“The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., today announced that it has hired Don Bacigalpi, current director of the Toledo Museum of Art, to be its new director. The announcement means that the Toledo Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art will be looking for new directors simultaneously this fall.”
Tag: 08.17.09
Charles To National Trust: Change HQ Design Or I Quit
“A senior royal aide told the trust and its architects that [Prince Charles] could not accept the design of a proposed £14.5m building in Swindon and said it should be changed or they would face the prospect of his stepping down as its president, according to a source involved in the project at the time. … Clarence House has no minutes of the meeting but said any argument was about the sustainability of the building.”
Classical CDs: Lots Of Output, But Sales Just Aren’t There
“More musicians are getting more music out to more people. But I don’t see that ‘more recordings’ equals ‘revitalization of an industry.’ Because I always thought that an industry is a field that makes money. And very few of these recordings do. The companies that put them out are, increasingly, non-profit organizations.”
Fretting About The Future Of Modern Dance
Michael Kaiser: “Modern dance is one of the glories of American cultural history. … But virtually every great modern dance company was founded more than 40 years ago. Where is the current, not to mention next, generation of great modern dance companies to carry the torch?” And will they have the administrative and board support they need to survive and thrive?
It’s Thrilling When Things Onstage Go Badly Awry
“[B]esides introducing a certain kind of spontaneity and titillating uncertainty that can only take place in live performance, what makes bloopers so interesting is the opportunity they provide for the performers to display their quickness, wit or personality, uninterrupted by the dictates of the author. Disasters, oddly, are the only time when the actors are completely in control.”
Reader’s Digest To Declare Bankruptcy
“Reader’s Digest — an American media icon of the 20th century, thanks to its inspiring, safe-for-family-reading articles and folksy, cornpone humor — is planning to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. Parent company Reader’s Digest Association has had trouble since going private in 2007, cutting costs and trying to stay relevant in the post-ironic, niche-driven 21st-century media landscape, a place [that] can be tough sledding for an earnest, general-interest magazine.”
Loosen Up, Hollywood Control Freaks. It’s Good For You.
It’s not that the big movie studios dislike the sort of centralized control that China embraces and that the World Trade Organization ruled against last week. “They just want to be the ones holding the power.” But the way they’re exercising that power is getting in their own way. “When Hollywood tries to preserve last century’s business models and ‘release windows’ that restrict availability, it risks missing the opportunity that new technologies present to increase consumption.”
China To Appeal Ruling That Would Open Cultural Markets
“China said on Monday it will challenge a World Trade Organisation ruling against its restrictions on imported films, books and audio-visual products, continuing its sparring with Washington over trade access.”
Reimagining Penn Station (And Shooting For Greatness)
“The first shovel has been turned on the … $8.7 billion Mass Transit Tunnel from New Jersey that will double the number of passengers arriving from across the Hudson River” into Manhattan, though not at Penn Station. “With a little architectural vision, the tunnel could link with a spruced-up Penn and spur as much as 40 million square feet of commercial and residential development,” transforming “the far West Side the way Grand Central replaced a smoke-belching ditch with tree- lined Park Avenue.”
Recovery’s Begun. So How Do Canadian Arts Orgs Recover?
“[T]he setbacks endured by our museums and performing arts companies have generally been less severe than those suffered by their counterparts in the United States, where an atonal symphony of shrinking endowment funds, belt-tightening philanthropy and declining attendance have created a climate of retrenchment. Closer to home, the good news is that the major players have all survived. The bad news is that many of them have been wounded and weakened in ways that could make it hard for them to operate at peak level for years to come.”