ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

Stories

Opera Australia Posts Dismal $10M Deficit

Australia’s largest performing arts company confirmed its Sydney winter season and its much-hyped run of Sunset Boulevard failed to meet box office forecasts but it had sold out its summer season off the back of La Traviata and The Magic Flute. - Sydney Morning Herald

Harvard Law School Bought A Copy Of The Magna Carta For $27. Turns Out It’s Real

British historians were able to verify the document’s true authenticity after an academic stumbled across the item while looking through Harvard Law School’s online archives. - CNN

Willem Dafoe On His Upcoming First Season Leading The Venice Theater Biennale

Unsurprisingly, considering his decades with New York experimental-theater legends the Wooster Group (which will perform at the Biennale), Dafoe is focusing on the avant-garde, with work by directors Thomas Ostermeier and Milo Rau. Says Dafoe, “Some of these pieces will sail, some won’t. What’s important is people talking about stuff.” - The Guardian

The Case For Salonen To Return To The LA Philharmonic

In L.A. he has a venue like no other in Disney Hall. The L.A. Phil is an orchestra more flexible than any other, and in L.A. Salonen has benefited from daring administrations able to afford Salonen’s effort to create an orchestra for a new era — a promise the San Francisco Symphony couldn’t, or wouldn’t, deliver. - Los Angeles...

Texas Proposes Law To Punich Bookstores For Selling “Unsafe” Books

Specifically, the bill, HB 1375, authored by state Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth, would hold bookstores legally liable for the "distribution, transmission, or display of harmful material to a minor." - WFAA

Is It Ethical To Buy Used Books?

Used-book stores or vintage-record shops, where hidden gems lurk like geodes waiting to be split open, play a role, too. Such venues don’t just preserve art; they bring enthusiasts together, spark conversations and cultivate new audiences. - The New York Times

Salman Rushdie’s Attempted Murderer Sentenced To 25 Years In Prison

“A jury found Hadi Matar, 27, guilty of attempted murder and assault in February. … Matar received the maximum 25-year sentence for the (stabbing) of Rushdie and seven years for wounding a man who was on stage with him. The sentences must run concurrently because both victims were injured in the same event.” - AP

Why We All Need To Study History

When students, and school boards, ask, Why history? What are we supposed to be getting out of this? the best answer is still that one word: judgment. We demand it of all professionals: doctors, lawyers, chefs, and quarterbacks. And we need it most in the profession of citizen.

The Oscars Want To Make Voters See Movies They Vote On. But How Do You Enforce It?

That might seem like an obvious rule for voters of any award: View the works you’re judging. But when I recently spoke with several Academy members about the new condition, the lack of consensus about how to judge a movie was striking. - The Atlantic

Republican Tax Bill Would Allow President To Kill Non-Profits

Among those amendments, buried on page 380 of the draft, is a section that would enable Trump’s secretary of the Treasury to denounce any nonprofit as a “terrorist-supporting organization” and strip it of its tax-exempt status. - The Intercept

Dance World Surveys Damage Already Done By Withdrawal Of NEA Grants

“It was 5:45 pm on Friday, May 2, when Megan Kiskaddon, executive director of Seattle’s On the Boards, learned that the grant for that night’s performance had been rescinded. … The National Endowment for the Arts was now taking back the $20,000 they’d pledged for the co-commission.” - Dance Magazine

Gauguin’s Final Self-Portrait May Not Be A Selfie After All

“The Kunstmuseum Basel …, which has housed Self-Portrait with Glasses (1903) since 1945, is re-examining the work following claims that it may have been painted not by Gauguin, but by a Vietnamese revolutionary and close acquaintance after the artist’s death.” - Artnet

Auschwitz Memorial Creates Digital Replica Of Death Camp For Filmmakers’ Use

“Organisers of the Picture from Auschwitz project said they have harnessed ‘cutting-edge 3D scanning technologies’ to build a digital model of the concentration camp … ‘down to every single brick’.” Yet to come are accurate digital replicas of the gas chambers and crematoria as well as scanning the adjacent Birkenau site. - The Guardian

Remaining Kennedy Center Employees Start Unionization Process

“The union, which they’re calling the ‘Kennedy Center United Arts Workers,’ would be in partnership with … the UAW. It would consist of nonsupervisory employees from artistic programming, education, marketing and development departments, along with administrators of the Washington National Opera and the National Symphony Orchestra.” - The Washington Post (MSN)

$34.5 Billion Mega-Merger Will Create US Cable TV Behemoth

Charter Communications is the country’s second-largest cable company after Comcast; Cox is also among the largest. … Charter’s footprint includes New York City and Los Angeles, while Cox is a major player in Boston, Phoenix and New Orleans.” The company will be called Cox Communications; Spectrum will be its consumer-facing brand. - The Hollywood Reporter

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');