“Over the past few years, questions surrounding repatriation have evolved beyond whether it will happen to how — and by whom and in what way the fate of objects will be decided. … – ARTnews
Sixty UK Music Institutions Promise Gender Parity By 2022
More than 60 organisations, including some of the UK’s highest-funded companies and prominent performing arts conservatoires, have promised to take positive action towards equality. The Keychange project is the brainchild of charitable funding body the PRS Foundation. It was launched in 2018, when 180 music festivals committed to programming gender-balanced line-ups by 2022. – The Stage
Ha: New York Bookstore Owner Makes Case That His Stores Ought To Get Tax Breaks Amazon Was Going To Get
His argument for assistance is simple: The stores generate $650,000 in annual tax revenue for the city and state, and his 75 staffers (on a payroll of $1.7 million in 2018) spend “virtually all” their income in the city. In addition to its status as a small-but-mighty economic engine, he adds, “Book Culture contributes simply by being what we are, storefront businesses active in a community.”
Met Museum Can Keep Picasso’s ‘The Actor’, Rules U.S. Court Of Appeals
“First brought against the Met in 2016, the suit alleged that Picasso’s The Actor (1904-05) was subject to restitution laws and should therefore be returned to the family of its original owners, Paul and Alice Leffmann, both of whom fled Germany during the Nazi party’s rise to power in the mid-1930s. The Leffmanns’ great-grandniece, Laurel Zuckerman, had alleged that her relatives were made to sell the work ‘under duress.'” – ARTnews
Theatre On The Go: Made For Your Car
This is a theatre column, after all. But I really picked up three actors who directed me around streets previously unknown to me in downtown Markham and its environs, and who each made me believe in ten short minutes that their situations were really happening. – Toronto Star
How I Found A Studio For Merce Cunningham In Postwar Paris
Marianne Preger-Simon recounts how she saw the great choreographer perform in the French capital in 1949, and how she contrived to meet him — ultimately to become his first student and then a charter member of his dance company. – Literary Hub
At Historic House Museums In The South, A New Focus On The Lives Of The Enslaved
“In cities including Savannah and Charleston, … for years, tours of historic homes would focus on their architecture and fine furniture, but not on how the wealth so clearly displayed depended on enslaved labor. … Now that’s changing.” – The New York Times
Why Lists Of “Best” Or “Most Livable” Cities Are A Dumb Exercise
By using data as a driver, such rankings present themselves as dispassionate and impartial, as if they are simply removing the lid on a machine to reveal objectively how the engine beneath is functioning. They nonetheless represent a worldview taken from a highly specific angle, one that is full of scarcely acknowledged assumptions about who the imaginary citizen they address is. – CityLab
What SFMoMA Is Buying From Its $50M Rothko Sale To Diversify Its Collection
Among the works in this group of acquisitions, which will go on view at the museum in August, are Thomas’s portrait of a transgender woman named Qusuquzah, Qusuquzah, une très belle négresse 1 (2011), Bowling’s monumental painting Elder Sun Benjamin (2018), and Belmore’s large-scale ceramic sculpture Tarpaulin No. 1 (2018). – ARTnews
Age-Appropriate Books (For Any Age)
Avid readers could build autobiographies around their favorite books and come to the realization that what they have read is almost as meaningful as when they read it. So here’s a list of books matched to every age. – Washington Post
Preserving The Japanese Writing System Reserved For Women
“Women in medieval Japan were discouraged from studying kanji – characters modelled on written Chinese which represent individual words – and began using kana, which transcribe words phonetically. A [20th-century] standardisation programme … saw 90% of the 550 kana die out. But these forgotten characters are now being kept alive by the artist and master of Japanese calligraphy Kaoru Akagawa, who became fascinated with them after deciphering letters from her grandmother.” – The Guardian
Negotiating The Most Intimate Sex Scene On Broadway
Terrence McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune begins with noisy sex in the dark, then the lights come up on the actors getting out of bed naked. It’s always been a delicate scene to stage, and the current New York revival is the first Broadway production of any kind to use a professional intimacy coordinator. Laura Collins-Hughes talks with her — Claire Warden — and stars Audra McDonald and Michael Shannon about how they make it work. – The New York Times
William F. Brown, Tony-Nominated Playwright Of ‘The Wiz,’ Dead At 91
“Mr. Brown began his career producing advertising for television before branching out as a freelance writer, playwright and, for several years, the co-creator of a syndicated comic strip. A versatile and all-purpose writer, Mr. Brown published humor books, wrote for musical revues and contributed jokes and skits to television shows.” – The Washington Post
Actors’ Unions Push IMDb Not To Publish Birth Names Of Trans Actors
The online database says that it’s not outing anyone; it’s simply listing the names of actors as they were at the time they appeared in a given production. SAG-AFTRA, joined by a number of LGBTQ advocacy organizations, calls the practice an invasion of privacy that can put the named actor at risk. – The New York Times
Director Who Transformed California Symphony Resigning
In five years as executive director of the Walnut Creek-based orchestra, Aubrey Bergauer used a data- and diversity-driven approach to turn a languishing institution around, with ticket sales, donor base, budget, and number of performances all more than doubling. – The Mercury News (San Jose)
Rem Koolhaas’s OMA To Create Annex For New York’s New Museum
“The new structure, which will add 60,000 square feet of space, reflects how much New York’s small, scrappy New Museum has changed since it opened on the Bowery in 2007, increasing its annual attendance to more than 400,000 from 60,000 and staff to 150 from 30.” – The New York Times
Large Study: Students Who Study Music Do Better In Other Subjects
“It is believed that students who spend school time in music classes, rather than further developing their skills in math, science, and English classes, will underperform in those disciplines. Our research suggests that, in fact, the more they study music, the better they do in those subjects.” – Pacific Standard
The Grace of Uzbek Dance
What struck me watching Zamira Aminova in Bukhara was that, although her movements were not as complex as others I’ve seen, she never stopped seeming to float like a leaf on the wind. That takes strength. – Michal Shapiro
What Happened to Nelson Algren?
The New York Times Book Review has finally covered Never a Lovely So Real, Colin Asher’s Algren biography, and Susan Jacoby’s honest, well-reported review sets a judicious standard. – Jan Herman
Greta Matassa In L.A.
Following the recent Rifftides review of her new album, we thought you’d enjoy Ms. Matassa and friends in a Gershwin medley. – Doug Ramsey
Opponents Of LACMA’s Design For A New Campus Start To Organize
The group is primarily concerned about the latest design’s 10% reduction in size and museum director Michael Govan’s plan to disburse objects from the permanent collection to future satellite exhibition spaces in South Los Angeles and elsewhere. – Los Angeles Times
Amazon Responds To NYT Story That Says It’s Lax On Policing Fake Books
Amazon remains defiant that it is doing more than enough to combat the issue. In its blog post, the company claimed that in 2018 alone it “invested over $400 million in personnel and tools built on machine learning and data science to protect our customers from fraud and abuse in our stores.” – Publishers Weekly
When A Philosopher Is Forced Not To Think
Being a philosopher on brain rest is like being a point guard on hand rest. The major asset for your profession is suddenly not working reliably. – The New York Times
Deep Engagement
As a result of the centrality of government funding for the arts in South America, the emphasis in much of the work in the arts there appears to be on developing connections with communities. Here are several projects I learned of at a conference this month in Santiago, Chile. – Doug Borwick
Propwatch: the telephone in ‘Present Laughter’
Did you see that video of two teenagers baffled by a dial phone? Nothing is guaranteed to make you feel jurassic like watching the routine technology of your childhood appear irrefutably foreign. But cometh the play, cometh the phone. The defining prop, sound effect and plot device of Present Laughter, Noel Coward’s 1942 comedy of vanity, is an ink-black dial phone. – David Jays