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
Facebook Wants To Make Its User Data Available To Social Scientists. Should It?
In partnership with the non-profit Social Science Research Council, Facebook's social-science program will put out a call for university scientists to apply for grants to study the effects of social media on democracies and elections, potentially using proprietary Facebook data. The money will come from various foundations known to give to Democrats, Republicans, and journalists. … Read More
Netflix Considers Buying A Movie Theatre Chain
Although no cinema deal has materialized, the idea of Netflix buying a theater chain would mark a new phase in the company's rapid ascent to become one of the most powerful players in the entertainment industry. … Read More
‘Albee Would Never Have Allowed This’ – Joe Mantello Talks About Directing ‘Three Tall Women’
"I also think that he was a playwright who was very confident in his interpretation of the play. I once heard him say, 'No actor or director has ever shown me anything in one of my plays that I didn't intend to be there.' I think what he meant by that was not that he had all the answers, but that if you found it, on some unconscious level he meant it to be there. I found that statement - there was something very sad about that statement to me. Because one of things I like most about rehearsal is when somebody brings something to it that I've never thought of." … Read More
NYC Will Move “Fearless” Girl” Off Wall Street
The statue known as “Fearless Girl” will soon be moved from its spot at the southern tip of Broadway to a spot facing the New York Stock Exchange, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Thursday. And if the city has its way, the bull will eventually go with her. … Read More
How Liesl Tommy Carved Out A Career For Herself As Director, Tony Nominations And All
It was, in her words, "a fucking compulsion," says Tommy, a mixed-race native of Cape Town who came to Massachusetts with her family at age 15. "I believed the lie that the reason that there weren't more of us [directors of color] working was because they didn't believe we were qualified. So I was like, 'Here I am! Here are the reviews, here's the sales, here's the work.'" … Read More
In A Florid Suit, Collector Sues Jeff Koons For Not Delivering
In the 53-page complaint that includes lines that reference Shakespeare (“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”) and that are almost Dickensian, New York litigator Aaron Richard Golub charges, “Behind the ostensible façade of Jeff Koons’ art world triumphs and record-breaking auction prices . . . lurks a well-oiled machine, more specifically an established, archaic System as old as the hills applied to the art world to exploit art collectors’ desire to own Jeff Koons sculptures. … Read More
Collecting All The Music Written In Nazi Concentration Camps
"Jewish Italian musicologist and pianist Francesco Lotoro has devoted his life to unearthing thousands of songs and scores written during the Holocaust. ... Lotoro has catalogued symphonies, operas, scores and songs written on everything from coal sacks to toilet paper and by anyone who composed it in the captivity of a concentration camp: Jews, gypsies, prisoners-of-war. He has collected more than 8,000 pieces of music, with the goal of both preserving them for posterity and repairing a 'gap' in music history, a time when innumerable composers were murdered in the Holocaust." … Read More
Ohio Arts Funding ED Steps Down In “Challenging” Climate
Cuyahoga Arts and Culture CEO and executive director Karen Gahl-Mills has resigned, effective June 7, according to a press release sent this morning, April 18. In a challenging atmosphere of funding cuts, the leader of one of the nation’s largest public funders of the arts became embattled on several fronts: first in an attempt to address racial inequity in grantmaking to individual artists, and subsequently by choosing to significantly reduce operating support to nonprofit organizations all at once, rather than gradually, in the hope of keeping grant amounts stable for a period of years despite a projected continual decline in cigarette tax revenue. … Read More
Solresol, The 19th-Century Invented Language Based On Music
"Jean-François Sudre, a music teacher in 19th-century France, ... [had a] vision of a universal language [that] transcended linguistic boundaries. From written and spoken word to melody, gesture, number, and even color, there are few ways that one can't express Solresol, the language that Sudre spent more than three decades developing. But after his death in 1862, it was largely forgotten. Fittingly, the global connections made possible by the digital age have forged a 21st-century life for Solresol." … Read More
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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]
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]
A New Boom In Ceramic Art
Call them potters, ceramicists, or clay sculptors, but there are getting to be more of them, amateur and professional - and their work is fetching higher prices. Reporter Amy Fleming looks at how the trend has developed and the reasons for it. … [Read More]
The Difficult Birth Of The Tate Modern
"The Tate briefly flirted with the idea of splitting in two and setting up an entirely separate Museum of Modern Art, inspired by the success of MoMA in New York. This was in the early 1990s, before the gallery decided to remain a single institution with two London venues: Tate Britain and Tate Modern. The behind-the-scenes efforts of Nicholas Serota, the Tate's director from 1988 and 2017, to create Tate Modern are revealed in the gallery's trustee minutes for 1991-92." … [Read More]
‘Disney For A Despot’: How Saddam Hussein Turned The Ruins Of Babylon Into A Propaganda Vehicle
"For Saddam, the ruined city of Babylon had always held a special fascination. He ordered an ambitious reconstruction of the city's walls, costing millions of dollars at the height of the Iran-Iraq War. ... When archaeologists told him that ancient kings like Nebuchadnezzar had stamped their names on Babylon’s bricks, Saddam insisted that his own name be stamped on the modern bricks used in the reconstruction. ... In 1981, Babylon was where celebrations took place to commemorate the first anniversary of the Iraqi invasion of Iran, with officials using the slogan, Nebuchadnasar al-ams Saddam Hussein al-yawm (yesterday Nebuchadnezzar, today Saddam Hussein)." … [Read More]
Marcia Hafif, Painter Of Exuberant Monochromes, Dead At 89
"By the mid-1960s, it was assumed in some circles that all of the possibilities for painting were exhausted - that the medium had, more or less, died. But some painters pushed back against that idea, arguing that painting could reset itself, and one was Marcia Hafif. ... [She] was overlooked by many art institutions for much of her career, only to be recently rediscovered and hailed as one of the essential painters working during a time when her chosen medium was considered highly unfashionable." … [Read More]
NEA Forbids State Champion In High School Poetry Contest From Going To Nationals Because He’s Not A US Citizen
Nineteen-year-old Allan Monga, who arrived (legally) in Portland last year as a refugee from Zambia, won the Maine state finals of the NEA's Poetry Out Loud contest last month. All state champions are supposed to get an all-expenses-paid trip to the national finals in DC next week - but the NEA says its rules permit only US citizens to compete. Monga and Portland Public Schools have filed suit; reporter Ray Routhier looks at the legal issues involved. … [Read More]
How Can Arts Orgs’ Boards Help Combat Harassment? Talk To The Artists
Pia Catton: "For non-profits, misconduct can pose a real threat to funding. Foundations don't want molesters and predators operating with those they fund. Why should individual donors give to theatres turning a blind eye? If people act that way, a new level of board involvement in hiring and oversight is needed. One path to that is more direct input from artists about what's happening in the company and during the hiring process. ... There is no shortage of knowledge among artists and their peers about who's handsy, manipulative or abusive." … [Read More]
Russia Can’t Let Go Of Fight Over Movie About Tsar Nicholas II And The Ballerina He Loved
"The reaction to Matilda represents, in microcosm, many of the contradictions of contemporary Russian culture. It should have been a flagship Russian movie, ... [and] originally had Oscar ambitions. Instead, the film's reception was derailed by religious purists. Part of Vladimir Putin's narrative is that he, too, is part of Russia's imperial legacy. Some think that he believes he has been divinely ordained to play his role. In some ways, this has been an embarrassment for the government: they part-funded the film. But they couldn't defend it, as the protesters were articulating one of the key tenets of Putin's presidency: Russia needs to return to the greatness of the tsars and to its Orthodox church roots." … [Read More]
Embattled Director Kirill Serebrennikov Gets A Film Into Cannes – So Russia Extends His House Arrest
The director of Moscow's acclaimed Gogol Center theater, Serebrennikov has been under house arrest since last August, awaiting trial on embezzlement charges that his allies call absurd and trumped-up. Seemingly in response to the news that Serebrennikov's latest film, Summer, will be screened in competition at the Cannes Festival next month, authorities in Moscow extended his house arrest into July. … [Read More]
Bolshoi’s Controversial ‘Nureyev’ Leads Nominations For Russia’s Top Dance Awards
"Both the creators of the ballet and its performers have been nominated for the Benois de la Danse, nicknamed the ballet's Oscars, in four professional categories: Ilya Demutskiy for Best Composer, Yuri Possokhov for Best Choreographer, Kirill Serebrennikov for Best Stage Design, and dancer Vladislav Lantratov for Best Performance in the title role of the ballet Nureyev." Serebrennikov, whose recent film Summer will be in competition at Cannes next month under house arrest in a case many observers consider trumped-up, just had his detention extended into July. … [Read More]
‘There Is No Going Back From Here’: Saudi Arabia’s First Female Filmmaker On The Kingdom’s Lifting Of The Ban On Cinemas
"Five years ago, Haifaa al-Mansour made history with her moving and critically-acclaimed drama Wadjda, making her not just the first female Saudi filmmaker, but the first director to have shot a feature film in the kingdom. At the time, the idea of Wadjda being released on home soil was ludicrous: its cinema and theaters had long since been closed following the country's adoption of strict ultra-conservative Islam in the early '80s. On April 18, 2018, however, a new cinematic dawn broke over the kingdom with the opening of Saudi Arabia's first cinema since the movie theater ban was lifted in December ... [Al-Mansour] wrote to The Hollywood Reporter with her thoughts on the cinema opening, the "seismic shift" now sweeping over her home nation and why nothing will be the same again. … [Read More]