There’s a tentative deal, say negotiators. Museums have been on strike since May. “Money was a key issue, with no agreement even on the musician’s current status. The players say they work 38 hours a week for a base salary of $61,000, and then have to spend about a quarter of their income on maintaining and insuring their instruments. Management says the average annual salary is $75,000 for a 20 hour week.”
Tag: 10.16.05
What The Getty Antiquities Case Means To The Art World
“The Getty case is so important that it will represent a milestone and completely change relations within the art world,” says Anna Maria Reggiani, archaeology director at the Italian Culture Ministry.
Orchestras – Where Are The Women?
“Women have yet to attain the power, prestige and astronomical pay scale of baton-wielding superstars at the Big Five orchestras in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Chicago. They’re not exactly flourishing at a variety of other ensembles, either. Why is it that in our supposedly enlightened age, when so many gender barriers have been broken, female conductors still have difficulty reaching the top of the profession? What needs to change in order for that to happen?”
Fiction Down…
“Has American culture begun to mimic the chronic nostalgia of a certain strain of post-imperial Englishness? Is the embrace of these fantasies part of, in Michael Moorcock’s words, a ‘longing to possess, again, the infant’s eye?’ Or is there something in them that speaks to the moment more clearly than, say, ‘Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous’?”
In Baltimore – History Wins Over Design
“Going back in time, architecturally, was the overriding concept behind the $32 million restoration and modernization of Baltimore’s Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was built starting in 1806 and dedicated in 1821. It was the reason the 1940s-era stained-glass windows were removed. It was the impetus for re-creating 24 skylights in the dome – to ‘restore the light’ in the cathedral as Latrobe meant for it to be seen. But what happens if restorers discover works of art or other artifacts that are so significant and so well preserved that it would be a shame to peel them away?”
Opera – The Future Is Live
So we’ve seen the last of the great studio opera recordings. But maybe there’s something new to be made of the live recording. “Think of all those bootlegged accounts of Maria Callas that once surreptitiously circulated among fanatics. More recently, EMI has been legitimizing those recordings and releasing them, sonically cleaned up as much as possible, in its comprehensive Callas Edition. But through the years there have been many distinguished, well-engineered and perfectly legal live recordings of operas.”