Monster Mash: Breaking news and headlines

-- So long, farewell: The Rodgers & Hammerstein catalog, which includes such titles as "The Sound of Music," "Oklahoma" and "South Pacific," is sold to a Dutch investment group.

--There's a catch: Former Museum of Contemporary Art chief Jeremy Strick hasn't yet repaid a $500,000 loan to MOCA. 

-- It's always the arts: Los Angeles budget proposals hit arts agencies.

-- Over money, of course: Franky Gehry feuding with Miami Beach over New World Symphony project.

-- Top prize: Playwright Lynn Nottage and composer Steve Reich are among winners of the 2009 arts Pulitzer Prize.

-- Back to owners: The Austrian town of Linz is to return Gustav Klimt painting to the descendants of a Jewish family who were robbed of it by the Nazis.

-- Another return: U.S. officials to return a Dutch Old Master portrait seized from a New York gallery to heirs of a Jewish art dealer who was forced to sell it before fleeing Nazi Germany in 1937.

-- Another theater contest: The Drama League announces award nominees.

-- List narrows: Three selected from a field of thousands to compete for BP Portrait prize.

-- Royal prerogative?: Leading architects accuse Prince Charles of using his royal position to attack plans to develop a former army barracks in London.

-- Costly paint job: A new Damien Hirst creation to be sold for charity in Los Angeles.

-- Lisa Fung

Photo: Julie Andrews in a scene from "The Sound of Music." 

Comments

[steven]

Today the Wall Street Journal reported that dutch pension fund company Imagem Music Group purchased the entire Rodgers and Hammerstein music library. First off, I am still wondering what a pension fund company called a ‘music group’ is all about. I guess the ecomony sucks, and the Rodgers and Hammerstein organization needed to cash out and move on. Maybe they won’t actually move on, but will stay on to take care of the NYC offices, or maybe they will all retire to the Hamptons...

My big concern is about what this will do to the theatre show licensing, and what the performance rights will cost to your average civic light opera or community organization. How sad it will be if I have to drie by the Elizabeth Howard Dinner Theatre, and not be able to see that they are performing The Sound Of Music again, or read in my hometown newspaper that Jefferson High isn’t able to perform Carousel anymore, because the exchange rate with the dutch gulden makes the rights out of reach.

But most importantly, I am so concerned and upset that the music of two people so quintessentially American being bought and administered by a dutch pension fund company. I’ve never been keen on us Americans selling off our culture to foreign countries, especially since working in Germany, where one daft german girl explained to me that the US doesn’t actually HAVE any culture.

Well, apparently, this little bit of American Non-Culture is worth about 200 million to the dutch, how do we get our country to see that same value in our arts?