AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- You Might Not Know This Designer’s Name, But His Chairs Changed The Look Of The Future
Steen Ostergaard, who died recently at 90, helped Star Trek and James Bond films look the way they were supposed to – sleek, weathy, futuristic. – The New York Times
- Imaginations Change Possibilities When People Are Enslaved, Restricted, Or Imprisoned
“The condition of fugitivity emerged from a radical imagination capable of envisioning existence beyond oppression. As a refusal of captivity, it entailed an inner transformation – a reorientation of consciousness that makes escape conceivable in the first place.” – Aeon
- Where The Power Of Women’s Singing Voices Comes From
“I was thinking about Celine Dion or Billie Eilish or, you know, Beyonce and why some singers come across as important or authentic or legitimate, and other singers, like Celine Dion, for instance, are sort of brushed off as singing kind of inauthentic.” – NPR
- In Chicago, Taking ‘The Nutcracker’ To A Very Different Place
That is, to a children’s hospital where the kids are sometimes in their rooms for hundreds of days. “We wanted to give the children something that was a spectacle. … So we chose pieces that were very visually exciting, and music as well, that would be very exciting for them.” – Chicago Tribune
- A Mayan Ceremony Honors Nobel Prize-Winning Guatemalan Author Miguel Angel Asturias As His Ashes Return Home
Asturias, who died in 1974, “went into exile after a 1954 coup led by Gen. Carlos Castillo Armas, who revoked his passport and stripped him of his Guatemalan citizenship, labeling him a communist. Asturias’ final visit to Guatemala took place in 1966.” – Seattle Times (Associated Press)
ISSUES
- Jewish Heirs Are Challenging The Auction Of A Van Gogh Sold During Nazi-Era Duress
“The claim centers on that 1936 sale, which … took place three months after the family had left Berlin for Vienna. The Nazis restricted what departing Jews could take with them, and according to Schnabel’s research, the family was forced to pay the ‘Reich flight tax.’” – The New York Times
- Why Isn’t This Art Collection, Pledged To Seattle University, Heading There?
Well, some of it may be — after the owner sells enough of the collection to clear old debts. – Seattle Times
- Artnet Makes Controversial Partnership With Kalshi
On Wednesday, Artnet announced that it had partnered with Kalshi, the prediction-market platform that lets users bet on everything from election results to sporting events. Artnet will become Kalshi’s official art partner, helping select markets and supplying the auction data used to determine which bets pay out. – ARTnews
- Not Budging “The Bean” Was Not Enough: London Crowd Will Attempt To Move Marble Arch
Inspired by last weekend’s attempt by Chicagoans to move the Anish Kapoor sculpture Cloud Gate seven inches to the left, Londoners will gather on Saturday and try to push John Nash’s 1827 monument seven inches left. The stated reason for these two efforts is the same: to free anyone trapped inside. – Ocula
- Art Basel Paris To Partially Refund Gallerists For Early Closure
“All exhibitors who participated in the most recent edition of Art Basel Paris, which closed two days early because of planned protests, will get a 20 percent reduction on their final invoices. … Additionally, tickets purchased for that weekend have already been refunded.” – ARTnews
MEDIA
- Reasons To Be A Freelance Artist Might Include Avoiding 160 Webcam Videosurveillance Photos Per Day
As if constant AI use and keystroke surveillance isn’t enough: “In the vast majority of states, if an employer decides to implement facial monitoring, employees will have little option but to smile for the camera.” – Fast Company
- The Moral – And Possibly Legal – Harm From Being ‘Nice’ To Bots
“‘We won’t really be elevating the moral status of A.I.’ … All we’ll be doing is reducing living human beings ‘to the equivalent of a box of equations.’” – The New York Times
- UK Artist Visas Are Being Sold Fraudulently
Several companies have been helping migrants apply for UK visas under the government’s Global Talent program by creating fake art portfolios, complete with fake published art criticism and art news. – ARTnews
- Shady Companies Make Fake Portfolios For Rich Migrants Who Want UK “Global Talent” Visas
For a hefty fee, these companies will fabricate forged portfolios, with fake images of work and forged review clips, for applications for the Global Talent visa, which can lead to permanent residency in three to five years and is one of a very few UK visas which doesn’t require demonstrated fluency in English. – BBC
- Kennedy Center Switches Ticket-Buying To TicketMaster
For decades, the Kennedy Center has used a not-for-profit platform called Tessitura to handle its ticketing. But the Kennedy Center plans to partner with the ticketing behemoth Ticketmaster. – NPR
MUSIC
- Wait, We’re Getting Temu Books Now?
“Alibris has inked a deal to make over a million books available on Temu’s massive digital marketplace.” Er … will they all be bought, scanned, and pulped by AI model companies? – LitHub
- Managing The Celebrity Egos At Vanity Fair
“Stars of a certain caliber demanded certain privileges in their contracts: quote approval, cover approval, cover-or-nothing. Vanity Fair wished to appear to grant these privileges but really had no intention of doing so.” – LitHub
- The Machine That Gave Birth To Mass Media
Before the late 1800s, printers had to arrange letters one-by-one on metal plates, a slow and painstaking process. Media maven Jeff Jarvis points out that, once the Linotype machine appeared toward the end of the 19th century, books and periodicals could be printed quickly enough to meet booming public demand. – The Christian Science Monitor
- Will A SciFi Booker Win Bring More Attention To The Genre?
Author and critic Olivia Laing agrees it’s taken the literary world “an embarrassingly long time to clock that you don’t need realism to write about how it feels to inhabit late capitalism and unravelling modernity”. – The Guardian
- How Aztec Historians Saved Their People’s History From Spanish Bonfires
There were codices of Nahuatl hieroglyphics before the conquistadors arrived, but they were all either burned by militant Catholic priests or lost to time. Secretly, though, indigenous scholars collected oral history and wrote it down, usually in Nahuatl using the Spanish alphabet, and a surprising amount has survived until today. – History Today
PEOPLE
- You Might Not Know This Designer’s Name, But His Chairs Changed The Look Of The Future
Steen Ostergaard, who died recently at 90, helped Star Trek and James Bond films look the way they were supposed to – sleek, weathy, futuristic. – The New York Times
- Imaginations Change Possibilities When People Are Enslaved, Restricted, Or Imprisoned
“The condition of fugitivity emerged from a radical imagination capable of envisioning existence beyond oppression. As a refusal of captivity, it entailed an inner transformation – a reorientation of consciousness that makes escape conceivable in the first place.” – Aeon
- Where The Power Of Women’s Singing Voices Comes From
“I was thinking about Celine Dion or Billie Eilish or, you know, Beyonce and why some singers come across as important or authentic or legitimate, and other singers, like Celine Dion, for instance, are sort of brushed off as singing kind of inauthentic.” – NPR
- In Chicago, Taking ‘The Nutcracker’ To A Very Different Place
That is, to a children’s hospital where the kids are sometimes in their rooms for hundreds of days. “We wanted to give the children something that was a spectacle. … So we chose pieces that were very visually exciting, and music as well, that would be very exciting for them.” – Chicago Tribune
- A Mayan Ceremony Honors Nobel Prize-Winning Guatemalan Author Miguel Angel Asturias As His Ashes Return Home
Asturias, who died in 1974, “went into exile after a 1954 coup led by Gen. Carlos Castillo Armas, who revoked his passport and stripped him of his Guatemalan citizenship, labeling him a communist. Asturias’ final visit to Guatemala took place in 1966.” – Seattle Times (Associated Press)
PEOPLE
- You Might Not Know This Designer’s Name, But His Chairs Changed The Look Of The Future
Steen Ostergaard, who died recently at 90, helped Star Trek and James Bond films look the way they were supposed to – sleek, weathy, futuristic. – The New York Times
- Imaginations Change Possibilities When People Are Enslaved, Restricted, Or Imprisoned
“The condition of fugitivity emerged from a radical imagination capable of envisioning existence beyond oppression. As a refusal of captivity, it entailed an inner transformation – a reorientation of consciousness that makes escape conceivable in the first place.” – Aeon
- Where The Power Of Women’s Singing Voices Comes From
“I was thinking about Celine Dion or Billie Eilish or, you know, Beyonce and why some singers come across as important or authentic or legitimate, and other singers, like Celine Dion, for instance, are sort of brushed off as singing kind of inauthentic.” – NPR
- In Chicago, Taking ‘The Nutcracker’ To A Very Different Place
That is, to a children’s hospital where the kids are sometimes in their rooms for hundreds of days. “We wanted to give the children something that was a spectacle. … So we chose pieces that were very visually exciting, and music as well, that would be very exciting for them.” – Chicago Tribune
- A Mayan Ceremony Honors Nobel Prize-Winning Guatemalan Author Miguel Angel Asturias As His Ashes Return Home
Asturias, who died in 1974, “went into exile after a 1954 coup led by Gen. Carlos Castillo Armas, who revoked his passport and stripped him of his Guatemalan citizenship, labeling him a communist. Asturias’ final visit to Guatemala took place in 1966.” – Seattle Times (Associated Press)
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Imaginations Change Possibilities When People Are Enslaved, Restricted, Or Imprisoned
“The condition of fugitivity emerged from a radical imagination capable of envisioning existence beyond oppression. As a refusal of captivity, it entailed an inner transformation – a reorientation of consciousness that makes escape conceivable in the first place.” – Aeon
- Inside The 20-Year, 40 Million Dollar Renovation Of A Theatre In Los Angeles
In a city and private partnership, Leimert Park’s 95-year-old Art Deco Vision Theatre is (finally) making a comeback. – Los Angeles Times
- A Grim Trend In Children’s Literature And Movies
Seriously, why would The Cat in the Hat (the character) need a real job? – Reactor
- Are We Scapegoating Our Phones?
Against the suggestion that the furor over phones is no different from past outcries over new technologies, some point to novel features of social media—exploitative algorithms or “infinite scrolling”—to argue that this case is different. – Boston Review
- Refugees And The Imagination Of Borders
Each of us had imagined a life that exceeded the border and acted upon that imagination. In that sense, the prison did not simply contain border-crossers; it brought together people whose aspirations had collided with the territorial imaginary of the nation-state. – Aeon