“The San Francisco Opera will close the books on the 2003 fiscal year with an operating deficit of $3.8 million, General Director Pamela Rosenberg said Friday. That deficit on an operating budget of approximately $60 million is a sizable amount, but far less than the previous year’s loss of $7.6 million — not to mention the $9.2 million shortfall that company officials had originally predicted.”
Tag: 12.08.03
I Wanna Be Taller (The Tallest)
“The tall building is the symbol of all that we hope for—height, reach, power, and a revolving restaurant with a long wine list—and all that we cower beneath. It is a symbol of oomph and of waste, the lighthouse of commerce and the outhouse of capitalism, the tallest candle on the biggest cake, and the cash-economy prison made up of countless anonymous cells. When the Empire State Building was being built, as Neal Bascomb reveals in his new book, the motive for its height was insistently said to be commercial—it was more economical, and the spire would be a place for wandering zeppelins to find a mooring—even though everyone knew that the real motive was just to be . . . taller.
Family Feud – Why Scotland’s Most Famous Composer Shut Up
James MacMillan is Scotland’s most famous composer. But “over the past five years or so, the steady deterioration in the relationship between the country’s most famous composer and Scottish society at large has progressed gradually and relentlessly, until now, when there is no relationship at all. Systematically, MacMillan has cut himself off from communications with the outside world.
Many of the circumstances of the decline are well-known – notorious, even – though one day there is a large footnote to be written in the history of Scottish contemporary cultural life, in order to document the whole sad, shambolic affair.”
Is Tate Modern Building A Failure?
Architect Will Alsop says that Tate Modern has been hugely overhyped, and that it should never have been located in a former power station. “I don’t think [Tate Modern] is a great building. It casts a very large shadow over the river edge. They should have pulled the existing building down. When I go around I feel I’m being guided in the same way I might be guided round a shopping centre.”
Perry Makes Difficult Turner Choice
Choosing Grayson Perry to win this year’s Turner Prize was evidently no slam dunk as far as the judges were concerned. “The judges’ verdict was anything but a foregone conclusion: it took hours longer than usual to reach a decision, and they went out of their way to praise ‘the outstanding presentations produced by all four artists’. But, in the end, Perry’s use of the traditions of ceramics and drawing, and his “uncompromising engagement with personal and social concerns” put him out front.”
Does Perry Deserve The Turner?
Why did Grayson Perry win this year’s Turner Prize, asks Adrian Searle. “Grayson Perry is, at least in terms of his self-constructed public image and his candid interviews, an interesting, complicated character. But he makes middling, minor art. What counts most, perhaps, is Perry’s invented alter ego, Claire, who is exactly the kind of creation the media loves. Yet I have always wondered what the pots, the drawing, Perry and Claire have to do with one another – apart from all being Perry’s invention, all aspects of Perry.”
Just Who Is Grayson Perry?
“Born in Chelmsford, Essex, in 1960, his parents split up when he was five and his stepfather, the milkman, was a bully…”
Poetry Magazine Windfall Sows Some Discord
“While initially hailed as a blessing, the $100 million gift from drug-company heiress Ruth E. Lilly is sowing discord in the normally harmonious realm of verse. Poetry is embroiled in a lawsuit with a bank over alleged mismanagement of funds. The journal’s editor of 20 years, Joseph Parisi, quit over the summer amid a battle with a newly assertive board. Rival poetry groups complain the magazine is gaining too much influence and will stifle the more-creative elements of the craft. Even Poetry’s staunchest supporters wonder how the monthly journal will survive its sudden windfall.”
Australian National Gallery Courtyard Attacked
A courtyard at Australia’s National Museum in Canberra has come under attack. “The public is overwhelmingly hostile towards the courtyard. They don’t like it and something has to be done,” says the chairman of a council set up to review the work. “Conservatives, led by former Howard speechwriter and council member Christopher Pearson have decried the museum’s futuristic design and complex architectural symbols since it opened in March 2001.”