Hub goes Hollywood, theaters face changes
We had budget cuts and high-profile exits, a city shut down by a cartoon marketing campaign, and movie stars seemingly everywhere. One big museum started knocking down walls, another drew hundreds of thousands of people to South Boston's once barren Fan Pier. We chuckled at the brawl at Symphony Hall and wondered when the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art might finally let us into Building 5. And was that really David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen together onstage?
Natalie Jacobson, or "Nat" as we knew her over three decades at WCVB, told her colleagues in mid-July that she would be retiring. She'll be remembered not only for covering so many high-profile events - visits by Queen Elizabeth, Nelson Mandela, and Pope John Paul II, the Blizzard of '78 and the Red Sox' World Series win in 2004 - but for her notorious 1990 interview with then-gubernatorial candidate John Silber.
There were comings, and there were goings. Two key departures took place in the local theater community, as the American Repertory Theatre decided not to bring back artistic director Robert Woodruff and Nicholas Martin announced he was leaving the same position at the Huntington Theatre Company. New education leaders were hired at New England Conservatory (Tony Woodcock) and the Longy School of Music (Karen Zorn). Marie-Hélène Bernard arrived at the Handel and Haydn Society, replacing longtime executive director Mary Deissler. Janice Mancini Del Sesto announced she would step down as Boston Lyric Opera's general director in 2009. And in November, Boston's music community mourned Craig Smith, the founder of Emmanuel Music, who died at the age of 60.
The once-feuding Police played Fenway. Diamond Dave and Eddie revived Van Halen, and even Extreme headed back onstage. But August brought the most bittersweet band reunion. Boston's long-estranged Tom Scholz, Barry Goudreau, and Fran Sheehan played "Don't Look Back" at a concert tribute to singer Brad Delp, who committed suicide in March.
Though they were found in New York, the paintings Alex Matter claimed were created by famed Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock spent a good chunk of the year in Massachusetts. The Harvard University Art Museums and the Museum of Fine Arts both studied the pictures, finding that some pigments and other materials used in the works couldn't have been around in the United States in Pollock's lifetime. Even so, Boston College's McMullen Museum of Art chose to show the works in the exhibit "Pollock Matters."
One Monday morning in September, a giant electronic screen lit up over the Massachusetts Turnpike. The digital mural was just one feature of WGBH's new, $85 million headquarters on Guest Street in Brighton. The new digs also include an auditorium, a recording studio, and, along with a number of broadcasting studios, a space for the show "The World" with windows overlooking the street.
"It's the Number One video on CNN," said Boston Symphony Orchestra managing director Mark Volpe. He wasn't talking about the Mahler Ninth. In May, during a Boston Pops concert, a brawl broke out on the second balcony. In the end, Michael Hallam, 44, and Matthew Ellinger, 27, dropped charges against each other. But not before the incident made the "Today" show.
Tax credits. A new movie poobah in Nick Paleologos. No wonder so many movie stars were floating through Boston. In September alone, "Bachelor No. 2," "The Pink Panther 2," and "The Women" all began production in town. Now can somebody please put "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" out on DVD?
It was the feud to end all museum feuds. Christoph Büchel, the Swiss artist, left North Adams in December 2006, never to return. By the spring, more than 150 tons of material for his unfinished football field-size installation remained in the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art's Building 5, with no hope of an opening. The museum sued. Art critics railed. And quietly, Mass MoCA removed all that stuff and opened its Jenny Holzer exhibit.
One museum reveled in its rebirth, another moved forward on its building project. For years, the Museum of Fine Arts has merely been talking about its massive expansion plan. This year, the work became tangible, as excavation began for the new American wing just as the MFA announced it was closing in on its $500 million fund-raising goal. Across town, on Fan Pier, the Institute of Contemporary Art attracted an unprecedented 300,000-plus people to its new space. Visitors filled the ICA's new galleries, theater, and wooden bleachers overlooking the South Boston waterfront.
The Citi Performing Arts Center fell under fire, first for cutting back on its free Shakespeare production in the Boston Common, later after reports in the Globe on a $1.2 million bonus paid to its president and CEO, Josiah Spaulding Jr.
Never mind the recently opened theaters at the Boston Center for the Arts and ICA. The show went on, at times, in the most unexpected venues. "3rd and Oak: The Laundromat" took place at the All-Brite Laundramat in Brighton. The Actors' Shakespeare Project performed in the basement of the JFK Garage in Cambridge. And Opera Boston headed to the Lizard Lounge for a series of cabaret evenings.
If you went to Florida in November, you missed some magical moments at Symphony Hall. Hot conductor Gustavo Dudamel and his Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra wowed the audiences one day, and Boston Symphony Orchestra maestro James Levine kept the crowd spellbound less than 24 hours later. Writing of the BSO's performance of Mahler's Ninth, Globe critic Jeremy Eichler praised the BSO's string section. "The depth and sweetness of tone, the purity of intonation, and Levine's impeccable balancing of the string choir made this movement devastatingly effective," he wrote. "At the very end, you couldn't tell exactly where the music stopped and the silence began. Wherever that point was, Levine held it for a small eternity."
Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com. For more on the arts, visit boston.com/ae/ theater_arts/exhibitionist. 