Romance isn’t pretending not to be about politics. “Romance is political because all art is political, but also specifically because of what it is and who makes it. As the genre grapples with its place in the resistance, it confronts the structures of privilege and exclusion that have shaped the genre for decades. It is a reflection of America, after all, in more ways than one.”
Is It Time For The UK To Stop Building New Museums?
“A recent government report says that Britain should stop building new museums and focus on the ones it already has. But with limited public funding available, how far can existing museums diversify and grow?” An official with Britain’s Museums Association agrees with the report, while former Culture Minister Ed Vaizey has a different idea.
Meet The Choreographer Who Made The Sally-Hawkins-And-Sea-Monster Dance In ‘The Shape Of Water’
“The man behind these moves is Roberto Campanella. A former National Ballet of Canada soloist and current artistic director of the contemporary ballet troupe ProArteDanza, he’s no stranger to film sets. For the last 13 years, he’s contributed movement coordination and choreography to a variety of projects, such as the Silent Hill horror movie franchise, Hallmark’s A Nutcracker Christmas (with Sascha Radetsky) and [Shape of Water director Guillermo] del Toro’s vampire show on FX, The Strain. We spoke with Campanella about his latest collaboration.”
How The American Indian Became A Marketing Symbol And National Mascot
From the status of Pocahontas and Squanto as quasi-mythical figures in the nation’s founding, through the use of Sitting Bull as an attraction in Buffalo Bill’s show, to the use of generic Indian figures as branding symbols for everything from cigarettes to baking powder to sports teams, Carolina Miranda looks at a “wildly complicated” history.
The Fall Of Kings: Henceforth, Only Queens Shall Reign At ‘Medieval Times’
“For the 34 years Medieval Times has been in business, [its] monarch has been a man. But the show, which draws an estimated 2.5 million customers each year, is replacing all of its kings with queens. And its peculiar brand of dinner theater – a sort of G-rated Game of Thrones – is taking on an unlikely resonance amid the national jousting over gender equality provoked by the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.”
How A Small Appalachian Town Made Itself Into An Arts Destination – By Raising Its Taxes
“City officials [in Berea, Kentucky] count 40 galleries in total, and three new restaurants and a gallery-cafe have opened in the past two years – not a bad showing of entrepreneurship in a city of fewer than 20,000 people. … But it wasn’t always like this.” Ivy Brashear reports on how it got to be like this.
Choir Of King’s College, Cambridge Seeks New Director For First Time In Decades
“Stephen Cleobury has confirmed that he will step down as Director of Music of King’s College, Cambridge in September next year. Such has been the length of his tenure that it’s the first time the college has sought someone to fill the post since 1982.”
Giant Building-Size Murals And Hipster Culture
Like other novelties of the post-hipster age, the source of the value is not just the finished work, but also the tedious and rarefied conditions of its production. The spectacle of painters hanging from a wall is as much Colossal’s product as the murals themselves. Colossal offers time-lapse footage and photos for clients to share on social channels.
Is There Really Such A Thing As ‘The Self’? Yes, And Science Really Can Study It
The idea that there is no “self” that can be fully apprehended, let alone studied, goes all the way back to David Hume – and up to Daniel Dennett today. In philosophy, it’s called antirealism – and Şerife Tekin is here to demolish it.
Why Dealers Are Better Judges Of Authenticity Than Academics
“Many of the paintings I decline are accompanied by ‘certificates of expertise’, signed by certain academics who, unlike myself as a seller, are not financially liable. When I have crossed swords with such figures over the years, they have frequently been amazed that I would quibble with their learned opinions. Perhaps they would like to explain to buyers who have bought paintings with their certificates why these have been rejected for resale and not accepted for any major museum show?”
Did Telling Stories Help Us To Evolve As Humans?
Anthropologists have long theorized that humans developed “moralistic high-gods” as a way of promoting shared norms and prosocial behaviors. What is religion, after all, but a patchwork quilt of stories reminding humans how to behave—and, more importantly, how not to behave? But religion is thought to have emerged only with the advent of agriculture and large-scale, politically complex human settlements.
Trump Supporters Flood Social Media With Bad Reviews Of Guggenheim Museum
An army of amateur art critics soon flooded social media, from Facebook to Yelp, with their grievances. One particularly pissed off Yelper gave the museum a one-star review, the same paltry rating he bestowed upon a Connecticut Cheesecake Factory and the Art Lounge at Newark airport, commenting, “This POS institution thinks its funny to offer our president a toilet. GFY Guggenheim.”
Culture Is Being Priced Out Of Our Cities. What To Do?
As cities lose their creative communities and the spaces they operate from, they become at risk of becoming what Mark Auge referred to as “non-places”—homogenized cities in which aesthetic diversity and local authenticity is diminished. This impacts cities’ vibrancy and distinctiveness, economic dynamism and capacity for innovation. These cities face a dilemma: How can they continue to attract new residents and investment while preserving the cultural and creative milieu that made them desirable in the first place?
Jeff Koons Defends Giant Tulip Work That Sparked Protest In Paris
The work is not imagined as a memorial but as a message of hope to deliver to the present and future generations: “Created as a symbol of remembrance, optimism and healing, Bouquet of Tulips symbolizes the act of offering, represented by the outstretched hand holding the brightly colored flowers.” The artist rather wished to express the painful context of the attacks into a symbolic work, both in its iconography and in its aesthetic experience.”
Remember When The iPad Was Going To Transform Publishing?
“I’m not saying News Corp. or Conde Nast, publisher of Vogue and GQ, would have been worth as much as Google if they hadn’t bought into the iPad hype. But they did lose precious time and money following Apple down the iPad rabbit hole when they could have focused on Facebook, internet video, smartphone apps, mobile websites, their own subscription products or other promising areas. Newspaper and magazine publishers no longer treat the iPad as a priority, if they devote resources to it at all.”
Ferry McFerryface? Social Media Naming Vote Goes Wrong (But Not The Way You Think)
When the name was announced back in November, Transport Minister Constance tweeted as though his hands were tied and there was nothing he could do. He said that while Ferry McFerryfacce wasn’t “everyone’s cup of tea,” the “people voted for it.” It turns out that was a lie.
Coco Schumann, Jazz Guitarist Who Survived The Holocaust, Dead At 93
“[He] performed alongside Ella Fitzgerald and Marlene Dietrich during a decades-long musical career, but who gave his most consequential performances as an inmate of the Nazi concentration camps where, he said, music saved his life.”
Sundance 2018: Gay Conversion Therapy Drama Wins Grand Jury Prize
“Directed by Desiree Akhavan and starring Chloë Grace Moretz, the adaptation of Emily M Danforth’s 2012 novel [The Miseducation of Cameron Post] secured admiring reviews … for its compassionate study of Christian teenagers struggling with religious disapproval and the injunction to ‘pray away the gay’.”
Marin Alsop Named Artistic Director Of Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra
“‘I’m very honoured to be the first [woman in the post],’ she admitted, ‘but I’m also rather shocked that we can be in this year, in this century, and there can still be ‘firsts’ for women.'”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.29.18
See It Now–Michel Sittow, Extraordinary Painter
Hats off to Estonia, which in celebrating the 100th anniversary of its proclamation as an independent republic in 1918, following the dissolution of the Russian Empire, decided to honor its genius painter – Michel Sittow (c. 1469-1525) – with … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2018-01-29
A Japanese Company Brings a Forest to New York
Kei Takei’s Moving Earth Orient Sphere performs at New York Live Arts, January 25-27. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2018-01-28
Monday Recommendation: Crispell, MacDonald, Tremblay
Marilyn Crispell, Raymond MacDonald, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay: Two Duos, Three Trios (Bruce’s Fingers) … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-01-29
Jazz Congress, Winter JazzFest, shape of jazz to come
The Congress’s sessions included JALC managing and artistic director Wynton Marsalis speaking on race and jazz, women in jazz announcing “yes, we’re here,” and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar keynoting about his love of the music. … read more
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond Jazz Published 2018-01-28
Window Cleaner Rushes To Save Banksy Mural After It Had Been Painted Over
“I was just going to bed when I’d seen that it had been painted over, and someone had said it was still wet,” he said. “Banksy, love him or hate him, has international prestige and he’d gifted the city with his art.” The window cleaner already had his ladders and other equipment prepared for his Monday morning shift, so he headed straight to the bridge in an attempt to save the mural.
UK Government: Foreign Languages Versus Arts Education
Under their model, “modern foreign languages teaching hours are increased at the expense of subjects other than biology, chemistry, classics, English, geography, history, mathematics, and physics teaching hours”. Consequently, 51,000 more curriculum hours are being planned for languages by 2022, which is to be achieved, in part, by cutting hours for art & design, design & technology, drama and music by a collective 19,000 hours.
How Artificial Will Judge Us (The Star System? Really?)
The reputation economy is based on the simplistic, but effective star ratings system. Anyone who’s ever rated their Uber driver or Airbnb host has actively participated. But what happens when algorithms, rather than humans, determine an individual’s reputation score based on multiple data sources and mathematical formulas, promising more accuracy and more flexibility via machine learning?
A Path Out Of The Classical Music Ghetto?
Frankly, I’ve never understood why there has—until recently—been such a demarcation between genres in music. As far back as I can remember, I’ve been enormously responsive to music, independent of genre. I know I’m not alone in this, especially in today’s eclectic musical environment, but for many people, classical music’s vaunted tradition excluded an appreciation of popular or folkloric forms—and heaven forfend that any classical composer should write something as shallow as film music!
The Lost Genius Of African-American Literature
“A half century before the poet Claudia Rankine used her MacArthur ‘genius’ grant to establish an institute partly dedicated to the study of whiteness, [William Melvin] Kelley turned his considerable intellect and imagination to the question of what it is like to be white in this country, and what it is like, for all Americans, to live under the conditions of white supremacy – not just the dramatic cross-burning, neo-Nazi manifestations of it common to his time and our own but also the everyday forms endemic to our national culture.”