At Last, Philly Gets A Public Statue Of An African-American
"Next month, ... educator, activist, and ballplayer Octavius V. Catto will be honored by the city where he was murdered with a full-blown sculptural commemoration in bronze and granite on the southern apron of City Hall. Amazing to say, Catto will then become the first named African-American to be memorialized on public land in [Philadelphia's] history." … [Read More]
Yayoi Kusama Built Herself An Entire Museum While We Weren’t Looking
The five-story building in Tokyo's Shinjuku district was actually completed in 2014, with installation going on since. The museum, which opens October 1, will have rotating exhibits changing twice a year, a separate floor for the Infinity Rooms, and a library/archive; timed tickets will cost ¥1,000 (just over $9.00). … [Read More]
What Michiko Kakutani Meant For The Times, And Where Its Books Coverage Is Headed Without Her
Boris Kachka investigates how the notoriously publicity-shy critic worked and what she's like as a person (no mean feat, that), and he looks at how changes in both the Times approach to her beat and her own interests seem to have led to her decision to take a buyout. … [Read More]
Michael Moore Puts His Broadway Audience On Buses And Takes Them To Protest At Trump Tower
"Like any Broadway spectacle, the excursion was a splice of authentic emotion and fabrication. It seemed equal part an earnest bid to get people off the sidelines and into a picket line and equal part showbiz hoopla aimed at bolstering a show that opened last week to mixed reviews and that has not yet caught fire with ticket buyers." … [Read More]
Unknown Bootlegs From Bob Dylan’s 1965 Tour Surface – And They Were Made By Allen Ginsberg
"With some interruptions, they document two Dylan shows from 1965, near the beginning of that fateful tour: one in San Francisco on September 11, 1965, and the other in San Jose from the following evening. As you might expect, the performances are enough to knock you out, but the sound quality is up and down." (Alas, they've been removed from YouTube.) Andy Cush tells the story. … [Read More]
‘Newfields’: Indianapolis Museum Of Art Rebrands Its Grounds And The Many Things On Them (Because People Don’t Know They’re With The Museum)
"During springtime, the Indianapolis Museum of Art welcomed you to friendlier weather with thousands of color-drenched blooms on its outdoor campus. A beer garden and, later on, 18 holes of mini-golf designed by artists kept you coming back. Starting in mid-November, ... the museum's gardens will be illuminated by millions of lights that dance along to the music of the Nutcracker Suite. You'll have your choice of drinks and firepits to roast s'mores. These are the type of cultural experiences Indy residents are drawn to. It's just that when it comes to perception, market research shows people don't necessarily connect them to the IMA." … [Read More]
What the NYC Cultural Plan Means for the Dance Community
"While there is nothing specifically dance-related in the plan, many dance companies and artists within marginalized and lower-income communities stand to benefit from increased funding. Here are the key takeaways." … [Read More]
Thieves Are Stealing Paris’s Favorite Street Mosaics (And It Seems To Be A Custom-Order Job)
About 15 works by the street artist known as Invader have been removed from the walls of buildings by two men in yellow jackets who claim to be city workers (and then drive off in a Mercedes). … [Read More]
Opera Superagent Bruce Zemsky Dead At 62
The co-founder of Zemsky Green Artist Management worked with some of the leading opera singers in the world today, among them Jonas Kaufmann, Anja Harteros, Brandon Jovanovich, and Pretty Yende. … [Read More]
Too Many Accountants In The Arts World Are Making It ‘Frightened’ And ‘Risk-Averse,’ Says Top UK Director
Dominic Dromgoole, who spent a decade as artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe and oversaw that company's worldwide tour of Hamlet: "Institutionally I think we have a problem that we have possibly over-stacked our governance areas with people from the world of ... accountancy. They are entirely honourable and entirely nice people, but I think from the moment they begin working on things they're always overly calculating risk and overly worried about danger. Their inclination is to say no to any venture that they can't absolutely 100 per cent future-proof, ... so that now you have an element of fear within a lot of organisations that doesn't need to be there." … [Read More]
Bitter Novelist Whose Play Got Bad Reviews Says Critics Shouldn’t Get Free Tickets And That Theatre World Despises Him
Anthony Horowitz, author of the Alex Rider teen spy novels and some Sherlock Holmes and James Bond sequels, and whose comedy Dinner with Saddam had a less-than-successful run at London's Menier Chocolate Factory in 2015, went on quite the rant at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. … [Read More]
Hal Prince To Recreate Original ‘Evita’ Production For World Tour
The staging makes its debut in October in Johannesburg, followed (so far) by runs in Cape Town, Tokyo, and Sydney, where Opera Australia will present it at the Opera House. Prince is said to be 'determined' to bring the project to Broadway, though no such arrangements have been announced. … [Read More]
How Brick And Mortar Bookstores Are Competing With Online
"In reality, a bookstore is a really unique kind of space where people from different walks of life can cross paths. I mean, it's a very sort of democratic kind of product, and it's kind of a space where people can come in and start to have conversations. And that's the kind of space we want to be." … [Read More]
“Hamilton” Tries New Plan To Fight Bots, Scalpers
“This is a new effort to put tickets into the hands of theatergoers at regular prices,” said Jeffrey Seller, the lead producer of “Hamilton.” “We’ll always be fighting the resellers because their incentive to keep trying is so powerful. Are we making progress? Yes. But is it foolproof? Not at all.” … [Read More]
Canadians Are Still Ditching Cable TV – Only In Smaller Numbers
Canada's biggest TV providers lost almost a quarter fewer customers in the first half of 2017 as they did the same time last year, a new report shows. … [Read More]
Premium Classifieds
Director of Programming – The Joyce Theater, New York City
The Joyce Theater, located in the heart of Chelsea in New York City, is among the world’s best presentation venues for dance. With a 472-seat house, the theater was established by dancers for dance in … [Read More]
Executive Director – West Michigan Symphony
West Michigan Symphony seeks an Executive Director with proven leadership and development abilities who holds a passion for music and music education, embraces a collaborative management style and has … [Read More]
Barbra Streisand: On the Couch
Look inside the heart and soul of Barbra Streisand. Read Psychoanalyst Alma Bond's historic novel revealing the hidden depths of Barbra's character as no one but a psychoanalyst could do. See the … [Read More]
Center Theatre Group: Junior Publicist Position Open
We entertain. We create. We engage. We inspire. As one of the nation’s most influential nonprofit theatre companies, Center Theatre Group provides the broadest range of theatrical entertainment in the … [Read More]
DataArts, President and CEO
The President & CEO will work collaboratively with DataArts’ board to envision and lead the implementation of its strategic action plan, comprehensive resource development, and delivery of high … [Read More]
Museums In Talks To Return Benin Bronzes To Africa…
The British Museum will take part in a European summit to discuss the return of art seized from the Benin kingdom, now part of southern Nigeria, by a British punitive expedition in 1897 as “reparations” after it defied the British empire by imposing customs duties. … [Read More]
Karaoke, And The Technology That Makes It Possible: A History…
The phenomenon dates all the way back to the 1970s and 8-track tape players, and initially people did it at home as well as at bars. … [Read More]
How The California Symphony Blew Up Its Business Model And Remade Its Audience…
To give away the end of this story, over the last three years, after a calculated change in approach to audience development strategy, the California Symphony has seen profoundly different results from the national trends for orchestras … [Read More]
We May Be On The Verge Of Having Real Sex Robots – And That Could Be Fantastic Or, Well, Problematic…
"There are a lot of sweeping statements about the idea that having robots available could mitigate human trafficking, or exploitation of children by pedophiles. ... But how do you prove it? How are you going to run tests, which heads of child trafficking operations are we going to have fill in a questionnaire for us on whether or not use of a robot would help them?" Aimee van Wynsberghe, co-founder of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics, talks with Quartz. … [Read More]
Piano Teacher Daisy Sweeney, 97 – Credited With Teaching Oscar Peterson To Play…
“What she tried to do was to look at the children around her and have them see the potential in themselves. She was always the one they all remembered because she took it beyond the piano bench, it was right into their lives, into their school, into their social (life).” … [Read More]
‘Imagine If Antonin Artaud, William S. Burroughs And David Lynch Decided To Open An Industrial Nightclub’…
That's what the lead singer says about David T. Little's next opera, Artaud in the Black Lodge (yes, it's a Twin Peaks reference), whose first part is getting a concert premiere in Los Angeles. (By the way, David Lynch has, in fact, opened a nightclub.) … [Read More]
A Tale Of Two Languages…
"To us French people, American English has this beautiful casualness about it that translates into the way we picture Americans themselves—a cliché of self-possession and comfortable-in-their-own-shoesness. A jealous French person would say “cockiness.” I for one like this ability Americans have to say big things very casually. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find that some things in French just have too much weight, and that the American way is enviable. Example: “love” and “amour” are two very different words, even though any English-to-French dictionary will try to convince you they mean exactly the same thing." … [Read More]
Surveying The State Of Russian Theatre At The Country’s National Performing Arts Festival/Competition…
"That fearlessness on the part of Russian theatre artists has led to an increase in audiences, including that most coveted of demographics: the under-40 set. One had only to look at the audience at Gogol Center, where I saw Kafka on a Saturday night." Diep Tran visits the Golden Mask Festival, where Russia's top companies present their best work of the season over two months, at the end of which a jury awards a Russian national equivalent of the Tonys or Oliviers. … [Read More]
A Rejuvenated Salzburg Festival?…
"In recent years, this most sumptuous of classical-music gatherings has reverted to its default identity as a parade of musical celebrities with no clear artistic destination in sight. Last year, though, the progressive-minded Austrian pianist and impresario Markus Hinterhäuser took over as Salzburg’s artistic director, and he is stirring memories of the festival’s most vital period—that of the nineteen-nineties, when Gerard Mortier presided over a superb array of provocations." … [Read More]
Meeting The Real-Life Diplomat At The Heart Of The ‘M. Butterfly’ Story…
Stage director Vincent Lancisi and his wife were vacationing in France a couple months before he was to begin work on a revival of David Henry Hwang's Pulitzer-Prize winning play. One day, their guide/driver casually said, "I was a driver for a famous man. There is a movie about him with Jeremy Irons, called M. Butterfly." Within an hour, Lancisi was on the phone with Bernard Boursicot; within a month, he and his lead actor were visiting Boursicot at his nursing home in Brittany." … [Read More]