So, Luminato approached a wide range of African-Canadian artists, scholars and community leaders to attend a meeting to simply discuss the idea of bringing the show to Toronto. The reaction, especially on social media, was so immediately condemning, with one activist reaching out to the organizer of the British boycott for advice, that Luminato quickly backed away from the idea. The group is still meeting on April 22 to discuss Exhibit B, but it will be a rather hypothetical discussion: On Tuesday, the festival announced that it “has determined that 2016 is not the right time to present Exhibit B in Toronto.”
Christopher Wheeldon In Wonderland: “An American in Paris” Is Ballet Choreographer’s Dream Come True
His staging (direction as well as dance) of the Gershwin show, just opened on Broadway after knockout success in Paris, “perfectly encapsulates the artistic character of the boyish-looking, 42-year-old Wheeldon: a sophisticated balletmaker who is a hopeless fan of razzle-dazzle.” Sarah Kaufman tells how he came to the project.
Ivan Doig, A Writer Who Cared About Getting Every Word Right
Doig, who died in Seattle on April 9 at age 75: “I don’t think of myself as a ‘Western’ writer. … To me, language — the substance on the page, that poetry under the prose — is the ultimate ‘region,’ the true home, for a writer.”
Now They’re Remaking Books As Game Apps
Play on your tablet or phone as Sherlock, as the White Rabbit, as Mr. Crab in a fable from Nigeria – and experience books or folk tales in a new way. Or at least, that’s the hope.
The Most Honest Show About Addiction Ever On TV Is A Comedy, And About To End
Edie Falco, who plays Nurse Jackie: “The story of addiction is that they are often highly lovable individuals — charismatic, charming, and easy to love. … They systematically go about destroying all those feelings of attachment to the people around them.”
Just Before Its Final Concert, The Green Bay Symphony Had Hundreds Of Tickets Available
“On the Friday before their final performance, only 480 tickets had been sold. ‘Trying to get Green Bay residents into a classics concert— even this one this Saturday night— is very difficult.'”
Is One Of Egypt’s Most Celebrated Paintings A 19th-Century Italian Fake?
“The plaster artifact shows three couples of geese amongst tufts of grass, and was supposedly found by Italian Egyptologist Luigi Vassalli, then a curator of the Museum Bulaq, in the Atet chapel at the Nefermaat funerary complex at Meidum. Tiradritti thinks it is highly likely that Vassalli is the real artist behind the geese.”
Garry Trudeau Explains Why Satire – And Charlie Hebdo – Shouldn’t ‘Punch Downward’
“Satire punches up, against authority of all kinds, the little guy against the powerful. Great French satirists like Molière and Daumier always punched up. … Ridiculing the non-privileged is almost never funny — it’s just mean. By punching downward, by attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings closer to graffiti than cartoons, Charlie wandered into the realm of hate speech.”
Berlin Versus The ‘Sharing Economy’
“Many view the battle against the vacation rentals as being decisive in the effort to wrestle a piece of Berlin back from speculators and tourists.” But the battle is not going well.
Should Critics Reviewing Translations Know The Work In Its Original Language?
“If you don’t know the poet’s original work, what are you reviewing? But when you whittle the already small pool of poetry critics down to those who are multilingual or translators themselves, the result is that hardly anyone reviews translations, and in turn fewer people read them. If nobody reads poetry, less than nobody reads international poetry.”
Founder Of The Living Theater And Political Rebel Judith Malina Dies At 88
She was “an actor and director who with her husband, Julian Beck, founded the Living Theater, a troupe of activists and provocateurs who advanced the idea of political theater in America, catalyzed fierce debate over their methods and intentions, and in the name of art ran afoul of civic authorities on three continents.”
Disney Is Making A New Live-Action Film Of ‘Mulan,’ But Will A White Woman Play The Lead?
“Campaigners are calling for the title role, based on the Chinese fable of female soldier Fa Mulan who dressed as a man in order to take up arms against Genghis Khan, to be played by an actor of Asian extraction.”
Do We Need ‘Hot Takes’ On Issues? Slate Says Yes
“We’ve experienced ‘take’ creep. The definition has expanded. What first meant a moronic gloss of opinion, slapped carelessly on cheap news aggregation to make it more shareable came to mean any opinion writing, argument, or analysis, or really, any piece of journalism I don’t like.”
How Did A Movie That Was Supposed To Be Oscar Bait End Up Airing On The Lifetime Channel Over Memorial Day Weekend?
“If it seems like we’ve been discussing this $35 million boondoggle for forever, it’s because, well, we have.”
The New Yorker Who Helped LACMA Break Out
“Barron’s influence goes well beyond the temporary exhibition program. She has helped shape the permanent collection and found innovative ways of presenting it in the museum’s galleries.”
When A Famous Choreographer Takes Himself To Broadway
“The show opens with a big dance number, closes with a 14-minute ballet and, with ballet dancers in the leading roles, it relies on dancing all the way through to propel the plot. It perfectly encapsulates the artistic character of the boyish-looking, 42-year-old Wheeldon: a sophisticated balletmaker who is a hopeless fan of razzle-dazzle.”
Deal With It: Los Angeles Is The New Capital Of The Art World
“The Broad Museum is about to open its doors this September, and by doing so it’s going to explode a U.S. military style daisy cutter on the Los Angeles art scene. Then comes Hauser Wirth and Schimmel (HWS) a few blocks away in LA’s undeniably burgeoning Arts District. … Its palatial grounds, amidst the growing number of galleries, will cement LA as the new capital of the art world, what I simply call ArtWorldInc.”
Film Schools Lining Up For The YouTube Generation
“The rapidly shifting film school landscape has led to what a business professor might refer to as marketplace confusion. Never have the film school options been so many, and never has there been greater bewilderment about where to go — or whether to go at all.”
Yale Art Dean Robert Storr Rips Critics For What They’ve Become
“Critics have gotten confused about the issue of what their role is…. this is about instant response. It’s about the number of likes you get on your Facebook page. It’s all about the ego popularity presence of the critic. And frankly, none of these people, are interesting enough to really merit being a presence overall… I can’t imagine most of this stuff will people read 10 years from now.”
Why The Toronto Symphony’s PR Disaster Spun Out Of Control
Peter Himler, a P.R. strategist who advises clients on crisis management, agrees that the TSO didn’t get out ahead of the story. “There is not one Tweet from them bringing up this issue,” he said. “I think they should be up front and continually communicating their point of view. That’s one of the rules of thumb in crisis communication.”
The Thinking Behind Design Of The Whitney’s New Downtown Museum
“The features are a blueprint for museums today, as institutions the world over compete harder for the chance to mount crowd-pleasing shows by big names. Instead of courting donors with grand galleries or stark white rooms for displaying masterworks, museums are luring star artists with buildings that they can engage and ultimately reshape with their work.”
Orange County Museum Of Art Lays Off People So It Can Build Ambitious New Building
“The plan also raises all kinds of questions about the future of the curatorial program at this venerable little institution — the sort of place that once had a show by Chris Burden shut down by the local Fire Department because his installation created the risk of toppling the museum’s walls.”
Using New Language Analysis, Scholars Attribute Another Play To Shakespeare
“We can tentatively add another play to the Shakespeare canon. Using a unique form of text analysis, in which they weigh the “psychological signatures” of three possible authors, psychologists Ryan L. Boyd and James Pennebaker of the University of Texas-Austin conclude Double Falsehood was written largely by the man who brought us Twelfth Night and King Lear.”
The Detroit Symphony’s New Principal Oboist Will Take The Job (As Soon As He Graduates From School)
“Alexander Kinmonth’s appointment also puts an exclamation point on the rapid transformation of the DSO under music director Leonard Slatkin, who has been rebuilding the ensemble following the epic six-month musicians strike in 2010-11 that threatened to push the orchestra into bankruptcy. Since the start of Slatkin’s tenure in 2008, he has appointed 10 current principal players and 27 total musicians, about a third of the ensemble.”
Misty Copeland Talks About Succeeding As A Dancer
“The pain that dancers experience—I don’t know if it can be compared to any athlete, or anything. There’s something that is engrained in us as ballet dancers where we constantly have a poker face on. Even on stage, we experience some of the most extreme physical pain. You go through a ballet that’s three hours long and have to still put on a face that you’re enjoying yourself and performing. It takes a lot of mental strength to not let all those negative thoughts come into your mind, to just push them out and stay focused in the moment for a very long period of time. I think we’re some of the strongest people.”