The studio judges that its “Bandersnatch” project was a success and it’s exploring extending its experiments in letting viewers have more control of the stories they’re watching. But what kinds of stories should these be? – The Guardian
Indigenous Australian Artists: It’s Time We Stop Being Reviewed By White Culture
“It feels like a moment where we are angry and ready enough to address how white Australian review culture maligns Indigenous work by only superficially engaging with it. It feels like a moment where we are ready to sustain our own review culture. We have centuries of white engagement with Indigenous story as evidence for the need to change; we also have our own critics, who show us what’s possible when whiteness loses its frame of evaluative authority over a work.” – The Guardian
A Large Local Arts Funder Searches For A New Leader (And Ponders Some Existential Questions)
Cleveland’s Cuyahoga Arts and Culture is one of the country’s largest local arts funders. As such it has an enormous impact on its arts community. Of course having money to spend supporting the arts is a good thing. But it also gives a funder power. So what kind of leader does CAC want to have? – CANJournal
Off-Broadway’s Best-Connected, Best-Loved Talent-Spotter
“For the past 15 years, [Jason Eagan] has been the remarkably well-connected, stealthily low-profile, principal creative force shaping the innovative Off-Broadway incubator Ars Nova. … He’s the guy who plucked an obscure Billy Eichner out of one Manhattan basement and an unknown Lin-Manuel Miranda out of another; who discovered the alt-cabaret comedian Bridget Everett at midnight at a karaoke bar; who looked upon the glorious excess of Dave Malloy’s nascent War and Peace musical, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, and said, in effect: ‘More.’ ‘Keep going.’ And ‘Yes.'” – The New York Times
Is London’s Proposed New Concert Hall Merely A Play For Bragging Rights?
The scheme is slated to cost nearly £300 million and is London’s volley in an intercontinental game of high culture one-upmanship, which in recent years has produced Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and Jean Nouvel’s Philharmonie in Paris. This arms race for cultural dominion has, in London however, reached new levels of absurdity with the decision to build the new 2,000 seat concert hall less than 300 metres from an existing 2,000 seat concert hall. – dezeen
A Snapshot Of Arts Workers In Local Arts Agencies
A survey by Americans for the Arts gives an idea of salaries and demographics of arts workers across America’s local arts agencies. – Americans for the Arts
Working To Diversify The Buncha-White-Guys World Of Improv
“Improv may still skew white, but things are changing. … The following folks are currently working to alter perceptions and expectations about improv. Some are longtime warriors, others are new to the scene. But all point toward a future in which the stage presents a more diverse mix of ages, nationalities, body types, skin tones, gender identities, sexual orientations, and, yes, even political affiliations.” – American Theatre
Gimlet Media Becomes First Podcast Company To Unionize
“The 83-person staff of Gimlet Media, a podcasting startup acquired by music streaming service Spotify for $230 million in February, is unionizing with the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE). Gimlet was founded in 2014 and produces popular podcasts including Reply All, StartUp, and Crimetown.” – BuzzFeed
The International Campaign To Rebuild And Restock The Mosul University Library
With well over half a million books in Arabic and more than one million antique maps, documents, and other materials (including a 9th-century Quran), the library was one of the most important in the Middle East — until ISIS began its destruction while it occupied the city (2014-17). Now the NGO Book Aid International and a project called the Mosul Book Bridge are gradually undoing the damage. – Publishing Perspectives
An Attempt At An NPR For Conservatives?
The nightly two-hour show, which is carried on nearly 200 radio stations nationwide and boasts an estimated audience of 1.3 million, might not identify as ideological or political, at least not overtly. But Lee Habeeb has clearly positioned it as a right-of-center alternative to NPR, whose programs such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered also emphasize skillful story-telling, but which many conservatives perceive, rightly or not, as inhospitable to anything that isn’t progressive or politically correct. – The Daily Beast
A Stolen (And Damaged) deKooning Will Be Shown Before Heading To The Getty For Repair
The challenge is bringing the 1955 canvas — an example from de Kooning’s celebrated but also contested “Woman” series, known for their grotesque, even savage renderings of the female nude — back to near-original condition. Ulrich Birkmaier, the Getty Museum’s senior paintings conservator, and Tom Learner, the Getty Conservation Institute’s head of science, have teamed up for the project. They expect the process to take at least a year. – The New York Times
Tulsa Symphony’s New Executive Director: Keith Elder Of Aspen Festival
“Keith C. Elder, whose career as a performing arts administrator has included stints with such prestigious organizations as the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Eastman School of Music, has been named the new executive director of the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra.” – Tulsa World
Why Would Someone Pay Millions For A Copy Of The Mona Lisa?
In Sotheby’s recent New York Old Master sale, a copy of the Mona Lisa soared past its estimate of $80,000-$100,000 to sell for $1.69m. It seems extraordinary that someone would pay so much for a copy (in fact, that’s probably an auction record for any copy). Then there is the fact that the painting had been offered privately before the auction for considerably less, but with no takers. Some have seen the transaction as suspicious. – The Art Newspaper
CEO Of Cartier: The Arts Define Who We Are
“Whether it is photography, painting, sculpture, or design, the arts define who we are at Cartier. Some of our creations were directly linked to the aesthetics of the Mughal period in India with Cartier looking less to local jewelry and more to miniature paintings. Also, geometric shapes found in Islamic Art inspired the designs of some of our accessories and the ornamental “guilloché” patterns in our watches. Art motifs enter Cartier’s vocabulary and then we use them in intuitive ways, on products without a logo or in the architecture of our booths or boutiques, so that our clients feel they are walking into Cartier’s universe.” – Artnet
Why Are There So Many Movies About Horny Dancers Going Insane And Killing Each Other?
Just in the past year, there’s been Red Sparrow, Suspiria, and Climax. “What is it about dancers that inspires filmmakers to depict them in various forms of total destruction? And, most importantly, how closely do these films hew to real life? In other words, are all dancers really just horny, deranged murderers?” Rachel Handler asks a couple of real-life dancers for the truth. – Vulture
The 25 Top-Earning Authors Of The Past Ten Years
The top name on the list pulled in $290 million more than the runner-up, who in turn grossed just over twice as much as number three. The takeaway? “Franchises make money, and so do adaptations, but if you want to be a literary millionaire, you really have to write a) for children or b) a mystery (or romance) that strikes fear (or lust) in the hearts of the world.” (But isn’t there anyone writing in Chinese, Spanish, or Hindi who’s sold enough books to qualify?) – Literary Hub
Sexing Up Female-Female Relationships For Biopics Isn’t Enough? Now They’re Adding Fake Lesbian Lovers To Movies About Real People
“The latest sapphic storyline to get tongues a-wagging” is Ammonite, starring Kate Winslet as paleontologist Mary Anning and Saoirse Ronan as her entirely fictional lover. Laments Guardian writer (and lesbian) Hannah Jane Parkinson, “It is immensely damaging that LGBTQ relationships are being fetishised for entertainment – and depressing to think that the mass audiences may not be interested in women unless they’re in bed together.” – The Guardian
Harper Lee Hated Monroeville, Ala. For Turning Her ‘Into A Tourist Attraction Like Graceland Or Elvis’: Letter
“The hypocrites in charge, not a one of whom I know, say they are doing this to ‘honor’ me. What they are doing is trying to drown me in their own bad taste, and are embarrassing me beyond endurance.” – The Guardian
Adding Up What The Government Shutdown Cost Museums
“In that time, the Smithsonian — 19 museums including the Cooper Hewitt design museum in New York and the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) and National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, along with the National Zoo — lost an estimated 1 million visitors. … Although national museums (except the Cooper Hewitt) offer free entry, the Smithsonian lost an estimated $3.4m in gross revenue from its gift shops, concessions and IMAX film screenings.” – The Art Newspaper
Thieves Stole €3M Brueghel From Italian Church — But It Was A Copy Put There By The Cops
“The bona fide version of The Crucifixion, donated to Santa Maria Maddalena church in the small Ligurian town of Castelnuovo Magra more than a century ago, was safely stored away last month as part of a carefully concocted bluff.” – The Guardian
Graham Vick’s Opera Company, Always A Community Affair, Has Brought Refugees Into Its Chorus
“Birmingham Opera Company has traditionally cast its chorus from local volunteers. Now it’s extending a welcome to people fleeing countries such as Sudan. In the past decade, the company has seen 90,000 people take part in its productions.” (video) – BBC
Cuba Is Cracking Down On Street Artists. Here’s How They’re Keeping On
Authorities who accepted street art just a couple of years ago are now whitewashing murals, harassing artists, and having them turned out of their studios. Yet they keep on, painting on everything from fallen chunks of concrete to bicycle taxis to El Paquete, the Cuban “internet” that’s passed from house to house on external hard drives. – Pacific Standard
Jewish Theater Is A Real Thing In The US — Why Not In Britain? (There’s No Shortage Of Jews In Theatre There)
“Jewish theatre artists have been central but often unidentified.” (Harold Pinter, Janet Suzman, Antony Sher, David Lan, Tracy Ann Oberman, Nicholas Hytner, …) “Is this an immigrant people’s anxiety around unwelcome attention? ‘We’re a self-effacing community,’ says playwright Samantha Ellis, ‘we’re afraid to put our heads above the parapet.'” – The Guardian
Our Academics Are Trapped In Academia. Can You Help?
On every campus, I meet scholars eager to share what they know outside the walls of their institutions. They find themselves stalled by three factors: lack of knowledge on how media works as an industry, fear of being scorned by their colleagues, and the realization that, in the chase for tenure or promotion, such public work rarely counts toward academic credibility or formal metrics. – Pacific Standard
Spotify Accuses Apple Of Unfair Business Monopoly Practices
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek says that if Spotify pays this cut it has to “artificially inflate” its prices “well above the price of Apple Music.” But if it doesn’t pay, Apple applies “a series of technical and experience-limiting restrictions” that make Spotify an inferior experience. Ek also notes that Apple “routinely blocks our experience-enhancing upgrades,” including locking Spotify and other competitors out of Apple services like Siri, HomePod, and Apple Watch. – The Verge