The Universe Is Unfathomably Big. And Our Understanding Is So Small…
As we attempt to grapple with this bleak post-human future, we must also confront the question of what humans can hope to understand. Parts of the physical world are understood. They can be observed and described by theories—but much of it cannot. Human observation bumps up against stark limits. Human reasoning is not limitless either, but it does allow us to think through what might in principle be “over the horizon.” … Read More
By Funding Those That Others Overlook, LAB Grants Are Changing Boston’s Arts Ecosystem
"Allyson Esposito, the director of arts and culture for The Boston Foundation, ... says the grant is meant to fund genres and artists who have been chronically ignored by funding institutions in the past. 'There's been just this great divide along racial lines and genre specific lines around what has and has not been getting support.'" … Read More
Francesco Clemente Talks About The Conditions For Good Art
"I work best on commission. I work best when the situation is the opposite of when someone says 'Do whatever you want.' I’m not a fan of that situation. I don’t want. My job is not to want. My job is to be, so it’s a good situation when I can bounce back to other people’s minds, and listen to other people’s thoughts. I love to be proved wrong." … Read More
Podcasts Are Now Big Business — And Compelling, Sometimes Slippery Storytelling
Rebecca Mead looks at how Serial changed the medium — opening floodgates of possibility, pressure, and money — and how some of that show's successors have dealt with issues of narrative form and ethics. … Read More
‘The African Mahler’: British Comedian Pays Tribute To Britain’s First Black Composer
Lenny Henry: "Over the past few months I have been enthralled and captivated by the story of a man from Croydon in south London who died more than 100 years ago and who wrote one of the biggest musical hits of the [early] 20th century. He was a total genius – a bit like Prince, but for late 19th-century London rather than 1980s California – and his name was Samuel Coleridge-Taylor." … Read More
Can Blockchain Reform A Broken Scholarly Publishing Industry?
With research increasingly open to the public, scholars can’t expect readers to know who everyone is and which journals are reputable. Blockchain can offer additional information and reassurances about the review process. Today that level of trust is primarily an asset of the corporate publishing oligarchy. Blockchain might democratize it. … Read More
Netflix Is Releasing Its New Movies In Theaters Before Streaming Them — Not That You Could Tell
"For The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the new film from the Coen brothers and the first title Netflix is distributing this way, the exclusive theatrical release was something of a mirage" — one screen in each of three cities for four barely publicized days. The same thing is going to happen next week for Alfonso Cuarón's Roma. Film fans are not happy. … Read More
Man Disrupts “Fiddler On The Roof” Performance With Nazi Shouts
The man, who had been seated in the balcony, began shouting “Heil Hitler, Heil Trump.” Immediately after that, “People started running,” audience member Rich Scherr said. “I’ll be honest, I was waiting to hear a gunshot. I thought, ‘Here we go.’ ”The man was escorted out a few minutes later and the show continued. … Read More
Identical Triplet Ballet Dancers From Cuba Ready To Take On The World
Angel, César, and Marcos Ramírez, now 18, had secure jobs dancing with the National Ballet of Cuba. But they gave them up to study at the Rock School in Philadelphia. Ellen Dunkel meets them. (includes video) … Read More
What Memorials Of World War I Should Really Focus On
Duty and honor? Patriotism? Rebecca Onion reminds us of the truth about "the war to end all wars": it was bloody, cruel, and basically pointless. "How, then, to commemorate a useless war that shouldn't have happened — a black hole in history?" Slate's resident history maven suggests that we have a look at some of the antiwar literature and advertising campaigns of the time. … Read More
Cellphone Addicts In The Theater? Here’s One Broadway Star Who Calls Them Out Right From The Stage
Fortunately, Mike Birbiglia doesn't do it quite the way Patti LuPone does. And he's playing himself in his one-man Broadway show, The New One, so he can talk to offending audience members directly without breaking character. Here, with audio of recent examples, he explains how and why he does it. … Read More
Wolfgang Zuckermann, 96, Helped Midwife Off-Off-Broadway Movement And Invented Build-Your-Own-Harpsichord Kit
Late in life, he opened an English bookstore in Avignon; before that, in London, he wrote anti-consumerism and anti-automobile books. But he made his biggest mark in New York's Greenwich Village in the 1950s and '60s: he briefly ran the Off-Off-Broadway birthplace Caffe Cino, and he devised a kit that lets customers assemble their own harpsichords, enabling the modern revival and spread of the instrument. … Read More
National Book Awards 2018 To Sigrid Nunez’s ‘The Friend’, Jeffrey C. Stewart’s ‘The New Negro’
Alongside the fiction prize to Nunez's novel about a bereaved writer and his Great Dane and the nonfiction prize to Stewart's biography of philosopher Alain Locke, honors went to Justin Phillip Reed's Indecency (poetry), Yoko Tawada and Margaret Mitsutani for The Emissary (translated literature), and Elizabeth Acevedo's The Poet X (young people's literature). Isabel Allende became the first Spanish-language author to receive the lifetime achievement award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. … Read More
St. Louis Ballet Dancer Found Dead In Rural Missouri Lake
"Raffaella Maria Stroik, 23, was reported missing Tuesday after a state park ranger found her unattended vehicle at Mark Twain State Park, about 100 miles northwest of St. Louis." Her body was discovered floating in Mark Twain Lake Wednesday morning. She had joined St. Louis Ballet only last year. … Read More
How Do We Know These Bronzes Are By Michelangelo? Eight-Pack Abs, Short Big Toes, Messy Pubic Hair
It's those features, common in his male nudes and rare in those of his colleagues, that led researchers at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge to be certain that the two "Rothschild Bronzes" were sculpted by Michelangelo — making them the only surviving works in that metal by the Florentine artist. … Read More
Premium Classifieds
Full-Time Faculty in Creative Technology, College of Performing Arts, The New School
The College of Performing Arts (CoPA) at The New School (consisting of the Mannes School of Music, The School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and The School of Drama) invites applications for a … [Read More]
Vice President of Operations/COO of Orpheum Theatre Group
The VP of Operations/COO will be charged with creating systems and managing (including hiring, training and firing) staff to insure OTG delivers the highest level of operational efficiency, delivers … [Read More]
Shape your Creative Sector Career with Classes in Finance, Marketing + Entrepreneurship
Northwestern University’s MS in Leadership for Creative Enterprises program develops leaders in business, innovation, and entrepreneurship across Entertainment, Media and the Arts. Earn your Master’s … [Read More]
Global Arts Management Fellowship – DeVos Institute at the University of Maryland
The DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland is currently accepting applications for its 2019-2021 Fellowship Cohort. Led by Institute Founder, Michael M. Kaiser, and … [Read More]
New Internationally-situated MFA in Dance
Internationally-situated MFA in Dance Year, Low Residency, and Flex Cohorts Summer 2019: Residencies in Paris and Montpellier, France Application Deadline: January 14, 2019 University of the Arts, … [Read More]
Professor of Art History, SCAD
SCAD seeks Professor of Art History to conduct classes for enrolled students in the area of art history. Master's degree or foreign equivalent in art history or related. Resume to Erin Powell, … [Read More]
Oligarch Seller Of ‘Salvator Mundi’ Formally Charged In Major Monaco Corruption Scandal
Dmitry Rybolovlev faces charges of "trading in passive influence and violation of the secrecy of the investigation" as part of what Le Monde has described as "a vast influence-peddling scandal at the heart of Monaco institutions." The billionaire — who in 2004 bought Donald Trump's Palm Beach mansion sight unseen at an inflated price — issuing art dealer Yves Bouvier, and he is accused of getting Monaco's former justice minister to influence the case. … [Read More]
OED’s 2018 Word Of The Year: ‘Toxic’
"The word was chosen less for statistical reasons, [the U.S. head of Oxford Dictionaries] said, than for the sheer variety of contexts in which it has proliferated, from conversations about environmental poisons to laments about today's poisonous political discourse to the #MeToo movement, with its calling out of 'toxic masculinity.'" The runners-up were "gaslighting" and "incel." (Last week, rival dictionary Collins declared its word of the year to be "single-use.") … [Read More]
Neighbors Are Suing The Tate Modern Because Its Visitors Keep Gawking Through Their Windows. So An Artist Installed Binoculars
Demonstrating that conceptual art and masterful trolling can be one and the same, Max Siedentopf says that his installation — which he has titled Please respect our neighbours' privacy — will "just help visitors to enjoy Tate Modern's most popular sight a little bit more and up close." … [Read More]
Kuwait Bans ‘Brothers Karamazov’
Maybe it's not too surprising that a conservative Arab monarchy has already banned the likes of 1984 (too subversive) to One Hundred Years of Solitude (too racy) to Disney's Little Mermaid (Ariel's top is too skimpy). But the crop of 948 new titles blocked from presentation at this year's Kuwait International Literary Festival includes Dostoevsky's masterpiece. (Too gloomy?) … [Read More]
Former Opera Company Chief Pleads Not Guilty To Sex-With-A-Minor Charges
Timothy Sexton, the former artistic director and CEO of the State Opera of South Australia in Adelaide, was indicted on four charges for incidents alleged to have occurred between 1988 and '91. He had worked in various capacities with SOSA for 20 years when he took the company's helm in 2011; he resigned last year for unspecified personal reasons. … [Read More]
The Art World Defined By Price? A Little Simplistic, Isn’t It?
Nathaniel Kahn’s documentary poses the question “What is the relationship of art to money?” to a handful of prominent figures in the contemporary art world, including richer-than-god Koons, Sotheby’s chairman Amy Cappellazzo, self-styled populist critic Jerry Saltz, and the painter Larry Poons. Their answers, while often brazen, land ambivalently, creating an incomplete portrait of an art world that seems completely resigned to the status quo. … [Read More]
Stan Lee’s Secret To Managing Creative People
Keep talent busy was just one of the lessons I took from Lee’s example. A second, but equally important lesson, was don’t censor talent. Lee preferred to let his talent sort out the creative details. He remembered working on a comic strip that used the word pogo stick in the punch line. The editor felt that pogo stickwouldn’t resonate with rural audiences, and he instructed Lee to change the gag so that the punch line had the word roller skates instead. It deflated the joke, but Lee changed it anyway. The strip was eventually dropped, and Lee said, “this type of censorship, to me, is almost indecent.” When you hire an artist to do a job, you let them do the job. Lee elaborated, “It seems to me that if a person is doing something creatively, and he feels that’s the way it ought to be done, … [Read More]
Why Are Movie-Makers So In Love With Van Gogh?
He has been anointed—and travestied—as the ideal of the modern artist, even by those for whom art, modern or otherwise, is at best a diversion and at worst a scam. Everybody knows about the cutting of his ear, or cracks cruel jokes about it. His name is as famous as that of Picasso, but Picasso has been mythologized as a monster of control, whereas van Gogh, it is agreed, lay at the mercy of the uncontrollable. … [Read More]
Hopper Sells For Record $92 Million (It Had Been Promised To A Museum)
“Chop Suey” was among the marquee collection carefully curated by Seattle-area luxury-travel magnate Barney A. Ebsworth, who had promised in 2007 to give the painting, along with 64 other works, to SAM. But Ebsworth died in April, and about 100 pieces from his collection — including “Chop Suey” — went to Christie’s. On Tuesday, sales from that auction totaled $317.8 million, above Christie’s low estimate of $261 million. The auction continues Wednesday. … [Read More]
Jill Lepore: How Intellectual Authority Has Been Undermined
That transformation, from facts to numbers to data, traces something else: the shifting prestige placed on different ways of knowing. Facts come from the realm of the humanities, numbers represent the social sciences, and data the natural sciences. When people talk about the decline of the humanities, they are actually talking about the rise and fall of the fact, as well as other factors. When people try to re-establish the prestige of the humanities with the digital humanities and large data sets, that is no longer the humanities. What humanists do comes from a different epistemological scale of a unit of knowledge. … [Read More]