The Mass Market Ain’t What It Used To Be (And What That Means For The Arts)
What does it mean to “engage with an audience”? It’s a fundamental question for anyone who makes anything. Whether it’s a political party trying to win votes, Coke trying to sell drinks, an entrepreneur trying to sell drinks, an entrepreneur trying to sell an idea, or a theatre trying to sell tickets. … read more
AJBlog: diacritical Published 2015-11-30
“Mission Accomplished”? Izabela Depczyk Out as Publisher of ARTnews
Arriving last week, my December issue of ARTnews magazine included an inserted letter, signed by Izabela Depczyk, publisher and CEO of Artnews S.A., informing subscribers that “ARTnews will be a quarterly publication, publishing four issues a year,” beginning this February. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-11-30
On the First Day of Christmas, ABT Brought Costa Mesa a Lovely Nutcracker
Kevin McKenzie, Gillian Murphy and others discussed Alexei Ratmansky’s The Nutcracker with me for California’s Coast magazine this month. The heralded production left the Brooklyn Academy of Music to establish a new home in Costa Mesa beginning December 10th. … read more
AJBlog: Fresh Pencil Published 2015-11-30
Scrapping of Maurer Show Revealed As National Academy Finally Announces Director’s Resignation
The National Academy’s very belated official statement announcing the resignation of director Carmine Branagan and the appointment of Maura Reilly has just hit my inbox, in the same form that I reported to you last Tuesday. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-11-30
Dan Brubeck Quartet At The Seasons
Dan Brubeck, the drummer among Dave Brubeck’s five musician sons, took his own quartet into The Seasons Performance Hall in Yakima, Washington, last night. As did his band’s recent album, the concert paid tribute to … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-11-29
December Spinout: Links, Letters, Libraries
Van Gogh’s Letters by Nicole Kraus “In Jewish mysticism, the empty space — the Chalal Panui, in Hebrew — has tremendous importance, because it was the necessary pre-condition for God’s creation of the world. … read more
AJBlog: blog riley Published 2015-11-30
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Archives for November 2015
The University Of Arizona Still Wants Its De Kooning Back
“The museum had just opened when a man and a woman walked in. They were the sole visitors. The woman, described as being in her mid-50s with shoulder-length reddish and blond hair, distracted the a security guard by making small-talk while the man, who appeared to be in his 20s and wore a mustache and glasses, cut the painting from the large frame, leaving the edges of the canvas attached.”
When Your Art Becomes Part Of The Dialogue In A Popular TV Show
“Patterson is a multimedia artist who explores social issues, including race, class and gender, through a female lens. Her artworks, which often weave intricate patterns, jacquard photo tapestries and glitter, are prominently featured in the current season of the TV show ‘Empire.'”
British Authors Ask Book Industry ‘Where Are The Brown People?’
“Everyone keeps saying ‘I am not prejudiced, or racist,’ but they won’t say it is my responsibility as well to try and do better.”
Seriously, How To Get Gender Parity In Theatre?
“This is the way that recognition of the issue—which is usually step one—has been sidelined by those who want to feel that they’ve addressed the problem but don’t actually want to address it. They say it’s already been addressed, solved, and resolved. They say that now it’s a merit-based system, and anyone who isn’t entering and moving up the pipeline doesn’t have merit. They say that women have other priorities, choosing families and personal lives over their work. They say that to give voice to artists who don’t meet their standards would be minimizing the quality of the work they offer the world.”
The Bronx, Where Art Is Saving The World
“The DreamYard Project has a patriotic attachment to the Bronx. Two young actors, Jason Duchin and Tim Lord, founded it, twenty-one years ago, to teach public-school kids in grades K through twelve by using the arts. The idea was to recruit teachers from among working artists of Duchin’s and Lord’s acquaintance in New York and match them with schools whose funding for arts education had been cut. Through a few changes, that has been DreamYard’s basic mission from the start”
The Internet Is For Everyone (Who Speaks One Of Very Few Languages)
“At the moment, the Internet only has webpages in about five percent of the world’s languages. Even national languages like Hindi and Swahili are used on only .01 percent of the 10 million most popular websites. The majority of the world’s languages lack an online presence that is actually useful.”
The (Frankly Bizarre) Dominance Of Enya
“Her success so deeply contradicts accepted industry wisdom that it’s inspired a term — ‘Enya-nomics’ — to describe it. Several years ago, she was invited to Harvard Business School to discuss the subject, but, like most invitations, Enya declined. Her underexposure, after all, is at the heart of both Enya-nomics and her appeal.”
How To Fix Risk-Averse Arts Institutions
From a Portland playwright and grantwriter: “Consider just doing a show when you’re ready and not forcing yourself to program a whole season. Consider strategic partnerships. Consider not becoming a nonprofit and being an LLC instead. Consider the difference between what you want and what you need. (Do you WANT your own building, or do you NEED your own building?) Consider what you’re spending money on. Invest in people first, stuff second.”
India’s Film Board Asks For Cuts To Latest Bond Flick
“The film board demanded trims to two kissing scenes in ‘Spectre’ and also ordered that some salty language be cut. Sony Pictures acceded to the order, but the episode angered many in India who believe it illustrates increasing prudishness by the film board as well as a disturbing trend toward rising intolerance in the country.”
So It Turns Out There’s A ‘Mollywood’ – The Mormon Film Industry
“Two different films from recent years — ‘Mobsters And Mormons’ and ‘Inspired Guns’ — involve culture clashes between, well, mobsters and Mormons. However, because these films’ humor relies so heavily on Mormon-specific culture, and often Utah-specific Mormon culture, they’re thought to be near-incomprehensible to a wider audience.”
The One-Off Song That Accidentally Became One Of America’s Most Popular Mnemonics
“The odds of ‘Fifty Nifty United States’ becoming a beloved children’s classic were slim. Kraft Music Hall wasn’t exactly must-see TV—in the season that ‘Fifty Nifty United States’ made its first appearance, it wasn’t even in the top 30 most-watched shows on TV.”
Toronto’s Mayor Dances In The Nutcracker
He played the moose. Wait, the … moose? “This is a Canadianized version of the Nutcracker, and that’s why there is a moose in it.”
Eldzier Cortor Painted The African-American Social Life Of Chicago’s South Side
“With money from the W.P.A., he helped found the South Side Community Art Center in Chicago, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year.”
William Blake, Poet And Artist And Sex Radical
“Blake also claimed he encountered Satan on the staircase of his South Molton Street home in London.”
Miami City Ballet Turns 30, And Here’s How It Has Grown
“Today it’s one of America’s leading companies: together with San Francisco, Pacific Northwest and Boston—Houston, some would say—it ranks in artistic success and national recognition right behind The Big Two: New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre. In other words, it’s a miracle.”
So It Begins: The New York Times’ 100 Notable Books Of 2015
And it’s full of literary fiction, poetry and nonfiction, with the occasional genre book tossed in.
The Man Who Wanted To Be An Orchestral Violinist But Perfected Record Players Instead
“At his father’s insistence, though he would have preferred music school, Mr. Pickering attended Newark College of Engineering (now part of the New Jersey Institute of Technology) and after graduating went to Juilliard.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs For 11.29.15
Got Miami Week Blues? A New Twist
AJBlog: Real Clear ArtsPublished 2015-11-29
Arts Grants Reward The Wrong Things
“We’re so used to jumping through funding hoops that when we try to make the case for continued state funding of the arts, we parrot back the values of the political classes – tangible, rational, moderate and easily quantifiable benefits to society. Rather than proving their worth, talking about the arts simply as a way to transfer skills or drive a social agenda diminishes them to something small-minded and replaceable and undermines the very ecology we seek to protect.”
Theatre That Changes Everything
“When artists and audience members share an intimate, borderless space in which they can see one another clearly, the possibilities of proximity can be electric.”
The Obsessive (And Expensive) Life Of An Audiophile
“Surprising as it might seem to a generation weaned on iPods and Spotify, proper hi-fi is a booming industry. It might now take the form of a digital streamer, preamp, power amp and speakers, but it inspires devotion as fervent as any early-90s High Fidelity, American Psycho-style enthusiast.”
Setsuko Hara, Star Of Kurosawa And Ozu Films
“Not long after working with Ozu on his penultimate film, ‘The End of Summer’ (1961), she left the cinema abruptly, implying, in her final news conference, that she had acted in films only to help support her large extended family. She lived the rest of her life in seclusion in Kamakura.”
The Rise Of The Private Press, And What That Means For The Public
“While political news is everywhere, coverage of the day-to-day inner workings of government—the slow, steady development of policy in Congress, in the administration, and in the independent regulatory agencies, and how those policies are implemented—has become increasingly scarce in the media that average citizens historically have relied upon. The opposite, however, is true of the ‘paywall press.'”
The U.S. Demands That Germany Take Action On Nazi-Looted Art
“The letter, postmarked two Thursdays ago in Washington, wasn’t likely to be welcomed by its recipient in Munich’s state chancellery. The document bore the grand blue letterhead of the US House of Representatives and was signed by 29 members of Congress — and demanded that Bavarian Governor Horst Seehofer facilitate a dialogue between his state’s museums and Jewish families who still suspect the institutions of harboring Nazi-looted art.”