalists. “Whether they jumped or were pushed, most of those who left are more satisfied today than before they left. More than half managed to stay in journalism. Those who remain, meanwhile, say the mood is uncertain at best. Circulation is in freefall. Readers increasingly are dissatisfied. Turnover disrupts stability. Many older staff members were pushed out in the layoffs; now some of the younger ones are leaving on their own.”
Rethinking A Building For Art
The Art Institute of Chicago is getting a new wing. But more than a just a building, the addition represents a philosophy. “Museums are places where people need to feel they can discover things. What is important to you is a thing you discover. The balance to that is the scholar relationship — the curator, who wants you to look at a painting with a view to the fact that there is an artistic development that should be noted.”
Belgian Collectors To Open Beijing Museum
Belgian art collectors Guy and Myriam Ullens will open a non-profit museum in Beijing next November to showcase Chinese contemporary art. Three exhibitions are already planned for the new center. The first is ’85 New Wave: The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art,” which covers the period when artists ‘moved away from socialist realism and started to express themselves’.”
Where The Money Is In Canadian TV
“Operating sales among television broadcasters climbed 8.2 per cent last year, the third largest increase in the past decade, as Canadians tuned into pay-per-view television, video-on-demand, specialty channels, and public broadcasting for the return of the hockey season.”
City Ballet’s Best Season In Years
The current New York City Ballet season is the best in years, writes Robert Gottleib. “The crucial thing is that for the first time since Balanchine’s death, in 1983, there’s a sense of things coming together rather than falling apart or holding on for dear life.”
Spending On Videos Down
“Consumers spent an estimated $10.7 billion on home video in the first six months of the year, down 2% from the year-ago period. Rental spending was projected to remain flat at $3.9 billion, while DVD sales were pegged at $6.8 billion, down 3%.”
Advertisers Puzzle Over Advertising In New TV World
“For years, people have been able to circumvent TV ads with digital video recorders, but that requires some effort. There are much easier opportunities for ad-avoiding multitasking at the click of a mouse, which is why the networks are experimenting with a mix of alternative formats for online promotional breaks — including having none at all.”
What’s To Happen To The Spoleto Festival?
Now that Giancarlo Menotti is gone, what’s to happen to his Festival of the Two Worlds” in Spoleto? There have been confusing reports from the mayor of Spoleto about reuniting with the Charleston Spoleto Festival. And then there’s the matter of trying to rebuild the festival to its former glories…
Live, Real, And On TV Before The Crackup
“The genre that VH1 calls celebreality has taken up the slack where F. Scott Fitzgerald left off: rich party people making one heroic stab at being human and then — spectacularly — losing it all. One difference between reality television and novels, however, is that these television personalities have flesh-and-blood lives offstage. They have, in other words, something to lose that Gatsby did not.”