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- The Most Talked-About Director In British Theatre
“Theatre is controversial again and it’s happened, surprisingly, in an Andrew Lloyd Webber revival” — the Evita in which Eva Perón sings to the crowd on the street — “at the London Palladium. … And those buzzy shows that you heard about were probably directed by the same guy as this one: Jamie Lloyd.” – GQ
- How Italian Towns Selling Houses For €1 Changes Culture
The campaigns seemed to me to have been largely successful – some towns had sold all their listed properties. By attracting international buyers to a house that “costs less than a cup of coffee”, as one piece put it, some of Italy’s most remote towns now had new life circulating through them. – The Guardian
- The Latest Korean Pop Culture Phenomenon? Swing Dancing
“For a vintage American cultural practice to spread overseas and thrive there more robustly than at home is a story at least as old as jazz. Not in every case, though, does the transplanted form evolve into a local variant. That’s what has happened in Korea.” – The New York Times
- Rethinking Origins Of The Blues
What is original, real, and distinctive about black Southern culture is still often distorted or dismissed as primitive. And that is true not only in the South but in the wider American culture. – Hedgehog Review
- An Ancient City Off The Coast Of Italy Re-emerges From The Sea
For centuries, Aenaria had existed somewhere between history and myth. Today, its rediscovery is reshaping Ischia’s story – and offering travellers the rare chance each summer to dive into a piece of history once thought lost to the sea. – BBC
- Why Putting Tariffs On Foreign Films Is An Idiotic Idea
The tariff idea arises from the worldview that treats international exchange as a threat — and cultural expression as just another import to tax. – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)
- Beetles Are Eating Their Way Through One Of Europe’s Oldest Libraries
At the Pannonhalma Archabbey, founded in 996, conservators are removing 100,000 books from the library shelves for disinfection from an infestation of bread beetles, which like to eat the gelatin and starch-based adhesives used in medieval books – AP
- The Frustrations Of Advocating For The Arts
Advocacy emerges from discontent. In the arts, it’s often borne of witnessing creative practice undervalued, institutions destabilised and public funding eroded. These grievances are real and deeply felt. But passion alone, when untempered, can be self-defeating. – Arts Hub
- Why We Choose To Ignore Useful Information Right In Front Of Us
If the saying ‘knowledge is power’ is true, then most people hold an indefinite amount of power in their pockets. And, in this light, it’s curious that someone would choose to relinquish that power by avoiding information. – Psyche
- Recent Rulings On AI And Copyright Leave The Issue More Confused Than Ever
On certain key points, the two judges disagreed with each other—so thoroughly, in fact, that one legal scholar observed that the judges had “totally different conceptual frames for the problem.” – The Atlantic
- 1,700-Year-Old Mayan Royal Tomb Uncovered In Belize
“The tomb is the final resting place of Te K’ab Chaak, the first ruler of (the) ancient Maya city (of Caracol) and the founder of its royal dynasty. He ascended the throne in 331 C.E. and was interred in a royal family shrine along with items including pottery vessels, jadeite jewelry, and a mosaic jadeite mask.” – Artnet
- Artnet Staff: Our Favorite Art Books Of All Time
The books that made impressions on people who care about art. – Artnet
- What Brain Scans Reveal About Humans Seeking Revenge
Recent neuroscience discoveries reveal a chilling picture: Your brain on revenge looks like your brain on drugs. Brain imaging studies show that grievances—real or imagined perceptions of injustice, disrespect, betrayal, shame, or victimization—activate the “pain network,” specifically the anterior insula. – Slate (MSN)
- How Women From The Former East Germany Are Shaking Up The Museum World
What these women offer isn’t nostalgia. It’s clarity. A resistance to simplification. A belief that history is not a finished room. In Kathleen Reinhardt’s office, there’s a poster that reads: “You don’t have to tear down the statues – just the pedestals.” – The Guardian
- Praemium Imperiale 2025 Winners: Marina Abramović, András Schiff, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Peter Doig, Eduardo Souto de Moura
It seems the categories for the $100,000 arts prizes this year were made a bit flexible: performance artist Abramović won the prize for sculpture and choreographer de Keersmaeker won the theatre/film award. Meanwhile, pianist Schiff won for music, artist Doig for painting, and Souto de Moura for architecture. – FAD Magazine
- Hackers Commandeer Elmo’s Account (Yes, From “Sesame Street”) And Tweet Offensive Messages
“The account was compromised over the weekend and instead of the usual posts of encouragement and kindness, Elmo’s 650,000 followers were given antisemitic threats and a profane reference to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation. Those tweets were soon deleted.” – AP
- The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra seeks a Director of Operations
The Director of Operations plays a key role in assisting the ASO VP & General Manager with the execution of orchestra initiatives, crossing departments to ensure the smooth day-to-day functioning of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and all its activities. This includes execution of concert production and services at the highest level, both in Symphony Hall and when presented externally. The Director of Operations will also lead planning and implementation for special concerts, contracted services, and runouts.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Orchestra Service Management:
- Ensures exceptional execution of all orchestra services by managing the day-to-day activities of the ASO including, but not limited to daily orchestra operations, library, production, and personnel staff and serving as a liaison to each area.
- Includes supervising the regular dissemination of accurate day-of-show sheets and production schedules and adherence to the ASO’s Collective Bargaining Agreement.
- Works with the VP for Marketing and Sales and VP & General Manager to ensure the comfort of patrons and musicians in all service venues.
- Creates and administers the Orchestra service schedule and coordinates with Symphony Hall Live and Education teams to ensure that the Orchestra and Symphony Hall Live are utilized for optimal fulfillment of mission and revenue generation and compliance with the Orchestra CBA.
- Ensures sufficient staffing during all Orchestra services.
Orchestra Relationship:
- Works alongside the VP & General Manager to ensure open and effective communication between players and management and creates a positive work environment and relationship between musicians and management.
- With personnel staff, ensures adherence to Collective Bargaining Agreement in all communications with the Orchestra.
- Serves as staff lead for ASOPA subcommittees in areas of travel, scheduling, and provides support for Orchestra Fellowship and Media Taskforces.
Collective Bargaining Agreement:
- Provides crucial support to the management negotiating team for all National, Local, and special union agreements. Once negotiated, works with VP & General Manager to ensure all contractual obligations are met and oversees their execution and management.
- Assists VP & General Manager with the negotiation and management of the Orchestra members’ individual contracts and with the processing and management of grievance procedures.
- Assists General Manager with the management of the ASO’s relationship with ASOPA and AFM Local.
- With the President of the ASOPA Committee and VP & General Manager, assures that agendas are established for all meetings and reviewed by all appropriate parties and keep minutes and ensures follow-up to meetings.
Other Earned Revenue:
- Special Concerts, Contracted Services and Runouts, and Tours: In coordination with VP & General Manager and Director of Productions with managing relationships, arrangements, and contracts with entities presenting the ASO.
- Manages all runout, off-site and touring engagements, including management and presenter relationships; negotiates contracts with presenters directly when needed.
- With VP & General Manager, ensures the excellent planning and execution of any tour within budgeted guidelines and CBA provisions.
Electronic Media:
- Responsible for media (in partnership with VP Marketing and Comms).
- Plans and implements all media projects in accordance with CBA, IMA, and any other local or national agreements to which the ASO is a signatory.
- Manages the Orchestra’s Electronic Media Guarantee and works with payroll to ensure proper accounting, reporting and payments.
- Reviews royalties and manages mechanical rights and royalties due to agencies or individuals; negotiates all agreements related to the creation of EM projects.
- Working with the Marketing and Artistic teams, develops schedule and content for the Behind the Curtain series, including special digital projects.
Department and Administration:
- Serves as the primary the Operations Department liaison to all other departments of the ASO including Symphony Hall Live, Education, Marketing & Communications, Development, Sales & Revenue, etc.
- Provide departmental leadership to ensure completion of necessary projects and responsibilities. Responsibilities include preparing agendas for, and leading weekly staff departmental meetings and area leads meetings as requested.
- Monitors and ensures compliance with operations and orchestra budgets.
- Leads and assists with special projects as directed by VP & General Manager.
- Social Prescription — When Doctor’s Orders Are Art, Music, Dance, Nature, Or Group Exercise
“It’s the idea of health professionals ‘literally prescribing you a community activity or resource the same way they’d prescribe you pills or therapies.’ … The prescriptions include exercise, art, music, exposure to nature and volunteering, which are known to have enormous benefits to physical and mental health.” – NPR
- Milwaukee Ballet Will Use Live Orchestra For “Nutcracker” After All
Less than two weeks after the company announced that, due to financial troubles, it would use a recording of Tchaikovsky’s music for the next three seasons, an anonymous contribution by a first-time donor will fund the use of live musicians this year. The following two seasons, however, are not (yet) covered. – Urban Milwaukee
- SUMMER RERUN: Art Doesn’t Need to Be Served. People Do.
From 2024: The Mellon Foundation almost got it right for nonprofit arts leadership in the 2020s.
Seems obvious, and yet even the foundations don’t always get it perfectly right. But this was a nice baby step Why don’t people subscribe to nonprofit arts organizations anymore?
Because you can’t get good seats from inside a coffin.
You may not have heard about this, mostly because the news has not been reported as much as it should have been, but the Mellon Foundation, the meat of whose mission is…
We believe that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and we believe that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom to be found there.
…just granted three $1 million grants to leaders of theaters that are instituting a radical change for the better for their respective institutions.
One hopes.
I’m sure that by now, if you follow the large nonprofit theater scene, you’ve read or heard that the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut has broken with its past almost entirely. And this is a monumental positive change for the company and for New Haven — a city with a bifurcated populations of Yale (and its offshoots) on the one side and middle-class laborers (and their offshoots) on the other. This is a massive success story as they have eschewed the glitz and toxicity of choosing to produce art for the donors who support it (“Donors donate so that donors may attend”) to bring their art to where the people who are underserved actually are.
On the one hand, it’s a no-brainer. On the other, there are a slew of me-first, I-paid-for-it would-be stakeholders in the area who see this move as a slap in the face. I have no stake in it except to say that if those people still exist, I’d be happy to slap them in the face and so would the entire underserved population of New Haven.
New Haven is a city of approximately 138,000 people, 32% of whom are White, 30% of whom are Black, and 22% are Latino/Hispanic. 25% of the population lives below the official poverty line, which means that there are 34,500 slaps in the face due to the detractors. Oh, right, 34,501.
So, Jacob Padrón, the Long Wharf’s artistic director, along with key members of the board and administration, had to fight off the shackles of a storied, if uncharitable tradition of producing Broadway-bound plays for the “largely White, affluent, older” (which is how Padrón described them) former attendees. The entirety of the previous decades of the company’s existence settled on producing art for the sake of acclaim. Its eyes were trained on New York, and its attitude toward New Haven was that of a slick huckster you probably work with. You know, the one who, while in conversation with you, is continually looking past you to see if someone wealthier, handsomer, or generally is more interesting is behind you.
(Photo 35525226 © Auremar | Dreamstime.com) Now, to use their produced art as a tool, not merely its unique (and measurable) power as a collaboration, convening, and reflective way of making lives better, but as a conduit to greater personal knowledge, dignity, and paths to greater understanding of the people whose stories are not always told. They take their art to the people, as guests in their world, as opposed to forcing them to go to a (possibly) intimidating place where they’ve never, ever felt welcome.
Good job, Mellon. This was a fantastic decision.
I recently got to spend a lot of time with Robert Barry Fleming of Actors Theatre of Louisville (ATL). Fleming received one of Mellon’s million-dollar grants to benefit the company, a company that had really only been known outside of Louisville as the home of a new play festival. The sponsor of that festival, currently selling its downtown buildings in Louisville and reportedly sharpening their Damacles sword over their staff, pulled their funding. And the festival will no longer happen, which is a bit of a shame, but it did not help the communities of Louisville in any way (except for some hotel rooms and airlines – the plays were seen by scouts of commercial and for-profit theaters).
But Fleming’s goal is to lift ATL into a company that told the stories of the “global majority” (his words, and eloquent at that). In other words, the same people who have been quietly but studiously eliminated from the power structure of Louisville would now have their stories told back to them. It’s a case of a company that had never done that kind of peer-to-peer storytelling (instead, looking at an annual season of traditional Dracula productions at Halloween and A Christmas Carol at the holidays), and it is beginning to take hold. Like the misguided hecklers to Padrón at the Long Wharf, Fleming is fending off myriad old-timers who want to drag their companies back into some sort of Euroentric Eden, but don’t understand that Eden belongs to everyone, not just descendants of the Puritans and the privileged. I hope Fleming succeeds and continues to work with non-arts charities to spread that message of not just inclusion, but of the truths of the people (even funny ones).
Good job again, Mellon. This was a fantastic decision.
Then there’s Portland Center Stage (PCS), whose $1 million gift from Mellon to support their operations. The artistic director there, Marissa Wolf, talked about the gift in more traditional ways. Nonprofits often discuss major gifts in terms of leverage instead of award. Wolf talked not about celebrating transformational change, but of “inspiring long-term investment from our whole community.”
Leveraging other gifts for PCS from Portland power brokers is great. As I was told at a PCS board meeting several years ago, Portland’s elite is notorious for having “deep pockets and short arms.” But PCS clings to an outdated theory that maintaining a glorious venue is more effective than acting as guests in other of Oregon’s communities. It’s the polar opposite of the truly transformational work from the Long Wharf.
As Meat Loaf once sang, “Two out of three ain’t bad.”
Meat Loaf (1947-2022)
You’re going to want to get a bunch of these for your board. Just click on the image for more info.
Please consider pitching in to support Alan’s caffeine habit. It’s the only thing that keeps him going. - Unreleased Music By Beyoncé Stolen From Car In Atlanta
“The theft of the materials, stored on five thumb drives, … along with footage, show plans and concert set lists, … happened on July 8, two days before Beyoncé began a four-day residency at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium.” – AP
- “Gorky Park” Author Martin Cruz Smith Dead At 82
“(He) had just published Hotel Ukraine, the 11th and final installment in his Arkady Renko detective series, three days before he died. The novel featured his detective hero grappling with the usual concerns — official corruption, a brutal murder — as well as the same debilitating illness faced by Mr. Smith.” – The Washington Post (MSN)
- Hollywood Bowl LA Phil Season Opens On A Down Note
One of the highlights of this season has fallen victim to a baffling Venezuela travel ban. Gustavo Dudamel can no longer bring his Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra in August. That now means that Dudamel will spend only a single week at the Bowl during his penultimate summer as L.A. Phil music director. – Los Angeles Times
- Historic Documents Stolen Ten Years Ago From Dutch National Archives Are Found In Attic
A decade ago, an employee stole 25 priceless documents from the Netherlands’ National Archives in the Hague. The trove included 16th-century records of clandestine government affairs, a 15th-century letter from a knight and documents from the Dutch East India Company. – Smithsonian
- AI Slop Is Swamping Publishing
Creative professionals have long found themselves amid an existential crisis in a market where profits are slim and the vast majority of them will not make a living wage solely from their art. Those matters have become exacerbated tenfold by the speedy implementation of generative-AI technology within their spaces. – Paste
- Photos as Art — Geometric Compositions of Spare Beauty
- Bronx Museum Picks A New Director
Shamim M. Momin is, most recently director of curatorial affairs at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle and co-founder of Los Angeles Nomadic Division, succeeds Klaudio Rodriguez, who left his executive director post last August. – The New York Times
- First Look At LACMA’s New Home
Created to house the museum’s permanent art collection, the David Geffen Galleries increase the total museum space from 130,000 square feet to 220,000 square feet. – Los Angeles Magazine
- Columbia University In Discussion To Pay Trump Administration $200 Million
Part of the money would be paid to the government, people familiar with the matter said. White House officials said the deal also includes payments to individual students and professors whose rights allegedly have been violated. – The Wall Street Journal
- Kennedy Center’s Director Of Jazz Joins Long Line Of Leaders Quitting
He is the latest administrator to leave the performing arts center following the Trump takeover. Other administrators who also left included Renée Fleming, Shonda Rhimes and Ben Folds. – OperaWire
- Restaurants Consider Ditching Recorded Music Because Of Higher Licensing Fees
The National Restaurant Assn. said its members pay an average of $4,500 per year to license music, or 0.5% of the average U.S. small restaurant’s total annual sales. “This may not seem like a large amount, but for an industry that runs on an average pre-tax margin of 3%-5%, this cost is significant.” – Los Angeles Times
- The Harvard Linguist Who’s Figured Out How Algorithms Have Shaped Our Language
“I want to balance being a ‘ha-ha funny’ TikToker with academic credibility. It’s a little hard to strike that balance when you are talking about ‘Skibidi Toilet’ on the internet.” – The New York Times
- La Scala To Ticket-Buyers: No Flip Flops! (We Mean It!!)
The venue is stepping up the enforcement of its dress code this summer, reminding patrons via signs in the foyer to dress “in keeping with the decorum of the theater.” The underdressed will not be allowed inside, according to its policy, which is also printed on tickets, nor will they be reimbursed. – The New York Times
- Is It An Honor Just To Be Nominated?
These shows, and actors, may find out tomorrow at the Emmy nominations. – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)
- It Might Be Time To Revive This Forgotten Pulitzer Prize-Winner’s Plays
“Gale didn’t coin the term ‘think global, act local,’ but that’s what Sodality does: Gale’s stories imagine an anti-capitalist vision of ‘sodality’ that could extend across the world, if only women were in charge.” – LitHub
