Clearly, the Opera House can't shake the ticket-broker site that it feels is impersonating its own site. It's an issue Boston Ballet has clearly dealt with. Now, the Opera House is taking some action.

In a recent e-blast, Broadway Across America dropped the url of the site that is "controlled by an unaffiliated ticket service that uses the domain name without permission. DON'T BE FOOLED!"

Then, the website urges anybody who feels ripped off to contact the Opera House, which will put them in touch with the state officials who regulate ticket sales.

Boston isn't the only city with museum expansions in play. I spoke today with Larry Wheeler, the director of the North Carolina Museum of Art. He's excited for the April opening of NCMA's new building. I've been to the old museum having lived in North Carolina for six years and what's striking is the campus, which covers 164 acres. The new building is low to the ground, naturally lit and should be a perfect new home for the museum's rich collection.

I love the countdown on the museum's website. Very Lostish.

Expansion slideshow

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has a new board chairman. But he'll have to wait a while to take over. Edmund “Ted” F. Kelly will assume the position in September of 2011. He'll officially succeed Edward H. Linde, the real estate developer who died in January. Linde's term was supposed to run until August 31, 2011.

Finishing out that term will be a pair of co-chairs: Stephen B. Kay, a senior director at Goldman, Sachs & Co., and Robert O’Block, a partner with McKinsey & Company.

Back to Kelly. He’s a former math professor who now serves as chairman, president and chief executive officer of Liberty Mutual Group. (Liberty Mutual is the sponsor of the July 4th Pops concert on the Esplanade.)

Kelly has been a trustee since 2004 and vice-chairman of the board since 2006.

Robert O'Block and Stephen Kay, who will serve as Co-Chairs of the BSO Board of Trustees through August, 2011, with Edmund F. Kelly, who will take on the Board of Trustees Chairmanship on September 1, 2011 and BSO Managing Director Mark Volpe at Symphony Hall

Did you hear? Museum attendance is up. And the Onion hit the streets to get the full scoop.

Yes, the word “arts” is in the title. But is the May 6 “Bellator Fighting Championship” – a mixed martial arts event – the true purpose of the Wang Theatre? 

Absolutely, says Citi Performing Arts Center CEO Josiah Spaulding Jr. 

The center’s financial and other problems have been well documented. Spaulding points out that the martial arts event, which is a four-wall rental – meaning the Citi Center isn’t involved, other than to hand over its building for the night – can help keep the lights on.

“We have an obligation to rent the building at full rates to whoever wants to rent it,” he told me this week. “This rental, to promote the building to the fastest growing sport of a worldwide television audience, is a good thing.”

Spaulding points out that while the center’s 50 percent occupancy rate is the same as   last year’s, the shows being brought into the Wang are selling more tickets. But do the other shows scheduled for the Wang this year, including pop star Mariah Carey, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, and comedienne Chelsea Handler, line up with the center’s mission?

Spaulding said it is a misconception that the Citi Center, because of its non-profit status, is not supposed to feature commercial artists and events. With the exit of Boston Ballet last year, that means there’s an increasing emphasis on star-centered, one nighters.

He then referred me to the City Performing Arts Center’s mission statement.

“Citi Performing Arts Center is dedicated to providing broad-based, popular entertainment and arts education programming.  As a non-profit institution, it is committed to KEEPING LIFE COLORFUL for New England residents and visitors by inspiring a greater appreciation for the performing arts through educational outreach, public programming, and community partnerships.”

(Globe Staff Photo / Stan Grossfeld)

Boy, do they grow up fast. It seems like just yesterday that BR&S started posting art reviews, opinion pieces and interviews with the art-world movers that make our city so dynamic. But no, it's been six years. And Big RED needs your help. The online journal opens up into a donation site. We're not telling you where to spend your money. But we can tell you that keeping Big RED is good for me, and it's good for you.

I've already received some borderline hate mail after today's story on the hanging of the Sully and the comments section of Boston.com is alive with people upset that A. I mentioned that one of the MFA facilities guys smokes Newports and that B. I ended the story with a quote from Joe Morgan.

"This article could not be more pretentious if it TRIED."

"Would the reporter have made a comment if a museum executive had a piece of food in his/her teeth? Of course not."

Well, first things first. If Malcolm Rogers came downstairs wiping the tunafish from the corners of his mouth, I bet that would have been in the story. Because it would have been interesting that a museum director ran downstairs so fast to make sure he caught the hanging. As for Bryan's Newports... My favorite stories, fiction or non-fiction, have detail in them. They also show contrast. And to me, the idea of Bryan's Newports and his 76ers hat being in the same gallery as these whispering curators...that's about the contrast and detail.

But hey, perhaps when I get into my 12-year-old car or try to change the washer on the bathtub faucet, I'm harboring a deep resentment of the working class.

Here are three pictures David Ryan took that didn't make it into the paper.

Handout photo

Since opening in 1955, North Shore brought Broadway-style theater to the suburbs. It was once the largest theater in the region, with close to 350,000 people attending each year.

By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff

The ghosts of "A Christmas Carol" past are in the future of the revived North Shore Music Theatre.

The theater plans to bring back its longtime holiday production of “A Christmas Carol,” an audience favorite sliced out of the schedule just before the organization’s demise last year.

Theatergoers can also expect other productions to start as soon as this summer, according to William Hanney, the South Shore businessman who this week finalized his purchase of the shuttered theater for $3.6 million.

“I paid for it, so now the hard part starts,” Hanney said today.

Though he said it was too early to reveal which productions he will bring in for his first season, Hanney made it clear he was eager to see the adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic return with longtime artistic director Jon Kimbell, who retired in 2008.

Kimbell, who has been counseling Hanney for months, will direct the run.

"Jon’s been fantastic through this process,” said Hanney. “He has been my North Shore mentor. Anytime I have a problem or concern, I pick up the phone and call Jon. He was delighted to hear I was going to do it and he was all over it.”

Many Kimbell supporters blamed his successors for the 54-year-old theater’s demise, in part because they chose to replace “A Christmas Carol” with “Disney High School Musical 2.’’ In reality, the financial problems had deeper roots. The theater – which at its peak drew some 300,000 people a year, making it the largest regional theater in New England – had been saddled with years of deficits.

Its loss left a hole for locals who didn’t want to pay high prices and battle traffic to see polished, Broadway-styled productions in Boston.

Citizens Bank paid $3.6 million at a foreclosure auction last year. Hanney bought the property, which includes 28 acres, for the same amount. In addition to NSMT, he owns Theatre by the Sea in Rhode Island and a chain of cinemas.

Kimbell said he was encouraged by what he had heard during multiple discussions with Hanney.

“I think Bill is going to be a really savvy businessman,” said Kimbell. “He’s a smart guy. It’s his own money so he’s going to be careful with it. I don’t know where the budgeting is going but I know, from my conversations with him, that he wants high quality theater there.”

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com

This morning, at one of our fine arts institutions, I ran into a loyal reader of "Exhibitionist," who looked at me sadly and said: "I've really missed the blog."

I was about to say, "yeah, the last time I posted was..." but he cut me off and finished the sentence: January 26.

Ouch.

Why so lax? Because I've simply been busy. I've always had to blog on off hours, either before I go to work or after work with the occasional post done at my desk. But in recent months, I've been busy with my movie - and the site I created for it - and haven't been able to focus on the blog on my off time. Which is really not such a great excuse.

So today, a pledge. I am going to post at least once a day for the next month, weekends included, and see where it gets us.

The musicians at the New Hampshire Music Festival demanded the organization's leaders be removed. Apparently, that's just what will happen. The Laconia Daily Sun reports today that David Graham, the festival's president since 1987, is leaving in May. Also out: Festival director Henry Fogel and artistic director Jonathan Gandelsman. Ron Sibley tells the newspaper that he'll be taking over for board chairman Rusty McLear and that three other board members have resigned.

Here's our previous story on the controversy. 

Tony Beadle is heading back to Boston or, more specifically, Rockport. The former manager of the Boston Pops, who left in 2006 to become executive director of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, is taking over as executive director of Rockport Music. The organization presents the Rockport Chamber Music Festival held in June.

It's a big year for the organization, as it will open the Shalin Liu Performance Center, a 330-seat space with ocean views.

Before moving into management, Beadle, a Boston University graduate, was a musician (double bass) who worked with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, the Opera Company of Boston under Sarah Caldwell and was principal bass of Boston Ballet. While managing the Pops, he helped launch a jazz series at Tanglewood and oversaw the self-release of the group’s CDs.

Beadle’s tenure in Columbus was anything but smooth, as a financial crisis led to a labor dispute with the players and the five month shutdown of the orchestra. The Orchestra’s officials allowed Beadle’s contract to expire at the end of last August.

Sebastian Smee has seen the designs for the new Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's building and he's not impressed. "To my mind, this vision sounds like an awkward hybrid of a classroom, a café, and a club lounge at an airport. It is, at any rate, a radical rewrite of Gardner’s own very deliberate and theatrical vision for encountering her creation."

Read the rest...

Gardner Museum director Anne Hawley and Jim Labeck, the director of operations, look over a 3-D model of the Gardner's new wing (center). That's an existing apartment building at left. The original building (right) sits in front of it facing the Fenway. (John Tlumacki / Globe Staff)

By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff

Tomorrow morning, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will unveil the design for an ambitious $118 million expansion created by Italian architect Renzo Piano, a new glass and copper-clad wing that will fundamentally change the way visitors experience the museum.

The project, expected to be completed in early 2012, will more than double the size of the museum's footprint, creating a new entrance, music hall, gallery space, and other facilities for an institution largely unaltered since its opening in 1903.

Gardner's original Venetian-style palazzo will remain almost untouched as the wing connects to the existing museum through a glass passageway. A new four-story building will host visitor services such as the gift shop, cafe, and coat check, which are currently sited in cramped quarters in the palace. A new 300-seat music hall in the building will allow the Gardner to stop holding concerts in its delicate, often overcrowded tapestry room. A soaring new gallery for temporary shows, a visitors' "Living Room," offices, and conservation and education facilities will round out the building. A smaller second structure with a sloping glass roof will host greenhouses and apartments for artists-in-residence.

In total, the new wing will add 70,000 square feet to the museum's current 60,000 square feet. Construction is already underway on the wing, which is located in part on the grounds of Gardner's former Carriage House, destroyed in July amid controversy over the terms of her will and the Carriage House's historic significance.

The project is part of an unprecedented cultural building boom in Boston, with the Institute of Contemporary Art opening its new waterfront home in 2006 and the Museum of Fine Arts set to open a massive new wing later this year.

In an interview, Gardner Museum director Anne Hawley praised Piano for creating a design that doesn't overwhelm the current palazzo. The new main building will be 11 feet shorter than the approximately 70-foot high museum, and its glass-walled first floor will afford visitors a see-through view of the site.

"It's possible to wander up to the music hall and hear music, wander into a gallery and see an art project," Hawley said. "What I love about this design is that when the visitor first comes up to the building, everything they see is about art and their experience with it."

"It relieves a lot of stress on the historic building," said Labeck. "That's really its most important function. It provides the space that the museum has really needed for 10 years so its programming can really blossom."

Right now, visitors enter the Gardner Museum via the Fenway. The new entrance will be around the corner on Evans Way, through a low-slung glass structure. Museumgoers will walk through the new wing into a glass corridor shaded by a canopy of trees, entering a section of the palace now taken up by the gift shop. From there, visitors will enter the Gardner's central courtyard through a new opening in the south end of the museum's East Cloister. To accommodate the new entrance, a sarcophagus will be moved to a spot a few feet away.

"It's the opposite side you enter, but there is the same sense of discovery," said Piano by phone.

At 1,800 square feet, the new cafe will be nearly three times the size of the current cafe. The new gallery will provide 2,000 square feet for contemporary art and changing exhibitions -- four times the current amount.

The music hall is one of the new wing's most distinctive features. A square structure with exactingly designed acoustics, it will place performers on the ground floor, surrounded on all sides by seats. Three balconies will ring the space, with seats just one row deep, for a total capacity of 296.

The Gardner first announced its plans for an expansion in 2004. That year it hired the world-renowned Piano, winner of the Pritzker Prize for architecture. Bill Egan, a museum trustee who chaired the Gardner's building committee, said Piano's design is respectful of the existing museum.

"The whole goal here was to make sure that we didn't change the experience of the palace, and only enhance that," said Egan. "I think we're going to have one of the great small concert halls in the world, but you know what? We're not going to have as many seats as [music director] Scott Nickrenz would have liked because the size was basically controlled by how big Renzo felt it could be as compared to the palace."

Piano said he's most pleased with the transparency of the new building. Glass can be found throughout the design, from the entryway and corridor to the sloping wall that lets onlookers see into the artist studios and greenhouses.

"The sense of lightness is a fundamental element, so it doesn't compete with the palace. The new building will be more visible, more accessible, more understandable from the outside," he said.

The total cost of the project will be $118 million, and the Gardner aims to raise an additional $40 million-plus in endowment to support it. The museum is also looking to raise $20 million for other preservation projects not related to the new wing.

While the MFA and ICA underwent successful fund-raising campaigns during the economic boom, the Gardner found itself struggling to complete its fund-raising during a recession.

Museum trustees extended Hawley's deadline for raising $100 million from last January to last May. But she was told the project would be put on hold if she couldn't hit her target. Hawley did. Museum trustees and overseers gave $79 million of the $100 million raised so far. Among the largest contributions was a gift from the Calderwood Charitable Foundation, which gave more than $10 million. The music hall will be named in honor of Norma Jean and Stanford Calderwood.

While raising the money was sometimes difficult, Hawley said the recession meant that construction costs fell dramatically during the last two years.

"There was tremendous pressure on all of us because our building people were saying you really need to get under contract in this environment because you'll get a much better price," said Hawley. "We were racing on this."

The Gardner's leaders were so eager to start building, they didn't bother holding a ground-breaking ceremony. In July, the museum began drilling energy-reducing, geothermal wells that are meant to help the project earn an LEED certification. The foundation has also been poured, and construction is ongoing.

Patricia Jacoby, the MFA's deputy director, said she was impressed by the museum's ability to start work during a recession.

"They had to make a case for scarcer resources than we did," said Jacoby. "So in many ways, I think they were rather smart to put a hole in the ground. That just reinforces there is a vision, there is a specific need, and they are not going to let the world hold them back."