“While not well known outside continental Europe, Elsner was a major star in Germany, one of the country’s most famous actors and a regular in both film and television. She was also one of the last great originals, a larger-than-life personality who seemed fearless in her choice of roles and in her intense acting style.” – The Hollywood Reporter
In San Diego, Emerging Artists And Organizations Get An Alternative To Official Nonprofit Status
The process to gain 501(c)(3) status takes a lot of time and resources, even more in California than elsewhere, and most grantmaking bodies won’t consider any entity that doesn’t have it. So the San Diego Foundation developed a solution called the Creative Catalyst program. Reporter Julia Dixon Evans explains. – Voice of San Diego
Most Of The Books We Own Bring Us Joy, But That Doesn’t Mean We Need To Keep Them
A woman who keeps only 5-10 physical books in her personal library at any time wonders, “Why are we so attached to our books? As I held and decided the fate of each book, I kept coming back to this question. Why was I attached to these physical objects? Paper, binding glue, a cover. Fairly simple and commonplace. I knew I could easily find replacements for my discarded books, and that … the true connection I felt was to the stories themselves. The books were mere vessels. So why didn’t I want to part with them?” – The Millions
Is “The Death Of The Critic” A Tired Trope That Needs Retiring?
“What if the critic doesn’t need more audacity, or more ruthlessness; what if there isn’t one “tone of the time” waiting for their elucidation – indeed, what if nothing but mass popularity is missing? Relinquish the assumption that the mainstream is the critic’s rightful inheritance, and the anxiety might start falling away.” – Times Literary Supplement
Steven Spielberg Doesn’t Hate Netflix. Really!
“Recent reporting about the now-rejected proposal to bar movies produced by and for streaming services from Oscar contention has tended to portray Spielberg as a reactionary arch-enemy of Netflix. But insiders say that just isn’t true — his company actually helps Netflix produce some of its programming — and have taken pains to let the New York Times know it.” – The New York Times
A Dome And A Home: The Theatre From The Calais Jungle Travels Around France Offering Welcome To Migrants
Since it was set up in the (now-removed) refugee camp in the Channel port in 2015, Good Chance Theatre‘s dome has become a pop-up playhouse, setting up in several locations around Paris and providing a gathering place for previously alienated migrants. – American Theatre
See Inside Some Of America’s Grandest Old Movie Theatres
The photographers used Cinema Treasures, a database of American movie theaters past and present, to track down some of the country’s most spectacular movie palaces. At first they focused only on abandoned theaters, but after discovering some tastefully repurposed palaces, such as Brooklyn’s cavernous Paramount Theater—now used as a gymnasium by Long Island University—they expanded the scope of their project. – Wired
New UK Study: Economic Demographics Of Workers In The Arts Unchanged In 30 Years
They found that people whose parents “had the most privileged occupations”, such as doctors, lawyers and senior management posts, “were over four times more times more likely to be working as actors, musicians, programme-makers and in other creative roles than those from a working-class background”. “This disparity did not significantly change across the period studied,” the researchers found. The period covered was from 1981 to 2011. – The Stage
Louvre To Start Requiring Timed Reservations This Fall In Attempt To Manage Mobs Of Visitors
The decision came after the Louvre’s visitor numbers surpassed “the symbolic threshold” of 10 million last year, which equates to 25,000 to 50,000 a day. At the Louvre’s most-popular art, the crowds are so thick you really can’t see much, and the atmosphere is circus-like. – The Art Newspaper
Many Popular Shows Will Probably Leave Netflix As Streaming Services Compete
These new streamers will be desperate for content, and will yank their own shows off Netflix. So “when do we reach peak streaming? How many services can the average viewer reasonably adopt? Is this the start of a dystopian TV future where only the wealthiest among us are able to watch 100 consecutive episodes of Frasier? Guess we’re set to find out.” – Jezebel
Cannes Festival Still Bans Netflix, Except For This Part That Doesn’t
“The long-running row between the Cannes film festival and Netflix has taken an unexpected turn as the Directors’ Fortnight, one of the key strands of the festival that runs in parallel to the official selection, has selected a Netflix film for its lineup. This is in marked contrast to the official festival, which has maintained its exclusion of films distributed by the streaming giant for the second year in a row.” – The Guardian
New Research: Studying The Arts Boosts Self-Esteem (Even If You Don’t Excel)
“Initiatives to promote arts engagement in children may provide a practical and efficient way to improve children’s self-esteem,” report Hei Wan Makand Daisy Fancourt of University College London. Importantly, they found that kids didn’t have to be good at their chosen creative activity for these positive effects to blossom. – Pacific Standard
Returning Cultural Items From Museums Is Complicated. Here’s A Primer
David Shariatmadari does a good job taking his readers through the issues. – The Guardian
James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ And The Politicians Who Love It (And Keep Telling Us So)
“In the current political environment, name-checking the writing of James Joyce may not seem like the canniest move. It’s a dog whistle, meant to appeal to refined impulses, to élite rather than populist sympathies. How shall we put it? Joyce is a snob whistle.” – The New Yorker
Medieval Monks Were A Distracted Lot. Here’s How They Focused
It occurred to historian Jamie Kreiner that the monks she studied spent a lot of their time trying to figure out how to stay focused. And maybe their advice might be useful to the present-day world full of digital distraction. – Aeon
How The Roxane Gay-Christina Hoff Sommers #Feminist Debate Tour In Australia Turned Into An Ugly Mess
If it had happened in a radio or television studio, it might have gone well. But having an audience turns out to have been a bad idea. (And some ill-advised moves by either Gay or her management didn’t help.) – New York Magazine
Rebuild Notre Dame, Of Course. But We Need More Sensitivity To What Can’t (Or Shouldn’t) Be
This story takes up the cases of several high-profile fires that have damaged cultural icons and asks: 1. why do we not seem to be more careful in taking care of them, and 2. when contemplating what was destroyed, we sometimes restore in ways that end up as garish cartoons of what they were. – ArtWatch
What Will Art, And The Art World, Look Like In 2039?
“Devon Van Houten Maldonado asks artists and curators to imagine the changes and trends that will influence the art world in the next two decades.” – BBC
Is ‘Jeopardy!’ Winning Machine James Holzhauer Breaking The Game? If So, Does That Matter?
Emily Yahr: “After all, we’re in an era where television is more fractured than ever. Big TV events are increasingly rare, and it’s refreshing to have one topic to discuss around the virtual water cooler of the Internet — especially something that you could easily catch up on in one episode.” – The Washington Post
Academy Decides Not To Bar Streaming Movies From Oscars
The board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences “left intact Rule Two, the one that established that a film” — including one produced by Netflix or Amazon — “can be eligible for Oscars if it has a minimum 7-day theatrical run in a L.A. County commercial theater.” (Sorry, Mr. Spielberg.) – Deadline
Henry Wollman Bloch, Art Philanthropist And Co-Founder Of H&R Block, Dead At 96
The primary beneficiary of Bloch’s largesse has been Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: he spent three years as its board chairman, he and his wife are the name donors on the museum’s 2007 expansion and its 2015-17 renovation, and at the same time the couple gave a collection of 29 major Impressionist paintings to NAMA. – ARTnews
In Case Of Counterfeit Rodins, French Court Sentences Businessman And Art Dealer
Last week a court of appeals in Paris handed septuagenarian U.S. businessman Gary Snell a suspended prison sentence of one year and Parisian art dealer Robert Crouzet a four-month suspended prison sentence as part of an 18-year legal battle over counterfeited Auguste Rodin sculptures. – Artsy
In China, Two Historical Soap Operas Go Viral, And The Communist Party Promptly Cancels Them
The Story of Yanxi Palace and Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace smashed viewing records for the streaming services that showed them. Then the journal Theory Weekly (a title only a Communist bureaucrat could love) published an article condemning the series as “incompatible with the core values of socialism” and “[a] negative influence on society.” State media condemnation went on from there, and the series disappeared. Why? – The New Yorker
More Than 7000 TV Writers Have Fired Their Agents, Says Union
The writers’ union’s memo also claimed, “Most of the writers who haven’t yet signed termination letters are retirees or no longer actively working.” – New York Magazine
Suzanne Farrell Back At City Ballet – What It Means
Alastair Macaulay: “What makes Ms. Farrell so important? Her place in Balanchine history is central: She inspired him to make some of his most radically modernist works; opened up fresh torrents of Romanticism in him; showed how old roles could be transformed. She combined grandeur, musicality, wit, fervor and acumen to phenomenal degrees.” – The New York Times