While many curators today have a status on a par with the artists with whom they work, it was not always thus. The celebrity status of the curator has mushroomed with the professionalization of art, the multiplication of international events, and, not least, with difficult-to-define contemporary art being in desperately in need of able ambassadors to the public.
Leadership! Business Schools (And A Business Magazine) Discover Orchestra Conducting
“Read however many books you like about the principles of leadership, but in watching an orchestra rehearse a new piece for two hours, you can learn everything there is to know about leadership.”
Writing A Singable English Version Of The World’s First Good Opera Wasn’t As Easy As It Sounded
“The technical problems of making a singable version of an Italian opera can be stated very simply: you have to make English sentences fit music written for Italian ones. However, this is like trying to fit a set of spanners into a velvet box made for a dinner-service. It also means you have to flip the polarity of the whole language.”
The Art World Has To Ditch The Rich Russians
“The great myth about the art world is that it is loaded with money. It is, of course, but only at the top end. Collectors, successful dealers and some artists are rich. Yet around this elite, and servicing it, is a constellation of magazines, books, critics and websites, curators and exhibitions that is not so profitable.”
From Hollywood Star To Hollywood Power Broker (And Star)
“Witherspoon has certainly emerged, somewhat unexpectedly, as one of the flagwavers of Hollywood feminism.”
Turns Out First-Time TV Directors Are, By The Numbers, Almost All White Guys
“Even as shows such as ‘Black-ish,’ ‘Empire’ and ‘Cristela’ broaden the diversity of characters and stories on television, the opportunities for first-time female and minority directors on TV remain limited.”
Writers Don’t Get Respect On Movies And Thus Prefer TV, Says Writer
“Although I understand why they treat writers so badly, it’s not in their interests to do so. They will get poorer work from their writers. Create an atmosphere of trust and [writers] will take risks and write better for you. Create an atmosphere of fear and neglect and they won’t.”
This Whole ‘Overlooked Female Artist’ Trope Is Getting Annoying, And It Has To Change
“The rhetoric surrounding these ‘rediscovered’ artists excludes too much about the specifics of their lives and the sociopolitical contexts that have perpetuated their exclusion — not simply from notoriety, but also from market success and a place in art education. Instead of acknowledging these forces, we often say women artists were too unorthodox for their times.”
Novelist Robert Stone Was Inspired By War Abroad And At Home
The novelist died at 77 on Saturday. “‘It’s literally true that the world is seen by the superpowers as a grid of specific targets,’ he told The Paris Review in 1985.’“We’re all on military maps. There happens to be no action in those zones at present, but they’re there. And then there are the wars we fight with ourselves in our own cities. It is the simple truth that, wherever you are, there is an armed enemy present, not far away.'”
What’s Next For Thrice-Detained Cuban Artist Tania Bruguera?
“For me, this is ‘Arte de Conducta’ — Behavior Art — and it’s a piece that is decided not by the artist but by a political condition. It was like a test to see how ready everyone was to create a new behavioral dynamic. Right now, people have an on/off button that they turn on and off when something like this happens. I wanted to change that reaction.”
The Vast Reach Of The Courtroom Sketch Artist
“Shafer Edwards uses alcohol-based markers to sketch out courtroom scenes on a 9″ by 12″ pad of paper. She doesn’t use pencils to outline and she never erases. ‘I love the stress. I love the immediacy, the spontaneity,’ she says. ‘There is a buzz. There is this electricity that goes on.'”
Legendary Cartoonist Robert Crumb Reacts To The Charlie Hebdo Massacre By Drawing Cartoons Of A Mohammed’s Ass
“It was tasteless, that’s what they say. And perhaps it was. I’m not going to make a career out of baiting some fucking religious fanatics, you know, by insulting their prophet. I wouldn’t do that. That seems crazy. But then, after they got killed, I just had to draw that cartoon.”
Why Did The British Suppress A Documentary About Concentration Camps After The 1945 Liberation?
“The British thought the Germans needed to be nurtured as allies against the growing power of the Soviet Union. But were such compunctions realistic? Would showing the film to postwar Germany have been a propaganda reverse for the British, serving to alienate the Germans and tip the emerging cold war in the Soviets’ favour?”
Life As A Character Actor, By A Character Actor Who Just Died Too Early
Taylor Negron: “My heyday is coming to an end. Parts for the alternative everyman are increasingly scarce. I have had to let go of my dream of being in a Hobbit movie. This will never happen unless Bilbo Baggins orders a pizza and we all know that when a hobbit orders a pizza in Middle Earth, someone is going down a wet, nasty, dirty hole.”