“Conductor Arturo Toscanini dubbed her a once-in-a-hundred years talent, and yet music schools in her home town of Philadelphia would not entertain her as a student, and she did not find true fame until she left Jim Crow America behind and went to Europe. Even at the height of her fame, African-American contralto singer Marian Anderson encountered barriers erected solely because of the color of her skin. And yet, she kept pursuing her love, with the support of her church and community, a launch to fame via an adoring European audience, and her refusal to bow down to American segregationist policies.” – Smithsonian Magazine
An Arts-Funded Online Survey Says 80% Of Australians Favor Publicly Funding Orchestras. Too Bad More Of Them Don’t Actually Go To Concerts …
A national online survey of 800 adults found that 83% of respondents believe that government funding of orchestras should be maintained or increased, 70% say orchestras are economically significant, and 48% consider classical music an important part of Australian culture. But 80% report not having attended a classical concert in the past 12 months. (Most said that cost is the primary reason for that.) – Limelight (Australia)
Umberto Eco’s Outsized Influence On Popular Culture
Few of the newspaper obituarists seemed to know quite what he had done. He had been involved in something that had changed the way texts are interpreted; but it was not really clear why that was so Earth-shattering. – Times Literary Supplement
Twenty-Five Years After Founding Native Voices At The Autry, Randy Reinholz Gets Some Major Recognition
Reinholz, an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, also had a hit as a playwright with Off the Rails (an adaptation of Measure for Measure) at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2017. He “is now the first Native person to receive the Ellen Stewart Career Achievement in Professional Theater Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.” – Indian Country Today
How London’s National Theatre Live Changed The Landscape
Broadcasting live theatre changes the audience – and the theatre. But for the better? Directors try to “collaborate with the show’s creative team and company. ‘We’ve got to do it in such a way that the artists are supported, that they trust it.'” – Playbill
Beethoven’s Revolution (But What Kind?)
Beethoven’s political engagement is indisputable, but whether it finds direct expression in his work – aside from dedications and commissions – is a sticky topic. – New Statesman
Detroit Art Is Hot. And With It Come The Challenges
“Artist studios get filled up pretty quickly,” he said. “And people are getting priced out.” – Artsy
Lee Bennett Hopkins, America’s Unknown King Of Children’s Poetry, Dead At 81
“[He] dedicated a lifetime to writing and anthologizing poetry for children, amassing troves of verse” — 120 volumes by the time he died — “to help young people navigate the unknowns of life, from why stink bugs stink to how to survive a divorce.” – The Washington Post
‘I Love Staring At One Spot For Six Hours!’ Life-Drawing Models On The Trials And Joys Of Posing Nude For Art Students
The person who gave that quote actually meant it. Tim Jonze talks to three professional figure models about the worst and best parts of their jobs. – The Guardian
For The First Time, A Telenovela Is Centered On A Gay Couple
El Corazón Nunca Se Equivoca (“The Heart Is Never Wrong”), produced and set in Mexico City, is a spinoff of the popular Mi Marido Tiene Más Familia (“My Husband Has More Family”): two young men in that series have fallen in love and go off to university together — with the full support of one of their families. And with the power of telenovelas in Mexico’s machismo-filled culture, the new series is a major development. – The Washington Post
Abandoned Sketch Found Beneath Leonardo Painting
“Why Leonardo abandoned this first composition still remains a mystery. Handprints resulting from patting down the priming on the panel to create an even layer of more or less uniform thickness can also be seen, probably the work of an assistant – but perhaps even by Leonardo himself.” – The Guardian
The Biology Of Art (and Its Many Connections)
So many of the metaphors which we use to describe art are biological in nature, from calling a work “my baby” to William S. Burroughs’ contention about language’s viral nature. How some people describe biological creation is reciprocal in its metaphors, such as thinking of a child as a “masterpiece.” – Nautilus
A Show That Turns Involuntary Gestures Of Cerebral Palsy Into Choreography
Despite it being a show that satirised the appropriation of disabled roles by non-disabled actors, few assumed someone with cerebral palsy might have staged it. That he did – and so well – feels like a step forward. – The Guardian
Why I’m Philosophically Opposed To Signing Petitions
“Such a document tries to persuade you to believe (that it is right to do) something because many people, some of whom are authorities, believe it (is the right thing to do). It is not always wrong to believe things because many people believe them, but it is always intellectually uninquisitive to do so.” The New York Times
Hostile Architecture In The Big Apple
Here’s a look at the some of the design features — often touted as amenities — that keep people from lingering, stretching out, or even sitting down in various public (or should that be “public”) spaces in New York City. – Gothamist
Gustavo Dudamel Has Led The LA Phil For Ten Years: What He’s Done And Will He Stay
“It may now seem inevitable that the world’s most glamorous conductor ended up leading what may be the world’s most admired orchestra, that a young Latin American hero would settle in a Latino-majority city that likes to tell itself it will never grow old. But it could have just as easily not happened at all.” – Los Angeles Magazine
A New Literary Timeline Of African-American History
Yusef Komunyakaa on Crispus Attucks, the first American to die in the Revolutionary War; Jesmyn Ward on the 1808 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves; Darryl Pinckney on the Emancipation Proclamation; Rita Dove and Camille T. Dungy on the Birmingham church bombing of 1963; Lynn Nottage on “Rapper’s Delight”; and others. Clint Smith begins and ends the collection, part of The 1619 Project, with poems on the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia in 1619 and the scene in the Louisiana Superdome after Hurricane Katrina. – The New York Times Magazine
‘For Centuries, Black Music, Forged In Bondage, Has Been The Sound Of Complete Artistic Freedom. No Wonder Everybody Is Always Stealing It.’
“Americans have made a political investment in a myth of racial separateness, the idea that art forms can be either ‘white’ or ‘black’ in character … This country’s music is an advertisement for 400 years of the opposite: centuries of ‘amalgamation’ and ‘miscegenation’ as they long ago called it, of all manner of interracial collaboration conducted with dismaying ranges of consent.” An essay for The 1619 Project by Wesley Morris. – The New York Times Magazine
YouTube Sued By LGBT Video Creators For Discrimination
“Five LGBTQ channels have joined together for the suit, which alleges that YouTube has discriminated against them by hiding their videos, removing subscribers, and denying advertising. They say the platform unfairly targets any video tagged with words like ‘gay,’ ‘transgender,’ or ‘bisexual,’ even when the videos have no mature content.” – BuzzFeed
Artist Robert Indiana’s Caretaker Left Him Living In Filth While Helping Himself To Indiana’s $13 Million Bank Account, Say Court Filings
“The allegations against Jamie Thomas, Indiana’s personal caretaker since 2013 and a longtime island associate, are included in a counterclaim by Indiana’s estate” in response to a complicated lawsuit by Thomas.” – Portland Press Herald
Trump Postponed Tariffs On Chinese Goods? Not On Art He Didn’t
Among the items imported from the People’s Republic that will be subject to import duties as of Sept. 1 are “paintings, drawings, engraving, prints and lithographs, sculptures and statuary of any material and antiquities more than 100 years old, as well as stamps and collectors’ pieces of archaeological interest.” And that will include Chinese items purchased from third countries. – The Art Newspaper
What The Allegations Against Placido Domingo Could Mean For Opera
Mark Swed: “The ramifications are considerable. If proved true, the allegations would be a tragic ending to one of the great careers in the history of opera, a tenor and now baritone who has sung more roles than any other, as well as a conductor, opera administrator and celebrity. It would also be a sad revelation about the catalyst and voice of opera in Los Angeles.” – Los Angeles Times
The Musical Aspirations Of Charles Manson
Manson had three primary lures: LSD, sex, and music. But music, and its power to unite a community of outsiders and misfits, remains the least-examined weapon in his arsenal. – The New Yorker
On Broadway, Female Lead Producers Are Coming Into Their Own
“Many in this new generation of female producers are taking alternate paths to the industry’s top rung — picking up skills in the nonprofit theater world, which has become an important breeding ground for Broadway shows, or in the corporate entertainment industry, home to many of the movie and pop-music brands that end up seeding international stages.” – The New York Times
How Music Festivals Got To Be A Mega-Business
This year there will be roughly 100 large, multi-day events—attended by more than 10,000 people each—around the United States. Live Nation, the concert and festival promoter, is now arguably the most important firm in the music industry, with more revenues than most traditional record labels. It owns four of the five largest festivals. AEG, the sports and entertainment company, owns two others. – CityLab