Tag: 12.12.02

Portrait of the Philanthropist

Alberto Vilar, the world’s most famous arts patron over the past few years, but under criticism for not living up to some of his pledges, says “he can easily give away $50-million a year”, and “is on record as saying he is good for his pledges. Some of his Amerindo funds have suffered in the depressed stock market. He has also been in poor health. In his interview with this paper, he says he has had four surgeries in the past two years for herniated discs in his lower back. ‘I was at home for one year immobilized,’ he says.

Music Go Boom?

John Adams has been commissioned by the San Francisco Opera to write an opera about the deveopment of the atom bomb. “It involves what I call American mythology. That was what drew me to the `Nixon in China’ story as well. I grew up in the late 1950s and ’60s, the worst part of the cold war, and these images are planted in my consciousness.”

New In AJ LETTERS

“I found the article by Andrew Eaton in the Scotsman on the Turner Prize very poorly wrought. I, for one, am perfectly willing to admit anything into the category ‘art’ that comes into being to evoke response. But being art doesn’t necessarily imply that something has value…”

Aristocratic Greed Endangered British Art During WWII Blitz

During World War II, the British worried about the safety of their art. So they devised places to hide it. One of the plans was to hide it in the rich country houses, but owners of the houses were less than helpful. “A forthcoming book discloses that their behaviour led them to be compared to collaborators with Hitler. The attitudes wrecked plans to save art treasures by holding them in such houses. Instead the works had to be stored at high public cost in specially built underground installations in Wales and Wiltshire.”

Free Museums Don’t Attract The Poor

So attendance has soared at British museums that dropped their admission charges last year. But the increased visits aren’t coming from low-income people for whom the entry fees might have been a barrier. “Free admission is a welcome bonus for all those who already appreciate our museums’ riches, but it is not a very effective way of attracting anyone else. Instead, the extra visitors increase museum running costs for the museums, which they have to meet out of grants so limited that their custodianship of our heritage may be compromised.”

Don’t Read Books? Maybe It’s Because We Want Better Stories

Why is it that many educated people aren’t reading books anymore? Is it because our brains have forgotten to function in longform? Not really, writes one critic. Today’s literary writers – at least those in Canada, anyway – want to write about states of being, rather than action in the real world. “I think this disconnect, more than the slow and inexorable frittering away of our collective intelligence, explains why we don’t read much any more. It’s not our brains that have turned to mush, it’s the books.”

Children’s Theatre Grows Up

Some theatre people believe that some of the most adventurous plays these days are coming out of children’s theatre. And some of the best children’s theatre in North America is coming out of Canada (“although we still lag behind Europe”). “Unfortunately in Canada, the public perception about plays for young people places it in a state of awkward adolescence.”