When Bruce Taub looks at art, he sees dollar signs. And his new investment company is hoping that other high-rolling investors will see it that way, too, and diversify their personal portfolios to include works his company invests in. “The company will establish a series of art funds for clients looking to diversify their existing portfolios. The funds will buy art, both privately and at auction, that their consultants think is undervalued.” Investors won’t actually get to take the art home with them, since the fund would own the works. Instead, they’ll reap the financial rewards (if any) when and if the works are resold.
Tag: 07.23.04
The Feminine Ideal Wears Toe Shoes
What is it about ballet that has always caused the form to be inextricably linked to the adoration of women? John Rockwell says that, no matter how many male dancers achieve stardom, “a gauzy Romantic image of womanhood, no matter how tweaked with grandeur or anger or rage or seductiveness, remains central to the art.” The Royal Ballet, in New York this week, emphasizes the point with a new young crop of principal dancers, including four ballerinas “[representing] different facets of the ballerina archetype, past and present.”
A City’s Lessons For A Nation’s Leaders
The Democratic Party convention arrives in Boston next week, and Holland Cotter says that the pols could do worse than to leave the convention hall for a few hours of good old-fashioned Bostonian-American culture. “Utopian thought is a visionary version of yes-saying; principled dissent among the most constructive ways of saying no. The two are flip sides of the same coin; together they can bring out the best, and curb the worst, in human behavior. Boston knows all about them.”
All Of A Sudden, Broadway Tickets Seem Like A Bargain
If you’re a classical music aficionado living in Korea, you’d better be prepared to dig deep for concert tickets. A recent tour performance by the Vienna Philharmonic featured an average ticket price of $214, and a show featuring the La Scala orchestra wasn’t far behind. In fact, the cost of seeing a concert in Korea is considerably higher than the cost of the same concert with the same ensemble in Europe. Promoters say that the discrepancy is due to a lack of government subsidy and corporate support for the arts.
Picking A Fight Over Pencils and Paints
Sydney artist Craig Ruddy was awarded Australia’s prestigious Archibald Prize earlier this year. But the award has sparked a vicious court fight and is drawing a lot of attention from the media, after painter Tony Johansen took the Art Gallery of New South Wales Trust to court over a technicality. Specifically, Johansen claims that Ruddy’s winning portrait is a mixed-media drawing, which should make it ineligible for a painting award. Nit-picking? Sure. But Ruddy is garnering a great deal of support from some interesting corners…
Scottish Opera Chair Resigns
Duncan McGhie, the chairman of Scottish Opera, has quit in protest of the Scottish Executive’s treatment of the company. The board McGhie has led, which also oversees Scottish Ballet, is slated to be disbanded under the terms of the Executive’s much-criticized plan to keep the opera company afloat. The resignation is only the latest high-profile protest against the plan.
Boulez At Bayreuth, 35 Years Later
It was 1966 when the fiery iconoclast Pierre Boulez, who had once suggested solving “the problem of opera” by blowing up all opera houses, came to Bayreuth to conduct Wagner’s Parsifal. “Famously, he conducted the quickest and least pompous Parsifal ever seen at Bayreuth. This year, he’s back [at Bayreuth] with Parsifal after a gap of 35 years… To conduct Parsifal as a slow, grandiose celebration of religiosity could all too easily turn into a proto-nationalist ritual, so it’s no wonder Boulez wanted to strip away these connotations.”
Sir Simon’s Extracurricular Activity
Famed conductor Sir Simon Rattle is making headlines of a sort usually reserved for pop musicians. This week, Rattle admitted that he has separated from his wife of eight years, and is living with the famous Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena, who is 18 years his junior. The affair is causing quite a stir in Europe’s normally staid classical music scene…