“The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow will soon take over the running of Russia’s National Centre for Contemporary Arts, whose nine branches extend from Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea to Tomsk some 4,000km east. … Several new NCCA branches are under discussion for the university cities of Khabarovsk, Tyumen and Novosibirsk.” – The Art Newspaper
L.A. high school revives Mexican dance tradition many parents left behind
“They may look like a professional dance company but they’re actually students from Esperanza College Prep, a high school located in the primarily Hispanic East Los Angeles. Students there are learning historic Mexican folk dances, some of them hundreds of years old. Their parents and grandparents loved these traditions growing up but had to leave them behind when they came to America.” (video) – CBS News
Get Politics Out Of Classical Music? Well, Er…
These invectives against “political” music seem to stand out more due to our current contentious climate, which may create the impression that there has been an uptick in the number of modern pieces with a political orientation. But the truth is that there has always been a desire on the part of artists to respond to the issues of the moment. – NewMusicBox
The Internet Is Changing How We Write (For Bad And Good)
The Internet is speeding up the evolution of English by increasing our ability to stay loosely in touch with, and mutually influence, one another. – Washington Post
Music Deserts: What We Need Is Nutritional Music
“Musical malnourishment, with increasing mono-diets and over-consumption of processed, chemically treated/created culture, entails an over-reliance upon intake from manufactured commodities such as loudspeakers, machines, and computers. Thus greater passivity is generated whereby people no longer look to themselves to make music, but simply purchase it via a concert ticket or through a new electronic home entertainment toy.” – NewMusicBox
Twenty Years Ago, Reality Shows ‘Broke TV’ And Paved The Way For Today
Used to be, the U.S. TV landscape had a few reality shows, nothing spectacular, nothing great. But 1999 changed things: “The drama, the spectacle and arguably the artifice of reality television became the main draws. Participants couldn’t simply be regular people anymore; they had to be personalities, or types, perfectly attuned and calibrated to orchestrating the juiciest of drama. Soon reality stars became the new celebrities, celebrities the new reality stars.” One might say it led to a certain election outcome as well. – HuffPost
A Gender Gap In Ballet Leadership Seems Too Weird – But It’s Real
Girls outnumber boys up to 20 to 1 in ballet classes, and so it seems like ballet would be one place – maybe the only place – where women would have the majority of leadership roles. Nope. “A whopping 72% of ballet companies have a male artistic director. Those women who do get the title of artistic director earn only 68 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts.” And for choreography, the numbers are far worse. – Forbes
Historian Presenting Lecture On Controversial Musician Gets Shut Down And Banned
“Recently I was asked to present a lecture on composer Julius Eastman and his work at the OBEY Convention, a music and sound festival in Halifax, Nova Scotia. But rather than a fruitful discussion of Eastman’s probing, piercing minimalist music and legacy as an overlooked composer only now getting his due, the situation turned into a referendum on complicated questions: who gets to hold forth on artists of different identities, and on whose terms?” – ARTnews
When Words Fail Us
How serious is the gap between experience and the words we have? Serious. The need to render experience for others is tied to a need for others to understand us, and when unfulfilled, leaves an emptiness that hollows out our sources of motivation. – Nautilus
Flutist Eugenia Zukerman On Dealing With Her Alzheimer’s
Zukerman, 74, has Alzheimer’s. She was diagnosed about three years ago after her two daughters insisted that she get checked. At the time, Zukerman thought nothing of the memory slips… – Albany Times-Union
The Reinvention Of Opera Philadelphia
The refrain “adapt or die” haunts many performing arts organizations, so it’s fascinating to find one that heeds the warning, discovers what it needs to do—and then actually does it. – The Philadelphia Citizen
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Amazon Says It Will Let Random People Give Answers For Alexa Questions
The system will use game mechanics to engage users — people will be able to earn “points” each time the assistant shares one of their answers. – CNBC
Why Is Netflix Canceling So Many Shows?
The more original shows Netflix orders, the more likely it is to cancel those that don’t perform well. The company relies on an “efficiency metric” to decide what shows should be kept and which should go. If a series is able to retain subscribers with a risk of leaving or bring in new subscribers (like Stranger Things), it gets renewed. If it can’t, it’s probably going to be canceled. – The Verge
Behind The Feud Between DC’s Mayor And The City’s Arts Commission
“The latest episode is tied to the fight for control of the commission, which will shift from the mayor’s office to an independent agency Oct. 1,” pursuant to legislation by the city council. The council did this because, “last year, [Mayor Muriel Bowser] proposed creating a broader office for the arts, which would include culinary and other creative endeavors, and making the commission an advisory council.” – The Washington Post
Turkey Moves Ahead With Dam That Will Flood 10,000-Year-Old City
“The ancient city of Hasankeyf, which sits on the banks of the Tigris River in southeastern Turkey, is believed to be one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited settlements.” Yet it could be flooded within weeks as work continues on the long-controversial Ilisu dam project. – Smithsonian Magazine
Lyric Opera Of Chicago Names Music Director To Succeed Retiring Andrew Davis
Davis, now 77, will have been music director and principal conductor at Lyric for 21 years when he retires at the end of next season (2020-21) Succeeding him will be Italian conductor Enrique Mazzola, 51. – Chicago Tribune
EU Bans Resale Of Ebooks
“In a move that will be welcome news to publishers and other rights holders, advocate general Maciej Szpunar has ruled sites such as Tom Kabinet that sell second-hand ebooks ‘unlawful under EU law.'” – Publishers Weekly
How Can The Arts Be More Diverse When The Structure Isn’t Set Up For It?
This leads us to the most critical question: if most arts leaders are white, and diversity is the business of leaders, what is required of our leaders to effect change? – ArtsHub
Lyric Opera Of Chicago Picks A New Music Director
Enrique Mazzola, who is currently the principal guest conductor at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin and was until recently artistic and music director of the Orchestre National d’Île-de-France in Paris, declined to give his age, describing himself as “old enough to take the position of music director, and young enough to take it with energy and enthusiasm.” – The New York Times
Disney Wants To Limit Profit Sharing For Creators Of Hit Shows
Show creators traditionally get big payouts when a really popular show gets syndicated and sold over and over again. Disney wants to pay more up front and limit the back end. Creators aren’t happy. – Los Angeles Times
Is This The Last Botticelli Left In Private Hands?
This portrait of a 15th-century Greek-Italian poet-soldier has, for the past dozen years, been on loan to the Prado from the Spanish collector Doña Helena Cambó de Guardans, who hopes to get $30 million for it (and hopes Spain will let it out of the country). – The Art Newspaper
NY Mega-Galleries Are Building Opulent New Homes, Redefining Galleries
In designing such new homes, these heavy hitters — Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, David Zwirner and Pace, which is consolidating its spaces on the Upper East Side and West 25th Street — are redefining what it means to be a gallery, shifting their emphasis from selling and showing art to a more full-service visitor experience that offers food, performance spaces, research libraries and open storage. – The New York Times