Kay Redfield Jamison, a specialist in manic depression and other mood disorders, talks about how Lowell’s poetry changed after being treated with lithium, his own attitude to his mental illness (and that of several of his well-known contemporaries), and the ethics of using the medical records she used (and those she chose not to use) in writing a book about Lowell.
The Next Stage: Wendy Whelan And Virginia Johnson On Life After A Career In Ballet
“Former professional ballet dancers Wendy Whelan and Virginia Johnson join us to discuss life after a career in dance. Whelan, who had a 30-year career with the New York City Ballet (NYCB), is the inaugural Lida Orzeck Distinguished Artist-in-Residence at Barnard. Now artistic director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, Johnson was a founding member and principal dancer with the company for more than 20 years.” (audio)
After Smashing Antiquities In Mosul Museum, ISIS Used It As Tax Bureau
“Iraqi troops took the museum back last month from the militants, who left its once-famous collection in a sorry state. … In a basement room under the main exhibition halls, there was a pile of envelopes used to issue orders to pay Islamic tax, one of main sources of funding for the militants. ‘The Islamic State … seeks to levy your duties which were forced by God on the rich people’s money.'”
What Would It Look Like If The Biggest TV Network Looked For Opportunities To Broadcast Arts? (The BBC Is About To Show Us)
The BBC will “create opportunities for arts organisations of all sizes to show their work on the BBC via a £4m fund, ‘Artists First’, that will commission artists and organisations to make new works for broadcast and online. The new Culture UK partnership, with Arts Council England (ACE), the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Arts Council of Wales and Creative Scotland, will also see the development of three major broadcast and live event festivals each year.”
What Use Are Historical Periods? They Often Confuse Things
Labels such as “medieval” and “modern” are highly relative scholarly impositions. What counts as “modern” in philosophy is quite different – in chronology and in style – from modernity in literary studies. While such categories may be convenient for organizing the historiography of philosophy (among other disciplines), no one really thinks they represent precise and absolute distinctions. What, after all, does it mean for a philosophy to be “modern”?
There’s A New Kind Of Booing From Britain’s Opera Audiences, And It’s Good, Says Covent Garden’s Music Director
The custom has made its way to the opera house from, of all places, Christmas pantomimes – and Antonio Pappano is all for it. (After all, that Pinkerton is a terrible cad.)
Poland’s Supreme Court Approves Government Takeover Of New World War II Museum
The current right-wing nationalist government in Warsaw is not happy with the way history is presented at the Gdansk museum, which opened two weeks ago, and they’ve been trying since they took office to scrap the museum or merge it with one more to their liking. Now the country’s Supreme Administrative Court has given clearance to do the latter.
London’s Southbank Hires TV Exec As New CEO
It’s Elaine Bedell, who was director of entertainment and comedy at ITV. “As well as becoming the organisation’s first woman chief executive in its 66-year history, her appointment alongside Susan Gilchrist as chair and Jude Kelly as artistic director will mean that the arts centre – Europe’s largest – has an all-female leadership team.”
He’s The Most Hated King In India’s Long History, But Does He Really Deserve It?
The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb was no saint: he (over-)extended the empire to the largest territory it ever had, but he killed his brothers and imprisoned his father (Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal). Aurangzeb is also said – especially by modern-day Hindu nationalists, including the ones in the current government – to have killed countless Hindus, destroyed countless temples, and to have ignored or suppressed the great Indian artistic traditions brought to their height by his great-grandfather, the emperor Akbar. Historian Audrey Truschke argues that for centuries, for political reasons past and present, the evidence about Aurangzeb was deliberately distorted and that he was no worse than any Muslim ruler of his era.
The MoMA Curator Who Lives In An Apartment With Almost Nothing In It
Klaus Biesenbach lives in an all-white, 550-square-foot high-rise apartment that contains little more than a table, a bed, a couch and two or three chairs. His favorite feature is the view from his window, which he photographs every day and posts to Instagram for his #window23 project. “It’s a calming place because there aren’t many distractions,” he said. “That’s what makes the window so important. How can you compete with the world?”
New Museum Of American Revolution Surpasses $150 Million Fundraising Goal
Thanks to a $2.5 million gift from Comcast/NBCUniversal and the Roberts Foundation, the Philadelphia museum, which opens on April 19, has raised a total of $152 million for its building and endowment.
International Diplomacy Isn’t Theatrical, But Playwrights Keep Putting It Onstage – How Do They Pull It Off?
And they do pull it off: Oslo. A Walk in the Woods. Stuff Happens. The Prisoner’s Dilemma. Pacific Overtures. (Okay, that was gunboat diplomacy.) Even Call Me Madam. “[Alexis Soloski] recently discussed stagecraft and statecraft with the authors of past, current and coming plays. Unfortunately, writing hasn’t improved their own negotiating skills. ‘That’s why I have an agent,’ [one of them] said.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.05.17
Doin’ It: Vocabulary
Last fall (in ABCD and Community Engagement) I floated a label – Community Based Artistic Development – for this work. CBAD implies, rightly, that participatory projects can be important to the health of the arts and to arts organizations. But in order to craft participatory experiences, it helps to have language that guides understanding of the options. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2017-04-04
A Trouble With Museum Boards
When I started writing that headline, above, I wrote “the” trouble with… But I quickly corrected myself, because … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2017-04-05
Celebrating Thirty Years, Moving On
Doug Varone and Dancers shows old and new works at the BAM Harvey Theater. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2017-04-05
The Complete Jazz Masters Concert
The Monday concert that paid tribute to the 2017 National Endowment For The Arts Jazz Masters is now online, all three hours of it. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-04-05
Short-Attention-Span Music?
“Online streaming services offer countless choices, so there’s no reason to stick with a song that doesn’t grab you right off the bat. And many people don’t: Research from 2014 found Spotify subscribers skip about one-third of sampled songs after a mere 20 seconds. But perhaps more interesting is the notion that this new reality is changing the way music is written and recorded.”
Six Years After Revolution, Egypt Resumes Big Museum Projects
As culture officials wait for a tourism revival, the revolution has had the positive side-effect of inspiring local interest in Egyptian heritage. The number of Egyptian visitors to the Islamic museum has “risen exponentially” since the reopening, prompting GEM to rethink its projected audiences.
Exit Interview: Brent Assink On Leaving The San Francisco Symphony
The absolute number of total attendance at the symphony has dropped about 10 percent during Assink’s tenure. In effect, more individuals are coming, but less often. The good news is that the average age is dropping. What’s also changed are donor profiles and giving patterns, particularly in the last two years. The amount per donor has increased slightly and there is a new culture among donors, which is increasingly tied to Silicon Valley — as Assink put it, “with everything that that means.”
General McChrystal: Don’t Kill PBS – It Makes Us Smarter
“Public broadcasting makes our nation smarter, stronger and, yes, safer. It’s a small public investment that pays huge dividends for Americans. And it shouldn’t be pitted against spending more on improving our military. That’s a false choice. This might seem like an unlikely position for me, a 34-year combat veteran. But it’s a view that has been shaped by my career leading brave men and women who thrive and win when they are both strong and smart.”
A Look Back At Renée Fleming’s (Soon-To-End?) Opera Career
It hasn’t been said officially, but it’s widely rumored that her upcoming run as the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier at the Met will be her final appearance in staged opera. Charles McGrath talks to one of her closest friends, her college voice teacher, a former manager, a former publicist, Met General Manager Peter Gelb, and others who have figured prominently in her career.
Hermitage Bumps Up Security After St. Petersburg Bombing
“‘All visitors are being inspected, which surely might cause inconvenience for the museum’s guests,’ the museum said in a statement … The Hermitage also said it had reached an agreement with Rosgvardia, the new National Guard created by President Vladimir Putin in 2016, to strengthen security at the museum.”