David Franklin “comes from a place where museums are funded almost entirely by the federal government. In the same way that tax dollars foot the bill for national health care in Canada, they also pay for museums. In Cleveland, and all over the United States, the arts are funded almost exclusively by private money.”
Tag: 11.03.10
The Legacy Of The Marion True Antiquities Case?
“It is worth considering how the Italian state orchestrated a major campaign to obtain works that are now in less committed and less organised environments than before. Considering the universality of these items [belonging to humanity], wouldn’t it have been better to leave them in the museums where they were?”
V&A Museum Selects Architect for New Scottish Branch
“Japanese architects have won a competition to design the first dedicated museum for the [Victoria & Albert] outside London, a low-slung angular building on the banks of the river Tay [in Dundee]. The ‘bold and ambitious’ design by Kengo Kuma & Associates, [is] a two-part structure of close-fitting slabs made from a stone compound and glass.”
What Makes Theater Folk Keep Riffing on Chekhov?
“There’s a Trinidadian Three Sisters, a Liverpudlian Three Sisters, … Uncle Vanya has visited North Wales and Australia, and in Drowning Crow, The Seagull plays out in the black artistic community of South Carolina … Other plays have wondered how Arkadina reacted to her son’s suicide and how the sisters would actually fare if they ever got to Moscow. … What hubristic impulse is it that draws us to rewrite this man and his work?”
Jerry Bock, Composer of Fiddler and Fiorello!, Dead at 81
While he composed the music for such shows as She Loves Me, Fiorello! and The Rothschilds, Bock is best-known for the score to Fiddler on the Roof, one of the most successful musicals in Broadway history. Bock’s passing comes 10 days after the death of his Fiddler colleague, librettist Joseph Stein.
A New (and Peripatetic) CEO at Seattle Symphony
Simon Woods, who left the top job at the New Jersey Symphony after only a few months to run the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, is returning to the US. He steps in full-time at the Seattle Symphony – which had lacked a permanent executive director since last February – next May, joining incoming music director Ludovic Morlot.
Gates Foundation Donates $50M to Smithsonian
“The money will go principally to the Youth Access Endowment, a new entitly created by the Smithsonian. Gates is giving $30million of the gift to ‘reach underserved students” in the United States’.”
Morphoses Settles on a Post-Wheeldon Plan
The ballet troupe which was founded as “Morphoses: The Wheeldon Company” was in a bind after Christopher Wheeldon abruptly left the organization in February. “His co-founder and the company’s director, Lourdes Lopez, said on Wednesday that a different artistic director will be put in place each season. First on the list is Luca Veggetti, the Italian stage director and choreographer.”
Getty Trust Can’t Take Its New Turner Home From Britain (Yet)
“The J. Paul Getty Trust is being told once more that its money – this time $44.9million – may be no good in Great Britain, where authorities have blocked the sale of a prized landscape painting of Rome by J.M.W. Turner that the Getty appeared to have bought in a July auction.”
British Journalist Faces Prison in Singapore for Book on Death Penalty
“The British author Alan Shadrake is today facing a possible prison sentence after a court in Singapore convicted him of challenging the integrity of the city-state’s judiciary in a book” – Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore’s Justice in the Dock – “criticising its use of the death penalty.”