Should a Broadway revival that’s nothing more than a carbon copy of the original show be eligible for a Tony Award? The reemergence of A Chorus Line and Les Miserables in stagings that look identical to their originals has many in New York’s theatre world asking the question, and the producers may not like the answer.
Tag: 11.29.06
Smooth Sailing (And A Surplus) At Canadian Opera
The Toronto-based Canadian Opera Company rode a $600,000 boost in ticket sales and a $1.5 million increase in fundraising to a balanced budget for fiscal 2006. “The COC eked out a $20,000 surplus on the year, without receiving a penny from its foundation, which added $1-million to its treasury. Nor did the company take any ‘transition funds’ from its continuing capital campaign, which saved it from recording a loss in 2004.”
ROM Reups Its Chief Despite Expansion Troubles
“In a stunning vote of confidence, the Royal Ontario Museum’s board has extended the contract of its director and chief executive officer, William Thorsell, until 2010, even though the Renaissance ROM expansion is about six months behind schedule and short by about $37-million.”
Canadian Mega-Chain To Offer Self-Published Titles
“Canada’s largest retail book chain, Indigo Books & Music, has agreed to carry a selection of books by self-published Canadian authors… There’s a selection process for all titles and those chosen will be displayed in ‘high-traffic areas’ of Chapters, Indigo and Coles stores ‘for at least 60 days — longer if the book keeps selling.'”
Canadian Art Hot At Home
A busy auction night in Toronto highlighted what has become apparent in recent weeks: that the art boom occurring on both sides of the Atlantic is even stimulating interest in (and higher prices for) works that might previously have been considered of only regional interest. “The fall auction season for Canadian art [hasn’t] approached anything like the heat of international art auctions. [But this week’s] sales looked like yet more signs that collectors’ appetite for Canadian art, far from softening, is actually broadening.”
Moral of the Story: It Ends Better When Everyone Plays Nice
The Italian government has agreed to loan two valuable antiquities to New York’s Metropolitan Museum and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, in exchange for the museums having returned contested antiquities to Italy. The amicable settlements in New York and Boston stand in stark contrast to Italy’s ongoing battle with Los Angeles’s J. Paul Getty Museum.
Is Anyone Not Stealing From Italy?
“Seeking to build on its success in bargaining with a few American museums, Italy has asked the New York collector Shelby White to consider returning more than 20 ancient artifacts that it argues were illegally mined from its soil… Rather than implicitly threaten legal action, however, as it occasionally has in pursuing objects in major museum collections, the government hopes to rely on moral suasion.”
Parsing The Sudden Popularity Of Chinese Art
In this season of unfathomable auction records and price spikes in the art market, Asian art has been some of the hottest, and most surprising, work to be sold at auction. And it isn’t just Western buyers who are looking to the East. “Wealthy buyers from China and other parts of Asia are now jockeying with European and American collectors to buy Chinese works that only five years ago were largely ignored by the international art market.”
MoMA Finally Complete
The newly expanded home of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (all of it) is finally open to the public, and Nicolai Ouroussoff says that the last of the newly built spaces is “unlikely to appease those who feel the museum has become a soulless corporate machine. But at least it underscores what is most alluring about the museum’s recent expansion… Seen from the street or the garden, the museum presents a continuous pattern of activity, reaffirming its public mission.”
Wales Review Proposes New Arts Board
The debate over how major arts groups should be funded in Wales is continuing, as a review rejecting the notion of “direct funding” by the government is published. “Instead, the review recommends a new arts board with representatives from the arts council, assembly government and other public bodies. The board, chaired by the culture minister, would oversee arts strategy… Much of the practical element seems to amount to the creation of the new arts board – yet another committee, something we are all too familiar with.”