Arts players will make news in 2014
Great expectations for 2014 will be tested for a number of key figures in our cultural world. Janet Carding, who has spent more than three years putting her mark on the Royal Ontario Museum since taking over as CEO, will be determined to put us all in a ROM state of mind as this cultural giant marks its 100th anniversary. Antoni Cimolino wants to prove that the buzz and increased attendance during his first season as Stratford Festival artistic director were no fluke. He’s counting on the theme of madness to draw crowds, and on Colm Feore’s turn as King Lear (directed by Cimolino) to equal or surpass memories of John Colicos, Peter Ustinov, Douglas Campbell, William Hutt and Christopher Plummer, Stratford Lears of the past. Heather Conway, who played a big part in improving the numbers in her brief run as business affairs chief at the Art Gallery of Ontario, now faces a challenge that many might consider a nightmare: trying to reinvent the CBC in her new job as head of the corp’s English language operations, even as it faces severe budget cuts and a hockeyless future. Charles Cutts, the boss at Roy Thomson Hall and Massey Hall, will move forward with the first stage of a massive seven-year plan to expand and improve Massey Hall, which will require Toronto’s biggest cultural fundraising campaign of this decade. Rita Davies, reinventing herself after her 2012 exit as executive director of culture for the city, is one of the key figures shepherding a new Toronto International Book Fair set to debut in November. But her guiding spirit will be increasingly missed at city hall. Garth Drabinsky, hoping to be granted full parole a year after his release from jail, will try to orchestrate another showbiz comeback after his 1989 expulsion from the Cineplex movie empire and the 1998 collapse of his Livent stage empire. Peter Herrndorf, who has made the National Arts Centre into one of the strongest cultural organizations in Canada, will follow the NAC’s spectacularly successful China tour with a tour of the United Kingdom in the fall, marking the 100th anniversary of Canada’s entry into the First World War. Robert Lantos, who has concentrated on movies for more than a decade since selling Alliance Entertainment, will launch a major TV project, triggering memories of an earlier era when Lantos quarterbacked such small-screen shows as Night Heat, Mount Royal and Due South. Victor Loewy ruled the world of independent film distribution in Canada for decades, until his sudden exile when Alliance Films was taken over by eOne a year ago. Now the question is whether Loewy can create a new company successful enough to rival eOne. Peter Oundjian, who has concentrated on strictly artistic matters during his first decade as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, will become increasingly involved in political and financial issues after the departing Andrew Shaw is replaced by a new executive director and the debt-plagued TSO seeks a new survival strategy. Charles Pachter will extend his reputation as the painter of our times who mythologizes Canadian history with two series of images that will be seen by the public later this year. One series, about the War of 1812, will be installed at Fork York’s visitor centre. The other, about Canada’s role in the First World War, will be on view at Queen’s Park. Sarah Polley, who has just been named to the Order of Canada, will continue to win awards for Stories We Tell, her documentary about family secrets. Polley, whose 2006 movie Away From Her led to the red carpet at the Oscars, could well be making another trip to Hollywood.
Her latest film will likely be one of the five docs on the slate when nominations are announced this month. mknelman@thestar.ca