“In the world of art, political turmoil can sometimes provide inspiration. In Mexico, the echoes of revolution 100 years ago can be seen in the work of a contemporary artist.” (video plus text) – PBS NewsHour
How To Write Classical Concert Program Notes That Actually Engage An Audience
Lara Pellegrinelli writes that, “as a lover of words, I’d once held the opinion that ‘Notes on the Program’ are bound to be mind-numbingly, soul-crushingly boring – or one of the more effective embalming tools for classical music.” After seeing a few – too few – examples of genuinely fascinating notes, she thinks “that this genre of writing about music needs an intervention.” So she provides one, complete with six useful rules. – 21CM
How Conservators Keep Art Made With Day-Glo Pigments Glowing
A reporter visits Los Angeles County Museum of Art, conservator Kamila Korbela as she works on restoring Frank Stella’s enormous Bampur. The challenge: the hue that’s fading fastest is one of Day-Glo Color Corp.’s most chemically complex: Saturn Yellow. – Los Angeles Times
Mezzo Dolora Zajick Will Retire From Opera Next Year
“[Her] final performance will take place at the Metropolitan Opera in the spring of 2020, when she will make her role debut as Kabanicha in performances of Janáček’s Káťa Kabanová scheduled for May 2, 6 and 9.” – Opera News
PBS NewsHour Visits Cambodia’s All-Gay-Male Classical Dance Troupe
“In 2015, artist Prumsodun Ok formed Cambodia’s first all-male and gay-identified Khmer dance company — in his living room. Part of his mission was to support the revival of an art form all but destroyed by the reign of the Khmer Rouge. Ok told his dancers they would need to be brave in order to give voice to a marginalized community. He shares his brief but spectacular take on honoring tradition.” (video plus transcript) – PBS NewsHour
Wangechi Mutu: A New Face for the Met
“Nourished by Kenyan culture, the transnational artist is filling the niches on the Fifth Avenue facade, for the first time in the Met’s history. It’s a step on the museum’s rocky road toward diversity.” – The New York Times
DC Mayor Locks City’s Arts Commission Out Of Its Storage Vault
In an escalation of what has reportedly been a long feud, staffers of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities “arrived at their offices in Southeast before the holiday weekend to find that the badges that grant them access to the agency’s art collection no longer worked.” The locks had been changed on the order of the office of Mayor Muriel Bowser, and access was not restored until the middle of the following week. – Washington City Paper
How Conspiracy Theorists Are Building (And Rebuilding) Their Own Networks
Over the past few years, an ideologically diverse coalition of white nationalists, conservatives and ultra-libertarians has launched attempts to build out its own online infrastructure, setting in motion a migration towards newly established “censorship-free” platforms. – Journal of Design and Science
Ceiling Collapses At The Portland Art Museum
Nobody was injured and the Art Museum says no artworks were damaged. 6 chairs and a table were lost. It says engineers examined the third floor room and the rest of the Mark Building and found no structural safety issues. – KXL
Hey Amazon, Goodreads Is A Terrible, Neglected Trashfire
Goodreads is essentially a good listmaking app, a place where readers go to, well, make lists. Is it a community of readers? Um. “Goodreads lingers in the dustbin of the early aughts, doomed to the hideous beige design and uninspiring organization of a strip mall doctor’s office.” Amazon, what gives? – OneZero
How 18th-Century Gentlemen Got Dressed [VIDEO]
Hint: They didn’t do it for themselves. – Aeon
How To Attract Young Audiences To Theatre, And Keep Them
A case study comes via Portland Center Stage in Oregon, where the theatre had a funded chance to experiment to see what works … and what doesn’t. Turns out, exterior bus advertising and billboards really work: “All those surveyed mentioned that if they can’t avoid advertising, they tend to pay attention.” – American Theatre
Margaret Atwood Talks About ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ And Why She Wrote A Sequel
“Totalitarian systems don’t last, it is my fervent belief. Some of them have lasted longer than others. When they come apart, what is it that causes them to fall apart? … [And] how do you get to be a high-ranking person within a totalitarian dictatorship? Either you’re a true believer from the beginning, at which point you’re probably going to get purged later on, or you’re an opportunist. Or it can be fear … I would put fear as No. 1: If I don’t do this, I will be killed.” – The New York Times
In Trial For Oakland’s Ghost Ship Fire, One Defendant Acquitted, One Gets Hung Jury
Three years after three dozen people died in the flames at the warehouse-turned-artist-colony, Max Harris, the 29-year-old resident caretaker, was found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter; jurors deadlocked 10-to-2 over Derick Almena, the 49-year-old master tenant and organizer of the derelict warehouse’s informal transformation into a live-work complex. – San Francisco Chronicle
Arts Council England Defends Its New ‘Relevance’ Funding Requirement
Simon Mellor, the Council’s deputy chief executive: “To be clear, of course we’re not going to be asking organisations to justify the relevance of individual works of art. We do, however, think that it is not unreasonable to expect organisations in receipt of the public’s money to be relevant – to ensure that the way they work, including their public programmes and other activities, is valued by their communities and stakeholders.” – Arts Professional
Dallas Opera Cancels Plácido Domingo Gala Following Latest Sexual Misconduct Allegations
The tenor’s performance at the benefit concert next March would have been his first appearance with The Dallas Opera since his U.S. operatic debut in 1961. (The one accuser in the latest report who was willing to be named publicly, soprano Angela Turner Wilson, is the daughter of the president of Southern Methodist University in Dallas.) – The Dallas Morning News
Toxic or Tonic? The Late David Koch’s Munificent Cultural Philanthropy
It remains to be seen whether his cultural benefactions will be augmented by bequests. I’m guessing that museums on the receiving end of such bequests, unless encumbered by unacceptable conditions, won’t abjure them as toxic. Nor should they. – Lee Rosenbaum
Propwatch: the photo album in ‘Appropriate’
In Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast has some advice about hoarding: Don’t hold onto anything you don’t want your kids to have to sort through once you’re gone. For the Lafayette family in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate, it’s an album stuffed with vintage photos of lynchings from the American south. – David Jays
V&A Director Defends Accepting Sponsorship From Fossil Fuel Companies
Tristram Hunt: “I think that the pre-history of fossil fuel companies in muddying the science about climate change, in lobbying, in their political acts, have been pretty criminal and they will be judged on that. But, I also think they will be part of the solution to dealing with climate change and they are engaged with it. … So, I don’t have a problem with having relationships with those organisations, like for example BP who are thinking very carefully about a zero-carbon future.” – The Art Newspaper
Boris Johnson’s Government Promises 4.1% Increase In UK Culture Funding
According to the government’s spending review for 2020-21, “the budget of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) will increase by 4.1% in real terms to £1.6bn, after inflation is taken into account.” The Treasury announcement said that there will be “over £300m to support the UK’s world-class national museums and galleries … [and] over £500m for Arts Council England and Sport England.” (Guess it’ll come out of all that money Britain will no longer be sending to Brussels, right?) – The Art Newspaper
Eleven More Women Say Plácido Domingo Kissed, Groped, And Pursued Them In Opera Houses — And Management Knew
Additionally, “several … backstage employees described for the AP how they strove to shield young women from the star as administrators looked the other way.” (These include staffers at Los Angeles Opera, where Domingo remains General Director.) “Taken together, their stories reinforce a picture of an industry in which Domingo’s behavior was an open secret and young women were left to fend for themselves in the workplace.” – AP
The Lakota Music Project finds common ground through collaboration
“The Lakota Music Project [is] a collaborative program developed with the [South Dakota Symphony Orchestra] and musicians of the tribe. The goal is to create cultural cooperation and break down barriers, enabling audiences to learn more about traditional art — of the Lakota, and of a symphony orchestra.” – The Washington Post