ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

Stories

Carlos Acosta Is Building A Dance Center In A Multiethnic London Neighborhood

"His arts education charity, the Acosta Dance Foundation, has set up its global headquarters in Woolwich. Housing five dance studios, it aims to teach styles from across the world. … He said he located the centre in this part of south-east London because of the many locals with African heritage." - BBC

How GoodReads Messes With Authors’ Psyches

The world-ending devastation of the first scathing review. The righteous indignation at the first three-star review. No one understands me. Are these people even literate? Am I even literate? It’s all too much; it doesn’t make you a better writer. Block the site and focus on your work. - The Guardian

The GoodReads Review Revenge

A Goodreads blitzkrieg can derail an entire publication schedule, freak out commercial book clubs that planned to discuss the release, or even prompt nervous publishers to cut the marketing budget for controversial titles. - The Atlantic

Musicians Have The Same Issues As Actors, Writers. So Why Aren’t They Also On Strike?

All the fears and complaints that Hollywood actors and writers have are a reality for musicians and songwriters, too. Yet the rockers, pop singers and hip-hop artists are not on strike to protest their paltry royalties or AI inroads. One big reason? They’re not unionized. - Los Angeles Times

At This Point In Our Culture, What Is History For?

Ironically, the education of more and more people in the United States has led to an expansion of potential audiences for quality, and progressive, history. It has also generated a series of unresolved questions about overt and implicit politics, style, and the identity of the historian as a writer and a public person. - Boston Review

Two Art Vandals Who Glued Themselves To A Raphael Painting Fined $1,600 Each

The Dresden prosecutor’s office announced on July 21 that the two activists, Jakob Beyer and Maike Grunst, would be fined €1,500 ($1,600) each for the act. - Artnet

One Of South Asia’s Great Architects Helps Victims Of Pakistan’s Floods Rebuild With Their Own Hands

Yasmeen Lari, who's spent nearly two decades creating and promoting architecture for the poor using inexpensive traditional materials and techniques, has designed improved, flood-resistant huts made of mud, rice husks, lime, and bamboo for thousands of villagers. Each costs less than $90. - The Guardian

New Ways To Use Old Instruments

 New music for old instruments is, of course, nothing new. Nor is the engagement by composers with varying degrees of historically informed performance. But in scouring the internet, there appear to be new directions revealing unknown aspects of old instruments. - Early Music America

“Here Lies Love”: Inside The 20-Year Journey Of David Byrne’s Imelda Marcos Disco Musical To Broadway

"Democracy, it's been said, isn't easy. Neither is examining its terrible fragility through the form of a deeply fun, fairly avant-garde song-and-dance show. … Does real democracy stand a chance, if old-school authoritarianism has a good beat and you can dance to it?" - Variety

Bay Area Musicians Fight Back Against The Gig Economy For A Living Wage

With each musician guaranteed $200 for an hour-long set, “we’ve presented about 400 concerts featuring 500 musicians, reaching about 18,000 listeners." - San Francisco Classical Voice

“Barbie”, Greta Gerwig’s Hot Pink Philosophical Experiment

"Barbie combines the rules of the movie musical ... with the investments of a Beckett or a Ionesco play. … (It's) a highly symbolic exercise where theoretical entities get to speak for themselves, and where real people get to tell anthropomorphized theoretical entities what effects they have on the human experience." - Literary Hub

What Was Remarkable About Conductor Carlos Kleiber

Like Kleiber, Klaus Tennstedt and Leonard Bernstein seemed to harness everything they knew in the heat of the moment. But Kleiber also had structural rigour and brisk tempos that gave his performances an infectious buoyancy. - Gramophone

Spotify’s Stock Is Tanking This Week. Why?

Spotify said recent price increases are expected to have “minimal impact” on the company’s total revenue in the third quarter. - CNBC

The First Lady Of Brazilian Jazz, Leny Andrade, Is Dead At 80

"(She) was a percussive, samba-driven improviser, an interpreter as worldly-wise as Edith Piaf and a consummate nightclub artist. With a thick, husky voice seasoned by cigarette smoke and late hours, Andrade sang torridly of love; she could also swing as hard as any American jazz singer." - NPR

Construction Of Philadelphia’s Long-Awaited Calder Museum Has Finally Begun

"Calder Gardens, the long-awaited showcase for the art of native son Alexander Calder, is finally moving toward reality. The new museum will be located on Center City's Benjamin Franklin Parkway, between 21st and 22nd Streets across from the Barnes Foundation and near several major cultural institutions." - MSN (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Our Free Newsletter

Join our 30,000 subscribers

Latest

Don't Miss

function my_excerpt_length($length){ return 200; } add_filter('excerpt_length', 'my_excerpt_length');