ArtsJournal Classic (Text)

Tania Castroverde Moskalenko, a Miami native who has spent the last two years at the helm of the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, will take the reins at MCB later this summer. “Thursday’s announcement noted that under Castroverde Moskalenko’s leadership the Auditorium ‘experienced a significant financial turnaround … and is projected to end Fiscal Year 2018 […]

“[Frances] Turner’s two and a half years at the head of New Zealand’s national ballet company were marred by trouble at the end of last year, when the board commissioned an independent review to investigate claims of workplace bullying and foreign dancers being preferred over New Zealanders. The review eventually cleared RNZB of those allegations […]

Guthrie Theatre artistic director Joseph Haj: “I really wanted to make a production where we could believe the difficulty of these young people’s lives a bit more than we’re typically given to when we see this musical. … It’s really the choreography where we thought, this is where we can shorten the distance between then […]

“This choreographic competition gives emerging ALAANA (African, Latino(a), Asian, Arab and Native American) choreographers the opportunity to hone their skills creating on the Joffrey Studio Company and Academy Trainees. … The program was originally funded for just one year by the Sara Lee Corporation in 2011. Yet the artistic staff at Joffrey was committed to […]

L’Association Professionnelle de la Critique de Théâtre, de Musique et de Danse, a group of 140 French and international journalists, named the Toronto-based troupe Best Company of the Year on Monday for its performance of Nijinsky at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.

This sort of thing is everywhere. Children and adults will often say “no offence” before or after saying something crushingly offensive, or introduce a nasty remark with a phrase along the lines of “I wouldn’t want you to think I’m nasty, but…” Politicians sometimes say “with respect” to interviewers before making clear their contempt for […]

“Tolerance is deeply rooted in the canon of apparent modern ideals: as an inherent good, a necessary individual ethic, a pillar of Western civilisation and proof of its superiority. … Yet tolerance, as an idea and an ethic, obscures the interaction between individuals and groups on both a daily basis and over the longue durée; […]

The bottom-up method is much less ambitious than the top-down kind, but it has two advantages: it makes fewer assumptions about theory, and it’s tightly tethered to data. This doesn’t mean we need to give up on the old unification paradigm, it just suggests that we shouldn’t be so arrogant as to think we can unify physics […]

Into this void march the techies, who come bearing money, jobs and promises of out-of-this-world innovation. But there’s a catch. Corporations are getting wide latitude in determining the future of cities. They are controlling more key services and winning important battles with once-indomitable city governments. Local officials find themselves at the mercy of tech: They […]

Among the American Philosophical Association’s estimated 10,000 Ph.D-trained philosophers in the United States today, an estimated 125 are black, 38 are black women. Twenty-five years ago, Adrian Piper and I attempted to invite the Ph.D-trained black women in philosophy to join a professional association. We identified about eight eligible philosophers.

Vulture heads to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City to watch how its exhibition maintenance manager, Trenton Dirksen, gives the resident apatosaurus some cleaning and TLC. (video)

Culture Track: Canada imports a long-standing U.S. survey of cultural consumption to this country and reveals some surprising results. Allophones – that is Canadians for whom neither English nor French is a first language – are more culturally engaged than anglophones or francophones. Millennials, defined as Canadians age 20 to 35, are more eager participants than […]

“With more funders looking for metrics — and effective altruists asking ‘how many lives does the opera save?’ — how can arts nonprofits best make their case, especially right now, with so many urgent causes vying for donors’ attention?” Mike Scutari looks at a couple of organizations who have answers to that question.

“Tuesday, the foundation announced it will invest $500,000 in Knight New Work Miami, an open call for ‘ground-breaking, innovative works of dance, theater and music.’ Choreographers, playwrights and composers based in Miami and those with with strong Miami connections are eligible to apply. The caveat: The works must premiere in Miami.”

Festivals are an ideal setting for experiential marketing campaigns as brands try to blend in seamlessly with the mood-altering atmosphere of a communal celebration. “The trend is no longer just marketing,” said Joe Lucchese, founder and owner of Pro-Ject, a 5-year-old, Chicago-based experiential marketing agency that manages sponsorships for Spring Awakening. “Their goal is to sell […]

The results of the annual study show that in 2017, just 16% of films were directed by women and only 10% came from film-makers of color, the latter statistic at the lowest it’s been since the DGA started reporting in 2013. The figures emerge in a year that saw notable successes for minority directors, including […]

Benjamin Lee looks at the making of the mid-1980s titles Buddies (shot in nine days in 1985), the TV movie An Early Frost (on which NBC lost $500,000 after advertisers fled; it went on to win four Emmys), Parting Glances, and Longtime Companion.

“PBS is strategizing with stations on how to package national and local content into an over-the-top ‘skinny bundle,’ potentially creating an entirely new channel for the younger viewers who are willing to pay for live streaming services. That partnership deal, a first for PBS, could come within the next six months.”

“This is the summer the vibrator arrives in Bollywood. No woman in the 105-year history of the Hindi film industry has ever pleasured herself. But this month, in the blockbuster Veere Di Wedding and Netflix’s Lust Stories, no fewer than three women are featured in onanistic embrace. It is one sign of the rapid change […]

The effect would be similar to how YouTube tries to detect and block copyrighted audio and video from being posted on its site, but it would be applied to all types of content, including text, images, and software, as well as audio and video. Critics say this section of the proposal, Article 13, would lead to legitimate […]

Opera Philadelphia has steadily built its reputation over the last decade as one of the top-tier companies in the world for commissioning (and co-commissioning) new works. In 2017, the nonprofit company launched its new programming model, with an ambitious—and wildly successful—fall festival called O17.

Understanding the mechanisms of violated expectations in music elucidates some of the basic functions of learning, memory, and our perception of time. Along with enhancing our understanding of music, the study of how we process expectations, and learn to revel in ambiguity and uncertainty, is important in understanding how we appreciate many aspects of art […]

“At the end of Rattle’s 16-year tenure as music director of the orchestra, their relationship is not unlike a couple that’s been married for too long. … ‘The orchestra doesn’t look at him anymore,” one string player familiar with the situation in the orchestra said. … Rattle is ‘the nicest and most diplomatic guy on […]

“Local cynics will contend that Miami can never support a professional symphony orchestra, either financially or in terms of a regular audience. Yet … Miami today is a very different place than the city was when the Florida Philharmonic ceased operations nearly fifteen years ago. … There is clearly a new audience in place for […]

At a Cannes Lions presentation this week, Live Nation unveiled the results of the experiment and, unfortunately for music-loving homebodies, they show that dragging yourself to a concert on a Friday will result in three times more emotional intensity than listening to a recorded album alone in your bedroom, wearing sweatpants and eating Wheaties.

Wesley Morris: “The more she empowered us to speak, the better she got at knowing how her emotional algorithm could supply us with books and feelings and tools for betterment. And she took real risks to better understand this country, too. … Oprah didn’t do this work alone. She helped us do it. She was […]

“In the US, people have turned their energies to each other because they can’t do much about who is on top of the power structure. … [There’s an] oppression olympics [in which] outrage becomes proof of existence. … [The] grievances are real and our intentions are good, [but we are] looking for flaws, instead of […]

Executive Director Lane Harwell will transition from Dance/NYC this summer to join the Ford Foundation as Program Officer, Creativity and Free Expression, where he will support the foundation’s explorations of how the arts can contribute to fairer and more just societies.

“Professor Cavell was for decades on the faculty of Harvard University, where he often expounded on the ideas of what is called ordinary language philosophy, which argued that philosophers had become so preoccupied with convoluted statements of philosophical problems that they had lost touch with everyday words and their meanings. … He also showed his […]

Says the 25-year-old author of the autobiographical novels The End of Eddy (about his violent upbringing as a gay kid in an impoverished French town) and History of Violence (about his rape and near-murder shortly after he arrived in Paris as a student), “I think that the more you talk and write about violence the […]

In America, nothing sucks the oxygen out of the room with more deadly force than financial success. Musicals are booming, so that is where all the attention and money is streaming, a sweet spot that magically unites commerce, branding, and universities. This is not to say there have not been terrific songfests over the past […]

“The Angel Shadows — three dancers and two puppeteers — are one of the most remarkable elements about this Tony Award-winning production, directed by Marianne Elliott. Through intricate choreography and cues, the Shadows are responsible for propelling the Angel into the air and operating her heavy wings.” Gia Kourlas talks to the designers who came […]

Last week, during a Los Angeles performance of Shakespeare’s Henry IV starring Hamish Linklater as Prince Hal and Hanks as Falstaff, an audience member passed out from dehydration. As paramedics were stabilizing the patient under the seating risers, “never breaking from his tragicomic role of Falstaff, Hanks addressed the crowd and even started pulling people […]

“A group of theater artists visiting St. Louis for [the Theatre Communications Group] conference … booed in unison during an excerpt from the musical The King and I. … Demonstrators objected to the portrayal of a character from Burma (now called Myanmar) by a white actress. They also decried other parts of the show as […]

“Maverick director Milo Rau has relaunched NTGent as no less than the ‘City Theatre of the Future’, sealed with the Ghent Manifesto, 10 commandments for making new theatre, Dogme 95-style, covering everything from authorship and language to casting and touring. Given Rau’s track record, this is no glitzy euro-branding hashtag exercise. He means business in […]

“A small square tile with the profile image of a beautiful angel has been claimed not only as the earliest surviving work by Leonardo da Vinci, but as his own self-portrait as the Archangel Gabriel. If genuine the tile has survived miraculously unbroken for more than 500 years, since the 18-year-old artist made it in […]

“Surveillance video recorded last week at the Tomahawk Ridge Community Center in Overland Park, Kansas, shows two young boys running around and playing with each other while a group of adults sat and chatted nearby. It was all fun and games until one 5-year-old decided to stop and admire the art.”

“The Pasadena Museum of California Art, that Modernist beacon that has swooped above East Union Street since 2002, will close its doors at the end of the current exhibition,” according to a slightly odd vote by the institution’s directors. Columnist Larry Wilson looks at the PMCA’s unusual situation and wonders if some individuals or institution […]

From major encyclopedic museums to university-run institutions, curators who are schooled in the art of ancient Mesopotamia, South Asia, Renaissance Italy, and many other eras and cultures across the globe are expanding and enriching how audiences experience art history. They’re also innovating the way that art is seen, understood, and disseminated.

Dr. Tedi Asher of the Peabody Essex Museum of Salem, Mass.: “When I first got to PEM,” says Asher, “we knew what the objective was, which was to create more compelling exhibitions for our visitors, by drawing on findings from the neuroscience literature, but we didn’t know exactly how to do that. … I see […]

“I think most writers are wedded to social realism, these days — social realism is the only genre left. And there’s been a contraction, as I was saying, of what you can expect from the reader. It’s not a conscious decision to cease to be as complex as you might once have been; it’s just […]

“UCL, in collaboration with audiobook giant Audible, measured the physical reactions of 102 participants aged between 18 and 67 to audio and video depictions of scenes from [well-known] books … According to the study, while the participants reported that the videos were “more engaging” than the audiobooks by about 15% on average, their physiological responses […]

“Based on information from responding publishers, the [Audio Publishers] Association estimates that audiobook sales in 2017 totaled more than US$2.5 billion, up 22.7 percent over 2016, and with a corresponding 21.5-percent increase in units. This continues a six-year audiobook trend of double-digit growth year-over-year.” And the accompanying consumer study explores the advantages listeners find in […]

“It is a fantastically stupid rule that when followed often has the effect of mangling a sentence. And yet for hundreds of years, schoolchildren have been taught to create disastrously awkward sentences like ‘With whom did you go?’ The origins of this rule date back to one guy you may have heard of. Of whom […]

You might be forgiven, then, for thinking that Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 is about fighting the evils of censorship. After all, the back cover copy declares it to be a “classic novel of censorship and defiance” and it’s generally taught this way in high schools. But Bradbury himself never took this line. According to the Christian Science […]