Doug Shipman said he informed the Woodruff in February of his intentions to leave after three years of leading the organization. The Woodruff Arts Center is Atlanta’s foundational arts organization, overseeing the High Museum of Art, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Alliance Theatre. It is the third-largest arts center in the United States. Shipman said he wants to be more directly involved in addressing injustices of the past and present. “I do not know exactly what pathway I will take, and I will need friends to help me navigate the road ahead,” he said. – ArtsATL
Will Self: Zooming Into Dystopia?
“In the 15 years between the inception of a fully-integrated bi-directional digital medium—the internet—and the onset of the coronavirus pandemic bringing with it imposed social distancing, viewing the world through screens has become second nature to all of us. The terms of physical meeting have been more profoundly altered than they ever were by train timetables or wristwatches: the absolute location, together with the universal synchronisation afforded by mobile phones, enables both the place and the time of a prospective rendezvous to be continually recalibrated.” – Prospect
Now Here’s A Black Female Composer Worth Rediscovering: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Wife
Shirley Graham Du Bois notched up plenty of achievements in her own right beyond the activism she shared with her husband: she was a novelist, playwright, biographer (of Paul Robeson, Booker T. Washington, and Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser), and radical who (in)famously joined the American Communist Party. But when she studied at the Sorbonne, her subject was music. The premiere run of her 1932 opera Tom-Tom was an enormous spectacle that drew audiences of 25,000 (the planned transfer to Madison Square Garden was derailed by the Depression), and David Patrick Stearns says a revival would be very worthwhile. – WQXR (New York City)
Turmoil At SFMoMA As Chief Curator Resigns
Gary Garrels is the fifth senior official at SFMOMA to depart over the past few weeks. Also gone are Nan Keeton, deputy director of external affairs; Marisa Robisch, director of human resources; Cindi Hubbard, manager of recruitment; and Ann von Germeten, chief marketing and communications officer. But the departures are not enough to assuage an activist group that calls itself xSFMOMA. In an open letter published Wednesday, July 15, the group of unnamed former employees demanded that the board also remove Benezra for his own culpability. – San Francisco Chronicle
Let’s Use COVID Shutdown To Bring Major Reforms To Theatre, Criticism
“Bad habits may be broken. Theater companies large and small will be weaned off the conservative commercial values of Broadway, freed of the timidity of white theater artists and audiences who are interested in seeing shows that assert their rectitude. Enough stage works that chronicle families under pressure. Where are the innovative scripts that explore thorny issues of race, corruption, income inequality, starvation, gender, global warming, philosophy, metaphysics?” – Arts Fuse
Minnesota Museum Fires Longtime Director
When Kristin Makholm took the helm in July 2009, the museum was virtually bankrupt and had been closed for about 18 months after losing its lease at the Ramsey County Government Center. But she soon found a new space at the historic Pioneer Endicott building, where it celebrated a grand reopening in December 2018. – The Star-Tribune (Mpls)
Leonard Slatkin: Here’s How I Would Change Orchestra Auditions
“In a way, the screen now represents a bit of an insult to those who are making the decision as to who will join the orchestra. Do we really believe that today’s musicians cannot come to a fair conclusion because they have seen who is playing?” – Leonard Slatkin
Portland Artist Space Suspends, Turns Its Building Over To Native Americans
Under its new ownership, Yale Union will be christened the Center for Native Arts and Cultures, serving as the new national headquarters for the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. “This repatriation is symbolic in that it’s not often, or perhaps has never happened, where the owners just hand over a building to a Native organization,” T. Lulani Arquette, the CEO of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, told Artnet News. – Artnet
Jazz Trumpeter Eddie Gale Dead At 78
“Gale walked on jazz’s cutting edge from his childhood. He was taught to play trumpet by bebop legend Kenny Dorham; as a teenager in the 1950s, he jammed with such titanic figures as Art Blakey and Jackie McLean; and he joined the Sun Ra Arkestra at 21. In addition to Ra, with whom he would work until the mid-1980s, Gale appeared on iconic and important recordings by Cecil Taylor and Larry Young before releasing two highly acclaimed albums of his own in the late 1960s on Blue Note Records. … Relocating from New York to San Jose in 1972, Gale built … a strong profile as an educator … [and] a passionate advocate and activist for musicians’ health and wellness.” – JazzTimes
Public Radio Ratings Plunge
Broadcast ratings for nearly all of NPR’s radio shows took a steep dive in major markets this spring, as the coronavirus pandemic kept many Americans from commuting to work and school. The network’s shows lost roughly a quarter of their audience between the second quarter of 2019 and the same months in 2020. – NPR
Even Country Music Is Facing A Reckoning These Days
“How does a genre in love with routine respond to a moment in which everyone’s lives have been disrupted?… Country fetishizes the day-after-day realities of homes, highways, and beer halls. There are exceptions, but typically it’s a genre in which work and family and place all are held up as things that must be defended. … As a slew of recent scandals and scuffles have demonstrated, however, not even Nashville can maintain the status quo anymore.” – The Atlantic
‘Everything Is Up For Change, And Will Change’: New Wave Of Bosses May Finally Make Publishing More Diverse
“Over the last year, deaths, retirements and executive reshuffling have made way for new leaders, more diverse and often more commercial than their predecessors, as well as people who have never worked in publishing before. Those appointments stand to fundamentally change the industry, and the books it puts out into the world.” – The New York Times
China Starts Reopening Movie Theaters (For The Second Time)
“China will begin reopening cinemas in ‘low-risk regions’ from July 20, the China Film Administration announced Thursday, ending nearly six months of closures that left thousands of theaters bankrupt. … When a small portion of cinemas reopened briefly in March, business was dismal. Venues were unable to attract much of a crowd by offering stale local titles that most people had already seen. Fresh content will now be crucial to getting people through the door.” – Variety
Bristol Removes BLM Statue Erected To Replace Racist
The sculpture of Jen Reid was erected on Wednesday but removed by Bristol City Council just over 24 hours later. Ms Reid had been photographed standing on the empty plinth after the Colston statue was pulled down during protests. Mayor Marvin Rees said it was up to the people of Bristol to decide what would replace Colston’s statue. – BBC
When “Plague” Ceases Being A Metaphor… What To Say?
“Early in the spring-2020 semester, I had planned to say quite a bit about Homer’s figurative use of disease and the literary tradition it initiated. But as we concluded February in exhausted anticipation of spring break, Covid-19 made the artistry of that metaphor abruptly beside the point. It seemed — and still seems — futile to talk about what plague means in the history of human discourse when plague quite literally is the current defining condition of homo sapiens.” – Chronicle of Higher Education
The Problem With Open Letters
“Perhaps because I spend a lot of time listening to people with crazy opinions, I am sympathetic to the view that the only way to live a healthy intellectual life is to expose oneself constantly to weird or detestable opinions. But I never sign petitions or open letters. I told the letter’s organizers that if I have something to say, I will write my own damn letter. Open letters are terrible, and you should never write one or sign one.” – The Atlantic
Yes, Enjoy Quibi Schadenfreude And Do Not Feel Guilty
Kate Knibbs: “Occasionally, circumstances arise where someone or something so high and mighty takes such a ludicrous tumble that the pratfall practically begs for a gleeful response, even from the most generous of spirits. Case in point: the disastrous debut of Quibi, a lavishly funded new streaming service that may currently have more jokes made at its expense than loyal subscribers. … [And laughing is] not sinful. In fact, there’s something akin to virtue in recognizing why Quibi deserves a ribbing.” – Wired
Canadian Choreographer, Dance Pioneer Anna Wyman, 92
For much of the 1970s and 1980s the Anna Wyman Dance Theatre was regarded as one of Canada’s foremost modern-dance companies. In 1975 it became the first modern dance troupe to tour Canada and went on to become one of the most travelled companies in North America. It took Canada-made modern dance to India, Southeast Asia, Australia, Europe and Mexico. It made TV specials, appeared in films and headlined at the National Arts Centre. – Vancouver Sun
No Sooner Does ‘The Great Gatsby’ Come Out Of Copyright Than —
— a prequel is hitting the shelves. Fitzgerald’s novel enters the public domain next New Year’s Day, and on January 5 Little, Brown is releasing Michael Farris Smith’s Nick. “The publishers say Nick Carraway will ‘step out of the shadows and into the spotlight’, with the story focusing on his life before his meeting with the enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby.” – The Guardian
Statues As Political Acts
If such monuments do have a connection to history, it is because they attempt to shape it, not reflect it. To believe we can learn history from them is like a judge choosing only to hear testimony from the defence. Public statues are political acts; when the politics change, so must the statues. – The Art Newspaper
How A Group Of Students Convinced The Fokine Estate To Get Rid Of The Blackface Moor In ‘Petrouchka’
The character as passed down from the Diaghilev Ballets Russes original is not only painted in outlandish blackface makeup, he is, as Wendy Perron puts it, “mean and aggressive [and] prodigiously stupid.” In the ’90s, the Oakland and then San Francisco Ballets decided to make the character’s face blue (“the Avatar solution”), and both Perron and Michel Fokine’s granddaughter (and Petrouchka rights holder) Isabelle had thought that was an excellent solution. But Perron’s dance history students at Juilliard last semester would not have it: they found the character grotesque, offensive and irredeemable. Perron and the class reached out to Isabelle, and Perron tells us how things came out. – Dance Magazine
Toward An Anti-Racist American Theatre
“This moment and movement did not come out of nowhere but emerges from longstanding frustration among BIPOC theatremakers … [who] have never truly felt welcome in an industry geared toward and run by white theatremakers and audiences, into which they have only fitfully been invited to do work, and even then under terms that have been variously exploitive, unequal, and harmful.” – American Theatre
The Detroit Institute Of Arts Borrowed An El Greco From The Director’s Father-In-Law. Ethics Violation?
Because the display of a painting in a prestigious museum can increase its value, the loan can be seen as breaking conflict-of-interest and self-dealing rules and a complaint was filed with the IRS and the Michigan attorney general. The director says that all procedures were properly followed, being shown at the museum wouldn’t really affect the value of an Old Master, and, basically, if you can get the long-term loan of an El Greco, why wouldn’t you? – The New York Times
Joanna Cole, Author Of ‘Magic School Bus’ Series, Dead At 75
“She originally created The Magic School Bus in 1986 with illustrator Bruce Degen. The core idea of a sweet and nerdy crew of schoolchildren taking field trips into scientific concepts, bodily parts, into space and back to the age of dinosaurs — and always led by their teacher, the intrepid Ms. Frizzle — eventually spun out into dozens of tie-ins and more than 93 million copies in print, plus a beloved television show that aired for 18 years in more than 100 countries.” – NPR
How The Met Museum’s Reopening Will Work
The Fifth Avenue flagship will welcome visitors — only those with masks, and only up to a quarter of the building’s regular capacity — five days a week beginning Aug. 29. The Cloisters will reopen in September. – The New York Times
A Comparison Of What Governments Around The World Are Doing To Help Rescue Culture
Stimulus packages for the arts and culture range from the £1.57bn package announced by the UK this week to smaller packages in countries such as Zimbabwe, Estonia and Costa Rica. – The Guardian
Making Dance Students’ Year-End Recitals Happen, Virus Or No Virus
“Among students of dance, the recital is much more than just a performance. It’s the culmination of a year’s work and a social event: … When the pandemic hit, some studios made swift decisions to cancel their performances, while others held virtual ones they knew could not compare to the adrenaline-filled, sequin-covered excitement of the real thing. But others dug in their heels and resolved to find some way to put on their biggest show of the year.” Here’s how a few of them pulled it off. – The New York Times