Sadly, we get news that David Omar White died on June 26 due to a massive infection, according to an e-mail sent out to friends. The artist's mural can be seen at the Casablanca Restaurant as well as a range of other art he did for the restaurant.

Boston Secession's 2009-10 season announcement is that there will be no 2009-10 season. Why? You guessed it. Money.

"While attendance at Boston Secession concerts has grown steadily over the past two years and the group has continued to receive critical recognition, the challenge of fundraising in the current economy has made it necessary for the ensemble to make this decision," the organization said in a statement. "Over the course of the next year, Boston Secession’s Board of Directors will assess how the ensemble might resume performing in the future."

The Boston Foundation's latest round of grants are out and here are the arts and culture recipients:

First Night, Inc. - $60,000 for general operating support.
Huntington Theatre, Inc - $75,000 for its Building Community Through Technology project which seeks to engage new and existing audiences.
Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion, Inc. - $50,000 to raise awareness of Villa Victoria Center for the Arts.
Museum of Fine Arts - $125,000 to bring under-represented populations to the museum and survey visitors’ needs and interests.
Opera Boston - $30,000 for general operating support.
EdVestors - $25,000 to expand arts education in Boston Public Schools.
Raw Art Works, Inc. - $75,000 for general operating support.
Zumix, Inc. - $50,000 for general operating support.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra confirmed today that 10 employees are being laid off, from departments including development and public relations. The orchestra and support staff are in transition this week from Boston to Tanglewood, their summer home in the Berkshires, and officials were not available for comment though a statement was issued by BSO managing director Mark Volpe:

"Like other cultural institutions nationwide, the BSO is facing serious challenges due to this past year’s economic downturn, including a substantial decline in the value of the orchestra’s endowment. In the course of confronting these challenges, the BSO found it necessary to reduce its full time work force by 5.3%. The BSO remains committed to maintaining its financial equilibrium, while pursuing its mission as one of the leading orchestras in the world."

The layoffs follow a staff hiring freeze instituted in December 2008 and the cancellation in April of a European tour the BSO had scheduled for 2010.

The 2009 Tanglewood season opens officially on July 3, with James Levine leading the BSO in an all-Tchaikovsky program featuring Yefim Bronfman performing the Piano Concerto No. 1.

--Thomasine Berg, Globe Staff

The North Shore Music Theatre may be no more. But "Memphis," the musical that began its life six years ago at the Beverly theater, is hitting Broadway.

It opens Oct. 19 at the Shubert Theatre.

North Shore Music Theatre hasn't been able to raise the $2 million it needed to launch a 2009 season. According to the organization's press release, the NSMT had raised more than $500,000 in pledges but that's not enough to open the doors.

The closing will leave a huge hole on the North Shore for locals interested in theater but find Boston venues too inconvenient or expensive. At its peak - about four years ago - NSMT had roughly 10,000 subscribers, said David Fellows, chairman of the theater's board of trustees.

That number had fallen to 4,400 when the theater stopped taking subscription orders late last year.

“It’s been a landmark here for a long time,” said Carolyn Pilanen, who directs musicals at Beverly High School.

Danvers resident Janet Guerette, a longtime subscriber, said she was saddened by the news. She also said she didn’t expect to receive back the $279 she had sent to NSMT for the now-cancelled season.

“How upset can I be?” said Guerette. “I’m upset I lost my $300. But everybody else lost theirs too.”

Back in April, the theater announced a plan to open this summer.

Here's one more argument for leaving your string quartet for the orchestra. It'll make the relay run easier. Today we get word that a group of Boston Symphony Orchestra players, BSO staffers and family members will run across the state from Symphony Hall to the main gate at Tanglewood. The run takes place June 29 and 30 and was created by BSO bassist Todd Seeber and BSO violinist James Cooke. Each of the 32 legs of the run will be between 3.5 and 6 miles. And the runners are schedule to arrive at the Tanglewood main gate at approximately 1:15 p.m. on June 30.

Here's kind of a cool thing, which is related to today's Hamelin profile.

We've got the first meeting of Hamelin and WGBH-FM radio host Cathy Fuller back in 2003. At the time, she was just an interviewer talking to a pianist and listening to him play Albeniz, Mozart and Schumann. Now, they're living together in Newton and set to be married.

I'll be on 88.1 FM between noon and 1 p.m. today talking about the Kinks. You can tune in if you're in Boston or get the show streamed.

One of my friendly comment-makers stated: "I know Regina Hackett. Regina Hackett is a friend of mine. You, sir, are no Regina Hackett."

First, I'll say: Duh. (And I might add, if you want to slam me, try to use a name better than JohnBGoode.)

In the further evidence that I'm not Regina Hackett category, here's her delicious and fair slam of her former newspaper colleague, Dave Horsey.

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project has scored second place for this year's ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming. The awards are given to orchestras that "challenge the audience, build the repertoire, and increase interest in music of our time." In the big orchestra category - $14.1 million budgets and higher - the first place winner was the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra under music director David Robertson followed by the San Francisco Symphony (Michael Tilson Thomas) and Minnesota Orchestra (Osmo Vanska). BMOP and music director Gil Rose finished behind the American Composers Orchestra in the $470,000 to $1.8 Million category.

Don't you hate it when you're supposed to sing at the Pops but that swine flu gets in the way? That's the case with a group of Boston Latin students who were supposed to get some stage time on May 20 but had to cancel because of the swine flu fears. They're at Symphony Hall tonight as winners of the Fidelity FutureStage music competition. We'll name them. Chris Middleton, 17, is a pianist and singer who will play an original ballad backed by the Pops. Then the Grieg Quartet - B. Kim, 15, on violin; Tadesh Inagaki, 17, violin; Allyn Hayes McCourt, 17, violin; Christopher Nguyen, 17, cello - perform Grieg’s String Quartet No. 1 in G Minor.

On a night consumed with 23 percent, I'm glad I clicked over to Regina Hackett, who is living proof you don't need a newspaper to make your mark.

"Where I write now does not exist in a generalized public sphere. A street sweeper on coffee break will not happen upon a leftover copy of this blog and be drawn into a review. A woman getting her heels buffed won't find it on the empty seat beside her and be motivated to see an exhibit of which she might otherwise not have heard."

Read it all...

For all of those people - in the arts community, the schoolyard, at my daughter's birthday party - who perhaps thought everything was settled... Here's the latest news on what is being forecast for the Boston Globe.

Nothing against Johnny Cougar or Rascal Flatts, but Neil Diamond is definitely a step up for this year's Boston Pops Fourth of July concert at the Hatch Shell. I wouldn't expect anything introspective off one of his last two records. I would be willing to bet my "Saturday Night Fiedler" record that he will, indeed, bring out "Sweet Caroline."

The Museum of Fine Arts has won a lawsuit it filed to establish its legal title to a valuable 1913 painting by Oskar Kokoschka. The judgment in US District Court for the District of Massachusetts seemingly settles a dispute that began in 2007, when attorneys for Claudia Seger-Thomschitz, an Austrian woman, demanded the return of the work from the museum.

Her lawyers contended that Jewish art collector Oskar Reichel, one of her ancestors, had sold the painting under duress in Nazi-occupied 1939 Vienna.

Here's a story I wrote about this dispute.

But U.S. District Judge Rya W. Zobel, in a decision filed this week, stated that the three-year statute of limitations period on such claims has passed. In addition, she wrote that it’s not clear whether the transfer of the painting to Kallir was illegitimate, as Seger Thomschitz alleged, and that the witnesses with first-hand knowledge of the transaction are now dead.

"Two Nudes (Lovers)" has hung at the MFA almost continuously since 1973. It is a self-portrait with Alma Mahler (wife of the composer Gustav Mahler), with whom the artist had an affair. In recent years, other Kokoschka works have sold at auction for as much as $1 million.

---

The MFA released a statement about the judgement about the painting, which was given to the museum in 1973 by Sarah Reed Blodgett.

Museum Director Malcolm Rogers has this to say:

"We are pleased with the court’s ruling acknowledging the MFA’s clear title to the painting," he said. "The MFA conducted a year and a half long comprehensive investigation of the work’s provenance, seeking documentation of the various transactions and changes of ownership in the painting’s almost 100-year history. We are satisfied and grateful that the judge has reaffirmed the Museum’s rightful ownership of the work."

Two Nudes (Lovers)
Oskar Kokoschka (Austrian, 1886–1980)
1913
Oil on canvas
*Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of Sarah Reed Platt
*Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Wyona Lynch-McWhite, currently the Fuller Craft Museum's deputy director, has been hired to take over for Gretchen Keyworth, who will stay as chief curator after taking the summer off.

Lynch-McWhite started as the museum in 2008 after serving as the director of the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. She has also worked at The Museum of Contemporary Photography and Art Institute of Chicago.

With the Boston Symphony Orchestra currently negotiating a new contract, it's worth noting that the musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra have voluntarily agreed to take a 4.8 percent pay cut. That cut - and reductions in pension contributions, overtime and royalty payments - should save more than $4 million in the FY10 and FY11 budgets, according to a release from the orchestra.

“The musicians view preserving the quality of The Philadelphia Orchestra as our sacred trust,” said cellist John Koen, Chairman of the Orchestra’s Members’ Committee in a statement. “Although we did not want to modify our negotiated contract, we understand the difficulty the institution is facing in these unprecedented financial times and remain committed to preserving it. We believe these short-term modifications to our contract are the best way to protect the Orchestra and our music.”