“There is a pervasive idea that if you are a great dancer, you are automatically qualified to teach, whether you have training or experience in education practices or not. There is also an assumption that training to be a dance educator is only valuable if you’re working with children — that you don’t need it when teaching anyone over the age of 16.” Alexandra Cook, community programs director with Mark Morris Dance Group, learned the hard way that these assumptions are not true. – Dance Magazine
Defund The Western Humanities Canon?
“I could not help but wonder about the institution of the Western canon. Were my colleagues and I right to think that the institution to which we had given much of our professional lives could be reformed? Was our particular culture as teachers of Western culture compromised to the core? If it was, must we then, well, defund the teaching of the canon?” – The American Scholar
The University Is Ripe For Unbundling
“What online services lack in quality, they make up for in convenience—and as they get more popular, they’re only going to get better, which in turn could unbundle the prevailing model of higher education.” – The Atlantic
How To Decide Which Statues To Take Down?
Much of the social media debate has been over whether a historical figure who took a morally objectionable positions must be understood as “a man of his time.” The response of activists has often been along the lines of “Hitler was a man of his time too.” Here both sides are mistaken. – Bloomberg
MoCA Cleveland Director Resigns After Controversy
In the statement announcing her resignation, Jill Snyder did not refer to the apology, saying, “I came to this decision with the understanding that the world at large, and our museum in particular, are in a powerful moment of disruption and possibility.” She added, “I embrace this as an opportunity to advance the movement for change that is now sweeping through our culture.” – The New York Times
Muti Opens Live Summer Festival In Italy
The 78-year-old renowned conductor said the coronavirus had ‘’destroyed music,‘’ with shuttered venues depriving the world of ‘’spiritual food” as it faced a pandemic that still threatens uncalculated economic repercussions beyond the lives lost. Even during two world wars, Muti noted, theaters stayed open to provide cultural relief except during the worst of the bombings. – Chicago Tribune
Press Release Claims Seattle Art Museum Is Dissolving
The release, sent from an email address that appeared to be the same as that used by the organization’s public-relations department, looked like the real thing — but it was fake. – Seattle Times
Culture Is A Major NY Industry. What Happens When It Shuts Down?
According to the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, film, TV, theater, music, advertising, publishing, and digital content in New York provide 305,000 jobs, and an annual economic output of $104 billion. What happens when the very things that bring so many people to New York are forced to shut down? When we’re banned from congregating in sanctuaries of art, drama, dance, comedy, literature, and music, where does the culture go? – National Geographic
A Netflix For The Performing Arts?
“Doing digital isn’t a quick-fix Band-Aid for anyone,” says Kathleya Afanador, Marquee’s co-founder and head of content. “It’s a fundamental layer of their overall business that needs to be prioritized.” – Washington Post
Thousands Of Arts Educators In London Are Losing Their Jobs
Arts lecturers tend to be employed on casual contracts. With universities closing in-person classes, these lecturers are being laid off en masse. – The Art Newspaper
Does Toppling Statues Make Sense?
It is easy to destroy; it is hard to build. The American edifice that imperfect men and women have built over the past two centuries is a solid foundation for the just nation in which we live and seek to improve. We must not burn it down in the vain hope that a better future can emerge from its bonfire. – Washington Post
Appeals Court Revives Copyright Lawsuit Over ‘The Shape of Water’
“The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals … says that additional evidence, including expert testimony, is needed to weigh similarities between the Academy Award-winning film and a play by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Paul Zindel.” – The Hollywood Reporter
A Socially-Distanced Concert Outside. How Did It Work?
Much like those nervously gathered to listen, the program was a little all over the place; but the intimacy of the experience — and our collective hunger to hear just about anything — gave the feeling that audience and performers were conducting the same experiment: just being there. Even before the first notes were played, I found myself getting lost in the music of chitchat and laughter — our own birdsong. – Washington Post
See Leonardo’s ‘Last Supper’ Online Far More Clearly Than It Looks In Person
“When he painted it, Leonardo used an experimental technique using egg tempera and oil paint on plaster, so it began to fade soon after it was completed. Luckily, Leonardo’s pupils created a copy using oil paint on canvas that has better stood the test of time. Now, that oil painting is available online after a partnership between England’s Royal Academy of Arts and Google Arts & Culture.” – Smithsonian Magazine
Barcelona Opera House Reopens For An Audience Of Plants
The Gran Teatre del Liceu filled its 2,292 seats with plants for a performance by the UceLi Quartet, which it called a prelude to its 2020-2021 season. The string quartet serenaded its leafy audience with Giacomo Puccini’s “Crisantemi,” in a performance that was also made available to human listeners via livestream. – NPR
Glyndebourne Festival Opera Will Do An Outdoor Season This Summer
“Offenbach’s 1858 Mesdames de la Halle is the first opera to be announced. It will be staged with 12 singers but no chorus, with 13 orchestral musicians instead of the usual 40, and with a limited audience of 200 people [spaced apart outdoors]. … Taking place throughout July and August, the series will include concerts from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and London Philharmonic Orchestra.” – Classic FM
BBC Pledges To Spend £100m To Increase Diversity In Front Of And Behind The Camera
“The U.K. public broadcaster is also putting into place a mandatory 20-percent diverse-talent target for all new commissions as it plans ‘bold steps that will help make the BBC an instrument of real change.'” – The Hollywood Reporter
In This Pandemic Summer, Dance Companies Reconceive Their Work For The Outdoors
“We all know it’s safer to be outside and socially distanced, but that doesn’t mean we are confined to an outdoor stage with chairs placed six feet apart.” Here’s a look at what companies in Tampa Bay, Houston, Seattle, and rural Connecticut (yes, Pilobolus) are coming up with. – Dance Magazine
‘Drive-Thru Drama’: Another Solution To The Theatre-In-The-Age-Of-COVID Problem?
“With the usual model of theatregoing currently out of the question most everywhere, a handful of theatres have taken a cue from an old concept: medieval pageant wagons. Only this time, instead of the artists driving from audience to audience, the audience drives from artist to artist.” – American Theatre
Joel Schumacher, Who Directed A Series Of Hollywood Hits, Dead At 80
“A journeyman director who shepherded a new generation of young stars to the big screen in St. Elmo’s Fire and steered the Batman franchise into its most baroque territory in Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, … he established himself as a filmmaker of great flair, if not often good reviews, in a string of mainstream films in the 1980s and ’90s. To the frequent frustration of critics but the delight of audiences, Mr. Schumacher favored entertainment over tastefulness — including those infamous Batman and Robin suits with visible nipples — and he did so proudly.” – The Washington Post
Another Bungled Art Restoration In Spain
First there was the world-famous fiasco “Beast Jesus,” then there was St. George painted to look like a toy. Now an early copy of Murillo’s Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables has been wrecked because a collector tried to have it fixed up for only €1,200 by a furniture restorer, and there are calls in Spain for the entire field of art restoration to be regulated. – The Guardian
Kurt Cobain’s Guitar Sold For $6 Million
At $6.01m after fees, the guitar is the most expensive ever sold at auction, Julien’s Auctions said. Bidding in Los Angeles opened at $1m and was won by Rode Microphones founder Peter Freedman. – BBC
The Summer Of Drive-In Culture
Up and down the country, drive-ins are opening as canny entrepreneurs see a business opportunity. It’s going out but staying in at the same time, and only a cynic (that’ll be me) would suggest it combines the worst of both. Cinemas, concert halls, theatres, galleries and standup gigs are closed, festivals abandoned. And yet we yearn for live art and entertainment. Hence recent drive-in gigs at an airport in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and at a car park in Bratislava, Slovakia. Across the world, people are leaving lockdown, getting into their cars and chasing down what passes for live culture at this difficult time while still socially distancing. – The Guardian
BlogBacks: John Ravenal & Alan Wallach (& me) on the Confederate Sculptures Fracas
I knew that my contrarian suggestions about what to do with the controversial sculptures of Confederate leaders on Richmond’s Monument Avenue would provoke some pushback, but I hoped for the constructive critiques that I’ve come to expect from my knowledgeable, insightful readers. That’s exactly what I got. – Lee Rosenbaum
When Public Assets Become Private – Why We Should Care
Only a public agent can speak in our name. So mass privatisation doesn’t simply shift decision-making away from public institutions to unaccountable, private entities; it also undermines shared civic responsibility and the very existence of collective political will. – Aeon