Two curators at the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation “were arrested while replacing a pharaonic statue of (fourth dynasty) King Menkaure, discovered in Luxor’s Karnak temple, and an ancient Islamic lantern with fake ones.”
Athletes And Singers Have Coaches. Do You?
“The concept of a coach is slippery. Coaches are not teachers, but they teach. They’re not your boss—in professional tennis, golf, and skating, the athlete hires and fires the coach—but they can be bossy. They don’t even have to be good at the sport. The famous Olympic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi couldn’t do a split if his life depended on it. Mainly, they observe, they judge, and they guide.”
Is Costa Rica’s Most Beloved Children’s Book A Racist Caricature?
“The book has long been compulsory reading in the Central American nation’s schools and has even given its name to various businesses, including the tourism website cocori.com. But now it is coming under scrutiny as never before. Members of Costa Rica’s black community – about 8 percent of the 4.9 million population – increasingly view it as a skewed interpretation of their identity by its white author.”
Are Machines Becoming More Like Us, Or Are We Becoming More Like Them?
“As machines become more humanlike, aren’t we humans meeting them halfway? Are computers not simply an extension of our brains? Our inventions may better resemble humans, but we are becoming more machine-like in the process. Are we no longer a natural species, or are we simply a part of nature that has evolved to become less ‘natural’?”
Britain Won’t Grant Visa To Actors From The Republic Of Georgia
“They are young, single, without dependents and have very little in their bank accounts, so cannot prove satisfactorily that they are ‘genuine’ visitors to the UK and would leave following their performances. Clearly, those who issue these visas have not peeked at the bank accounts of young British artists and seen how very little they earn too.”
Challenge: Stay True To Your Source While Making An Entirely New Thing For Your Art Form
“Together, the memoir and the musical argue for the fact that plot and character are just a part of what affects us when we experience art. Our response is also determined by form, genre, setting—not only by the story but by the way the story is told.”
Black Actor Slams American Ballet Theater’s “Jim Crow Production Of ‘Othello'”
Robert Manning Jr. wrote, in a protest letter to the company, “I hope you will sit down with me and attempt to explain to me, in person, why you believed it was a remotely good idea to not only cast Othello with a light-skinned Brazilian ballet dancer, BUT to also paint his face BROWN.”
How Streaming Is Changing The Content Of TV and Movies
“The very fact that we’re streaming, that they make so much money in syndication with streaming on Amazon, I think extends the life of the show. Also creatively it’s given us more freedom. We don’t get the talk that, “You’ve got to reach out to the younger audience. You’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that, or you’re going to be dead in a year.” It really frees us up.”
Amazon Data: America’s Most Well-Read Cities
Seattle tops the list. “Not so surprising, really. Several factors help boost our reading status, including our highly educated population, bookish community that includes fantastic public libraries and local bookstores that support authors and events, and long, dark months of dreary weather that lend themselves to, well, reading. It also helps that we have one of the world’s most famous book fans in town.”
How A New Music Group Started Giving Away Money And Found Its Business Thriving
“By shining a spotlight not just on great art but on the problems that any community faces–and more importantly, on local service organizations that offer solutions to those problems–the ensemble quickly developed a stellar reputation city-wide, not just for its artistry, but for its citizenship. Local governmental agencies took note, as did individuals and private enterprises that recognized the value of good music in their community.”
What Kind Of Music Do You Listen To? (The Way You Answer Might Change Soon)
“Spotify has found that playlists designed for activities like running or partying are as popular as those that center on more traditional genres, and its new version will make recommendations accordingly.”
Head Of Boston Public Library Resigns After Distovery Of $600,000 In Missing Art
“The library said last month it was bringing in an independent firm to review security protocols and that before any items were reported missing it was already working with an outside consultant to “organize, catalogue, inventory, and recommend processes to allow better security and control over” its more than 1.3 million Print Department holdings.”
The Songs We Listen To Have Been Defined By Technology. Now Streaming Is Changing Them Again
“Song length was affected by the amount a wax roll could hold. Song intros were a certain length so DJs could give call-out letters, traffic and weather. Song length has been a determining factor in radio airplay (too long = no play). The LP limited the amount of material that could be released; the CD expanded it, in some cases beyond what an artist had to say.”
Frick Museum Abandons Controversial Expansion Plan
“It just became clear to us that it wasn’t going to work,” said a museum official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the board had not yet made the decision final with a vote.
New Twists In Battle To Revive New York City Opera
“Two bidders with competing proposals to buy the failed opera company’s name and intellectual property in hopes of reviving it are now in talks to try to resolve their differences. The opera’s board is also weighing a third option in a light of a bequest that could be worth millions of dollars. Instead of selling off the company’s assets, the board could reorganize the defunct company through the bankruptcy process, enlisting one of the two bidders as a sponsor of the reorganization plan.”
UK Refuses Visa To Georgian Theatre Company
Manchester’s Flare festival invited The New Collective, a young group based in Tbilisi, to perform next month. “But the British authorities are so concerned that this young collective will want to migrate to the UK that their visa application has been refused.”
Margaret Juntwait, Voice Of Met Opera Broadcasts, Dead At 58
“Juntwait was only the third regular announcer of the Met’s broadcast series, which launched in 1931, and the first woman to hold the job.” Before joining the Met, she was for several years a host of classical broadcasts on New York publc radio station WNYC.
Sacramento Ballet ‘Parts Ways’ With Executive Director
“[Caty] Solace has served in the top post since last year. She will remain as a consultant with the organization. The move comes after the ballet ended its 2014-15 season early this spring, canceled its popular Beer and Ballet event and laid off dancers with three weeks left in the season.”
Footnotes In Fiction – There’s A Real Art To Them
Consider not only David Foster Wallace, the great virtuoso/victim of the format, but also Chuck Klosterman, Mark Z. Danielewski, Jenny Boully, and the great father of the footnote as literary device, Vladimir Nabokov.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 06.03.15
Crystal Bridges Makes A Few Announcements
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2015-06-03
Moves at LaMaMa
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2015-06-03
Some Early Minimalism Resurfaces
AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2015-06-03
Best restaurant in the world? Says who?
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2015-06-03
Recommendation: Matthew Shipp
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-06-03
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Prediction: Music Genres Will Be Irrelevant In The Future
“According to executives at Spotify, my children offer a peek at the future of music consumption. Spotify, which has just introduced a new version of its app, says that because online streaming services let us call up and listen to anything we like, and because its curated playlists push us toward new stuff, we are all increasingly escaping rigid genres.”
Canada Council Overhauls Its Arts Funding Model
Artists have long complained that the Council’s diverse funding categories aren’t flexible enough to accommodate multi-disciplinary work and ad hoc projects.
Museum Workers Versus The Museum Of Modern Art
To be clear, this isn’t a group of laborers that are raking in massive amounts of cash. According to a press release sent out by the union prior to the demonstration, the salary of “entry-level museum staff starts at approximately $29K per year and the membership, which includes professional staff such as curators, librarians and conservators, averages $49K.”
Is Live Theatre Anachronistic In Today’s Mobile Always-On World?
“Think about it: we (mostly) ask our audiences to commute to a particular location, step into a dark building, shut off all access to the outside world, be quiet, and not disturb us as we attempt (not always with success) to transport them to the world of a play that is—to hit on another tired trope —a reflection of the world we have asked them to ignore.”