Updates: Edith Wharton, Curtis Wong, NY Philharmonic in N. Korea

A few tidbits on some stories that we’ve been following:
—A Save the Mount emergency campaign has been launched to try to undo the financial damage caused by wishful thinking about fundraising for the admirable (and still unfinished) restoration and library acquisition at author Edith Wharton‘s former mansion and gardens in Massachusetts’ Berkshire Mountains. They say they need $3 million before Mar. 24 to prevent foreclosure.
I think Stephanie Copeland, The Mount’s president and executive director, has made this site a joy to visit. But now emergency-campaign donors need a level of confidence that their largess will not be in vain: A management shake-up, or at least a convincing long-term financial plan, seems essential.
—Curtis Wong has provided a few more clues about the new technology project he’s been working on, which will be announced tomorrow. It turns out that it’s not directly visual-arts related, as have been some of his previous projects that I’ve admired. Wong writes:
This project…has some elements of what could be a medium for storytelling, expression, or informing. If there is any art to it, it will come from the work of others who use it.
—I so agree with NY Times music critic Anthony Tommasini‘s comments today about the NY Philharmonic’s performance in North Korea, which I watched on New York’s WNET last night.
PBS will broadcast the concert nationally tomorrow. But you can see it online right now, here.
Tommasini wrote:
If only he [conductor and music director Lorin Maazel] had chosen to include even one short work by a living American composer, perhaps an Asian-American composer. Because the orchestra stuck to staples, the classical music art form came off as unthreatening. New music, by definition, is destabilizing. To have a composer taking part in the program would have been a reminder that the heritage is living, breathing and unpredictable.
As you may remember, I made a similar observation in December, here, when I argued for the grand old man of American music, Elliot Carter, “to demonstrate what contemporary creativity can be in a free society.” Imagine if the still working, 99-year-old composer, who continues to take his bows at performances, had been able to make that historic trip!
As for the broadcast itself, I was struck by the rigid lack of responsiveness on the faces of the North Korean audience and I couldn’t wait to see the reportedly intense emotional reactions of both players and listeners at the end.
But PBS perversely cut away and rolled the credits. Why?