“Preliminary figures from Nielsen Media Research put the audience for Sunday’s show, aired on Fox, at 13.1 million viewers. That’s 3 million fewer than for last year’s telecast, on NBC, and less than the record low 13.8 million three years ago on ABC.”
Tag: 09.17.07
Met Museum Chief Tops Non-Profit Exec Salaries
“Metropolitan Museum of Art Director Philippe de Montebello earned $4.7 million last year, beating out presidents of universities and leading hospitals as the highest reported compensation among executives at U.S. nonprofit institutions.”
Smithsonian Fundraising Increases Despite Troubles
Turmoil at the Smithsonian in the past year doesn’t seem to have slowed fundraising. Officials report that the troubled institution is on track to raise $140 million this year, up from $131 million in 2006.
Boston’s MFA Gets $10 Million Towards $415 Million Goal
Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is working on raising money for a major expansion. “The gift from the Boston financial services firm brings the MFA’s fund-raising total to $415 million, $85 million away from its goal. The money will fund a massive expansion project set to be completed in 2010.”
French President To Architects: Audacity Please!
“French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France would benefit from more ‘audacious’ designs at the opening of a new $111-million museum dedicated to French architecture, located in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.”
The U.S Versus The Musicologist?
A musicologist who worked in the US for ten years was suddenly barred from the country last year. “Her case has become a cause célèbre among musicologists and the subject of a protest campaign by the American Musicological Society and by academic leaders like Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College at Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., where Ghuman was to have participated last month in the Bard Music Festival, showcasing Elgar’s music.”
What’s Ailing The Guggenheim (And How To Fix It)
“Since Thomas Krens took over in 1988, the air around art at the Guggenheim has been distorted and toxic. Yet since he left his directorship in 2005 to run the Guggenheim Foundation, which oversees all five museums (New York, Venice, Berlin, Bilbao, Las Vegas), the institution has shown auspicious signs of actually putting his tenure behind it. But something rotten is brewing. Krens has been up to his corrosive old tricks again.”
Old Broadway Theatre To Come Down
The Broadway theatre opened in 1916 as the Ideal, and closed a few weeks ago as a porn house. Now it’s to be torn down. The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission also studied the issue and decided the building “did not meet three necessary criteria — architectural features, history and cultural contributions to the city.”
Yale Agrees To Return Machu Picchu Artifacts
Yale University and Peru have signed a preliminary agreement “that would return title to Peru of more than 350 artifacts — ceramics and metal and stone objects — that are considered to be of museum quality and several thousand fragments, bones and other objects considered to be primarily of interest to researchers. The agreement, which establishes an extensive collaborative relationship between Yale and Peru, provides for an international traveling exhibition.”
Opera World Says Goodbye To Beverly Sills
“The evening was filled with Ms. Sills’s singing and images on a giant screen, from a childhood television appearance to later performances. At the end, in the aria ‘Adieu notre petite table,’ from Massenet’s ‘Manon,’ the last notes fell to her: ‘Adieu!’ “