Josh Kosman: "When a composer pleads for a more sympathetic view of Levine because of his advocacy for new music, or when an opera buff clings to Levine’s recordings of the standard repertoire, that’s a tell. It says that wrongs inflicted on others don’t merit a full moral standing, at least not when weighed against the benefits to oneself....
"The unevenness of response across the London halls, from the vagueness and uncertainty of the SBC to the Wigmore Hall’s dauntless ongoing programme of streamed recitals, with audiences to be readmitted as soon as possible, has been mirrored across the country." - The Guardian
The Palms Springs Art Museum, a low-slung building designed by E. Stewart Williams in 1974, is emblematic of the Midcentury Modern architecture now synonymous internationally with the desert enclave. Rather than a civic celebration of one of the town’s greatest cultural contributions, as the 2016 plan envisioned, the council opted instead for a civic celebration of the misdemeanor crime...
The choreographer’s eclectic inspirations wind like a scenic highway through American culture, from ballet to figure skating, from Frank Sinatra to Philip Glass. - Washington Post
"The loss of broadcast exclusivity is going to accelerate cord cutting as younger viewers gravitate toward the streaming platforms. The loss of coveted younger viewers will reduce total local TV viewership. Still worse, as local TV stations fall into an inescapable vortex toward irrelevance to advertisers, it will become tougher and tougher for them to negotiate with their cable...
After a long-invested dictator falls, the Sudanese people (and some of the rest of the world) may gain access to the archaeological sites that show off the history of their country. "The ancient city of Meroe — part of a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2011 — is a four-hour drive from Khartoum, northeast along the Nile River. The pyramids here,...
In some cases, artists will never work again; some venues have shut down; and the cultural life of Britain has taken a beating. Artists including Ai Weiwei explain how the year worked, or didn't. - The Guardian (UK)
How "democratic" are these streaming Oscars when they're almost impossible to find, and expensive to subscribe to, in the UK? The coronavirus, and attendant openings and lockdowns, is mostly to blame, of course, but also: "Streaming infrastructure in the UK is less well-established than in the US, so outside major players such as Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ and Apple, distributors do...
Things aren't necessarily getting easier for museum directors thinking about what to do with their collections, and whether they should rely on their boards for money - or sell some art. "The debate has grown heated in recent weeks, pitting museum against museum, and forcing the — which serves as the industry’s referee and moral watchdog — to...
At Netflix, Bridgerton (at least the first season) succeeded beyond executives' wildest dreams. But the Shondaland production team wants a lot more than just Netflix success. No surprise, they need a lot more content, at all times. Podcasts, articles, behind the scenes snippets, TikToks, Instagram Stories, rebranded books (since the series comes from a book series). Welcome to 2021.-...
And they're not shy about asking the union to move up the timeline - please. "We feel unheard, we feel left out, and we feel way farther behind than any other industry when it comes to putting in place practical protocols that would get us back to work." - The New York Times
Gus Casely-Hayford has a vision for the new V&A East. "The space itself will be accessible in every possible way. We’ll build around it digital technologies, so you can both engage with the collection while you’re there and leave something of yourself behind, like comments. So it becomes not just a repository of objects, but of people’s thoughts and...
Darrow was "best known as Manolito Montoya in the hit Western The High Chaparral," but he was also "an activist who worked to expand the roles offered to Latinos on screen. In 1972, Darrow, Ricardo Montalban, Carmen Zapata and Edith Diaz founded the Screen Actors Guild Ethnic Minority Committee. Darrow was also a vice president of Nostros, the organization...
Don't just salivate over Ulysses, The Wasteland, and the soon-to-come centennial of 1922. Where would modernist English literature be without Great Gatsby? Mrs. Dalloway? John Dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer? Or Hemingway's In Our Time? - The New York Times
It's not easy for film and TV production location scouts at the moment. There's a lot of digital photography, and a lot of after-the-big-Zoom-meetings adaptation. One location manager "wonders if she’ll soon be using her new iPhone 12, which has Lidar light detection and ranging capability, to scout locations." - Variety
