“The Philadelphia Orchestra has hit upon a way to firm up attendance for its concerts at the Mann: free lawn tickets. This past summer, attendance, measured on a per-concert basis, was up over last year by 42 percent. An average of 4,221 listeners heard the orchestra each night it played in Fairmount Park, up from last summer’s 2,968.”
Tag: 09.04.07
Is Development Killing Cape Cod’s Artistic Heritage?
Provincetown’s Hawthorne School of Art, founded by Charles Hawthorne, is up for sale and “at risk of being swallowed by development” amid money troubles. “Some school advocates say the furor over its future reflects renewed concern in Provincetown about surging development and other threats to the artistic heritage of eastern Cape Cod.”
For The Uninitiated, A Visual Way Into New Music
“A graphic score is any musical score that isn’t (or isn’t entirely) written in conventional Western, five-line-staff notation. No two composers use the same system — if system is even the right word for what is often a very open-ended way of representing music — and a composer may invent a new language of notation for each piece he or she writes.” A gallery show puts the scores on view….
Auction Houses Eye Russians, Offer $1B In Guarantees
“Christie’s International and Sotheby’s are offering $1 billion in price guarantees to sellers of Warhols and de Koonings before their fall sales. The two largest auction houses are betting that Russians or Asians will support art prices as a credit squeeze threatens to limit Wall Street bonuses.”
It’s Commuter Vs. Conservatory Students At Colburn
“The Colburn School, where thousands of Southern California children have learned to master a musical instrument,” has a big, new building, a new president, 100 live-in students at its Colburn Conservatory of Music, and a fight on its hands. “Parents of the 1,500-plus kids attending the Colburn’s popular community-based School of Performing Arts division say they’re being shortchanged as attention is shifting to professional training for the conservatory students.”
In Tight Market, Museums Lose To Private Collectors
“Public collecting is endangered by a shortfall of resources, a decline in political support and even a loss of nerve that could cut off the flow of masterworks for the people. It has always been hard for museums to compete with private collectors, but driven by the scarcity of great old works and an expanding class of wealthy buyers, the recent stratospheric rise of art prices has utterly outstripped most acquisitions budgets.”
Italy Moves To Protect Treasures From Earthquakes
In Italy, where earthquakes are common, the “Culture Ministry has implemented guidelines that it hopes will mitigate the threat that earthquakes pose to the country’s artistic heritage. … Under the new guidelines unveiled this summer, officials at the local and national levels are to evaluate the seismic risk to individual structures in their jurisdictions and take steps to reduce the vulnerability.”
Who Owns The New Dance Group’s Choreography?
“Choreographers associated with the New Dance Group, an activist-minded crucible of modern dance that flourished in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, based works on Woody Guthrie’s songs, the struggles of the Depression and the Spanish Civil War. Now one of those choreographers and the children of two others are embroiled in a very modern court battle over who has the right to perform their dances.”