Well, besides Gadsby's "'neener-neener-you're-a-weiner' style of commentary." Ben Davis: "After spending four hours in it, I started to suspect that what makes the show so strange and strained is that it is actually trying to work against (Gadsby's) arguments — but without ever admitting that this is what is happening." - Artnet
But the progress with Black musicians is incremental at best. Why is this so difficult? Titus Underwood, the principal oboist at the Nashville Symphony, says, "We must reflect American culture. And American culture is nothing without Black musicians being at the center." - The New York Times
Post COVID-19 shutdowns, theatres everywhere are "fighting to keep doors open despite dwindling ticket sales, increased production costs and hesitant, recession-wary donors. The result: drastic cuts to programming, layoffs, candid pleas to subscribers." And this disaster in L.A. - Los Angeles Times
Some AI is OK, but not all AI. "'A work that contains no human authorship is not eligible in any category,' they said, under new 'Artificial Intelligence (AI) Protocols' released Friday." - Seattle Times (AP)
"In the hothouse atmosphere of flamenco dance, where passionate display of the self is prized, divas abound. But Carlota Santana isn't one of them." - The New York Times
DiDonato: "I think there’s a lot of power in putting on a legitimate, high-level concert, but challenging the audience to take home something more from it. ... Isn’t ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ lovely? It’s like, yeah, but, what do you do with it when you go home?" - Van
"The architects of LGA's new public art program mostly sidestepped the twin traps of blandness and kitsch, demonstrating a seriousness that reflects the importance of art (and artists) to the city's identity. But also, from the passenger's perspective, it feels like somebody up there actually cares." - Curbed
"Facing a significant budget shortfall, Center Theatre Group on Thursday announced that it would lay off about 10% of its full-time staff and pause season programming at the Mark Taper Forum ... through the 2023-24 season, (although) there is no confirmed end date yet." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
In February 1969, amid one of Boston's worst-ever snowstorms, a crate containing Picasso's Portrait of a Woman and a Musketeer went missing from Logan Airport; five weeks later, the painting was dropped off at the Museum of Fine Arts. Here's what happened in the interim. - The New York Times
Those millions of people are contributing to the billions of views on movies and films chopped up to fit the app's restrictive post limits, parcelled up and delivered to users in completely random order on its homepage. - CBC
Kimberly Akimbo for new musical, Leopoldstadt for play, and Topdog/Underdog for play revival. The whole list is at the link. And Ariana DeBose hosted it all without a script. "In the end the telecast aired without pickets, without scripted banter and without a hitch." - The New York Times
It's both exciting and worrying. Though "there are key differences between using R.A.V.E. to synthesize new versions of a collaborator’s voice and using A.I. to anonymously imitate a living musician," that difference will likely be blurred over time. And it's the same for composers. - The New York Times
Philip Kennicott: "They are accidentally beautiful, rather like an 80-degree day in January is accidentally pleasurable. To some, they may suggest the science-fiction scenography of a dystopian film; to others, they render the present moment visually akin to Eugène Atget's 19th-century France — haunting, sepulchral, yet oddly beautiful." - MSN (The Washington Post)
“How do you search? Who are the creators? How do you attribute labels to them? What do those revenue splits look like?” he says. “And how does that even work, when you can make a hundred remixes of the same song?” - Wired
In addition to knowing art history and being a good administrator and fundraiser, a museum director these days may have to address diversifying her curators, identifying and returning looted artworks, workers who are unionizing for the first time, and scrutiny of board members' wealth. - The New York Times
Commissioned by the League, the report covers the ten-year period from the 2013-14 season through the 2022-23 season and presents analyses by orchestra role and demographic group, building upon the League’s landmark 2016 demographic study. - League of American Orchestras
"It’s not hard to imagine a future in which a wide-eyed actor signs up for one season of a vampire TV show, and then two seasons later their AI replacement busts out of a coffin. Meanwhile, they receive no additional compensation." - Wired
Designed by Bauhaus-trained architect Marcel Breuer, the building has had its share of occupants since it was erected. It was first the third home to the Whitney from 1966 until 2014, before the museum moved into its current residence in the Meatpacking District in May 2015. - Hyperallergic
"Released in 1998, the film about one man living in a fabricated reality concocted by TV producers made an impact, but ... in subsequent years, it has come to embody a myriad of cultural anxieties – about omnipresent surveillance, mass voyeurism, and the reality TV craze that has swept the globe." - BBC
