Blake Gopnik’s idea for a collectors group, floated in the Washington Post, is an intriguing idea. “Of course, we’d all get into an immediate and fun argument as to what “contemporary” means. To Blake it’s obviously at least Arbus, Judd and Hirst – names that a lot of young curators and collectors may already find old and quaintly traditional — that’s what happens when one endorses the “new” rather than what’s good. To some, Arbus, Judd and Hirst may already belong in the company of the Matisses and Oldenburgs.”
Tag: 08.15.04
Collectors, Please Share With The Masses
Critic Blake Gopnik outlines his plan for Washington, D.C., private collectors to exhibit the city’s hidden plenty, serious contemporary art, in what he’s calling the Washington Collectors’ Project. “As the first project of its kind, the WCP would also help to put the city on the art-world map, and would likely lead to copycatting elsewhere.”
Balancing Books In The Desert
For a trio of Arizona arts groups, the news is good: “The Phoenix Symphony, Arizona Opera and Ballet Arizona all announced last week that they closed fiscal 2003-04 with surpluses.”
Misunderstanding Spike Lee
“Now 47 and the father of two, Lee has noticeable traces of gray in his hair, and his eyes look weary behind his glasses. He seems less angry than just hugely frustrated. With the state of his country. With how hard it is for him to get films made, despite being perhaps the most famous black director of all time. With how hard it is for him to find an audience, even within the black community.”
Dowling: What’s Next After The Guthrie?
In 10 years, Joe Dowling has reinvented Minnesota’s Guthrie Theatre. Coming off the theatre’s most successful season yet, and still two seasons from moving into the theatre’s new home, Dowling has begun to think about what’s next.
Cleveland Orchestra In Europe
The Cleveland Orchestra departs on a European tour – it’s the only American band in Europe this August. “It’s a costly tour, but an important one. Despite the orchestra’s accumulated deficit of $7.4 million, the tour is unaffected. The trip’s $2.3 million tab is being picked up by the European presenters ($1.2 million) and sponsorships, including gifts from Jan and Daniel Lewis and the Frances Elizabeth Wilkinson International Touring Fund. The tour is especially significant for its prevalence of firsts.”
Of Critics And Political Opinions
What’s a movie critic to do when he/she is reviewing a film with a strongly political slant? Should the critic’s political bias be prominent in the review? “The question of a critic’s bias is especially controversial with feature-film documentaries, which are not bound to reflect both sides of an issue; but even many works of fiction get assessed on the correctness of their worldview as much as on the quality of their aesthetics.”
Orchestras Thrive In Colorado
The Colorado Symphony and the Colorado Springs Philharmonic both end their seasons with small surpluses. “The success enjoyed in the Springs is particularly impressive, considering that the orchestra started with no assets. It emerged out of the collapse last year, under the weight of a $1 million debt, of the Colorado Springs Symphony.”
Can You Teach Pleasure In Books?
“Educators say that from first through third grades, children learn to read; from fourth grade on, they read to learn. Often left out of this discussion is whether a person can be taught to love to read and when or how that happens. In a time when statistics tell us that reading literature for pleasure is on the wane, it seems important to look at our own relationships with books.”
Does It Help To Know A Composer?
Does knowing the composer make for a more authentic performance if you’re a performer? The answer is probably not, writes David Patrick Stearns. Association with a composer is no guarantee of anything, and when you see how unreliably composers themselves often have been with their own work…