“Inkitt is marketed as ‘the world’s first data-driven publisher’. The company has built an artificially intelligent algorithm that analyses users’ reading patterns to predict future bestsellers. Once a future bestseller is found, Inkitt works with publishing houses to get these novels to print.”
Museums, And Maybe Audiences, Are Still Worried About Robert Mapplethorpe
“Twenty-five years after a landmark trial over exhibiting Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs, the debate about what can be shown in museums has shifted — but has not completely disappeared.”
Actual Spies Tell What Is And Isn’t Realistic In ‘The Americans’
“Real spies know that world is make-believe. Still, when they’re done lurking in shadows – or typing away in their cubicles, more likely – they often come home and turn on the show … Spies recognize that the show exaggerates, but they also mostly praise the ways in which it rings true – and even the ways it doesn’t.”
It All Comes Down To The Face: Ta-Nehisi Coates On The Controversy Over Casting The Nina Simone Biopic
“It’s equally difficult to ignore the fact that, while it is hard for all women in Hollywood, it is particularly hard for black women, and even harder for black women who share the dark skin, broad nose and full lips of Nina Simone.”
Martin Charnin Is Still Directing ‘Annie’, Four Decades After Its Premiere
“The fun of it for me is that every time I do it, I learn something new about it, and in theory every production that precedes the one I’m doing makes the one I’m doing the beneficiary of the stuff that I’ve learned. So it keeps growing, it keeps changing.” (includes memories of being in the original West Side Story)
‘She Was Less Like A Recluse, More Like A Bomb Going Off’ – The Real Emily Dickinson
“She was promiscuous in her own fashion, deceiving everyone around her with the sly masks she wore. She was faithful to no one but her dog. Her white dress was one more bit of camouflage, to safeguard the witchery of her craft. … Cotton Mather would have burned her for a witch.”
Top Ten UK Attractions Last Year Were All In London (Despite Big Drop In Tate Attendance)
Visitor numbers at Tate Modern fell by more than 1 million in 2015 to 4.7 million – the lowest since 2005. The steep decline represents a 19% fall compared with the previous year. It reverses attendance figures for 2014, when Tate Modern’s visitor numbers grew by 1 million to reach a record-breaking 5.8 million, due in part to the success of the exhibition ‘Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs’.
Russia’s Deputy Culture Minister Arrested, Charged With Embezzlement
“Russia’s deputy culture minister Grigory Pirumov has been detained on embezzlement charges, Russian state media reported on 15 March. Earlier in the day, the Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that several high-ranking culture ministry officials and businessmen were under investigation for allegedly ’embezzling state funds allocated for restoration work on cultural heritage sites’.”
Critics’ Poll Names Top 30 LGBT Films Of All Time
Perhaps predictably, only two of the top ten come from before 1990 (and one of those was 1985); the top two were released in the last five years. Yet the oldest movie on the list goes all the way back to Weimar-era Germany.
The Vatican Tried To Keep This Gay Romance Out Of Italian Cinemas – And Of Course It Backfired
The Italian Conference of Bishops’ Film Evaluation Commission ruled that the film is “not advised, unusable and scabrous (indecent or salacious)” – and since the Church owns most of Italy’s art-house theaters, that was a problem. Yet the movie – which is no. 2 on the list of greatest LGBT films, by the way – was the country’s top earner per screen last weekend, taking 50% more than the runner-up.
In The Conservatory, Male Opera Singers Have Disappeared. Why?
“Of the 72 applicants this year, 50 were women; 35 sopranos and 15 mezzo-sopranos. The conservatory decided that even though it would make for skewed student productions, it could not admit male singers on the grounds of gender alone.”
Protesters Warn UK Arts Organizations Over Fossil Fuel Sponsorships
“Following news that Tate galleries will end their sponsorship with BP in 2017, one of the leading groups behind the campaign to end the deal has vowed to target other high-profile arts organisations in a bid to sever the relationship between fossil fuel companies and cultural institutions.”
Broadway’s ‘Wicked’ Breaks $1 Billion Barrier
“The long-running musical imagining the Wicked Witch of the West’s back story has just passed the $1 billion mark at the Broadway box office. The musical is one of only three shows ever to reach that milestone.”
Readers Don’t Care About The Literary Quality Of Translations (Do They?)
“Simply, many readers, many critics, don’t notice. Or if they do, don’t particularly care. They read for content. The clamor of idioms about us has become so loud that we hardly notice when a translation, or indeed any piece of prose, is cluttered with incongruities.”
Anita Brookner, 87, Booker Prize-Winning Novelist And Art Historian
“Curiously enough, though Brookner’s art histories bubble with the delight of discovery and joyful exposition, her novels tend to describe a grey milieu of enervated, stranded and tentatively hopeless women.”
Asian-American Academy Members Formally Protest Offensive Skits At Oscars Ceremony
“Twenty-five members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who are of Asian descent – among them two-time best director Oscar winner Ang Lee and former members of the board of governors Arthur Dong, Don Hall and Freida Lee Mock – have sent a letter to the organization protesting ‘tasteless and offensive skits’ about Asians that were featured on the 88th Academy Awards on Feb. 28.”
World Go Champion Loses Tournament To Computer; Ken Jennings Welcomes Him To The Club
“Like [Garry] Kasparov before me, I now make a reasonable living as a professional human loser. Have rueful sense of own inevitable obsolescence, will travel.”
Ballet Dancers And Oakland Turfers Groove Together On PBS NewsHour
“What started out as a culture clash of dance styles evolved into a close collaboration among 12 dancers and the launch of The Mud Water Project. The project aims to create opportunities for turfers to showcase their art in concert-style settings and to audiences often beyond their reach.” (includes video)
Pointe Prosthesis Lets Ballerina Dance Again After 13 Years
“An amateur ballerina in Brazil, whose lower left leg was amputated after a road accident, has spoken of her joy after becoming among the first people to receive a pointe foot prosthesis allowing her to dance classical ballet again.”
Yannick Nézet-Séguin Undergoes Surgery
“Sunday afternoon he conducted Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 in Verizon Hall, and on Monday Philadelphia Orchestra music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin was at Penn Medicine for surgery.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.15.16
In a Risk-Averse Society, Failure is Our Way Forward
Classically trained artists and performers are typically possessed of levels of discipline, rigor and tenacity that are object lessons in the pursuit and achievement of excellence. Their training implies … read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2016-03-15
Scarcity, Abundance and Finding Your Own Way to Fail
“Let’s run an experiment and see what happens.” I say these words at least twice a week with complete freedom. Not just the freedom to take the risk, but … read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2016-03-15
Buoyant about Met Breuer: My Q&A with Metropolitan Museum President Daniel Weiss – Part I
After many months of trying to extract detailed information from the Metropolitan Museum’s press office about its operations at the Met Breuer (opening Mar. 18), my dogged persistence was rewarded last week with a brief … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2016-03-15
Hiphop footnote
Hiphop and arts organizations … Suppose the Kennedy Center, instead of naming Q-Tip as its Artistic Director for Hiphop Culture (see my last post), had named Kanye West instead. Or Jay-Z, or Dr. Dre. … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-03-15
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The First Book To Be Banned In Ireland In 18 Years
“No books have been banned on the grounds of obscenity recently but there have been books banned on the grounds of advocating abortion or miscarriage.”