After 43 years John Crosby is stepping down from running the Santa Fe Opera. “A first-rate visionary and a second-rate conductor, Crosby has run his festival like a reasonably benign dictator, amassing an extraordinary record of significant premieres to counterbalance the tourist-attraction repertory. He has done much to cultivate domestic exposure to the neglected operas of his favourite composer, Richard Strauss, and has also helped discover several generations of important American singers. Glyndebourne was never like this.” – Financial Times
Tag: 08.03.00
BERLIN THROUGH AN EXPAT’S EYES
Tom Freudenheim, a Jewish American and former director of the Jewish Museum Berlin, has decided to stay in Germany after stepping down from his museum post. His views on antisemitism in Germany, the Holocaust Memorial, and differences between the arts in the U.S. and Germany. – Die Welt
THE CORPORATE ARTS BUDDY PLAN
With only 1% of businesses investing in the arts, Australian Prime Minister John Howard decided it was about time to create an arts business foundation that would encourage funding from the private sector. “What we are trying to encourage is recognition that it’s not just about handing over a cheque. It’s about two partners looking for the longer term.” – The Age (Melbourne)
MOUSELAND
- Disney, already a huge presence on New York’s revitalized 42nd Street, says it wants to buy another theatre there. “Part of Disney’s yen for more theaters comes from its disdain for paying high rents to stage productions of Beauty and the Beast and Aida, as well as its need for space to stage a half dozen musicals in development, such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” – Inside.com
SCANDAL EFFECT
Sotheby’s earnings decline 5 percent, though revenue was up in the second quarter. “Sotheby’s shares have declined by more than a third this year as Internet spending and legal fees from the price-fixing investigation and related lawsuits cut into earnings.” – New York Times
ACQUIRING ETHICS
The American Association of Museums, comprised of 3,000 museums and 11,400 museum professionals and trustees, will adopt new ethical guidelines for how museums deal with art borrowed from private collections. Following in the wake of the Brooklyn Museum scandal in which it was discovered that Charles Saatchi, the exhibit’s largest donor, was also its single largest financial backer, the question of curatorial ethics has loomed large at arts organizations around America. – New York Times
WHERE SHOULD BEAUTY LIVE?
The hypothetical question of where the Elgin Marbles would go if they were returned to Greece has incited a debate over the proper context for items of beauty. Do we have a responsibility to make sure works of art remain in the place that gives them artistic life? “It’s our loss if we find reasons not to worship beauty and condemn ourselves to a life of aesthetic squalor.” – The Guardian
FAKING IT
You probably didn’t know you could find one of Michelangelo’s frescoes from the Sistine Chapel or Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” in a museum in Naruto, Japan. The priceless pieces are among 1,074 artworks from 190 museums that have been reproduced for the new Otsuka Museum of Art, the world’s first “ceramic archive.” Why would you want to spend your time looking at a fake? For one thing, the works can be displayed under bright lights, revealing details that could never be seen in a traditional museum. – Daily Yomiuri (Japan)
EXPLOSIVE ART
A Bosnian artist is digging up dirt from minefields and selling it in what she calls a “special artistic performance.” “I’ve already sold one minefield for 500 marks. Mom and I sew bags that contain 10, 20, 30 and 50 kilograms. I sold quite a few bags the first day.” – New Jersey Online
A MUSEUM FOR POMERANIAN HISTORY
The last and newest of Germany’s Federal State museums has just opened in the town of Greifswald on the Baltic Coast. The Pommersches Landesmuseum will focus on its historic links with neighbors Sweden and Denmark. It’s Picture Gallery, housed in a converted Franciscan monastery, will also feature the works of Frans Hals, Caspar David Friedrich, Phillip Otto Runge, Max Liebermann and Vincent van Gogh. – The Art Newspaper