Hit Flamenco Singer Finds Herself At Front Of Cultural-Appropriation Wars
"Throughout her rise to fame, Rosalía has been mired in a debate over her supposed appropriation of an art form with gitano origins. The 25-year-old star is not gitana, nor is she from Andalusia, the birthplace of flamenco. She's from Catalonia, the northern Spanish region now famous for its independence bid last year. She's been accused of capitalizing on southern, gitano culture — for adopting an Andalusian accent, sprinkling Caló (the Spanish Romani language) into her songs, dressing like a gitana and using Roma imagery in her music videos." … Read More
82-Year-Old Dance Professor Stars In Her First Head-Bangin’ Hard Rock Video
Dance anthropologist Judith Lynne Hanna, who (on top of her scholarly work) has served as an expert witness in legal proceedings against exotic dancers, "has spent her career getting us to think about dance's relationship to society. ... She hadn't performed since college when she got a call from a music video producer, who caught a video of her dancing with her 13-year-old grandson. The rockers of Egg Drop Soup loved her energy and flew her out to Los Angeles for a day-long video shoot. We spoke to Hanna about the experience." … Read More
H. Peter Stern Co-Founder Of Storm King Art Center, Dead At 90
"He and his father-in-law, Ralph Ogden, owners of a business that manufactured metal fasteners for construction and home use ..., co-founded [the center] in Mountainville, N.Y., and developed it into a prestigious outdoor sculpture museum with modern and contemporary works arrayed over a vast pastoral landscape." … Read More
Rare Ancient Image Of Jesus Discovered In Negev Desert
The painting of Jesus of Nazareth with John the Baptist — badly deteriorated but perceptible with high-tech photography and potentially restorable — is on the wall of the baptistery in a ruined 5th- or 6th-century Byzantine church. "In contrast to the Western image of Jesus as someone with flowing long hair and, sometimes, a beard, the Shivta painting shows him in the Eastern style with short curly hair, a long face and an elongated nose." … Read More
Roy Clark, 85, Country Guitar Wizard And Co-Host Of ‘Hee Haw’
"While Mr. Clark's musicianship and technical abilities were sometimes overlooked by critics who saw only the hayseed star of Hee Haw, he said he had few regrets about his career path. ... "I've seen too many great guitar players sitting unnoticed on a stool in an orchestra. I said, do I want to be there, playing great and nobody knows it, or do I want to be out front with the lights on me, giggling and laughing, playing guitar and rolling my eyes and they say 'Golly, this guy's great?'" … Read More
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, Longtime New York Times Book Critic, Dead At 84
"In one of journalism's most challenging jobs, Mr. Lehmann-Haupt was The Times's senior daily book critic from 1969 to 1995 ... Readers and colleagues called him a judicious, authoritative voice on fiction and a seemingly boundless array of history, biography, current events and other topics, with forays into Persian archaeology and fly fishing." … Read More
David Hockney Smashes Record For Most Expensive Work By Living Artist
With a total price of $90.3 million at Christie's last night, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972) became the most expensive piece by a living artist ever sold at auction. Even more unusually, "the Hockney painting went to the block without any type of guarantee — almost unheard of in this day and age, when consignors know how to play the big auction houses off against one another." … Read More
Main Funder Of National Theatre Wales Gives Warning In Debate About Company’s Level Of Welshness
With more than 200 Welsh actors having joined 40 of its playwrights in making public complaints about how little actual theatre the company is making and how few Welsh artists are being employed to make it, the chief executive of the Arts Council of Wales — which gives NTW £1.6 million each year — has issued a statement observing pointedly that "to be 'national' is a privilege, not a right." … Read More
London’s Old Vic Theatre Tries Crowdfunding More Women’s Lavatories
The £100,000 public fundraising campaign to double the number of ladies' loos in the building is fronted by a video featuring actresses Joanna Lumley, Bertie Carvel, and a ferocious-looking Glenda Jackson reading tweets from audience members on the subject. … Read More
Savannah Philharmonic’s Music Director Stepping Down
Peter Shannon has been artistic director and conductor of the orchestra for all of its ten years; he departs at the end of this season. … Read More
The Contemporary Novel Might Not Look Familiar, But It’s Thriving
The familiar world becomes alien within a single lifespan. In such a world of relentless evolution, art is perpetually in danger of being outstripped, every “realism” of describing a vanished reality. Just as capitalism erases difference to make way for a homogenous global anti-culture, artistic traditions are swept aside, denounced as irrelevant almost as soon as they have established themselves. Today, Ezra Pound’s modernist command to Make It New! sounds like nothing so much as a corporate slogan for Apple or Huawei. Capitalism and the avant garde check each other out from across the room, seeing much to admire. … Read More
How Pittsburgh Symphony Musicians Are Fighting Food Waste
Musicians began volunteering with 412 in September 2016, when violinist Lorien Benet Hart reached out to the food rescue organization in search of a way for musicians to contribute to the community during a two-month musicians’ labor strike. Since then, she has coordinated with 412 to send different groups of musicians and — starting a few months back — symphony staff members on a run or two a month to help connect good food that would have gone to waste with organizations that put it to better use than filling dumpsters. … Read More
The Gilded Age’s Most Famous Architects
“Today, you couldn’t tear down a McKim, Mead & White building. The preservationists wouldn’t let you.” But the firm’s long tenure at the top of the architecture field wasn’t always guaranteed. “They were the Ralph Lauren, the Rolls-Royce of architecture. Then the modern movement started, and boy did they crash. From 1925, when white walls and European modernism began its takeover of architecture, McKim, Mead & White were poison to the profession.” … Read More
Gotta Dance (Why?)
This Aeon Original video explores that unifying feeling of group ‘electricity’ that lifts us up when we’re enthralled by our favourite sports teams, participating in religious rituals, entranced by music – and, yes, dancing the night away. … Read More
An Argument Against The Concept Of Intellectual Property
The ubiquitous use of ‘intellectual property’ began in the digital era of production, reproduction and distribution of cultural and technical artifacts. As a new political economy appeared, so did a new commercial and legal rhetoric. ‘Intellectual property’, a central term in that new discourse, is a culturally damaging and easily weaponised notion. Its use should be resisted. … Read More
Premium Classifieds
Executive Director- Dance/NYC
Dance/NYC invites applications and nominations for this important leadership position. The next Executive Director of Dance/NYC will work in support of all dance makers across all dance disciplines in … [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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
Research: Evidence That The Internet Isn’t Necessarily Polarizing Us
If the most polarized population uses the Internet and social media the least, to suddenly point a finger at technology says more about our anxieties about the rate of technological change than about what has actually happened to us. The fact is that this twenty-two-year-old dynamic of polarization can’t easily be associated with the Internet. … [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]