Friday night fun at the Guggenheim’s Art After Dark party. (Photos: Aarona Pichinson and Virginie Blanchere)

In New York and Los Angeles, museums after dark are often busier than during daylight hours. In both cities, just about all of the major museums, and a few of its minor ones, have jumped on the nocturnal bandwagon, hoping to hook a younger generation on museumgoing. But they’ve hooked the older crowd as well, with some offering live music or D.J.’s, performances and lectures, discount prices and, not surprisingly, booze.

A majority of these evening activities are on Friday nights, seemingly perfect for just-arrived out-of-town weekenders. The crowds they attract appear much more local than tourist. The average attendee comes with high heels and a hip handbag, not sensible shoes and a Lonely Planet guide.

Whitney Live offers live performances at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Here are some examples from New York:
Target First Saturdays @ Brooklyn Museum of Art
Art After Dark @ Guggenheim Museum
K2 Lounge @ Rubin Museum of Art
Whitney Live @ Whitney Museum of American Art
Get Weird @ New Museum of Contemporary Art

And from Los Angeles:
NIGHT VISION @ Museum of Contemporary Art LA
College Night @ Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Friday Nights @ The J. Paul Getty Museum

Read more (The New York Times, February 7, 2008)

Protests by Jewish groups ended plans for a rock concert scheduled for last Saturday at the site of a Nazi death camp in Belgrade, Serbia, The Associated Press reported. On Friday, Efraim Zuroff, director of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, issued a statement calling the planned performance “a heartless insult to the memory of the victims of the Nazis.” The organizers of the concert by the British band Kosheen attributed the cancellation to “pressure from foreign and domestic media.” The concert was to have been held at Staro Sajmiste, where 48,000 Jews, Serb leftists and Gypsies perished in the 1940s. The Long Play company, which organized the concert, said, “We hope that the big publicity created around the Staro Sajmiste site will be used for solving the problem of renovating the place.” Members of the dwindling Jewish population in Serbia say the camp needs to be saved from decades of neglect.

From the New York Times (November 5, 2007)

Curator of the National Museum of Iran (NMI), Mohammadreza Kargar described the holding of concerts in Tehran’s palace museums to be a source of damage to the historical monuments.

A metropolis the size of Tehran needs to have several specialized venues for the holding of concerts and currently the only permanent place which the city possesses is the Vahdat Hall, he told the Persian service of ISNA.

According to Kargar, palace museums are not obliged to hold concerts on their premises.

The Iranian band “Shams” accompanied by several dervishes from Konya gave performances at the Sadabad Palace last month.

“The presence of a great number of people in one place will inevitably cause damage to a property, and probably only the open-air areas of these sites should be used for summer performances in order to keep such damage to a minimum,” he added.

Read full article (Tehran Times, September 18, 2007)

After seven years of Futures Awards, Beck’s has teamed up with the Institute of Contemporary Arts to organize Beck’s Fusions, a festival where art meets music. A series of events will take place at the ICA, an enormous pod will be installed at Trafalgar Square filled with commissioned art-music pieces, that will be transformed into a “multimedia stage for a very special Chemical Brothers performance, a one-off event to be performed live in front of 9,000 people.”

Beck’s Fusions runs from 4 September 2007 until 29 September 2007. For more information visit the ICA Web site or Beck’s Fusions.

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The Dutch hip hop artist and underground phenomenon DuvelDuvel is about to release his latest album Puur Kultuur at the Netherlands Architecture Institute, says his label TopNotch Records in a press release. The acclaimed DuvelDuvel is a true product of the city of Rotterdam, with his uncompromising lyrics and straightforward diction.

The NAi however does not announce this event on its Web site. It seems that where other museums are looking for more popular means of attracting younger crowds by inviting youth culture onto its premises, the NAi hosts one of the Netherland’s most respected figures of urban culture without making this public.

DuvelDuvel homepage
NAi homepage