Arts Attracting Attention and Support |
from the Summer 2009 Issue of Arts Management Arts groups are using virtually every means of wooing audiences. In addition to ticket discounts, offbeat programs and unusual performance settings, the arts use of Facebook, Twitter and text messaging has become increasingly prevalent and, in recent months, many arts groups including the San Francisco Symphony, have introduced online Social Networks. In June the New York Philharmonic became the first orchestra with its own Apple iPhone Application offering viewers extensive data, including program notes, audio clips of upcoming concerts and reviews. On July 14th the Philharmonic introduced ''Mobile Giving'' allowing audiences at its free concert in Central Park to send a $5 donation by text message to the orchestra, with the donated amount to appear on each donor's mobile service bill. Five text messages totaling $25 could be sent with each monthly billing cycle. This summer, the Utah Symphony invited its 1400 Facebook and 600 Twitter followers to sign up for the opportunity to post a live review of the music of ABBA at a Deer Valley Music Festival performance. The 50 selected from those who contacted the orchestra were offered free reserved seat tickets in a new media section. The digital revolution has encompassed groups throughout the world. The Metropolitan Opera's ''The Met: Live in HD'' which beamed live high-definition transmissions into movie houses and other settings in 36 countries, reached 1.6-million people, up 43% over the previous year. This summer the Met offered a free 10-day HD Festival beginning in August in Lincoln Center Plaza. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra initiated digital delivery in January with the first of some 30 real-time high-definition video and audio concerts streamed though its web site. Offbeat and non-traditional programs are becoming more frequent. One of the biggest attention-getters was the performance by the YouTube Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in April, featuring more than 90 musicians from 33 countries, selected from 3,000 videos submitted over four months. The musicians rehearsed for three 12-hour days before performing live. Opera has offered some unique performances, including the premiere of ''Green Aria: A Scent Opera'' at the Guggenheim Museum with music by Nico Muhly and Valgeir Sigurdson. Thirty fragrances created by perfumer Christian Laudamiel accompanied the music and were released at moments throughout the opera. In London, the Mammoth Music Theater presented ''Flatback'' over four nights in a very unusual setting -- an Ikea store. The cast of four singers, dancers dressed in Ikea's colors, and seven musicians presented the work using Ikea's furniture and everyday domestic objects -- wine glasses, saucepans and cheese graters -- as sets and props. In Manchester, England, soprano Juliana Snapper sang under water in a swimming pool, in what is believed to be the first underwater opera, ''You Who Will Emerge From the Flood,'' accompanied by a poolside chorus. Audiences are being drawn into the arts experience through participatory involvement and contests. Attendees at the Denver Art Museum exhibition, ''The Psychedelic Experience: Rock Posters for the San Francisco Bay Area, 1965-71,'' had hands-on opportunities for visitors to print out posters, create their own light shows and record a 60's memory. Audiences at orchestra concerts by the Indianapolis Symphony and New York Philharmonic have text messaged their choices for encores. At an updated performance of ''Cosi fan Tutte'' at New York's Symphony Space, cell phone texts by audience members determined who would marry whom in the wedding scene. For the third year, the Canadian Opera Company is using a contest to educate audiences on its productions. The ''Diva For A Day'' program invited audiences to take a cyber journey into the company's making of its production of ''Madama Butterfly,'' and then answer five COC-related questions. One person selected at random from those answering all questions correctly became Diva for a Day, winning a package of treats, including Grand Ring seats for the opening night of ''Madama Butterfly,'' along with amenities valued at $4,000. New York's Guggenheim Museum is inviting audiences to participate in the ''Design It: Shelter Competition,'' inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, the museum's architect and subject of a current museum exhibition. Through the museum's partnership with Google, global competitors can choose a location on Google Earth and use SketchUp 3-D modeling software to create virtual shelters. A people's prize -- a trip for two to New York and behind-the-scenes tour of the Gugggenheim -- will be awarded following public voting which closes on August 23 as will a juried cash prize for design professionals. Audiences have been streaming into the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum thanks to a fictional Hollywood film, ''Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.'' An IMAX showing of the film at the museum drew $119,000 in the first four days of showing, the best of any theater in the country. At the Crested Butte Music Festival, in addition to performances of Haydn and Mendelssohn works, audiences can have ''A Beer With Beethoven'' at a performance in a barn. In the UK, theaters around the country, several funded by the British Arts Council, are using hip-hop to involve teenagers in the theater experience. The arts have attracted notice with giant, attention-getting programs. In May, two million Canadians participated in the Coalition for Music Education's national Music Monday ''Sing Song'' program. In London, 30 pianos with laminated songbooks were placed on public streets for three weeks this summer to encourage pedestrians to sit down and play, which many did. In Washington, DC, on June 18th MENC, the National Association for Music Education, sponsored a rally in support of mandatory music and art programs in our schools. The event included a student drum corps and rock band, joined by sports star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, actress Florence Henderson and Mrs. America, Maureen McDonald. MENC leaders presented more than 120,000 signatures on Petitions for Equal Access to Music Education to Education Secretary Arne Duncan before marching with drum corps and band to meet with legislators. In an ambitious undertaking Musequality organized a ''world busk'' for a week in June with musicians performing on streets throughout the globe. Other recent attention-getting programs included: astronaut Buzz Aldrin narrating part of ''The Planets'' at a Boston Pops concert accompanied by NASA video footage; a parade of models through London's Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery wearing costumes inspired by paintings in the Gallery; a series of ads by Deutsche Oper Berlin featuring supermodel Nadja Auermann posing in full operatic costume as heroines in upcoming productions; and Lincoln Center's promotion of its 50th anniversary through displays in Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman department store windows. Earth Day provided an activities platform for more than 100 member organizations of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums to hold a Party for the Planet with environmental and family fun activities. The Chelsea Art Museum's new installation, ''Pencillism,'' is built entirely of colored pencils. In April, Washington, DC's performing arts groups toasted the new Administration and celebrated the city's commitment to the performing arts with a Welcome to Washington for Administration officials and new members of Congress. Held at the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Sidney Harman Hall and featuring performances by members of nine leading local performing groups, with other performing groups attending, the event drew nearly 100 Administration officials and First Lady, Michelle Obama. Public art will be very visible at San Jose's International Airport thanks to the installation of ''Hands,'' whose images represent San Jose's 20 cultures and 52 languages. The art when fully installed will include 400,000 plastic discs on metal mesh creating a 1200 x 63 foot image on a faade of the airport's new $271-million rental garage. Down to its last two tenors, the president and three members of the Jubilate Chamber Choir in Vancouver, camped out on a local bridge in tuxedos in freezing weather with signs reading, ''Free: the Tenors.'' They told drivers of passing cars that tenors, who they termed ''an endangered species,'' would not be charged membership fees if they joined the group. Sports and games are providing arts groups with opportunities to reach new audiences. The Boston Pops not only performed at the Boston Red Sox home opener but released a new recording the same day, ''The Red Sox Album,'' with baseball-related music. In another baseball link the San Francisco Opera sponsored a free live screening of its production of ''Il Trovatore,'' including plot synopsis and cast details, at AT&T ballpark, the home of baseball's San Francisco Giants. In April the Orlando Ballet performed at halftime during an Orlando Magic-Philadelphia 76ers playoff basketball game. Musicians can be athletes also as the Boston Symphony demonstrated. To mark the opening of its Tanglewood summer festival season, 14 orchestra musicians, along with family members and six orchestra staff members, ran a 150 mile relay between Symphony Hall in Boston and Tanglewood in Lenox. The upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver will feature the arts prominently in an accompanying arts and culture festival that will showcase more than 600 ticketed and free performances and exhibitions in 50 area venues. The circus and rodeos have been on the agenda of symphony orchestras. For four weeks next March, the Baltimore Symphony's concert hall will be transformed into a three-ring arena for the ''BSO Under the Big Top'' series of classical and pop concerts. Programs, one including circus performers, will feature such works as John Corligliano's ''Circus Maximus'' and Stravinsky's ballet, ''Pulcinella.'' Earlier this season the Houston Symphony devoted two family concerts to the Wild West with rodeo performers and clowns appearing and Copeland's ''Hoedown'' and Rossinni's Overture to ''William Tell'' among the musical selections. In a bit of gamesmanship, the New World Symphony is featured as an expensive property in the Miami and Beaches Edition of Monopoly. Its artistic director, Michael Tilson Thomas, is winning special attention because he has been crafted as a Monopoly pewter game piece. Meanwhile, with funding needs greater than ever, arts groups are finding new and unusual ways to win monetary support. In New York City, the Queens Museum of Art is using a scale model of New York City -- the 10,000 square foot Panorama of the City originally built for the 1964 World's Fair -- as a fund raising tool. Through the Adopt-a-Building program, donors have been able to pick out one of the 895,000 structures, or apartments within them, perhaps one they currently live in, and adopt it, with donor acknowledgements placed near the Panorama. Since introduced in March the program has raised about $15,000 in small donations for apartments at $50, houses at $250, and up to $2,500 for neighborhood or park maintenance. Sponsorship packages range from $5,000 for cultural institutions up to $10,000 for stadiums, arenas, bridges and major landmarks, including the right to add new buildings to the model. Thus far, the New York Mets have given $10,000 to replace Shea Stadium with its new Citi Field. Other large sponsorships are in the works. The Chicago Opera Theater raised $33,000 this season by having audiences pay $1 a vote to select one of the operas for the 2011 season. The more than 200 voters contributing $17,000 were supplemented by an anonymous matching grant of $16,000. The Shakespeare Festival/LA used EBay to auction off a speaking role alongside Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson in a May 18 production of ''The Comedy of Errors,'' a fundraiser that featured such other notables as Martin Short, Shirley Jones and Christina Applegate. While the Bryn Mawr Film Institute didn't have actual stars to participate in its all-day, $50 a head, fundraising event, ''Fashion in Motion: A Celebration of Costume Design in Film,'' they had celebrity look-alikes and impersonators to serve as greeters and ushers. Offbeat funding events included the ''99 Bucks'' art sale hosted by the Arts Council of the Palm Springs Art Museum which featured 5 x 7 works of art donated by celebrities and not so famous contributors, signed only on the back. They were offered for $99 each on a first-come basis without buyers knowing who created the work. In the UK, the first Martin Miller's Gin Flaming Art Festival to benefit the Nordoff Robbins Trust offered attendees the right to either bid for works of art, or not bid. Those works that failed to attract any bidders were thrown into a large fire with about half the works suffering that fate. One that survived and sold for £1.600 was a log signed by Banksy, authenticated as genuine, contributed by an anonymous man in sunglasses and a cap. from the Summer 2009 Issue of Arts Management |
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