Should We Bother?
My post reflecting on the presidential election, Blindsided, drew a thoughtful comment that seems to me to be worthy of a fuller response than a simple “Reply.” … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2016-11-29
Nine Ways the Arts Can Heal Our Hurting Civilization; or Lessons I Learned from Reading Comics to my Daughter
“This is the time when artists go to work. We speak, we write, we do language. This is how civilizations heal.” This is a quote from Toni Morrison. It has stuck with me. This is our power, and it is immense. But what will we do with it? … read more
AJBlog: New Beans Published 2016-11-29
The Cost of the Met Breuer (and other nuggets from Metropolitan Museum’s FY16 financials)
Back in April, the Metropolitan Museum’s president, Daniel Weiss, declined to disclose to me the cost of renovating the Whitney Museum’s Breuer building, now repurposed (at least temporarily) as the Met Breuer. Thanks to the Met’s annual report … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2016-11-29
Portland Jazz Bulwark To Close
There is news from Portland, Oregon, that Jimmy Mak’s jazz club will permanently close at the end of 2016. A leading west coast club for 20 years, Mak’s has been a primary outlet for the talents … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-11-30
Archives for November 2016
1000 Prominent Canadian Artists Petition Government To “Fix” The Business Of Creativity
They argue that despite their creativity and innovation, many of them are being squeezed out of a marketplace that monetizes digital distribution without fairly paying content creators: “The middle-class artist is being eliminated from the Canadian economy. Full-time creativity is becoming a thing of the past,” the letter says. “The carefully designed laws and regulations of the 1990s were intended to ensure that both Canadian creators and technological innovators would benefit from digital developments. We hoped that new technology would enrich the cultural experiences for artists and consumers alike. Unfortunately, this has not happened,” the letter continues.
Reinvent Canada’s CBC Model? What A Cranky Idea!
“The idea that CBC television and radio is a frivolity, sucking up vast amounts of money to make bad TV and irrelevant radio, is the position of a small number of well-off cranks in Toronto and Montreal, aided by a number of other cranks who, one imagines, stave off personal wretchedness by ceaselessly pointing out that the CBC gets funding to make TV and radio, while they don’t.”
New Evidence That The Brains Of Creative People Are Wired Differently
In their main finding, the researchers report the ability to make connections between distant concepts was associated with “structural variation” of several specific brain regions, one of which “was connected to distant regions through long-range pathways.”
Canadian Data: Arts Attendance Shrank Over 20 Years – Is Accessibility The Problem?
“Of the eight areas the index tracks, culture and leisure was the one that showed the most steady decline over the past 20 years: Participation was hit hard by the recession in 2008 and while it has recovered somewhat, it remains well below what it was in the 1990s. So, the report certainly reinforces the perception that arts audiences are shrinking – but it also provides a social and economic context for these losses that could be useful for those who want to turn the situation around.”
When Logical, Evidence-Based Reasoning Gets Treated Like A Religion, Things Can Get Ugly
“A new study finds that, for some, logic- and evidence-based reasoning may as well have been commandments handed down from God. … Yeah, they’re looking at you, New Atheists.”
American Television Struggles With How To Portray Muslims
“As an artist, you want to stay true to the narrative, and sometimes that goes against your activist agenda, which is to promote this positive image of Muslims. At the same time, to balance that with a truth that exists, in terms of my own experience with Islam, which may not always be necessarily positive.”
What It’s Like To Be A Political Cartoonist Who’s Regularly Charged With Sedition
A Q&A with Malaysian cartoonist Zulkiflee Anwar Ulhaque, known as Zunar, who’s facing nine charges of sedition (so far), and up to 40 years in prison, for cartoons about the country’s embattled prime minister.
When Brazil Was Even More Troubled Than It Is Today, A Pop Music Movement That Lasted About A Year Transformed The Country
“Tropicália was a movement that lasted just short of a year, spanning from Hélio Oiticica’s 1967 art installation of the same name, wherein viewers walked along a tropical sand path only to come face-to-face with a television set, to the debut of a TV show, wherein its constituents buried the movement on-air. But [it] modernized Brazilian culture just as the country’s ruling military junta began to strangle democracy and expression.”
Playing Video Games Changes Us. The Question Is How…
“We spend so much time debating the dubious proposition that video games cause violence that we rarely get around to considering how else our lives and selves might be shaped by a $91 billion industry catering to 155 million Americans. As a result, gaming’s defenders, fearful of censorship, rarely get nudged in the direction of self-reflection.”
The Dictionary With The Awesome Twitter Account
“If you were ever a nerd who thought of the dictionary as your best friend … well, this is sort of like that dictionary has finally come to life and loves you back and also tweets about words all the time.” A conversation with the folks behind @MerriamWebster.
This Year’s Story On How Third-Place Auction House Phillips Is Moving Up On Sotheby’s, Christie’s
The Phillips specialists acknowledge that their November sale was only an opening move; the larger effort to disrupt the duopoly has just begun. “We’re still in this phase when we get the sympathy vote. I don’t think it’s a giant leap. It’s just a good step to take.”
Researchers: Speaking A Second Language Makes Your Brain Smarter
“In recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.”
Sergei Polunin’s Rise, Fall, And Return To Dance – And What He Thinks About It Now
This preview of the documentary Dancer gives a good overview of the story of “ballet’s James Dean” – with quotes like this one about his troubled period in London: “At first, I didn’t want to talk to the media, I feel like I was shaken into talking to them, then they became [a sounding board]. … I started using the media as psychiatrists, I guess, they were someone to talk to.”
The Underappreciated Art Of Painted Movie Backdrops
“Paradoxically, the painted image often looks more realistic than the photographic image. Scenic artists can manipulate backings by adjusting light, color, and texture, helping to support the movie camera’s constructed image. Some information and details can be selectively accentuated, while others can be deemphasized. A photograph, on the other hand, is static and has a tendency to contradict the artifice of the rest of the setting.”
That Alleged Caravaggio They Found In An Attic Is Totally Not Genuine – But It Should Be In A Museum Nevertheless
Same for that notorious fake Vermeer that fooled Hermann Goering, argues Noah Charney, who wrote the book on art forgery. He lays out his case against the painting found under a roof in Toulouse, then lays out a case for it – as art, if not as real Caravaggio.
‘.art’ Is Becoming A Real Internet Address
The domain name is officially launching early in 2017, though a few websites with the address are already online. The 60+ early adopters of the address include some of the most prominent museums in the world (Guggenheim, Tate, Centre Pompidou, LACMA, …). So far, there’s only one organization from beyond the visual arts world, though more may come.
Why Oscars Season, Like Christmas-Shopping Season, Keeps Getting Earlier And Earlier
“When the early ceremonies give out their awards, often the only people who’ve seen the films are critics, festivalgoers, and (sometimes) their own voting bodies. Are these awards about recognition, or are they about advocacy, or are they about attempting to steer a conversation? Or they, at this point, just about being first?”
National Board Of Review Honors ‘Manchester By The Sea’ And ‘Moonlight’
The Board is one of the quirkier awards-giving bodies in the American film world, but their top prizes this year went to two Oscar frontrunners. Even so, there were the usual surprises …
‘Moonlight’ Rules Gotham Independent Film Awards
The surprise hit about a young gay black man took four awards, including best feature film and a special jury prize for best ensemble cast. Don’t draw too many Oscar conclusions from this, though.
Jury Finds Creators Of ‘Jersey Boys’ Guilty Of Copyright Infringement
The verdict is that the musical’s creators used, without permission, substantial portions of an unpublished autobiography by Tommy DeVito, a founding member of the group The Four Seasons. The jury held that 10% of the show’s success is attributed to the unauthorized material – which could lead to a big cash award to DeVito’s widow.
The Met Gives Up On Getting A New Opera Out Of Osvaldo Golijov
After the wild success of his Pasión según San Marco, Golijov was one of the first composers Peter Gelb commissioned when he became the company’s general manager. Alas, Golijov seems to have a years-long case of composer’s block; this is by no means the first time he hasn’t been able to complete a major commission.
5,000-Year-Old City Unearthed In Egypt
The first reports on this find in English, which came out just as the Thanksgiving holiday was starting, said that the ruins archaeologists found near Abydos in southern Egypt were 7,000 years old. That seems to have been a mistranslation from the initial news release in Arabic. Even so, this is one of the earliest settlements yet found in the country.
‘The Pérez Art Museum Miami Just Got A Lot More Pérez – $15 Million Worth’
“The longtime arts supporter for whom the 3-year-old public museum is named, Jorge Pérez, has pledged a multimillion-dollar gift to the museum over the next 10 years with specific instructions. The goal: to acquire the works of Cuban and Latin American artists and bolster the museum’s endowment.”
Pioneering Countertenor Russell Oberlin Dead At 88
He was the first male alto to make a solo career in the U.S.; in the 1950s and ’60s he was at the forefront of the early music revival, singing everything from 12th-century English music through Bach and Handel (not to mention Oberon in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream). And he didn’t use falsetto; alto was his natural range.