This week Washington Post arts journalists Anne Midgette and Peggy McGlone published results of their six-month investigation of sexual harassment in the classical music business. Some of the stories they put on the record were new; others have been open secrets for years. One of the latter stories - about Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster William Preucil is not new at all. Back in 2007, the … [Read more...]
How a Beethoven Tweet Broke Our Twitter Feed (And Other Lessons About Social Media Today)
A few weeks ago we posted a link in ArtsJournal to a piece in the Toronto Star under the admittedly provocative headline: "Time To Retire Beethoven's Ninth?" In the piece, John Terauds, who used to be the Star's staff classical music critic, suggested it might be time to put away the Ninth Symphony for a while. Why? In his words: We have the 19th-century ideal of strength in unity — … [Read more...]
Five Story Highlights From The Past Week 02.19.17: Trapped By PACs, New WTC As Cautionary Tale, Exploiting Humanities Workers
Last Week: Have performing arts centers led us to a dead end?... The new World Trade Center in New York demonstrates much of what is wrong with building today's cities... The humanities only exist on the exploitation of its workers... Here's the structure that makes the Grammys racist... A pocket history of fake news. In case you missed it, ArtsJournal published Joe Horowitz's essay on the … [Read more...]
Join Us Today For A Livestream: Artistic Leadership In A Border City
Following on Joe Horowitz's essay Lincoln Center Snapshot: Bing, Bernstein, and Balanchine Fifty Years Later and the five responses to his provocation, we're in El Paso, Texas today for a conversation about artistic leadership in a city literally divided in two - El Paso, Texas on one side of a border fence and Juarez, Mexico on the other side. The University of Texas, El Paso and the El Paso … [Read more...]
Is The Institutionalization Of Our Arts A Dead End?
In his essay looking back on Lincoln Center on its 50th birthday, Joe Horowitz suggests that the cultural citadel built optimistically to be a launching pad for the American performing arts, might have turned out instead to be a box canyon. Perhaps the buildings are to blame: the Met theatre is too big and unwieldy, and Philharmonic Hall and the State Theatre, despite renovations, haven't … [Read more...]
Are Orchestras A Ticket Or An Art? Maybe We’re Thinking About The (Made Up) Model Wrong
As recently as 1990, American symphony orchestras accounted for an average of 60 percent of their budgets in earned income. This meant, at the time, that if you weren't selling enough tickets (and other services) to make 60 percent, then you weren't considered healthy. A report in 1991 - The Financial Condition of Symphony Orchestras - conducted by The Wolf Organization, said that attendance at … [Read more...]
Five Highlights From This Week’s AJ: The Big Ideas You Need To Know, Says MIT
This Week: Trump, the arts, the culture budget and protest... Harvard ART school gets suspended...MIT's list of 10 things you need to know... Writers and money - the straight dope. Trump Inauguration And Artists: Obviously the biggest story this week was the American inauguration and the demonstrations the day after. There were dozens of stories pondering the role of art and artists in … [Read more...]
Killing NEA, NEH And PBS Is Just Collateral Damage In The Commodification Of American Values
So it begins. A report in The Hill, then picked up in the Washington Post, says that the Trump administration intends to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities and sell off PBS. It's part of a plan to cut some $10.5 trillion over the next decade. Zeroing out the culture budgets isn't about money; together, the NEA, NEH and PBS account for … [Read more...]
Context: Hollywood’s Political Bias? It’s Money
Unquestionably, a majority of the people who work in Hollywood lean politically left. More than lean, in many cases. But how much of their politics makes it onto the big screen? Rory Carroll takes up the question in the Guardian, writing that: "the industry as a whole could disappoint those hoping for a liberal, inclusive wave from Los Angeles to counter rightwing populism from … [Read more...]
Five Highlight Reads From This Week’s AJ: Did Originality Steer The Arts Wrong?
This Week: The Trump era is a challenge to America's arts institutions... Artificial intelligence is teaching us how to better-design concert halls... How originality has failed art... The Metropolitans Museum and Opera are struggling... Is Canada becoming the first "post-nation" state? The Role Of Arts Institutions In The Era Of Trump: As what follows any seismic shift in the landscape, … [Read more...]