Like Artemisia Gentileschi, Josefa de Óbidos (1630–1684) was the daughter of a respected painter. But she developed a successful career in her own right, painting both sacred and secular subjects, in Counter-Reformation-era Portugal.
Getting A Ticket To Banksy’s Dismaland Theme Park Is A Nightmare (That’s Gotta Be What He Wanted)
The website crashed from all the traffic, and people have to stand in line queue for hours at the gate.
Miami Drags Its Feet On Wealthy Collector’s Self-Funded Museum – Until Getting Publicly Shamed
The museum proposed by hedge fund tycoon Steven Berkowitz – which would house sculptor Richard Serra’s enormous Passage of Time and James Turrell’s light installation Aten Reign – was stalled by local government. Then The Miami Herald wrote, “It’s baffling when an opportunity arises for taxpayers to benefit from the generosity of a wealthy investor and art patron – and the city of Miami acts like it doesn’t care.”
How New Orleans Culture Asserted Itself After Katrina
“When I first got to New Orleans after the flood I was stunned first by just how much had been destroyed, and then later by just how little I knew. I’d been writing about jazz for 20 years. Yet I was profoundly ignorant about what it means to have a living music, one that flows from and embeds everyday life — a functional jazz culture of the sort that once existed in cities throughout the United States but now is exclusive to New Orleans.”
New Orleans After Katrina: A Laboratory For What Works In Building Cities
Today, the word “laboratory” seems less loaded than it did in those early days. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu recently called the city “the nation’s leading laboratory for social change.” New Orleans-based journalist and Floodlines author Jordan Flaherty called it a laboratory for progressive, grassroots organizing.
Slang Invented By Black People And Killed By Appropriation
From “the bomb” to “holla” to the very short-lived “YOLO,” black slang words often go through the cycle of being used by black people, discovered by white people, and then effectively “killed” due to overuse and a general lack of understanding of how to use these words.
Dance Is A Visual Art, Right? (So Maybe That’s Where It Should Be)
Dance is finding an audience among visual artists, who are completely comfortable with abstraction and don’t need to annoy choreographers with the dreaded, “What was that about? question.
The Most Talked-About Novel In France Is An Algerian Rejoinder To Camus’s ‘The Stranger’
Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation is told from the point of view of an Algerian named Harun, the younger brother of the Arab man [Camus’s protagonist] Meursault killed. Meursault was a European who killed an Arab. Harun is an Arab who – we learn – killed a European. Harun’s first line? ‘Mama’s still alive today.'”
When The President Makes Playlists
“At a time when so many of our everyday choices get gussied up in the language of ‘curation,’ playlists and d.j.s (particularly celebrity d.j.s) have taken on an elevated role. The playlist has become a kind of biographical shorthand, a way of communicating something essential about ourselves through the performance of taste. Of course, taste and relatability mean something different when they involve someone with drones at his disposal.”
Should We Really Care If Yet Another F. Scott Fitzgerald Story Is ‘Discovered’?
“So here is a caveat lector: if you see an announcement of a ‘new’ work by Scott Fitzgerald, or any other classic author with a ready-made audience, check their archive catalogue first (most of them are digitised). It is probably just unpublished, and many will argue that it should stay that way.”
Television Isn’t Actually That Diverse Right Now
“Diversity isn’t one thing; it’s a lot of things. It’s in front of the camera and behind it, in writers’ rooms and executive offices. It’s not exclusively about race and gender and sexuality, but about other things as well. It’s about the bland and unremarked-upon affluence of almost all television families, and the fact that TV doesn’t incorporate very many people who go to church, and all the other ways that it historically looks at the population through a keyhole. And it’s about what stories you tell.”
It’s Past Time To Get Beyond Theatre’s ‘Black Slot’
Lynn Nottage: “I’ve always been told that there’s only room for one black play. If the black slot’s full, they won’t put in another.”
Anna Shapiro Running Steppenwolf Theatre: Year Zero
“Shapiro is a star of sorts, the company’s 35th ensemble member (and one of the few nonactors in that group), acclaimed for muscular, lyrical relationship studies, the kind where a chair or two gets thrown. She is a Tony Award winner whose production of ‘August: Osage County’ remains intrinsic to Steppenwolf’s identity. Advance ticket sales alone for ‘Fish in the Dark; ($14.5 million) were about the same as Steppenwolf’s annual operating budget. And for the past few years she has added to her reputation by becoming a Broadway insurance plan of sorts, celebrity-whispering famous actors until they become believable, bankable presences onstage.”
Ten Lessons From The Theatre World On How To Start A Diversity And Inclusion Program Without Screwing It Up
“4. Walk through the entire program through the lens of those you are inviting into your theatre or organization. What would you see? What would you experience? What does it feel like to be as a person of color and walk into your institution? An easy way to feel tokenized is when you are the only one at an institution.”
Writer Nalo Hopkinson On The 21st Century And A Lot More
“Who’s your favourite villain in literature, and why?”
“Frankenstein’s monster, because he’s right: Victor Frankenstein is an entitled dick who doesn’t care about the humanity of his creation.”
There’s Just So Much TV To Watch (Is It OK To Skip Some?)
“Binge-watching isn’t just the new sex — it’s the new workout, the new book club, the new cocktail hour. Where once most new shows premiered in the fall, now they drop all the time, some in complete seasons. Announcements of new programming from clever upstarts Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Acorn feel like pop-culture air-raid sirens: ‘Citizens, seek shelter: ‘The Man in the High Castle’ is descending.’ Of course, we want to see it, but, oh, my God, who has the time?”
This Physicist Is Saving Music
“Some of those delicate things are wax cylinders, lacquer and metal disks, plastic belts and even sheets of tin foil—cutting-edge technology from the past. The sounds that they hold include early, experimental voice recordings made by Alexander Graham Bell and his father in the 1880s.”
The (Canadian) National Post Put Up, Took Down, Then Re-posted A Margaret Atwood Column About The Prime Minister’s Hair
“‘Um, did I just get censored?’ Atwood asked on Twitter Friday evening after her column disappeared from the Post’s website, several hours after it had been posted. ‘For my flighty little caper on Hair?'” (The answer was … probably.)
Houston’s Classical Radio Station To Sell FM Frequency, Go All-Digital
“Houston Public Media, which operates the University of Houston’s broadcasting properties, says it will sell the frequency and transmitter for KUHA (91.7 FM) while retaining the station’s classical music format via online streaming and an HD Radio subchannel of KUHF (88.7 FM).”
The Man Who Made Tanglewood Chorus Cool
Before John Oliver arrived, choral pieces at Tanglewood were sung by whoever could be corralled among students in all branches of what was then called the Berkshire Music Center, plus anyone regularly at the Berkshires estate and concert venue—including maintenance and cafeteria workers. Auditioning was rudimentary: “Can you carry a tune? Do you have any free time?”
Revealed: British Police Spied On Doris Lessing For 20 Years
“Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing was spied on by security services for more than 20 years over suspicions of her communist sympathies, newly declassified records show.”
East Africa’s Largest Music Festival Canceled For Lack Of Funding
Selling tickets wasn’t a problem. “The festival, whose name means ‘sounds of wisdom’, is held every February. For the past 12 years, it has attracted thousands of international visitors to the Tanzanian island. Festival promoter Yusuf Mahmoud said the target was to raise $200,000 (£130,000) before the dates for 2016 edition would be announced. But so far only $42,000 has been raised, he said.”
Dutch Police Arrest Man Trying To Sell Fake Van Gogh Painting
“Police said Friday the suspect wanted 15 million euros ($17 million) for the painting and was offering forged documents purporting to be from the Van Gogh Museum to vouch for the work’s authenticity.”