In the Arts: Asia Society Seeks Greater Reach With New Centers
February 1, 2012 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Bucking the austerity of many nonprofit cultural groups, the New York-based Asia Society is embarking on a major expansion, opening $50-million buildings in Hong Kong and Houston, The New York Times says.
The two new complexes will give the society gallery, lecture, and meeting spaces in cities where it previously maintained only offices. The Hong Kong center will open this week, with Houston’s to follow in the spring.
“This is that time when we should be increasing our footprint,” said Henrietta Holsman Fore, the society’s co-chairwoman. “We are covering 51 countries in Asia … there is a need for more scholarship, more visits, more business transactions, more tourists, more exchanges of artists, more connections between leaders.”
In other arts news:
• Officials of the Philadelphia Orchestra said Monday that fundraising for the organization is encouraging as the group emerges from bankruptcy, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
The orchestra has secured $35.5-million in gifts and pledges toward an immediate goal of $44-million to finance its reorganization and maintain operations in the coming years, chairman Richard B. Worley said. In the long term, the orchestra must raise $160-million to $170-million to secure its operations and endowment.
Several leading musicians have left the ensemble since it declared bankruptcy in April, and another wave of departures could be looming, according to the Inquirer.
• San Francisco’s Mexican Museum has signed on as an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution network, a move that will give the museum access to the more than 136 million artworks and artifacts held by the nation’s largest museum system, writes the Los Angeles Times.
The museum of Latino art and culture is the first San Francisco institution to join the Smithsonian’s Affiliations program, which includes several institutions in the Los Angeles area. The Mexican Museum is led by Jonathan Yorba, the chair of a nonprofit group that has advocated for the creation of an official Smithsonian museum dedicated to the culture of American Latinos.
