“Scientists have long claimed that our ability with numbers is indeed biologically evolved – that we can count because counting was a useful thing for our brains to be able to do. The hunter-gatherer who could tell which herd or flock of prey was the biggest, or which tree held the most fruit, had a survival advantage over the one who couldn’t. What’s more, other animals show a rudimentary capacity to distinguish differing small quantities of things: two bananas from three, say. Surely it stands to reason, then, that numeracy is adaptive. But is it really?”
Sarah Polley’s 20-Year Journey To Adapt Margaret Atwood’s ‘Alias Grace’
“Today, Polley is an auteur whose movies – Away From Her, Take This Waltz, and the autobiographical Stories We Tell – form a sort of three-part meditation on female restlessness, the complexity of long-term relationships, and the slipperiness of memory and truth. But back when she first tried to option the rights to Alias Grace at age 18 – as a well-regarded young actress with no filmmaking experience – Atwood turned her down. “
Re-Tooling Diaghilev’s Most Radical Ballet For 2017
“Parade was advertised as the world’s first cubist ballet – mostly in deference to Picasso’s designs, but also as a way of explaining the comic, disconnected logic of its fairground scenario and the clash of musical styles and found noise (pistol shots, sirens) in Satie’s score. … But for National Dance Company Wales (NDCW), it is Diaghilev’s relation to the Russian revolution that has provided the starting point of its show P.A.R.A.D.E.” Judith Mackrell has a look.
Being Hemingway (No Piece Of Cake)
“Perhaps a man possessed of an ego the size of a hot-air balloon could only subsist within a myth. To keep himself airborne required so much huffing and puffing that inevitably he ran out of breath. He was jealous, insecure, treacherous to his friends, and merciless toward his promoters—no good turn, no matter how good it was, went unpunished—and although he overestimated his talent, he also largely wasted it, which was precisely the charge he had laid against his old pal F. Scott Fitzgerald, who, with The Great Gatsby, surely did write if not the then at least agreat American novel.”
Twelve Great Libraries Reveal Their Oldest Treasures
“The New York Public Library, for instance, has not only cuneiform tablets and ninth-century gospels, but also a Gutenberg Bible and a copy of The Bay Psalm Book, one of the oldest books printed in America. In addition to its own cuneiform tablets and Gutenberg Bible, the Library of Congress holds one of the oldest examples of printing in the world, passages from a Buddhist sutra, printed in A.D. 770, as well as a medieval manuscript from 1150, delightfully titled Exposicio Mistica Super Exod.”
Why We’re Drawn To Doing Good After Emergencies
“When our survival is threatened, we are going to reach out and strengthen our connections with people around us. We show generosity. We show compassion. We show gratitude. These are all emotions that function to connect us with each other.”
Live Theatre Does Not Set The Heart A-Racing Any More Than Cinemacasts Do: Study
“Seeing a play live does not evoke a significantly stronger emotional response than watching it in the cinema, according to a project that monitored theatregoers’ heart rates. Reactions to live theatre, a cinema screening and a filmed, 360-degree virtual reality experience were found to be roughly comparable in a new study of Shakespeare performance.”
Here’s One Broadway Tour Where The Cast Can Make Serious Money
Chris Jones looks at the “exceptional” – in more than one sense – case of the current touring production of Les Miserables, now in Chicago.
When Pierre Boulez Went Electric
Boulez’s goal for the French Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique “was not to replace instrumental with electronic music, but to work so that the two would mingle and, in Boulez’s words, ‘live together like cotton and rayon.'”
One Hundred And Fifty Writers Later, This Guy Has Some Carefully Distilled Advice
First of all, writers, you really are not going to clean the house. Don’t do it. Stop it. “If you’re not making the time to write, no other advice can help you.”
Brooklyn Has A Newish ‘Bone-Breaking Dance Scene’ Inspired By Jamaica [VIDEO]
“When we’re in a dance battle, it’s really like a battle – it’s a way for people to let their emotions out,” says one contestant in the ever-evolving subculture.
Ambitious Createquity To Shut Down
When Createquity relaunched in 2014, our vision was to facilitate progress towards a better world by compiling, vetting, and interpreting relevant insights from the research literature for people with the ability to make a difference. And in three years, we came a long way toward pulling off that vision. We delivered deeply informed analysis and surprising insights on topics including the benefits of the arts, arts participation patterns, artist careers, cultural equity, and the history of the nonprofit arts sector. Our research-driven features have received tens of thousands of page views—according to figures provided to us by the National Endowment for the Arts, more than the NEA’s own flagship research publications. Most importantly, in my view, we began to create a robust logic for how all of this research could optimally inform leaders’ decisions affecting the health of the arts ecosystem—decisions that affect the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in the United States and beyond.
Protesters Deface Theodore Roosevelt Statue, Calling It A Symbol Of White Supremacy
Protesters splattered red liquid onto the base of the bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt outside the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, and later published a statement on the internet calling for its removal as an emblem of “patriarchy, white supremacy and settler-colonialism.”
Study: Musicians Have Better Memories Than We Do
A new meta-study concludes musicians tend to have stronger short-term and working-memory skills than their non-musical counterparts. The research, published in the online journal PLoS One, finds they also appear to have a small advantage in terms of long-term memory.
‘Dance Isn’t For Everyone’ – Mental Health And The Profession
Kathleen McGuire: “When I wrote about my struggle with depression, and eventual departure from dance because of it, I expected criticism. I was prepared to be challenged. But much to my relief, and horror, dancers from all over the world responded with support and stories of solidarity. The most critical response I saw was this one: ‘Dance isn’t for everyone.’ This may as well be a mantra in the dance world. We have become entrenched in the Darwinian notion that the emotionally weak will be weeded out. There is no room for them anyway.”
How Much Do Chicago Actors Get Paid? Less If You’re Not A White Guy, Finds Equity Study
“The majority of Equity acting jobs across Chicago theaters are going to men, white performers are often paid higher salaries than performers of color, and women are paid less than men on comparable contracts, according to a study from the Actors’ Equity Association.”
Second Lawsuit Filed To Stop Berkshire Museum’s Sale Of Art
“Less than a week after the sons of Norman Rockwell filed suit against the Berkshire Museum, attempting to prevent it from selling art from its collection, another lawsuit has been lodged against the Pittsfield, Massachusetts institution.”
Four Million People Visited Hamburg’s New Elbphilharmonie In Its First Year
The highly-praised, wildly-over-budget venue “has taken in up to 17,000 guests a day, with people from all over the world streaming in to attend concerts or just have a look around the distinctive building. In total, more than 62,000 people have thus far taken a tour of the building and 660,000 people have attended the concerts held there.”
Stratford Festival Gets Largest Donation In Its History: $10 Million
The gift by board chair Dan Bernstein and his wife, Claire Foerster, will go toward the construction of a new $60 million performance space to replace the Ontario festival’s Tom Patterson Theatre Center, built in 1971.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.26.17
Music Lessons for Museums
Over the past year or so, I have had the pleasure of working with the Wallace Foundation on its Building Audiences for Sustainability program, which has been funding initiatives at performing arts organizations for … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2017-10-26
Parsing the Arguments: Second Lawsuit and Reply Brief Filed Today on Berkshire Museum’s Art Sales
In the continuing saga of Berkshire Museum’s planned art sales through Sotheby’s, a second lawsuit and motion for an injunction (following close upon these) have today been filed by a new set of complainants in … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-10-26
American Ballet Theatre Throws a Party
ABT presents new and recent ballets at Lincoln Center through October 29th. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2017-10-26
Publisher Of ArtForum Magazine Resigns After Sexual Harassment Charges
“For decades, Knight Landesman, 67, had been a pillar of the international art scene, a man-about-town known from the galleries of Manhattan to the Art Basel fair in Switzerland for his primary-colored suits and deep connections in the industry. The brother of the renowned Broadway producer Rocco Landesman, who once served as the head of the National Endowment for the Arts, he started at Artforum in the 1980s and until Wednesday had run the magazine with his three co-publishers, Anthony Korner, Charles Guarino and Danielle McConnell.”