As The Atlantic runs a story for the end of Pride Month with the headline claim that “The Struggle for Gay Rights Is Over,” perhaps the author needs to chat with Khalid Abdel-Hadi, a Jordanian whose magazine, created in a place where only 7 percent think LGBT people should have equal rights, is blocked in his own country. (video) – BBC
A Creepy Way Of Thinking About Art: Investing In It
Both of these reservoirs of dark matter—trophy works destined for museum accession or philanthropic donation and unsold inventory—serve to keep prices afloat and maintain artificial scarcity for the thinly traded population of works that do come to market each season. – Artsy
Novelist Michael Chabon Will Be Showrunner Of Next ‘Star Trek’ Series
The Pulitzer-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Moonglow, Wonder Boys and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union will be in charge of Star Trek: Picard, the upcoming CBS All Access series that will revisit Patrick Stewart’s character from The Next Generation. – Deadline
Principal Of ‘Fame’ High School Is Out After Pushing Too Hard For Academics
After six years in charge of LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts in Manhattan, Lisa Mars has resigned. “For years, Mars’ leadership … has been criticized for what students, faculty, parents, and alumni have described as a shifted focus to academics. Last month, students staged an hours-long sit-in at the school to protest Mars.” – Chalkbeat
Hearing Each Other Over The Gun Fire
“When, back in May 2018, Pittsburgh’s Quantum Theatre programmed E.M. Lewis’s The Gun Show for the following February, it was with the intention of starting a conversation around gun violence in the area. This was before the mass shooting at the city’s Tree of Life Synagogue on 27 October. … In the aftermath of the shooting, we at Quantum knew that we had to do more than just present a show about guns. We had to talk face-to-face with our patrons about them.” – HowlRound
This Museum Wants To Repatriate Its Benin Bronze. That’s More Complicated Than They’d Expected
A Q&A with two curators at the museum at the Rhode Island School of Design about the issues of provenance, law, and diplomacy around the future return of the museum’s 18th-century sculpture of the head of a traditional Edo king. – Hyperallergic
Webster Vs. Worcester: America’s Dictionary Wars
As the desire for an authoritative dictionary of American English developed in the first half of the 19th century, there was a serious battle between the partisans of Noah Webster — who was passionate and devoted, yes, but whose definitions could be, well, idiosyncratic, and whose ideas about spelling reform were mocked — and the more scholarly Joseph Emerson Worcester. Who won? Not Webster, though it may look otherwise. – Aeon
Marvel Comics Moves Into Theatre With Series Of Plays For High Schools
“As if dominating movie theaters weren’t enough, Marvel is about to move into high school theater as well. The publisher has announced a partnership with theatrical publisher Samuel French to offer three one-act plays featuring Marvel characters created specifically for the high school market under the umbrella banner Marvel Spotlight.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Joyce Pensato, 78, Artist Who Gave Cartoon Characters De Kooning-Like Intensity
Robert Smith: “She subverted both sides of the high-low equation, ridiculing and exaggerating Abstract Expressionist technique while imbuing popular culture characters with raw, uncontrollable feelings that were more real and gripping than the angst of the Abstract Expressionists.” – The New York Times
Now Even Britain’s House Of Lords Thinks West End Tickets Are Too Expensive
“Liberal Democrat peer Patrick Boyle started the debate, in which he asked the government what ‘assessment they have made of the operation of the theatre market in London’ and what steps it had taken to ‘ensure theatre is accessible to as wide an audience as possible’. He used his speech to demand greater transparency from the theatre industry about where money from ticket sales went.” – The Stage
Two Houston Ballet Dancers To Lead Estonia’s National Ballet
First soloist Linnar Looris, a native son, has been named artistic director; Jared Matthews, who was a longtime soloist at ABT before coming to Houston as a principal dancer, will be assistant to the artistic director. – Pointe Magazine
What Happens To Modern Dance Companies — And What Happens To Modern Dance Itself — When The Founders Are Gone?
Joan Acocella: “A lot of modern-dance companies are talking about ‘legacy’ and trying to come up with ways to perpetuate it. Why? Well, the art form is more than a century old. Many modern-dance companies are now big institutions, prestigious features of our cultural landscape. If they disband, a ton of people will lose their jobs. More important, there will no longer be anyone to perform the dances properly, in the style passed down through generations of dancers. The work will cease to exist. It would be as if, when Rembrandt died, all his canvases were taken out into the back yard and burned.” – The New Yorker
Has Magic Been Displaced By Science? Not At All
Far from having evaporated, ‘folkloric disenchantment’ is still common today in the writings of self-described magicians, shamans and witches. But we also find its analogue in academic disciplines. In this academic version of the myth, nostalgia for vanished magic has been replaced by the idea that a scientific worldview has stepped in to replace more primitive folk-belief systems. – Aeon
Who Gets Duped By Fake Online Images
The main factors that determined whether a person could correctly perceive each image as a fake were their level of experience with the internet and digital photography. – The Conversation
How The Mueller Report Was Turned Into A Play And Live-Streamed By A Superstar Cast
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan (The Kentucky Cycle) adapted the special counsel’s notoriously careful report into a drama titled The Investigation: A Search for the Truth in Ten Acts — each act covering an act of possible obstruction of justice detailed in the report. And on Monday, a cast featuring Annette Bening, Kevin Kline, Michael Shannon, Alfre Woodard, Jason Alexander, and many others read and streamed the play live; John Lithgow played Donald Trump. – Los Angeles Times
Calm Down, Folks — Netflix Has Not Locked Down The Future Of Cinema
Not, argues David Sims, that you could tell from the big New York Times package on the future of movies. We need to keep in mind that “Netflix is still a young company, one that’s sitting on a mountain of debt and creating new film and TV at a rate that feels unsustainable,” that studios are building their own streaming services to compete with Netflix, and that last year’s box office grosses from actual cinemas were the biggest ever. – The Atlantic
New York City’s Public Libraries Drop Access To Streaming Movie Service
The Brooklyn, Queens, and New York Public Library systems began offering cardholders free access to the well-regarded service Kanopy in 2017, and last year about 1% of cardholders used the service. Now the libraries have said that rising costs (Kanopy charged the libraries $2 per view) have made offering the service “unsustainable.” – The New York Times
Guelph Treasure Case: Berlin Museums Will Appeal To US Supreme Court For Dismissal
“The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the organisation that oversees Berlin’s state museums, says it will appeal to the United States Supreme Court to dismiss a claim for the Guelph Treasure filed by the heirs of a consortium of Jewish art dealers who say they sold the artefacts under duress in the Nazi era. The heirs say the treasure is worth at least €200m.” – The Art Newspaper
That Queer Sex Video Jair Bolsonaro Tweeted? It Was Guerrilla Performance Art, Say The Men In It
In March the Brazilian president posted a video clip shot at a gay street party during São Paulo’s Carnival, tweeting, “We have to expose the truth so the population are aware of their priorities.” Now the pair caught on the video have spoken to the media for the first time since Bolsonaro’s tweet: they say they’re part of a six-person queer art collective called Ediy. “We want to perform in public places. Places where this sort of thing is not expected. We refer to it as ‘hacking the imagination’.” – The Guardian
Elizabeth Banks: Making Money In Hollywood Is Getting Tougher
“There’s a lot more work, but it’s a lot harder to make money on anything. It’s one of the reasons the unions are up in arms right now. For low-end workers, the people on the tail of those big productions, it’s a lot harder to get by. And that’s true for middle-class actors and writers, too.” – The New York Times
How “Hamilton” Changed The Broadway Touring Business
The 2018-19 touring season that just ended set records in box office ($1.6 billion) and attendance (18.5 million). “Hamilton” had a clear hand: There are now four productions beyond New York, up from three the previous season. The total number of “Hamilton” weeks on the road sprang from 121 to 177, according to Charlotte St. Martin, president of the Broadway League. – Washington Post
That Google-Docs Arts Workers Salary Spreadsheet: A Seattle Analysis
“There’s often a claim that there’s simply not enough to provide its most essential staff a living wage, and I think because people love working for these institutions they’ve been willing to take on that weight for long periods of time, sometimes years, but at this point folks just aren’t buying it anymore.” – Crosscut
New York City Opera Scales Back Plans, With Do A 10-Performance Season
General director Michael Capasso’s original plan when the company emerged from bankruptcy in January 2016 called for 72 performances of 13 operas in 2018-19 to mark the company’s 75th anniversary. – Washington Post (AP)
A Theatre Critic Reviews Presidential Candidates’ Performances
Peter Marks: “Political campaigns are all about seducing audiences. So why shouldn’t someone like me be out here, reviewing the art — or artlessness — of the seduction? Presidential contenders do not win merely by trumpeting their achievements and policies. No, their instrument has to resound with some other, ineffable qualities.” – Washington Post