A San Antonio mayor’s task force is recommending that the San Antonio Symphony take a year off to get its finances straight. “Mayor Ed Garza said he would urge the council to heed the task force’s recommendation that next year’s $339,500 city grant for the symphony be given instead to the oversight committee, which would hire an expert in transforming arts organizations.”
Tag: 08.20.03
The Chick Lit Put-Down
Why do critics disparage “chick lit”? “A whole generation of writing about young women’s lives is being trashed by commentators who took one look at a ‘fluffy pink cover’ and got out their knives. Chick-lit is a deliberately condescending term they use to rubbish us all. If they called it slut-lit it couldn’t be any more insulting.”
London’s West End On Sale
“London theatre is succumbing to a frenzy of price-cutting wheezes that don’t so much offer customers a healthy, free-market range of bargains as lead to a muddle, which will confuse everyone as to the real cost of a ticket and create resistance to the standard price.”
Copyright Would Be Great If It Paid Creators
In theory it’s a good idea that those who create something should be entitled to be paid for it. Trouble is, most copyrights aren’t owned by the person who created them. So complaining that “artists need to be paid” as a justification for the current copyright laws is… well…
SF Opera – A Season Of Negotiation
San Francisco Opera is heading into its fall season with contract negotiations for many of its artists and production crews as yet unresolved. The company’s orchestra is currently negotiating, with chorus, dancers and production staff next up… “The labor negotiations, like everything else at San Francisco Opera, are shadowed by the company’s financial troubles. A 2002 operating deficit of $7.6 million forced substantial cutbacks. Two productions were eliminated from the 2003-04 season, and the annual operating budget was slashed by 25 percent.”
Restoring Frank Lloyd Wright’s Legacy
Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous house – Fallingwater – is being repaired. But “several of the other approximately 300 remaining single-family Wright houses in this country are far more endangered than Fallingwater: Commissioned by now-octogenarians in desirable areas, their sites, but not their modest-sized rooms, are attractive to affluent buyers who want to replace them with megamansions. Since 2000, the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy has acquired, repaired and resold these Wrights-at-risk.”
“The Producers” And “The Return”
Broadway’s “The Producers” will keep its top ticket price at $100, rather than raise them when Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick return to the show. “Speculation that people would hold off buying tickets to “The Producers” until Lane and Broderick were back has turned out to be unfounded. That is largely because the show is playing to tourists, who have no choice but to see “The Producers” now, while they’re in town. As for what will happen to the show after Lane and Broderick leave in March, that’s a big subject of debate on Broadway right now. Some think the show will go over the cliff.”
Irish Slowdown
“During the past 10 years, Irish playwrights Martin McDonaugh (“A Skull in Connemara”), Maria Jones (“Stones in His Pockets”) and Conor McPherson (“The Weir”) have emerged on the world stage. But between 2000 and 2001, Ireland’s volatile “Celtic Tiger” economy slowed from an annual growth rate of 11 percent to just 2.5. And the most predictable victim of any economic slowdown is arts funding. Ireland is coping with an 8 percent cut to its national arts council’s budget, its largest in history.”
Denver Ponders Museum Building
The Denver Art Museum is hoping that its new building, designed by Daniel Libeskind, will become an icon of the city, represent it visually the way the Guggenheim does Bilbao. “But what if the wing is just plain ugly? A number of average citizens and schooled architects wonder if the jarring style represented by Daniel Libeskind’s design is more imposition than institution, more trend than truth, more spectacle than service to the community.”
Artists Try To Recover Work From Bankrupt Dealer
“Boston Corporate Art, established in 1987, sold primarily large-scale works to corporations and nonprofit organizations.” But the company suddenly went bankrupt earlier this year owing artists thousands of dollars in commissions, and holding hundreds of works of art, which it proposed selling to pay off creditors. This week, artists prowled through the company’s art looking to recover their own work…