“At stake is whether the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) can use state money for travel costs and continue to provide grants for individual artists — longtime recipients of the agency’s past investments.” – WBUR (Boston)
Out Of Debt And With A CEO Who’s Sticking Around, Orlando Ballet’s Terrible 2010s Are Over
This decade has been pretty rough for the company, which lost its home to mold, cycled through executive directors at an alarming rate, and nearly closed for good in 2015. Now Orlando Ballet’s in the black, audiences are up 40% in two years, its shows are hits, and its new HQ is being built. – Orlando Sentinel
How ‘The View’ Became A Genuinely Important Political Television Show
When Barbara Walters launched the show in 1997, it was seen as mildly scandalous that someone with her journalistic prestige would go to daytime TV; when President Barack Obama appeared on it in 2010, there were sniffs about the “dignity [of] the presidency.” Now ambitious politicians see The View as a must-do. Why? Because “it offers the tantalizing promise of reaching the unconverted.” – The New York Times Magazine
The Prado Is Developing An Emergency Evacuation Plan For Its Art
“[The expert engaged for the project] has 22 months to identify potential risks to the world-famous museum, such as fires, theft or terrorist attacks, and to come up with ‘a massive evacuation plan’ for the artwork” — including a list of the 250 “most important” items to be secured first. – El País (Spain)
New York’s Signature Theatre Company Sells Its One-Millionth $35 Ticket (Here’s How Its Audience Has Changed)
The off-Broadway theater company is celebrating its one millionth ticket sold through the initiative, and the company says its audience demographics speak to the program’s success. Almost 60% of Signature’s audience members had a two-person household that makes under $100,000 a year. Contrast that to a typical Broadway-goer who comes from a two-person household that makes more than twice that, according to stats from the Broadway League. – Fast Company
Paris Announces A Major New Park At The Eiffel Tower
Anchored by the Eiffel Tower, the park will connect the Place du Trocadéro, the Palais de Chaillot, the Pont d’Iéna, the Champ-de-Mars, and the École Militaire. – Architectural Digest
Researchers Can Now Take A Single Image Of A Person And Make Video Of It Saying What They Want
The new paper by Samsung’s Moscow-based researchers shows that using only a single image of a person’s face, a video can be generated of that face turning, speaking and making ordinary expressions — with convincing, though far from flawless, fidelity. – TechCrunch
Our Frontal Cortex Is The Sensible Part Of The Brain. So Why Is It So Late Developing?
The frontal cortex is the most recently evolved part of the human brain. It’s where the sensible mature stuff happens: long-term planning, executive function, impulse control, and emotional regulation. It’s what makes you do the right thing when it’s the harder thing to do. But its neurons are not fully wired up until your mid-20s. Why? – Nautilus
Home Concert Presenter Makes Millions While Musicians Play For Pennies
Sofar Sounds puts on concerts in people’s living rooms where fans pay $15 to $30 to sit silently on the floor and truly listen. Nearly 1 million guests have attended Sofar’s more than 20,000 gigs. In some cases, Sofar pays just $100 per band for a 25 minute set, which can work out to just $8 per musician per hour or less. Hosts get nothing, and Sofar keeps the rest, which can range from $1,100 to $1,600 or more per gig. – TechCrunch
How Did One Of The Best Documentarians Around Get Caught Up In The Theranos Fiasco?
Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War, Standard Operating Procedure, American Dharma) actually directed a few commercials for Theranos several years ago, before the company’s fraud was discovered. Morris now refuses to acknowledge any responsibility for having promoted fraudulent goods and services (as is the case with the AIG ads he directed in the years before the 2008 financial crisis). – Hyperallergic
Washington DC’s Mayor Wants Her City To Be An Arts Mecca. The City’s Artists Aren’t Happy
The mayor has instrumentalized culture as an economic driver of the capital’s fortunes ever since taking office in 2014 and embarking on the creation of her Cultural Plan one year later. Deference to what she has described as “the cultural economy” has earned Bowser few fans from the arts community, which has characterized the mayor’s proposals as siphoning funds away from the fine arts and into the pockets of small businesses. – Hyperallergic
Virtue Versus Utility: Do We Need To Change The Framework For How We Address Issues?
While virtue theory – the construction of a moral framework around the ideal of “the good life” and related character traits – dates back to Ancient Greece, it has been commonly associated with religion. And this helps to explains why it has fallen out of fashion since the Enlightenment.But are there signs of that movement being reversed? – Irish Times
The Sarasota Symphony Wanted To Build A New Home In A Park. The Community Didn’t Like That Idea
Hundreds of citizens attended the City Commission meeting Monday, and more than 70 of them spoke during public comment, which extended the meeting four hours beyond its estimated end. By the end of the meeting, the majority of the commissioners did not feel comfortable approving further research on the orchestra’s vision, which they still had so many questions about. – The Herald-Tribune
Are Social Media Influencers Undermining Theatre?
Showmanship likes to reveal itself as such and often in some sort of great theatrical caper. In contrast, this marketing approach – for obvious reasons – prefers to stay in the shadows. This is a marketing tool that does not respect the theatre industry or its legacy. At worst, it insults the genuine fans and advocates of productions whose postings may become questioned. It is also wide open for abuse. – The Stage
How Walt Disney Concert Hall Changed Both Its Orchestra And Its Neighborhood
Justin Davidson: “In 2003, [Frank] Gehry gave the Los Angeles Philharmonic its new home and showed that, every once in a while, a work of architecture can transform all it touches — in this case, the orchestra, the audience, music itself, the neighborhood, and the city beyond.” – Los Angeles Times
Is Koons’ “Rabbit” Worth $91 Million? Value Isn’t Measured In Cash
Andrea Scott: “It became an icon of eighties excess (and, thus, of white, male privilege): fuck like bunnies, make more money, the one with the most toys wins. It was an instant classic worthy of the oxymoron, as weightless as Andy Warhol’s shiny silver clouds of inflated Mylar and as radical as Constantin Brancusi’s polished-bronze ‘Bird in Space’.” – The New Yorker
Reviving Twyla Tharp’s ‘Deuce Coupe’, The First Ballet-Modern Dance Fusion
Gia Kourlas got Tharp and Sara Rudner, who danced in the work’s 1979 premiere, together with Misty Copeland and Isabella Boylston, who are performing in ABT’s upcoming revival. “It was lively … but certain points became clear: How important is it to work with the artist who actually created a ballet? Very. And how scary is it to step into the roles of two of the finest dancers of their generation, classical or otherwise? Ditto.” – The New York Times
We Applaud The Philanthropist Who Says He’ll Pay Student Loans. But This Is A Policy Failure
Students are saddled with crippling debt. And generations will be encumbered by it. The generous philanthropist who says he’ll pay the Morehouse College graduating class’s student debt has done a great thing. But it points to a glaring failure of public policy. – The New York Times
On The Tour Van With Shakespeare And Company
That would be the New England theatre troupe, not the Paris bookstore. “Every year since 1982, Shakespeare & Company has sent young performers on the road from early winter through late spring, for four months of Dunkin’ Donuts breakfasts, motel showers, flubbed lines, forgotten props, missed turnoffs, standing ovations and the chance to live with Shakespeare’s words a lot like the traveling players of 400 years ago would have.” Reporter Alexis Soloski spent a few days with them. – The New York Times
We’ve Already Got Broadway Shows Performed Live On TV. Soon We’ll Have Musicals Produced Directly For TV
Netflix has already done small-screen versions of Springsteen on Broadway and American Son, and they’re now working on feature versions of Broadway’s (recent) The Boys in the Band and (current) The Prom. Fox is working on its own jukebox musicals. Where will the genre go from there? – Dance Magazine
PBS NewsHour Gets $1.7 Million Grant To Beef Up Arts Coverage
Conductor Alan Gilbert On The New York Philharmonic And The Hamburg Elbphilharmonie
“The 2019-20 season will be Alan Gilbert’s first with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester in Hamburg. On paper, a German radio orchestra, with the system’s long tradition of advocacy for new repertoire, would seem to be an excellent fit for Gilbert. Over two conversations, one in a Hamburg café, the other on the phone, we talked about how taste is made, gender quotas for orchestras, self-doubt, and parenthood.” – Van
London’s Philharmonia Orchestra Names Successor To Esa-Pekka Salonen
Santtu-Matias Rouvali, 33, begins his 10-weeks-a-year, five-year contract term at the start of the 2021-22 season. He is also chief conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony (which is the official national orchestra of Sweden), where he just extended his term for four years), and the Tampere Philharmonic in Finland’s second city, where “the Rouvali effect” has seen extra concerts scheduled to meet audience demand. – The Times (UK)
Cabaret Star Baby Jane Dexter Dead At 72
“[She] first gained acclaim in the 1970s, when she appeared in New York nightclubs as a bluesy singer with a powerful voice and presence. She dropped out of show business for a decade before returning to the stage in the 1990s, using elements from her personal life — her size, her experience of sexual assault and depression — to heighten the emotional intensity of her performances, which were often so intimate that they seemed to be exercises in group therapy.” – The Washington Post
For The First Time, The Met Museum Will Put Sculpture In The Sculpture Niches In Its Façade
Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu is casting works to be displayed in the empty niches this fall, while Cree Canadian artist Kent Monkman is creating large-scale site-specific paintings for the museum’s Great Hall. (Meanwhile, the museum’s board presented the first balanced budget in three years.) – The Art Newspaper