Chicagoan Bob Koester, proprietor of the Jazz Record Mart and Delmark Records for nearly 70 years, is a model of music activism and entrepreneurship from an era rapidly receding. - Howard Mandel
As part of her reinvention and rebranding of the Newark Museum (which, in 2019, added “of Art” to its name, even though it also includes science exhibits and a planetarium), its current director, Linda Harrison, less than three years into her tenure, appears to be running roughshod over its own policies, not to mention the AAMD’s deaccession guidelines. -...
The return to the stage (though not their own) of the Met and of Opera Philadelphia, along with a streamed Aïda from the Paris Opera, have a few lessons for us. - David Patrick Stearns
The Artistic Advisor to the President and Chair of Composition Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music, also Artistic Director of Curtis Summerfest, speaks about the role of technology in today’s conservatory. - Aaron Dworkin
Real care has to be taken with comparing data on prices and audience characteristics, because the prices were set in the first place as a result of local audience characteristics. There is no universal 'demand curve' for the arts: each company has a unique situation based on where it is. - Michael Rushton
New York City has announced a new program, City Artist Corps, inspired by FDR's Works Progress Administration. There are two major problems with launching a WPA-styled policy in 2021, one in terms of the choice of policy, and one in terms of the very conception of arts policy. Let's look at these in turn. - Michael Rushton
As I put it in a program note: “It’s a COVID-period entertainment: compact, flexible, rejecting Romantic symphonic upholstery in favor of a dry, caustic sonority conducive to bitter entertainments, light-hearted yet not evasive.” - Joseph Horowitz
“Everything I’ve done in my life,” he told me at the beginning of our wide-ranging conversation in his office, “has really been to challenge the status quo—not to be satisfied with the way things are, but to try to improve them.” I “get” Eli, perhaps because (as I learned from his book) we had a lot in common. -...
The Senior Program Coordinator of the National Accelerator at ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts speaks about the impact of collaboration and fellowships on students. - Aaron Dworkin
The pursuit of audiences and artists who come from, and speak for, various subgroups can enrich any shared arts experience aesthetically, emotionally, and socially. Longer term, it can translate to broader support and buy-in for arts organizations — in short, to more staying power. Still, it’s not always clear which business decisions can drive this objective. Re-enter SMU DataArts....
Two years ago, when the Salem, Mass. museum named Brian Kennedy, then director of the Toledo Museum, to succeed longtime director Dan Monroe, I wondered why Lynda Hartigan hadn't gotten the nod. Now, after a brief detour to Toronto as deputy director at the Royal Ontario Museum, Lynda is returning to direct the museum that she so ably served,...
The President & Executive Director of the Merit School of Music shares about the importance and impact of collaboration between arts organizations. - Aaron Dworkin
The verdict in the George Floyd murder trial provides your arts organization with an opportunity to take a very simple quiz to determine its readiness for engaging with communities. Here are three questions. - Doug Borwick
At this writing, the Metropolitan Museum is safe and so am I. That said, for a brief time during my visit there Monday afternoon, I feared for my life. (Admittedly, I tend to panic when being evacuated due to a bomb scare.) - Lee Rosenbaum
