Hannah Beckerman: “Six years and many thousands of unpublished words later, my second novel is finally about to hit bookshops. Except that it’s not really my second novel. It is, in truth, my fifth. Because for the past six years, I’ve suffered from that widespread and yet rarely acknowledged creative affliction: second novel syndrome.” – Irish Times
Archives for February 2019
Art Institute Of Seattle Faces Closure
That’s unless someone buys the troubled institution. “According to a Seattle Times report from last October, in 2017 a faith-based nonprofit called Dream Center Foundation bought the Art Institutes franchise, as well as South University and Argosy University. The company then started closing Art Institutes all around the country. Of 31 total AIs, only 18 remain. Going into this fall, the Times reports, the Seattle campus had laid off all but 3 full-time professors.” – The Stranger
A Closer Look At Netflix’s Business Model
Netflix is not in the business of selling individual movies to many different customers. Instead, it’s in the business of selling many different movies to individual customers—in bundles. Bundled subscriptions allow Netflix to practice a different kind of price discrimination from the movie studios. The company doesn’t have to figure out how much a consumer values any individual movie on the service. The bundle does that for them—very profitably. – Harvard Business Review
Red Fish, Blue Fish, Racist Fish? A Dr. Seuss Debate Breaks Out
That tension between Seuss and Seuss-free classrooms is emblematic of a bigger debate playing out across the country — should we continue to teach classic books that may be problematic, or eschew them in favor of works that more positively represent people of color? – NPR
Should Historical Art And Artifacts Be Returned To The Country Where They Were Created? (A Four-Way Debate)
Author Tiffany Jenkins (Keeping Their Marbles) argues no; Africanist Marie Rodet argues yes, “as part of a reparation process”; anthropology museum director Nicholas Thomas says, in so many words, “It depends”; diplomatic historian Ioannis Stefanidis illustrates just how complicated the question can get with the example of the very-well-traveled “Horses of Saint Mark.” – History Today
Departures: André Previn And Ira Gitler
In interviews, I found Previn bemused by the difficulty that critics, and sometimes his fellow musicians, encountered when they tried to strike a balance in considering his variegated musical personas.
Gitler was an invaluable chronicler of the crucial years when jazz made the transition from the swing era into bebop and a model of clarity. – Doug Ramsey
Recent Listening: The Bill Mays Trio Is Back
Bill Mays Trio Live At COTA
Pianist Mays recently reassembled his trio for a concert and their first CD release in more than ten years. Mays, bassist Martin Wind and drummer Matt Wilson came together in a live performance at last Fall’s COTA (Celebration Of The Arts) festival in the Poconos. – Doug Ramsey
Looking At Nudes In The #MeToo Era
Museums and galleries – especially those representing a canonical European art tradition – burst with images of women disrobed and displayed for the delectation of men. Of course, there is nothing new about recognising the extent to which the spectacularisation of the female body has been part of a structure of oppression of women by men. – The Guardian
Theatre Made By Ex-Inmates To Show Outsiders That Prison Is Not Like ‘Orange Is The New Black’
Matt Trueman meets the women of the company Clean Break and playwright Luke Barnes, who talk about their scripts and the work they produce both inside and outside prisons. – The Guardian
Wendy Whelan And Jonathan Stafford Are New York City Ballet’s New Leaders
“Jonathan Stafford, 38, who has been running the company for more than a year on an interim basis, will become the new artistic director of City Ballet as well as its affiliated academy, the School of American Ballet. Wendy Whelan, 51, a star ballerina who danced with the company for 30 years, will become City Ballet’s associate artistic director. The two said they intended to work as partners.” – The New York Times
André Previn, 89
“[He] was a musical polymath who began composing for Hollywood at 16 and won a quartet of Oscars, and had additional careers as a jazz piano phenomenon and major symphonic conductor. All the while, he … was considered something of a playboy as he leapt with swaggering allure between Hollywood and the directorship of some of the world’s leading orchestras, often using his celebrity and skillfulness as a raconteur to bring wider attention to classical music.” – The Washington Post
Why It’s Good Business For Arts Organizations To Be Socially Conscious (And Act On It)
“I’m not suggesting for a moment that corporate virtue-signaling is driven by anything more than pure, uncut capitalism, or that a chasm doesn’t separate legitimate IRL activism from retail “activism.” But the point is that sincerity isn’t required for money to change hands. On average, people with the most surplus cash increasingly want to support a progressive agenda—or at least pay for a tenuous claim to it—and the for-profit world is adjusting itself accordingly. So why wouldn’t the nonprofit world benefit by doing the same?” – Artnet
Translating The Hebrew Bible As The Poetry It Is
Few English-speakers are aware that much of ancient Jewish scripture is written in sophisticated verse, full of wordplay and soundplay. Translators have concentrated on the meaning of the words, sacrificing what Robert Alter calls the “music” of the original text. He has done a new translation that concentrates on that “music,” and here he explains how he did it — and why it matters. – Aeon
Kathleen Turner (Yes, That Kathleen Taylor) And What She Learned Making Her Opera Debut
Once she understood the training that goes into distinguishing such voices, she began to fully appreciate the difference in acting styles from what the audience might expect in a non-musical. Opera’s bend towards high drama can only be conveyed through vocal ability, which deprioritizes Turner’s acting preference of a more natural technique. – The Observer
Ira Gitlin, One Of America’s Greatest Jazz Writers, Dead At 90
“[His] criticism appeared regularly in publications like DownBeat and JazzTimes. He wrote two books about bebop, the challenging form of modern jazz that emerged in the 1940s. And, along with Leonard Feather and Nat Hentoff, he was among the most prodigious writers of liner notes, annotating more than 700 albums. In 2017 he was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts.” – The New York Times
Why Rebels And Non-Conformists Tend To Look The Same – A Study
This is the hipster effect—the counterintuitive phenomenon in which people who oppose mainstream culture all end up looking the same. Similar effects occur among investors and in other areas of the social sciences. How does this kind of synchronization occur? Is it inevitable in modern society, and are there ways for people to be genuinely different from the masses? – MIT Technology Review
Why Readers And Viewers Love Stories About Real-Life Scams
People seem to devour articles, books, and documentaries about the likes of the Fyre Festival and Theranos; Bernie Madoff and Enron are household names. “Reminding ourselves that sometimes liars do get caught and sometimes thieves are punished makes it easier to believe it could happen again. What we like about stories about scammers, I think, is born of the place where envy meets outrage: It’s incredibly unfair, and definitely evil, but also, why didn’t I think of that?” – The Cut
Bracing And Incendiary Questions About The Classical Music World’s New Interest In Florence Price
“Given the longstanding historical exclusion of African American composers, Price’s sudden rise to stardom might raise a few eyebrows. Is the sudden widespread interest in Price’s music a convenient fad? Are predominantly white institutions exploiting her legacy for short-term gain—what Nancy Leong has called ‘racial capitalism’?” – NewMusicBox
There’s A Massive Bidding War For TV Showrunners. Blame Netflix
Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy, J.J. Abrams and their fellows are now getting nine-figure production deals, with next-rung creators like Mindy Kaling and Seth MacFarlane landing eight figures. Why? First Netflix, and then deep-pocketed Amazon and Apple, are competing with traditional studios to lock down the intellectual property those individuals create and supervise, and there are very few people who can do what they do. – Fast Company
Why Doesn’t Dance Have Preview Runs The Way Theatre Does?
“Money is a factor. But even a few extra zeroes wouldn’t necessarily change the creative process for concert work, where priorities tend to revolve around giving an idea its fullest expression, not how it will be received by an audience.” – Dance Magazine
Perry Wolff, Producer Of Groundbreaking TV Documentaries, Dead At 97
Among his most famous and historic programs were the 1962 Tour of the White House with Jackie Kennedy; Hunger in America (1968), which shocked the public and led to changes in federal policy; The Selling of the Pentagon (1971), which infuriated the Nixon Administration and helped establish important First Amendment protections; the seven-part Of Black America (1968); and You and the Commercial, about television advertising. – The New York Times
College Gallery Shows Art Incorporating Confederate Imagery. Students Get Angry. Artists Are Stunned. Show Is Removed.
“One installation in the show [at Mary Baldwin University] included a bathroom sink with air fresheners — shaped like the silhouettes of statues of Confederate leaders — hanging from it. A medicine cabinet was mounted above the sink, and, inside, pill bottles containing watermelon seeds were labeled ‘make as directed.'” (A colleague had warned one of the artists, “The minute they know you’re white, and they see those watermelons, it’s all over.”) – The Washington Post
Rothko Chapel To Get Renovation, Including New Skylight
“[The $30 million project] will erect three new buildings to support the chapel’s ongoing social justice programming and is replacing the building’s ceiling apparatus with a new skylight and digital lighting system. This will cast gentle natural light by day and uniform illumination by night for the first time on Mark Rothko’s 14 monumental black canvases.” – The New York Times
Sarasota Orchestra Asks To Put New Concert Hall In City Park
“The Sarasota Orchestra, which has kept its supporters guessing for years about the possible location of a new concert hall, made a pitch to Sarasota city commissioners Tuesday night to build a new performance, administrative and education facility in the city-owned Payne Park. The orchestra … began discussing a move from its longtime home near the Sarasota Bayfront more than 20 years ago.” – Sarasota Herald-Tribune
This Company Didn’t Fire Sergei Polunin For His Homophobic Post, But They Asked Him About It. And What Did He Tell Them?
In January, the ever-troubled ballet star caused another stir with some offensive (and incoherent) remarks on Facebook, and he was promptly let go from a guest spot with the Paris Opera Ballet. The Bavarian State Ballet kept him on (despite pushback) to star in Spartacus but asked for an explanation. He said “that he wanted to provoke people to raise awareness about the dangers of obesity.” – Deutsche Welle