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Friday, May 24, 2013
current top story
Hirshhorn Museum Director Resigns Over 'Bubble' Project Delays "Richard Koshalek, the high-profile director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, announced his decision to resign by the end of the year after the Hirshhorn board's split vote Thursday on the fate of the Seasonal Inflatable Structure project, informally known as the 'Bubble'."
The Washington Post 05/23/13
ideas
Why Has Scientific Research Become So Unreliable? "Fraud (the principal cause of retractions, which are up roughly tenfold since 1975) is not a new phenomenon, but digital manipulation and distribution tools have increased the spread and impact of science, both faulty and legitimate, beyond the confines of the ivory tower."
GigaOm 05/23/13
media
visual
Stunning Numbers Detail Absence Of Women Artists "People were saying: 'I find I can't even have this conversation about equality in the art world' because so many people think it's already been achieved. Because figures like Tracey Emin have defied the statistics, their rare success misleads people into thinking women get an equal shot."
The Guardian (UK) 05/24/13
publishing
Publisher Cuts Back As Poetry Market Slumps "We've seen our sales [of single-author collections] decline by over a quarter in the past year, and our sales have halved in the past five years."
The Guardian (UK) 05/24/13
music
media
publishing
Amazon's Plan To Publish Fan Fiction? There's A Catch "For example, Time Warner could launch a movie series based on a character you created and not owe you a dime. While the terms state that you retain the copyright, you also give Amazon an exclusive license to your original work and Amazon in turn licenses your work to Time Warner in a license that provides nothing for you."
Wired 05/23/13
visual
Museum Directors Look For An Evolutionary Model "Concerns about the number and scale of museums raised issues about the capacity for an industry-wide restructure, integrated collections and even the possibility of a moratorium on new museum construction for two to five years."
The Australian 05/23/13
music
Small Opera Companies Drive Innovation "Some companies are reinventing themselves with complex business models. Others are sharing productions as a way to trim costs and increase production values. No matter what model these companies choose, however, they're all chasing funds to sustain themselves."
San Francisco Classical Voice 05/22/13
publishing
Is It Time To Abandon The Apostrophe? "For several decades, writers, scholars, and language rabble-rousers have been suggesting that apostrophes are perhaps less necessary than we might suspect."
Slate 05/23/13
issues
In The New Economy - MFAs Trump MBAs? "Is art school the next B-school? Hardly, though artists often possess the skills and temperament that business leaders regularly say are in short supply: creativity, resiliency, flexibility, high tolerance for risk and ambiguity, as well as the courage to fail."
Fast Company 05/22/13
people
Fading Remains Of George Orwell's Burma "The remaining whiff of Orwell, whose five years at various stations in Burma as an officer of the Imperial Police Force ended here in 1927, is a spacious two-story wooden house with fireplaces and a once-elegant staircase."
The New York Times 05/23/13
publishing
Retail Bookstores Report A Good Quarter "Retail watcher Placed Insights found brick-and-mortar booksellers saw a 27% increase in shopper traffic in the first three months of 2013 when compared to the same period in 2012. That's according to a report in National Real Estate Investor, which keeps an eye on which stores tend to draw customers."
Los Angeles Times 05/23/13
theatre
Longtime Village Voice Theatre Critic Axed "Michael Feingold, 67, began writing for The Village Voice in 1970. His columns are known for the erudition and understanding of theatre history, both ancient and modern, and how current plays fit in with that continuum. Aside from John Simon, Feingold probably possesses more first-hand knowledge of New York stage history than any other currently working theatre critic."
Playbill 05/21/13
publishing
Granta Is Now Hemorrhaging Staff "A slew of high-profile departures from the prestigious literary magazine and publisher
Granta has left staff reeling as owner and philanthropist Sigrid Rausing steps up to take full control of the company."
The Guardian (UK) 05/23/13
media
Turning Timeless Film Classics Into Two-Minute Trailers "Of late, though, Criterion has brought its touch to the trailer business with an entertaining and thoughtful series of online promotional teasers that interpret, rather than simply hype, their films - in less than two minutes."
The Atlantic 05/23/13
people
Mary Ward Brown, Prize-Winning Short Story Author, Dead At 95 "[She was] a small-town farmer's daughter who resumed a literary career 25 years after putting it aside to run the family farm and raise a son, producing award-winning short stories set in the Deep South and a poignant memoir of life in rural Alabama."
The New York Times 05/23/13
music
Orlando Philharmonic Buys Itself A Theater The orchestra "is buying the iconic Plaza Live Theatre on Bumby Avenue, where [it] will update the 1,000-seat music hall to accommodate chamber music concerts while also keeping a schedule of rock, jazz, comedy and contemporary music shows."
Orlando Sentinel 05/21/13
people
Georges Moustaki, 79, French Singer-Songwriter "He was introduced to Edith Piaf in the late 1950s and started to write songs for the Parisian star, the most famous of which was 'Milord' ... Developing a reputation as a singer in his own right in the mid-1960s, the hirsute and heavily bearded Moustaki achieved fame with songs including the immigrant ballad 'Le Métèque' and 'Ma Liberté', a hymn to the 1960s free-living spirit."
Reuters 05/23/13
theatre
British Equity Worries About Increase In Nudity Requests "Fears have been raised [by the actors' union] about the increasing number of acting jobs that require nudity, and the possibility that actors refusing to take their clothes off at castings are being denied work."
The Stage (UK) 05/22/13
visual
Hirshhorn Museum Director Resigns Over 'Bubble' Project Delays "Richard Koshalek, the high-profile director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, announced his decision to resign by the end of the year after the Hirshhorn board's split vote Thursday on the fate of the Seasonal Inflatable Structure project, informally known as the 'Bubble'."
The Washington Post 05/23/13
visual
Tate Britain Buys Constable For £23M To Share With Regional Galleries "A turbulent landscape in which storm clouds and sunlight vie for mastery over Salisbury Cathedral, which John Constable hoped would help secure his eternal reputation as an artist of genius, has been acquired by the Tate ... will be shared and travel between a group of regional museums, including the national galleries of Wales and Scotland."
The Guardian (UK) 05/23/13
dance
Pina Bausch's Successor Named At Tanztheater Wuppertal This summer, four years after Bausch's sudden death, dance educator and former company member Lutz Förster will take over as artistic director of the provincial German company that Bausch made world-famous. He is not a choreographer, and he says that "there will be no new productions until 2015."
Haberler (Istanbul) 04/24/13 (in English)
dance
Was This Modern Dance Pioneer Forgotten Because She Got Too Cozy With The Nazis? "Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham and Bronislava Nijinska are regularly invoked to recall a golden age of female creativity and power. These women ... had a transforming influence on the language and practice of dance. And there is one more name that should also be added to the list: the German choreographer Mary Wigman."
The Guardian (UK) 05/22/13 (includes video)
dance
Images From The Birth Of British Modern Dance "In the process of a move from [Rambert Dance Company's] old London base in Chiswick to their new South Bank headquarters, photographs of their history have been catalogued for the first time, providing a fascinating record of how an artform was created - and an audience for it."
The Guardian (UK) 05/23/13 (slide show)
issues
What's Really At The Root Of The Culture Wars? Onanism Hugo Schwyzer: "The questions that self-pleasure raises are foundational: to whom do our bodies belong? What is sex for? Tell me how you really feel about masturbation, and I can more or less predict how you'll feel about the more frequently debated 'sex war' issues."
The Atlantic 05/22/13
media
Alec Baldwin Says Movies Are Abandoning Great Acting To Television "When I started out in the early 80s, two-thirds of the movies made were very cast specific, meaning: 'We need that woman to play the psychiatrist and that man to play the judge.' Now that's down to one quarter. ... Cable TV is the bastion of great acting now."
The Guardian (UK) 05/23/13 (includes video)
music
Florida Grand Opera Can't Find Stage Big Enough For Tristan "Florida Grand Opera has postponed Wagner's
Tristan and Isolde for a season and will be performing Massenet's
Thaïs in its place for the 2013-2014 season. The decision to wait was made when the company could not find large enough stages in Miami and Fort Lauderdale."
The Miami Herald 05/23/13
people
theatre
L.A.'s UnCabaret At 25 For a quarter-century, "it's been a place to hear unvarnished, rough-edged ideas being tried out ... It brought in funny people from the huge Hollywood talent pool ... and freed them to talk about things in their own lives." Founder Beth Lapides's key instruction to performers: "When you get onstage, do the material that, if you don't do it, your head is going to explode."
NPR 05/20/13 (includes audio)
dance
Brazilian Dance Sweeps The Internet "The Passinho dance style adapts elements of North American breakdancing and R&B with indigenous styles like Capoeria, Samba no Pé ("Foot Samba") and Forró. The result is a sleek dance style that has quickly spread through the urban slums where it originated and, with the help of social media, is cracking into the mainstream, both in Brazil and abroad."
CBC 05/22/13
media
Reality TV Is The New Family TV They make performance more exciting, or they game-ify aspects of adult life, like cooking or traveling or making money. And though "appropriate" is a relative term, they tend to do it in relatively clean terms.
Time 05/23/13
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