CALARTS CONFERS HONORARY DEGREES ON LECOMPTE AND SUBOTNICK; GETTY PAY CUTS
The California Institute of the Arts announced today that it is conferring honorary doctor of arts degrees on director Elizabeth LeCompte and composer Morton Subotnick. LeCompte is a founding member and longtime artistic director of the Wooster Group. In a body of work characterized by radical juxtapositions of classic and modern texts and the combination of an eclectic range of materials and media, LeCompte’s celebrated theatrical direction has shown the way for integrating live performance with evocative and technologically sophisticated uses of sound, lighting, video for the stage, and architectonic design. Legendary composer and founding CalArts faculty member Subotnick is one of the foremost pioneers in the development of electronic music and an innovator in the use of interactive computer-music systems. CalArts president Steven D. Lavine will present the honorary degrees to LeCompte and Subotnick at the 2009 commencement ceremony, which takes place on the CalArts campus on Friday, May 15.
In other news, Mike Boehm reports for the Los Angeles Times that nine top executives of the J. Paul Getty Trust will give up about $250,000 in pay in conjunction with other budgetary cuts during the coming fiscal year. The executive pay cuts are a fraction of the $64 million cut from the Getty’s budget––a 22.5 percent reduction for what remains the world’s most richly endowed arts institution, even though that endowment has shrunk from $6.4 billion to $4.2 billion since mid-2007. Each of the Getty’s top three earners will take a 6 percent salary hit in the coming fiscal year, according to the numbers in the compensation disclosure posted on the Getty’s website. President James Wood, chief investment officer James Williams, and director Michael Brand will receive base pay of $684,320, $800,654 and $513,079, respectively.
