Yearly Archives: 2021
Matter
An arts organization must come to matter to the community. When it matters, the community will support it. But how do arts organizations come...
Hollywood Waits With Its Blockbusters. Streaming Is Still A Risky Path
Even as the studio insists that its streaming strategy is a one-off response to the pandemic, it might not be able to rebuild those...
Native American Languages Could Become Another Casualty Of COVID
Jodi Archambault: "As COVID-19 takes a fearsome toll on our people, it also threatens the progress we have made to save our languages. The...
How Social Media Has Rewired Our Cultural/Political Discourse
This expanding cornucopia of tech and entertainment has served as a compensatory narrative of progress and advancement for an empire in decline. The future...
Andreas Delfs Named Music Director Of Rochester Philharmonic
The 61-year-old conductor spent a dozen years as music director of the Milwaukee Symphony (1997-2009). "Once reportedly accustomed to a few sellout audiences a...
The Case For Simpler Grant-Giving
“Are we giving to organizations that are actually doing the best work? Or are we giving to organizations that are giving us the best...
Twenty-One Young Composers For 2021
Michael Andor Brodeur: "There is really no playlist to match this unstable, uncertain moment. And, honestly, right now I'm less interested in rummaging through...
Cable TV Cord-Cutting Accelerates During Pandemic
In the interim, expect a flood of cable programming to start migrating over to streaming in anticipation for the day when cable is no...
The Playwright We Need To Snap Us Out Of The Past Four Years Is...
"Telling a lie over and over can make it seem true. It can also remove agency from the viewer, ceding the individual's judgement over...
André Gregory: What I Learned From Brecht (And His Wife)
"As I was at the beginning of my education as a young director, as well as a nervous, nerdy intellectual, I asked Helene Weigel...
City Of Austin Announced Major Overhaul Of Its Arts Funding Program, And Local Arts...
"Staff with the city's Cultural Arts Division unveiled an entirely new funding system in mid-December that, among other changes, lowers the funding cap for...
Metropolitan Opera Hires Harvard Law Dean As Chief Diversity Officer
"Marcia Sells — a former dancer who became an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn and the dean of students at Harvard Law School —...
Milwaukee Ballet Plans Return To Mainstage Performance In June
As it did with its abbreviated Nutcracker in December, the company will do its first two productions of 2021 before an in-person audience of...
While Lockdown Keeps The Hordes Away, The Louvre Is Fixing Itself Up
"The world's most visited museum — a record 10 million in 2019, mostly from overseas — is grappling with its longest closure since World...
Paris’s Pompidou Centre Will Close For Three-To-Four-Year Renovation
"'We no longer have a choice, the building is in distress,' Centre Pompidou president Serge Lasvignes told Le Figaro of the extensive upkeep needed...
Rare Violin Tests Germany’s Nazi Looting Restitution System
More than 80 years later, his 300-year-old violin — valued at around $185,000 — is at the center of a dispute that is threatening...
The Theatre Of Dreams
We are neurochemically predisposed to find our dreams meaningful, which may suggest that they do have a pedagogical function. Even the common advice to...
Could Amsterdam’s Radical Effort To Transform Itself Leave Capitalism Behind?
In April 2020, during the first wave of COVID-19, Amsterdam’s city government announced it would recover from the crisis, and avoid future ones, by...
The Psychology Of Massive Multiplayer Online Games and The QAnon Delusions
"The art of creating the connections and building communities of others who also come to believe and amplify them is a virtuous circle that...
Looking for a Fugitive Rainbow — A Very Transient “Gift” to the Bidens
Laura Baptiste, the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s always-helpful chief of communications, found herself dealing with misinformation disseminated in a number of news reports after...
Joseph Conyers on Being an Artist Entrepreneur
The Philadelphia Orchestra bassist and entrepreneur shares the passions that have fueled his success. - Aaron Dworkin
Bipartisan? Biden Should Think Arts
"It’s worth recalling that federal support for the arts throughout modern American history has been bipartisan. The Federal Art Project (1935–43) commissioned artworks by...
A Checklist For Happiness? It Doesn’t Work That Way
"Every cultural message we get is that happiness can be read off a scorecard of money, education, experiences, relationships, and prestige. Want the happiest...
Here’s What The New American Elite Looks Like
"From the American Revolution until the late 20th century, the American elite was divided among regional oligarchies. It is only in the last generation...
Students At The Glasgow School Of Art Protest School’s Pandemic Paralysis
"The pandemic will have caused frustration to students everywhere and it must have been difficult for university authorities to react to the ever-shifting situation....
