As the continent’s economic power grows, cities are building performing arts centers as badges of their new global clout. The complexes are usually called opera houses (the idea of “opera” still carries real prestige), but they usually have another auditorium for dance and/or drama, and often a black box as well – and all those stages need people to run them and shows to present. These theaters are sprouting up from China to Kazakhstan to the Persian Gulf, as flashy freestanding buildings or (sometimes) in high-end shopping malls.
Archives for March 2018
Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.28.18
April Showers: 28 La Salle University Deaccessions in Three Christie’s Auctions (with estimates)
Without a press release, let alone any fanfare, Christie’s has now published the complete catalogue information (including presale estimates) for 28 of the 46 works that were deaccessioned by La Salle University to bankroll its … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-03-28
Chummy MacGregor And “Moon Dreams”
Chummy MacGregor was born on this day in 1903 and died on March 9, 1973. It’s the rare listener to modern jazz who doesn’t know of the MacGregor composition “Moon Dreams,” which … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-03-28
Contemporary Music Has A Label Problem
Classical or art music has undergone a sea change over the last two decades or so. Music historians debate over when the Common Practice Period — characterized by tonality — began or ended exactly, but most generally put its demise roughly coinciding with the start of the 20th century. When many laypeople think of modern art music, they think immediately of the dissonant Modern period. That’s when composers deliberately eschewed any conventional notions of melody or harmony.
A Decline In UK Museum Attendance
In 2008/09, the number of visitors to 15 museums funded by the central government was 39.7 million. This increased every year to a high point of 50.8 million in 2014/15. The numbers have dropped consistently since and will be around 46.5 million in 2017/18, the financial year that ended on 31 March.
How Harassment Is Institutionally Supported In The Theatre?
It’s a matter of sexual harassment and abuse being a major public health and safety issue in all sectors of our society, and wanting to do something about it, especially when the leadership of arts institutions tend to do whatever it takes to preserve themselves first, at the direct cost of the health and safety of the individuals they’re supposed to serve.
Get Your Big Ears On
Contained within a walkable radius of historic downtown Knoxville — in a range of ornate landmark theaters, refurbished industrial spaces, art galleries, churches, and clubs — it creates its own atmospheric climate, along with a center of gravity. From its first iteration in 2009, the festival has been a locus of expedition, defined more by a go-anywhere ethos than by any style or genre allegiance.
Violist Wins Suit Against Orchestra For Damaging His Hearing During Wagner
The case won by Chris Goldscheider has huge implications for the industry and the health and safety of musicians. It is the first time a judge has scrutinised the music industry’s legal obligations towards musicians’ hearing.
An Extraordinary Personal Reflection On Climate Change By Composer John Luther Adams (Read This!)
“As a composer, I believe that the best gift I can offer our troubled world is music. Some composers choose to address the political issues of their times directly in their music. But, although I’ve been politically active all my life, the heart of my music lies elsewhere—again, in the Earth. In order to renew human culture, we sometimes need to step outside of culture, to remember that we are only a small part of the larger order of things. Although my work is in culture, I search for my music at the intersection of human imagination and what we call “nature,” which is the ultimate source of everything that we are as individuals, as societies, and as a species.”
The (Doomed) Morality Campaign To Get ‘Married … With Children’ Cancelled
“The culture wars never really went away, but … now feels like a great time to discuss one of the greatest sources of controversy of the past 30 years – Married … With Children, an edge-busting TV sitcom that predated the Streisand Effect but may have been one of its earliest examples.”
Adobe Develops AI Tools To Manipulate Your Eye (Implications For Art)
One of the prototypes, called Project Scene Stitch, illustrates how an algorithm could be used to replace ugly buildings in the foreground of a photo—a user would enter some key words, and the algorithm would find another image that would fit naturally into the space the user wanted to fill.
Merchant And Ivory Weren’t Just A Filmmaking Team; They Were A Couple For 40 Years. James Ivory Explains Why They Kept That Secret
Reporter Ryan Gibney: “Even with the release in 1987 of Maurice, they batted away any prying questions about their private lives. When I ask Ivory why this was, he comes as close to calling me a blasted fool as someone so urbane can. ‘Well, you just wouldn’t,’ he splutters.” (includes grousing about the lack of nudity in Call Me by Your Name)
Louvre Turns Down Culture Minister’s Suggestion For A Mona Lisa “Grand Tour”
Françoise Nyssen, France’s culture minister, made headlines when she suggested that the Louvre might send its best-known painting, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, on a “grand tour”. The museum, however, has politely rebuffed the proposal.
El Sistema Faces Tough Times In Venezuela Following Founder’s Death
“Executive director Eduardo Mendez said the program must overcome a crippling economic crisis that has forced hundreds of musicians to leave the country and move on from the loss of José Antonio Abreu, who created the orchestra network known as El Sistema. … He said 8 percent of the program’s teachers have recently left the country to seek a better life abroad. The network’s marquee Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra has lost 42 percent of its musicians over the past six months, though most of the vacancies have been filled with younger musicians.”
As Artistic Director Leaves, Madison Ballet Contracts By More Than Half
“Facing an uncertain future with the departure of its longtime artistic director” – W. Earle Smith, who’s been at the helm since 1999, leading the company’s transition from community-based to professional and adding a ballet school – “Madison Ballet plans to cut its company of dancers by more than half and drastically trim its season for 2018-19. But its leaders insist the company – part of the city’s artistic landscape for decades – will keep dancing.”
Jacqueline Woodson Wins World’s Largest Children’s Book Prize ($600K)
The American author is this year’s winner of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, funded by the Swedish government in honor of the author of the Pippi Longstocking books. “Woodson made her children’s debut in 1990 with Last Summer with Maizon, first in a trilogy exploring the friendship of two girls. Her 2014 memoir-in-verse, Brown Girl Dreaming, received the National Book Award.”
How Exactly Does Orpheus Chamber Orchestra Make The No-Conductor Thing Work?
Reporter Mark MacNamara talks to members past and present about how the collective’s members make musical decisions, how they give each other feedback, what kind of person makes a good Orpheus member (meek and deferential won’t cut it), and whether the Orpheus model cam work elsewhere.
Canceled Deals And Pulped Books, Unintended Casualties Of Publishing’s #MeToo Moment
“The list of prominent authors mired in harassment scandals has grown in recent months, and now includes best-selling children’s book authors, prominent political journalists and a National Book Award-winning novelist. As allegations of sexual harassment sweep through the publishing industry – resulting in canceled book deals, boycotts by bookstores and expulsions from writers’ conferences – publishers, agents and editors are grappling with how to tackle the issue … as they cut ties with accused men in hopes of minimizing any collateral damage.”
‘The Diary Of Anne Frank’ With A Multiracial Cast Makes Sense In 2018 America
Russell M. Dembin: “For me it was more than fine: [the] casting elevated the play to another level, embracing the characters’ Jewishness while speaking to a time in which many people, not only American Jews but especially communities of color and other historically marginalized groups, feel less safe and welcome in this country.”
Multiracial Productions Of ‘The Diary Of Anne Frank? Bad Idea
Wendy Rosenfield: “Even without seeing them, I know this much: Anne’’ story isn’t multicultural; it’s Jewish. … This would all be admirable if the voices at the center of the (nonfiction) story weren’t already marginalized, and weren’t marginalized further by a casting process that once again sought to replace the attic denizens’ identities with something more ‘universal.'”
Can Sponsoring Critics Be A Workable Model? This Sponsored Critic Says Yes
Fergus Morgan, whose six-reviews-a-week gig covering London’s Vault Festival was paid for by the local business improvement district: “The standard concern raised is that subsidised criticism jeopardises the integrity of the artist-critic relationship, that a reviewer’s opinion of a production will be skewed if he relies on the show itself for his livelihood. It’s a valid concern, but there are innumerable ways around it.”
Are Arts Orgs Being Too Profligate With Naming Rights?
With institutions ever more reliant on the big gifts that come with naming rights to fund new facilities or renovations – and especially when, as with the Sacklers or Kochs, controversy gets attached to those names – do cultural organizations need to be more cautious?
No, The Mona Lisa Will Not Be Touring France, Says The Louvre
Earlier this month, French culture minister Françoise Nyssen announced that she would like to see the painting travel to different museums around the country as a way to counter what she called “cultural segregation.” Then Louvre director had to tell her that the Mona Lisa won’t even be going downstairs for next year’s big Leonardo show, let alone out of the building.
#MeToo Meets Reality TV (It Had To Happen): New Series Busts Harassers On Camera
“[The Israeli series] The Silence Breaker is billed as an investigative factual entertainment format that will expose real-life sexual harassment at the workplace. Using hidden cameras, the show will go undercover to document harassment while also telling the victims’ stories. Each story will end with an on-camera confrontation with the harasser.”
Really? A Contemporary Art Theme Park? (One That’s Ripping Off The Artists It’s Riffing Off, No Less)
A new tourist attraction in Bandung, Indonesia, called Rabbit Town features installations that bear extraordinary resemblances to Chris Burden’s Urban Light (at the entrance to LACMA), Yayoi Kusama’s Obliteration Room (where visitors put polka dots on the walls), and the Museum of Ice Cream.
Leading Russian Stage Director, Under House Arrest At Home, Is The Talk Of Berlin
“Kirill S. Serebrennikov … [is] accused of embezzling 133 million rubles, or about $2.3 million, in government funds allocated to a festival he ran. For many in Russia and abroad, however, the case against Mr. Serebrennikov seems like a piece of politically motivated theater: punishment for a provocative artist who has been an outspoken critic of President Vladimir V. Putin. … The Gogol Center, the avant-garde theater he has led since 2012, [is now making a high-profile visit to the German capital].”