ArtsJournal Classic

AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only

DANCE

    IDEAS

    • At The Open Auditions For Off-Broadway’s “Spring Awakening” Revival

      “These aspirants arrived by plane, by bus, by subway, in braids and vests and milkmaid dresses, clutching headshots and binders and gigantic water bottles. … A few dozen joined the line before dawn. By noon, more than a thousand sat and stood and swayed.” – The New York Times

    • Filmmaker Mike Leigh Says His New Film Is His Last

      The 83-year-old director — one of the few to have won the top prize at both Cannes (Secrets and Lies) and Venice (Vera Drake) — has the autoimmune disorder myositis and says he’s physically unable to make another movie after Tender Loving Care, to be released this fall. – IndieWire

    • Interlochen Center Issues Report On History Of Sexual Misconduct By Faculty

      “The 97-page report spells out some 70 instances of sexual misconduct by multiple former faculty and staff spanning seven decades. … None of the 47 people accused in the report is currently employed by Interlochen. And owing to the amount of time that has passed, about a third of those accused are now dead.” – Interlochen Public Radio

    • Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, One Of Frank Gehry’s Last Buildings, Finally Has An Opening Date

      “After a slew of delays and controversies, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi has finally narrowed down its big debut to a single day: December 11. The winter inauguration keeps the museum (just about) on track to open in 2026, as previously promised, but arrives two decades after the mammoth museum project was first announced in 2006.” – Artnet

    • Institutions reinventing themselves

      Good Morning,

      Several stories today about institutions discovering they don’t actually need a center. Alabama’s WLRH dropped NPR programming and its audience grew (AL.com); public media more broadly is finding that losing federal money surfaced a donor base it had assumed was tapped out (Current). Neither result makes the cuts a good idea, but still. Makes you think…

      Rethinking the model shows up in Australia too, where four regional performing arts centers have pooled resources to originate the big work the capital-city companies used to (Limelight). In Buffalo, the AKG has split its director job in two (BTPM) — an admission that the singular-visionary model maybe should be rethought.

      A terrific essay asks why “ancient history” still means Greece and Rome (Aeon).

      And today’s saddest stories: the Kennedy Center is empty enough that the volunteer tour guide is now the story (NYT). And Betye Saar, who spent 70 years making art from what the culture threw away, has died four days short of 100 (Yahoo).

      Lighter: Emily Wilson has seen Nolan’s Odyssey and would like a word (London Review of Books).

    ISSUES

    MEDIA

    MUSIC

    PEOPLE

    • At The Open Auditions For Off-Broadway’s “Spring Awakening” Revival

      “These aspirants arrived by plane, by bus, by subway, in braids and vests and milkmaid dresses, clutching headshots and binders and gigantic water bottles. … A few dozen joined the line before dawn. By noon, more than a thousand sat and stood and swayed.” – The New York Times

    • Filmmaker Mike Leigh Says His New Film Is His Last

      The 83-year-old director — one of the few to have won the top prize at both Cannes (Secrets and Lies) and Venice (Vera Drake) — has the autoimmune disorder myositis and says he’s physically unable to make another movie after Tender Loving Care, to be released this fall. – IndieWire

    • Interlochen Center Issues Report On History Of Sexual Misconduct By Faculty

      “The 97-page report spells out some 70 instances of sexual misconduct by multiple former faculty and staff spanning seven decades. … None of the 47 people accused in the report is currently employed by Interlochen. And owing to the amount of time that has passed, about a third of those accused are now dead.” – Interlochen Public Radio

    • Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, One Of Frank Gehry’s Last Buildings, Finally Has An Opening Date

      “After a slew of delays and controversies, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi has finally narrowed down its big debut to a single day: December 11. The winter inauguration keeps the museum (just about) on track to open in 2026, as previously promised, but arrives two decades after the mammoth museum project was first announced in 2006.” – Artnet

    • Institutions reinventing themselves

      Good Morning,

      Several stories today about institutions discovering they don’t actually need a center. Alabama’s WLRH dropped NPR programming and its audience grew (AL.com); public media more broadly is finding that losing federal money surfaced a donor base it had assumed was tapped out (Current). Neither result makes the cuts a good idea, but still. Makes you think…

      Rethinking the model shows up in Australia too, where four regional performing arts centers have pooled resources to originate the big work the capital-city companies used to (Limelight). In Buffalo, the AKG has split its director job in two (BTPM) — an admission that the singular-visionary model maybe should be rethought.

      A terrific essay asks why “ancient history” still means Greece and Rome (Aeon).

      And today’s saddest stories: the Kennedy Center is empty enough that the volunteer tour guide is now the story (NYT). And Betye Saar, who spent 70 years making art from what the culture threw away, has died four days short of 100 (Yahoo).

      Lighter: Emily Wilson has seen Nolan’s Odyssey and would like a word (London Review of Books).

    PEOPLE

    • At The Open Auditions For Off-Broadway’s “Spring Awakening” Revival

      “These aspirants arrived by plane, by bus, by subway, in braids and vests and milkmaid dresses, clutching headshots and binders and gigantic water bottles. … A few dozen joined the line before dawn. By noon, more than a thousand sat and stood and swayed.” – The New York Times

    • Filmmaker Mike Leigh Says His New Film Is His Last

      The 83-year-old director — one of the few to have won the top prize at both Cannes (Secrets and Lies) and Venice (Vera Drake) — has the autoimmune disorder myositis and says he’s physically unable to make another movie after Tender Loving Care, to be released this fall. – IndieWire

    • Interlochen Center Issues Report On History Of Sexual Misconduct By Faculty

      “The 97-page report spells out some 70 instances of sexual misconduct by multiple former faculty and staff spanning seven decades. … None of the 47 people accused in the report is currently employed by Interlochen. And owing to the amount of time that has passed, about a third of those accused are now dead.” – Interlochen Public Radio

    • Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, One Of Frank Gehry’s Last Buildings, Finally Has An Opening Date

      “After a slew of delays and controversies, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi has finally narrowed down its big debut to a single day: December 11. The winter inauguration keeps the museum (just about) on track to open in 2026, as previously promised, but arrives two decades after the mammoth museum project was first announced in 2006.” – Artnet

    • Institutions reinventing themselves

      Good Morning,

      Several stories today about institutions discovering they don’t actually need a center. Alabama’s WLRH dropped NPR programming and its audience grew (AL.com); public media more broadly is finding that losing federal money surfaced a donor base it had assumed was tapped out (Current). Neither result makes the cuts a good idea, but still. Makes you think…

      Rethinking the model shows up in Australia too, where four regional performing arts centers have pooled resources to originate the big work the capital-city companies used to (Limelight). In Buffalo, the AKG has split its director job in two (BTPM) — an admission that the singular-visionary model maybe should be rethought.

      A terrific essay asks why “ancient history” still means Greece and Rome (Aeon).

      And today’s saddest stories: the Kennedy Center is empty enough that the volunteer tour guide is now the story (NYT). And Betye Saar, who spent 70 years making art from what the culture threw away, has died four days short of 100 (Yahoo).

      Lighter: Emily Wilson has seen Nolan’s Odyssey and would like a word (London Review of Books).

    THEATRE

      VISUAL

      • The Ancient World Beyond Greece, Rome and Egypt

        The de facto equation of ‘ancient history’ with ancient Mediterranean history, at least in most of the Anglosphere, has endured for many generations. But we are on the cusp of a dramatic shift in perspective that is producing a much bigger, broader and more exciting view of ‘the ancient world’. – Aeon

      • What If More Intelligence Doesn’t Make Us Better?

        If we think of intelligence as the ability to extract information from data, then even an infinitely advanced model endowed with infinite compute will be limited by the fact that there’s a limited amount of information that can be extracted from the data. – Noahpinion

      • With So Much Abundance, Why Are We Bored?

        For anyone with an Internet connection and a little discretionary income, the contemporary moment offers a superabundance of seductive distractions. Why then the pervasive mood of emptiness? Why are so many at once overstimulated and bored? – The Guardian

      • This Booker-Winning Book Set In Taiwan Has Sparked A Cultural Reckoning

        The author says she “wanted to tell Taiwanese people, ‘We do not really understand our own land’s history,’” partly because of the time Taiwan was a colony of Japan. – NPR

      • Alert: Don’t Throw Away Your Old E-Reader

        Of course don’t throw it away – get it to an e-waste recycler or dealer – but also, you can turn it into a Spotify controller or, perhaps coolest of all, a literary clock. – Wired

      WORDS