The nation’s oldest and largest nonprofit repertory theater company is at a pivotal moment, with change at the top and challenges everywhere. It’s bringing in its first new artistic director in 12 years and preparing to start a search for a new executive director. It’s coming off a smoke-plagued 2018 season that ended with 26 outdoor performances either canceled or moved indoors, $2.3 million in losses and 16 layoffs. – The Oregonian
There’s A Whole New Crop Of South Asian-American Stand-Up Comedians Coming
“They’re finding strength in numbers that have swelled in the wake of new role models, mounting recurring group shows with names like Kutti Gang and Brown Privilege in New York, and Desi Comedy Festival [in California]. … (It’s also no small thing to have people like [Mindy] Kaling and [Hasan] Minhaj to point to when arguing with immigrant parents who may disapprove of even their adult offspring pursuing stand-up.)” – The Daily Beast
The Man Who Used Culture To Transform Medellín’s Most Dangerous Slum Says He Can Do The Same With Paris’s Poor Suburbs
“Thirty years ago, Medellín was the most violent, the most dangerous city in the world. Nobody wanted to go there, not even Colombians,” says Daniel Carvalho, the urban planner who launched street-art and hip-hop programs to make the notorious Comuna 13 district attractive to visitors and locals (and keep give young people something to do other than joining gangs). Now officials from Paris are consulting him on similar ideas for the French capital’s poorest banlieues. – The Observer (UK)
The Pop-Up Instagrammable Experience: Is It Art?
“This is a sign of the times. Artists are understanding what audiences or the sponsors are drawn to and are looking for. They are looking for it to go viral or become an icon of that moment.” – Toronto Star
Recent Listening: Zeitlin Remembers Davis
Denny Zeitlin Solo Piano: Remembering Miles
– Doug Ramsey
Colleagues Remember I.M. Pei
People in the field who were close to him, recalling him after his death, said that the warmth was innate and not for show. “You think of architects who seem to lead with their ego, and he was never like that,” said David Childs, a consulting design partner with SOM, a firm that often competed with Pei’s. “He was very generous to me when I was a 28-year-old kid.” – The New York Times
How To make The SATs More Fair? Adversity Algorithms?
The standardized tests, it turns out, aren’t so standardized when you account for the disparities of students taking them. Where you grew up matters. How good was your school matters. So new algorithms attempt to measure these factors and level the field. – The Atlantic
Could New “Indie” Social Media Sites Solve What’s Bad About Social Media?
Could the IndieWeb movement—or a streamlined, user-friendly version of it to come—succeed in redeeming the promise of social media? If we itemize the woes currently afflicting the major platforms, there’s a strong case to be made that the IndieWeb avoids them. – The New Yorker
Sammy Shore, Co-Founder Of The Comedy Store, Has Died At 92
Shore, a stand-up comedian who opened for Elvis’ comeback and comeback tour, and for everyone from Barbra Streisand to Sammy Davis Jr. to Bobby Darin, spent the last 20 years touring with his son, comedian Pauly Shore. – Variety
Ruth Beckford, Often The Only Black Dancer In Modern Dance Companies, Has Died At 93
Beckford danced with the companies of Florelle Batsford, Anna Halprin, and Welland Lathrop – and “when Beckford came onstage, the audience would gasp in surprise.” In 1947, for the Oakland Department of Parks and Rec, she created the first modern recreational dance department in the country. – San Francisco Chronicle
Herman Wouk, Author Of ‘The Caine Mutiny’ And Perennial Best-Selling Writer, Has Died At 103
Wouk shot to the top of the lists with The Caine Mutiny in 1951, and he remained there “for most of a career that extended past his 100th year thanks to page-turners like Marjorie Morningstar, Youngblood Hawke and the World War II epics The Winds of War and War and Remembrance.” – The New York Times
Fighting Visual Clichés About Africa
Aïda Muluneh once worked as a photojournalist for The Washington Post. That didn’t go perfectly. “‘Are you an artist, or are you a journalist?’ her boss asked.” By now, the answer is clear: “Muluneh’s art isn’t coy. It deals in high-stakes disparities: Africa as aspiration and Africa as abyss. Reconsider the continent, her images command, and they proceed to connect it to a genre-blending aesthetic that reconceives notions of place and otherness.” – The Atlantic
For Decades, Cuba Exported Radio Soap Operas – And Now Their Post-Revolution Successors Are Going Digital
Plot twists, bingeing, and deep curiosity about characters are nothing new. Cuba exported tons of radionovelas, as they were called, from the 1930s through the 1950s. After the Revolution, “Cuban emigrés in Miami began making original Spanish-language radio soap operas … that reportedly ran on more than 200 stations worldwide. The Latin American Library at Tulane University is now digitizing a whopping collection of those 1960s-era programs and encouraging academic study of Cold War soaps.” You know, just like we “academic study” Game of Thrones. – NPR
As More Commercial Movies Flood Cannes, Deals Follow
There is, however, downward pressure on the market – which may eventually hit actors, directors, and everyone else working on films in the pocketbook. And – let’s face it – Disney is a challenge. “U.S. distribution is still a big issue. There are fewer studios now that Disney has purchased Fox, and most of the major companies are more interested in remaking past hits or backing sequels to long-running franchises than they are with buying an unknown property in the script stage out of Cannes.” – Variety
There’s A Moon Rush On, And Science Fiction Is Partly To Blame
Or, if not to blame, then to illuminate how we understand our moon. “If technologies once found only in SF do sometimes become real they do not, in so doing, always cease to be science fictional. SF is not, after all, simply a literature about the future; it is a literature about the shock of new capacities and new perspectives, about transcendence, estrangement and resistance in the face of the inhuman. Its ideas shape and constrain the ways in which technological possibilities are seen, understood and experienced long after those possibilities are first tentatively realised.” – The Guardian (UK)
LA MOCA Gets A $10 Million Gift To Make Entrance Free
A board member made the announcement of her gift at a quasi-40th birthday party for the museum on Saturday night. That fits with new director Klaus Biesenbach’s vision. “‘We are not aiming at having more visitors or larger attendance, but we’re aiming at being more accessible, at having open doors,’ Biesenbach said in an interview. ‘As a civic institution, we should be like a library, where you can just walk in.'” – Los Angeles Times
The Suburbification Of The Urban Landscape
Are cities urban anymore? Or are the suburbs moving in? New buildings across the country are offering parking, private entrances, “parks,” and other perks of suburban life – downtown. Yes, “these new buildings are designed for a very narrow slice of the population — those who can afford to spend multiple millions of dollars on a home — but it’s a slice of the population whose purchasing decisions affect all city dwellers.” – The New York Times
Protestors March From The Whitney Biennial To Board Member’s Townhouse
On the night of the Whitney Biennial opening,” a crowd of over 150 activists gathered at the Whitney Museum for their largest action yet: a culmination of Nine Weeks of Art and Action, a protest series spearheaded by Decolonize This Place (DTP) to oppose Whitney vice chair Warren Kanders. In a surprise move, the protesters marched from the Whitney Museum to Kanders’s townhouse in Greenwich Village to end the night.” – Hyperallergic
The Endless Discussions Of Game Of Thrones Won’t Stop Tomorrow
The show, which has earned a lot more viewers in its contentious final season, “was a mass-market hit for the era of no social consensus. … It divided its audience from start to finish, right down to the matter of what a happy ending would even constitute. It gave its intense fandom multiple angles to debate as well as to enjoy: whether it kept faith with the popular novels it was based on; whether it reveled in brutality in the name of critiquing it; whether it well-served its female characters or exploited them; and whether it lost control of its story as it sprinted to the finish.” – The New York Times
Eurovision: The Netherlands Wins, Madonna Flops, And Iceland May Have Gotten Itself Banned
Let’s start with the most contentious thing: Iceland, whose song seemed popular on Twitter, displayed Palestinian flags while live cameras were on the band during voting. The contest was held in Tel Aviv this year, and that did not go over well with Eurovision officials. – BBC