“Big Philanthropy is definitionally a plutocratic voice in our democracy, an exercise of power by the wealthy that is unaccountable, non-transparent, donor-directed, perpetual, and tax-subsidized.”
Time To Retire Beethoven’s Ninth?
Is Hip Hop The Way Forward For The Arts?
Hip hop culture illuminates a way forward within Canadian cultural institutions’ growth, evolution and vibrancy. It may seem that the spontaneity and improvisation of hip hop — cornerstones of the culture’s innovative core threaded seamlessly throughout dance, djing, rhyming and painting — are structurally and policy-wise an impossibility within cultural institutions. But…
American Shakespeare Center Names A New Leader
Former Shakespeare Theatre Company associate director Ethan McSweeny has been named to run the 30-year-old American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Va., beginning next week. The Blue Ridge troupe performs in the Blackfriars Playhouse, a facsimile of the indoor theater used by Shakespeare’s troupe.
Should An Artist Like Anish Kapoor Be Invoking His Copyright Just Because He Doesn’t Like The NRA’s Politics?
“Whether Sir Anish should leverage a law meant to foster and incentivize creativity and debate to instead silence and censor speech is the question before us. Put another way, does US Copyright law grant a copyright owner the sole and exclusive right to control how their copyrighted work is used?”
Stealing Art Is Easy – Doing Anything With It Afterward Is What’s Hard
“‘The main rule is that it’s not that hard to steal art, even from museums, but it’s almost impossible to translate that art into cash,’ says Noah Charney, a scholar and author who’s published multiple books on art theft. Paintings can be quickly cut out of frames, and small sculptures can be tucked into bags — even jewelry can be secreted away — but finding a buyer for your art or diamonds is often impossible. ‘Criminals don’t understand that, because their knowledge of art crime is based on fiction and films,’ Charney says.”
In His Head, He Was Constantly Panning It: When A New Yorker Book Critic Writes A Novel Of His Own
James Wood: “I find I can’t turn off the critical monitor quite how I would like to. … Perhaps I’ve reconciled myself to that inability, but I’ve come to the conclusion that that isn’t such a bad thing, that maintaining a critical consciousness at least enables me to review myself, edit myself, think twice and three times about everything I’m doing. … I found it to be sort of an intensely self-critical activity. So yeah, I was constantly writing my worst possible reviews.”
When A Museum Sells Off Some Of Its Art To Become More Diverse
The Baltimore Museum of Art‘s decision to sell off seven works by white male artists to create a war chest to fund acquisitions of art by women and artists of color drove a traditionally hermetic discussion about museum practices into the mainstream. Now, the museum’s closely watched decision is beginning to bear fruit.
The Untold History Of Sven, The Puppet Reindeer In Broadway’s ‘Frozen’
“[Disney Theatrical Productions] invited its longtime puppetry collaborator, Michael Curry (The Lion King), to experiment with ways the shaggy creature might be represented onstage. He tested two-performer pantomime before deciding to fashion a full-scale figure that could wordlessly engage with the unfolding plot — that could act — when brought to life by a single actor within. The resulting reindeer has become one of the most popular characters in the show, getting entrance applause and even a cameo on the Tonys.”
Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum Will Reopen Next January
“[The Hood] is due to reopen on 26 January 2019 after a closure of nearly three years for an expansion and revamp by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. The $50m project expands the museum’s space by 50% to over 62,000 sq ft, adds six new galleries and renovates the museum’s original 1985 Charles Moore building.”
An Attempt To Understand Racial Disparity At Nonprofits In Oakland
A total of 138 organizations serving people of color in Oakland with budgets of $250,000 or less are included in the research. In addition to documenting the impact of these grassroots groups (hint: it’s not just about the arts), the report highlights challenges faced by smaller cultural organizations and offers four overarching recommendations for policymakers and funders to consider.
The Noxious Problem With Stupid Opinions
We are seeing the worsening of a trend that the 20th century German-American philosopher Herbert Marcuse warned of back in 1965: “In endlessly dragging debates over the media, the stupid opinion is treated with the same respect as the intelligent one, the misinformed may talk as long as the informed, and propaganda rides along with education, truth with falsehood.” This form of “free speech,” ironically, supports the tyranny of the majority.
Ten Women Conductors Making Their Marks
No longer entirely a male preserve, orchestras are changing, and women conductors are increasingly making their marks.
Big Canadian Music Festival On Hold Because Of… Some Birds
Workers discovered the bird, a killdeer, guarding her four eggs while they were setting up one of the festival’s main stages. The breed is protected by the Canadian government and cannot be moved without federal permission.
Closure Of Celebrated Rio Music Nightclub Becomes Symbol Of Brazil’s Crises
“It was Rio’s equivalent of the Blue Note or Ronnie Scott’s, a legendary downtown samba club famed for its caipirinha-fuelled jam sessions and for spawning some of the best young musicians in town. Today, though, Bar Semente lies abandoned, a graffiti-covered symbol of the city’s post-mega-event slump. An epitaph has been sprayed on its facade: ‘The Olympics, for who?'”
What It’s Like To Be Jonathan Franzen Today
What had he done that was so wrong? Here he was, in his essays and interviews, making informed, nuanced arguments about the way we live now — about anything from Twitter (which he is against) to the way political correctness has been weaponized to shut down discourse (which he is against) to obligatory self-promotion (which he is against) to the incessant ending of a phone call by saying, “I love you” (which he is against, but because “I love you” is for private) — and though critics loved him and he had a devoted readership, others were using the very mechanisms and platforms that he warned against (like the internet in general and social media in specific) to ridicule him.
How Armenian Folk Dance Helped Sustain The Diaspora
“‘The two means of expression, outside of being a member of the church, to mark you as an Armenian are dance and food,’ [dance historian] Gary Lind-Sinanian says. ‘Those are the two every Armenian family practices to some degree.’ Still, every village seemed to have its own style, he said. ‘When people make their pilgrimages to some monastery for a festival, they could see, when various groups danced to a melody, by the way they danced, you could tell where they came from. It still happens today at Armenian-American conventions. You could have a dance taking place, and someone familiar with regional dances could go through it and say, ‘Oh, that group is from Fresno, they’re from Los Angeles, that’s Chicago, that’s Philadelphia, that’s Boston.””
Would-Be Rock Star Involved In Trump-Russia Scandal Trolls Us All With New Music Video
“The video, for a song called ‘Got Me Good,’ begins with a man sitting in front of a wall of computer monitors — a hacker in Russia, it seems — and on those monitors we see real footage of the singer, Emin Agalarov, talking to the real Donald Trump. … Then the video shifts to a scene in which Emin walks through a hotel hallway with a Trump impersonator. They exchange a briefcase implied to be full of cash, as Emin sings to the Trump actor, ‘I wish you at least could be honest. I wish that you told me the truth.’ Soon, they are frolicking in a bed with several women. What makes this more than a silly spoof is that Emin Agalarov is one of the only people in the world who might have firsthand knowledge of what Trump did or didn’t do during his brief trip to Moscow in 2013.”
How St. Louis Has Reworked And Rethought The Gateway Arch: Philip Kennicott
50 years after Eero Saarinen’s landmark was dedicated, it has a new museum, a new promenade connecting it to the city, and a new concept. “The arch … has always been beloved because it binds together two feel-good ideas that are essential to American identity: a heroic past of grit and conquest, and a triumphant future of innovation. Now, well into the 21st century, the challenge is how to disentangle and even dismantle those ideas while salvaging the arch as a cultural object. The solution, mostly effective, has been to think in terms of connection, both to the city which hosts it, and to the deeper currents of history that led to its creation.”
Philly’s Barrymore Awards Make Acting Categories Gender-Neutral
“On Tuesday, Theatre Philadelphia, which administers the Barrymores, announced it was switching to gender-neutral awards. Instead of a best actor and best actress, there will now be awards for best performance in categories that used to be gender specific, and two awards will be given.”
Why We Made The Barrymore Awards Gender-Neutral: Theatre Philadelphia’s Director
Leigh Goldenberg: “Theatre Philadelphia now recognizes a change like this one is more than just about nomenclature, and is certainly more than a question about language or even about a shiny statue handed to a select few. It’s about who we lift up and who we leave out in the process.”
What It’s Like To Play Violin In Simon Rattle’s Amateur Orchestra
“Simon Rattle is looking straight at me, eyes flaring, fist shaking. I am straining with every fibre of my being to give him what he wants. I would die for this man right now. I’m desperate to shape the phrase just as he’s showing, sustaining the long note and getting louder over the arpeggio. But I over-push the sound, my notes crack, I lose my focus and have to break eye contact to look at the music, ashamed of myself. I’m reminded why I decided not to become a professional musician.”
David Goldblatt, 87, Penetrating Photojournalist Of South African Apartheid
“[He] spent his entire career in his native South Africa, portraying black and white citizens in some of their most intimate and vulnerable moments. He ventured underground to photograph workers in the country’s gold mines, entered dusty black shantytowns and the segregated white churches and towns of Afrikaner hardliners.”
‘Beast Jesus’ Redux: Second Spanish Church Suffers Art Restoration Fail
“Five hundred years in an alcove of a Spanish church is likely to leave any statue looking a bit cracked and faded, and the 16th-century wooden figure of St. George at St. Michael’s Church in Estella, a town in northern Spain, was no exception. But after the church asked a local workshop to give the statue a makeover, the results horrified the town’s authorities, scandalized professional restorers and set social media alight with indignation.”
How I Directed ‘Macbeth’ In Kyrgyz, Which I Don’t Speak (And The Actors Didn’t Speak English)
Sarah Berger, who directed the first-ever Kyrgyz translation of “the Scottish play” at Kyrgyzstan’s national theatre: “I worked with 30 Kyrgyz actors who spoke no English. I don’t speak Russian or Kyrgyz. To add to the mix, I took two British actors with me, Claire Cartwright and Steve Hay, who performed in English with the rest of the cast speaking Kyrgyz. … There was also a fully Kyrgyz performance that was filmed and screened on state TV. So I had to deliver three different versions of the production in just over three weeks, as we performed four premieres with the cast variations.”