Obamas Were Visible Consumers Of The Arts. Is That Not Enough?
“It should come as no surprise that where the arts were concerned, the Obamas didn’t just ignore the Pennsylvania Avenue playbook, they wrote their own script. They established dynamic programs and raised considerable money for arts initiatives. They also sometimes drifted away from the traditions of the past, which could leave locals frustrated and impatient.”
Obama Culture Is Pop Culture
“Barack and Michelle Obama are arguably more conversant in popular culture than any other couple that has occupied the White House. And in four months, when his presidency comes to a close, they will depart as full-fledged celebrities, embraced by America’s two arbiters of cool: Hollywood and hip-hop.”
Kennicott: Obama Has Not Been An Arts President
“He is interested in culture, to be sure, but it is the living culture of our time, often the celebrity culture of popular music and commercial theater, but rarely the stuff people used to call “high” culture. Or that, at least, is the image his handlers have crafted.”
BBC Young Musician Winner: Classical Music’s Expense Problem
“Classical music is not elitist. The music itself is accessible to everyone. The real problem is the fact that it’s expensive and there is so little help from councils and the government.”
YouTube Creators Protest Over Takedowns Of Ads
“YouTube is facing a backlash from creators angry that the video giant is blocking advertising from running against content it deems inappropriate — while the Google-owned video giant says it has not actually changed its policy.”
What Happens When You Mash Hip Hop And Ballet Together?
“Conceived by Homer Hans Bryant, the artistic director and founder of the Chicago Multi-Cultural Dance Center, hiplet (pronounce it “hip-lay” to rhyme with ballet) showcases dancers on pointe as they twist and dip to the floor in a loose translation of hip-hop movement.”
Broadway Musicals Are More Diverse. But Broadway Plays?
“Somewhat overshadowed by the #TonysSoDiverse hype of the evening were the best performance awards in a play category: all four went to white actors over the age of sixty. After such an exciting season on Broadway, where productions finally reflected the zeitgeist of our times, are Broadway plays lagging dangerously behind?”
Fear Of Eternity Is A Genuine Phobia
“Woody Allen once said, ‘Eternity is a very long time, especially toward the end!’ Eternity sounds great on the surface, but actually experiencing it may be an entirely different matter. For some people, the very notion of infinity sends chills up the spine. In fact, for many who suffer from ‘apeirophobia’ – a term for the fear of eternity – the thought of an existence that goes on forever amounts to torture.”
We’re In The Midst Of A Tidal Wave Of Images (And It’s Changing How We Look At Them)
“In the world of social media, Instagram may be an oasis, but as a collective creative project its size is staggering, almost beyond comprehension. In the past year, 30 billion photographs were uploaded. Eighty million go up every day. What does that even mean? The scale of Instagram beggars all attempts to describe it piecemeal. It’s a tidal wave of visual information sweeping away all the old shibboleths of art criticism as it comes to shore.”
Roald Dahl’s Estate Wants To Become A Children’s Entertainment Empire
Luke Kelly, the author’s grandson: “With publishing shifting a lot, there is still, I think, a huge desire to bring his kind of vivid and mischievous world into other medium. We are really transferring from being a literary estate to being more of a story company, and that is a bit of a scary thing for some people. …[But] it just means that we’re also thinking, How do we get these amazing words and stories into kids’ bedrooms, and into their minds and imaginations, in many ways?”
Why Do We Need Disability Arts Festivals? (Hint: There Are A Lot Of Disabled People)
Actor Mat Fraser thinks we’ll need them “until disability is reflected in one seventh of all media” – so until we are adequately represented, since disabled people worldwide make up a seventh of the population. He goes on to express the importance of sharing our stories and perspectives. “Disability art is art that talks about the experience of disability in a disabled context, and until people agree that disability is just a social construct, disability arts events will be needed. In an ideal world, we would not need them, but the world is far from ideal.”
How Edward Snowden Ended Up In A Hollywood Biopic (It Was Pretty Weird)
“Oliver Stone wanted a hit – and the chance to put America’s most iconic dissident onscreen. The subject wanted veto power. The Russian lawyer wanted someone to option the novel he’d written. The American lawyer just wanted the whole insane project to go away. Somehow a film got made.”
How Medicine Is Incorporating The Arts Into Treatment
“North American medical schools are beginning to embrace literature in medical curriculum and this trend has now expanded, with physicians attending courses in the spin-off field of narrative medicine.”
Music That Hovers Between Appearing And Disappearing: Alex Ross On The Wandelweiser
“This is not music for everyone. No music is for everyone, just as no language or no religion is for everyone. But [the work of this group of composers] poses a particular challenge to long-established notions of how a piece should unfold. Silence overtakes sound to the point where the work seems on the verge of vanishing.”
How “Burning Man” Evolved From A Hippie Festival To… What?
The growing presence of the elite in Burning Man is not just noticed by outsiders — long-time attendees grumble that Burning Man has become “gentrified.” Commenting on the New York Times piece, burners express dismay at attendees who do no work. “Paying people to come and take care of you and build for you . . . and clean up after you . . . those people missed the point.”
Inside The Head Of A Chief Curator
Nancy Spector, new chief curator at the Brooklyn Museum: “There’s all the essential work that we do to create our central product, and there’s all of the scholarship and thinking and educational components that are really critical to what we do, and then there’s the fact that you have to raise money for everything — absolutely everything. So that is just a parallel track that’s always there.”
Great Britain – Land Of The Amateur Orchestras
“Germany might have the most professional orchestras in the world (a grand total of 130 full-time ones) but here in the UK we’re devoted to the world of amateur orchestras. There are so many, in fact, that we decided to make our series about symphony orchestras only, and excluded smaller groups with fewer than 40 players from our search.”
How Upright Citizens Brigade Turned Improv Into Big Business
“In 2003, the Times reported that ‘some 500 students’ were enrolled in ’30 or so improvisation and sketch-comedy classes’ at U.C.B. In 2011, New York had the figure at approximately eight thousand. The organization doesn’t reveal numbers (the better to avoid quibbling about not paying its performers), but one current employee let slip the latest tally: last year, U.C.B. trained twelve thousand students. That’s about five million dollars in revenue.”
At North Korea’s Only Film Festival, There’s No Red Carpet, And The Audience Screamed At A Gay Sex Scene
“With three screenings a day in seven theatres across Pyongyang, the majority of films are foreign titles for a local audience. North Korean filmgoers are so excited when the theatre’s doors crack open, they literally run for a seat. Some are left standing in the aisles, some sit on the floor, and many seats have two people squeezed into them.”
The Great Library Of Alexandria Had A Rival – And A Vicious Rivalry
The kings of Pergamon in Asia Minor (now Begrama, Turkey) fought hard to build a collection as large and prestigious as Alexandria’s – and the Ptolemies were not pleased at the competition. The two cities struggled over manuscripts, scholars, and even materials. (Yes, there was a papyrus embargo.)
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The World’s First Travel Guide
“In ancient times, tourists and travelers in Greece have gotten into some pretty intense situations. An adventure-seeking traveler would bathe in the river Herkyna, then consume sacrificial meat, wander through a dark cave of Livadeia to seek out the oracle, and emerge ‘paralyzed with terror and unconscious both of himself and of his surroundings.’ And that’s just a one-day itinerary.” So wrote [the] Greek geographer Pausanias.
Britain’s National Gallery Asks Government To Help It Buy £30m Italian Old Master
“The National Gallery in London wants to buy a portrait by Pontormo that its aristocratic owner sold to an oversees buyer for more than £30m last year. Unusually, the seller paid inheritance tax on Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (1530) before its new owner applied for an export licence. The National Gallery therefore hopes that the Treasury will refund the tax paid to help keep the portrait in the UK.”
Maestras: Four Top Women Conductors Talk About Cracking The Glass Ceiling
Marin Alsop, Susanna Mälkki, Barbara Hannigan, and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla talk with Michael Cooper about gendered gestures, their careers, and the progress that’s been made within a generation.
How Sergei Polunin, Ballet’s Gifted Train Wreck, Turned Himself Around
“I was sort of sabotaging myself,” says the now-26-year-old – who became a Royal Ballet principal at 19 and got compared to Nureyev and even Nijinsky – of the turbulent period that saw him storm away from Covent Garden and later from Moscow’s Stanislavsky Theater, which took him in after he burned his London bridges. Then one YouTube video gradually changed everything.
Pittsburgh Symphony Contract Talks Running Down To The Wire
“The contract for the musicians of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is set to expire Sunday night, and while the symphony’s management and musicians have agreed not to discuss the negotiations with the media, messages from both sides are getting across.”
Louvre’s Attendance Down 20% So Far This Year
“In a phone conversation with a representative for the Louvre – which is the most-visited museum in the world – artnet News discovered that attendance from January through June dropped 20 percent compared to the previous year.”
Dance Is The Perfect Art Form For Export, Which Is A Business Opportunity For Companies
Anthony Missen, director of Britain’s Company Chameleon: “From [our company’s] perspective, dance as an international export works because our dance pieces are scalable. Working both indoors in theatres and studio venues, and outdoors at events and festivals, our work can be presented in small squares, big plazas and huge theatres in sprawling cities, busy towns and relatively isolated rural communities. This flexibility means we can perform in a huge number of contexts and within a wide range of budgets.”
What’s The Key To Making An Arts Organization Resilient? The Workplace Culture
“The key point for leaders to realise is that a culture exists in your workplace whether you like it or not. And that’s the point: to develop and co-create a culture, you need to be ‘intentional’ about it. If you don’t think about it, it’s going to emerge anyway and, more often than not, you won’t like what you find.”
Opera Omaha’s Ex-Music Director Sentenced To Prison For Stealing From His Disabled Mother
“Through Wednesday, John C. Gawf Jr. visited his mother, who suffers from dementia, every day at her nursing home. He also stole $113,000 from her bank account over an eight-month period to fuel his gambling addiction. Thursday, [he] was sentenced to one to two years prison on one count of abuse of a vulnerable adult.”
Venice Is Screwed. Can It Be Saved?
“No effective provision on Venice’s behalf has been enforced so far by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, although protection of environment and cultural heritage is among the fundamental principles of the Italian Constitution. Nor are authorities developing any project whatsoever aimed not just at preserving the monuments of Venice, but at ensuring its citizens a future worth living.”