What’s Going To Happen To The American Jazz Museum?
The thing is, "the museum received a blistering report from a City Council-hired consultant earlier this month calling for a 'complete rebirth; and reorganized leadership. Museum Management Consultants Inc. issued its 62-page report April 9." Now the Kansas City City Council is putting forth widely divergent plans for what to do about the museum at 18th and Vine. … Read More
Judging A Translation Is Fairly Tough, But Here Are Some Ideas To Consider
Here's the deal: "We owe translators, and perhaps also ourselves, some recognition of what it might have meant to have handled every single word (space and punctuation mark) of the writing-to-be-translated, to have taken a decision in relation to its every single word (space and punctuation mark), and indeed to have written every single one of its parts." … Read More
Richard Oldenburg, Who Expanded MoMA And Drew Massive Crowds, Has Died At 84
He led the museum through competing curatorial arguments, staff strikes, and more, while also getting a massive expansion and a boost to the endowment. But it all began with books, and a close relative: "Mr. Oldenburg — whose older brother is the Pop Art sculptor Claes Oldenburg — was a publishing executive when MoMA hired him to run its publications department in 1969. The job allowed him to work closely with curators and artists on catalogs and books, an experience that proved critical when the board of trustees named him director three years later." … Read More
One Of France’s Busiest Tourist Sites Is Evacuated By Police After A Threat
Mont-Saint-Michel, in northwestern France, was evacuated Sunday after a man made threatening remarks on a morning shuttle to the site, got into a fight with café owners, and made threats against security forces. "Tourists were blocked from entering during the lockdown as around 50 police conducted a house-to-house search. Holidaymakers were evacuated from hotels and the abbey was shut." The site was reopened after police found the man. … Read More
Fifty Years Ago, These Four Pieces Of Music Blew Up The Modernist Status Quo
Mark Swed: Terry Riley's 'In C' "is simply a collection of 53 melodic motives, all in or around the key of C. Any instrument or vocalist — and any number of them — can play or sing. Each motive is repeated, over a pulse, as long as each performer wants before moving on. ... I was told not only that I couldn’t bring that sacrilege into the classroom, but to get it out of the music building and that the only place for it on campus was the trash can. That’s when I knew the revolution had begun." … Read More
One Hot Contemporary Art Trend: Tapestries
Renaissance tapestries are cold, ice cold - no one seems to want to spend substantial amounts of money on them. But new tapestries? Think computer-assisted, bright, and built to last. "Artists are getting really excited by tapestry and are trying to push what can be done with the medium." … Read More
A Photojournalist Killed In Libya Left Behind Tender Portraits Of Soldiers At Play
Tim Hetherington, killed on assignment in 2011, "abhorred violence, but he took it upon himself to explore the subject of war on the front lines, alongside soldiers in Liberia, Afghanistan, and Libya. While embedded in Afghanistan on assignment for Vanity Fair (for which he won the 2007 World Press Photo of the Year), Hetherington came to understand war as a function of male sexuality." … Read More
It’s Time To Stop Using An Ethnic Slur To Describe Itinerant Singers, Actors, And Dancers, Says Equity
"The union that represents stage performers announced this week that it would cease using the title 'Gypsy Robe' to describe one of its most cherished insider rituals — the passing of a colorful patchwork garment from one chorus to another on a Broadway show’s opening night — citing the potential offense to Roma people." Some performers are not happy with this decision. … Read More
Actually, Kendrick Lamar Should Have Gotten A Pulitzer For Writing, Not Music
Here's why: "Literary recognition would transform every other young black boy writing rhymes. It would stick two fingers up at the notion that the only way young black boys can get respect is on the streets. Contrary to popular belief, young black boys spend more time writing poetry than they do stabbing and shooting each other. For real. They have transformed the English language with an unparalleled lyrical dexterity. But we refuse to acknowledge that." … Read More
How The Pulitzer Committee Chose Kendrick Lamar For Music
Violinist and Pulitzer jury member Regina Carter: "I just sat down and it was like wow. I just felt like what he had to say and how he would say it, you had to really sit down and think about it and what does it mean for me? It might mean something completely different for someone else that’s listening to it. I felt like it was his experience as a black man in America — and a lot of peoples’ story, not just his story—and just trying to figure stuff out. It’s so poetic. I felt like if you took his lyrics and put them in a book, it would be great literature." … Read More
The Turner Prizewinner Who’s Using Her Fame And Fortune To Help Others Up The Ladder
Lubaina Himid won the prize in 2017 and has shows planned all over Europe this year. "All were programmed before the prize was announced, but Ms. Himid is now using her enhanced clout to request that galleries showing her work reach out to black artists living and working nearby and include them in events like talks and debates that run with the exhibitions. If curators say there are no black artists working in their region, as Ms. Himid said they often do, she provides them with names drawn from an extensive network she has built up over many years." … Read More
A Court In Mexico Has Blocked Sales Of The Frida Kahlo Barbie Doll
Mattel's been met with a temporary injunction after "Kahlo’s great-niece Mara de Anda Romeo argued in a Mexican court that Mattel does not have the rights to use Kahlo’s image as part of its Inspiring Women series." The toymaker had permission from the Frida Kahlo Corporation, but not (some of) Kahlo's family members. … Read More
When You’re One Of TV’s Rare Latina Leads, You Have To Prove Yourself In Many Arenas (Including The Climbing Wall)
Jaina Lee Ortiz is starring in a show about firefighters, so naturally, she "signed herself up for the firefighter’s Candidate Physical Abilities Test as soon as she landed the Station 19 role, running up flights of stairs in weighted gear, dragging a 165-pound dummy out of a building." And going on climbing walls for "moving meditation," of course. … Read More
New York Removes A Statue Of The ‘Father Of Gynecology,’ Who Experimented On Enslaved Black Women
This wasn't a fast decision about the man who didn't use anesthesia when he performed experimental surgeries on the women. "The removal of his 80-year-old statue comes after eight years of protests, activism and the local community collecting more than 26,000 signatures." … Read More
When Australia Comes To U.S. Streaming, At Least One Actor Seems To Be Everywhere
Look, Australia only has about 24 million people, and not that many of them are in acting. So that means, when U.S. streaming services start bringing in the Aussie content by the bucketful, the viewing public is going to get the familiar "British actor" feeling ("What's Snape doing as King Louis?"), except in an Australian accent. … Read More
Premium Classifieds
Design your Career in Arts Administration
Learn from national arts leaders & address current issues; do so from wherever you are through our limited-residency program -- M.A. in Arts Administration at Goucher ... Goucher’s Master of Arts … [Read More]
Director of Marketing & Communications, Carolina Performing Arts
The Director of Marketing and Communications (DMC) is a key member of the senior management team of Carolina Performing Arts (CPA) and is accountable for all CPA marketing, sales, and communications … [Read More]
George Eliot’s Masterpiece ‘Middlemarch’ Was Shaped, Says Novelist Jennifer Egan, By Eliot’s Unconventional Love Life
Eliot, whose non-pen-name was Mary Ann Evans, lived for decades with her partner, whose open marriage meant that when his wife had a baby with a different man, he was fine with it (and supported the baby). "Lewes’s legal wife went on to have three more children with her lover, all of whom Evans and Lewes supported (along with Lewes’s three sons) through their writing, editing and translating. Their urgent need for money was partly what prompted Lewes to encourage Evans to try her hand at writing fiction at the age of 37." How does that life experience turn into Dorothea's terrible mistake with Casaubon? Read on. … [Read More]
Changing Up The ‘History’ Part Of Art History In Museums To Mix Old, New, And Whatever Else Fits
The museum buzzword is "transhistorical," and it's being applied to everything from Franz Hals paintings to the Met's big "Unfinished" exhibition from 2016. "Suzanne Sanders, an art historian in Amsterdam, who organized conferences on 'The Transhistorical Museum' in 2015 and 2016, calls transhistorical curating 'the most urgent thing curators are doing in trying to reinvent the museum to create some sort of new paradigm.'" … [Read More]
Pushkin Was A Radical Russian Poet Whose Works Became Some Of Our Greatest Operas – And Now His Life Is One, Too
The British writer and lyricist Marita Phillips, a descendant of Pushkin's, grew up with a large book of his fairy tales, and she's wanted to mount an opera about him, and his tragically early death in a duel, ever since. Plus, he was quite political, and "Russian history is so violent and colourful it is easy to become interested." … [Read More]
Troubled Los Angeles Gallery CB1 To Close After Artists Say They Weren’t Paid
CB1 will close when the current show closes, after claiming they were having cash-flow problems. "Those cash-flow issues are what prompted a group of artists to publish an open letter alleging that CB1 Gallery had 'consistently failed' to pay artists according to the terms of its contracts, wrote checks that bounced and repeatedly sold work without informing them." … [Read More]
The Last Of Istanbul’s Public Scribes
The arzuhalciler, petition writers or public scribes who set up shop in the streets, go back to the early years of the Ottoman Empire, composing and writing legal documents for citizens to submit to courts and government offices. There are still a very few of them left (despite the efforts of Turkey's legal profession to get rid of them), and reporter Joshua Allen meets two of them. … [Read More]
CBC Is Digitizing, Then Destroying Eight Decades Of Audio/Video Archives
The Canadian Broadcast Museum Foundation says the public broadcaster’s English service earlier this month began destroying acetate transcriptions, as well as audio and video recordings that span eight decades, after converting the master copies into a digital format. The foundation asked the CBC earlier this year for time to find a suitable space to archive and preserve the material, but says it was turned down. … [Read More]
Philip Glass Talks About His Life In Music
When I do concerts I often give talks to students. They get them together, and I talk to them in the afternoon, and we talk about music. Not too long ago one young fellow, he said, “Tell me one thing that I can take away from this talk that I’ll remember and that’s important.” And I said, “No, I’ll give you one word.” He said, “What’s that?” I said, “Independence.” … [Read More]
The Technological Take On Expressing Ourselves
"More and more of us now express our emotions through the devices and software we rely on in our everyday lives. E-mail, text messages, social media, video chat—each platform demands of us different expressions of ourselves. And in the near future, we will have a new range of technologies at our disposal—sensors, monitors, and software with the power to track, nudge, persuade, and coerce. What the clock did to time, technologists hope to do to emotion—regulate and regiment it, measure and monitor it. But taming the temperamental beast that is human emotion might prove a challenge that contemporary technology is unfit to take on." … [Read More]
Does Literature Matter?
Only in America do we ask our writers to believe they don’t matter as a condition of writing. It is time to end this. Much of my time as a student was spent doubting the importance of my work, doubting the power it had to reach anyone or to do anything of significance. I was already tired of hearing about how the pen was mightier than the sword by the time I was studying writing. Swords, it seemed to me, won all the time. … [Read More]
Was The Orpheus Model Of Flattened Orchestra Hierarchy A Success?
Asked whether the principles of the Orpheus Process had any resonance these days, Stanford business professor Jeffrey Feffer replied in an email, “There are various movements that have tried to ‘democratize’ organizations. They mostly don’t work or don’t last. I am a huge believer in the advantages of the Orpheus approach, but it flies in the face of fundamental human psychology. So, no, although the Orpheus experience at one point got some press and attention, I would not say there is much diffusion, even in the music world where the MTT/SF Symphony model is much more prominent.” … [Read More]