Says one who was wounded in the 2016 shooting, “They’re talking about a theme-park environment where you buy memorabilia.” Of the club’s owner, who runs a foundation (which pays her a six-figure salary) to build and operate the proposed museum, the mother of one victim said, “These [young survivors] can’t afford their co-pays, they’re not getting PTSD therapy, and meanwhile you’re profiting and you want an admission-charging, souvenir-selling, tour-bus-visiting hate museum.” – Orlando Sentinel
Manchester’s Leading Theatre Builds A Pop-Up Stage To Take Plays To City’s Neighborhoods
“The Royal Exchange is one of Manchester’s best known theatres, the venue resembling a lunar landing craft located inside The Great Hall on St Ann’s Square. … The Den is a lightweight, 180-seat portable auditorium designed to be built and dismantled … by members of each host community who will become its ushers, its box office, technical team and audience.” – BBC
A New Literary Timeline Of African-American History
Yusef Komunyakaa on Crispus Attucks, the first American to die in the Revolutionary War; Jesmyn Ward on the 1808 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves; Darryl Pinckney on the Emancipation Proclamation; Rita Dove and Camille T. Dungy on the Birmingham church bombing of 1963; Lynn Nottage on “Rapper’s Delight”; and others. Clint Smith begins and ends the collection, part of The 1619 Project, with poems on the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia in 1619 and the scene in the Louisiana Superdome after Hurricane Katrina. – The New York Times Magazine
YouTube Sued By LGBT Video Creators For Discrimination
“Five LGBTQ channels have joined together for the suit, which alleges that YouTube has discriminated against them by hiding their videos, removing subscribers, and denying advertising. They say the platform unfairly targets any video tagged with words like ‘gay,’ ‘transgender,’ or ‘bisexual,’ even when the videos have no mature content.” – BuzzFeed
Controversial San Francisco School Mural Won’t Be Removed. It Will Be Hidden By Panels.
In a 4-to-3 vote, the San Francisco Board of Education voted to reverse its earlier decision to paint over the series of 13 Victor Arnautoff frescoes, collectively titled The Life of Washington, at the city’s George Washington High School. Students and activists had complained of the murals’ depiction of Native Americans and of Washington’s African-American slaves, though Arnautoff had maintained that those depictions were meant to be critical of the country’s treatment of those two groups. – The New York Times
Artists Join Protests In Hong Kong
Since the protests began on June 9, artists have been wondering about their role, and many have taken up the job of disseminating information to the wider public. – Artnet
Artists Join Protests In Puerto Rico
“It is impressive how the process has been turned into memes and audiovisual content with such extraordinary speed. There are artists creating posters and songs and whatnot, but artists also provide work strategies that contribute in many ways to these processes that don’t necessarily entail creating work for or inspired by the political processes.” – ARTnews
Who Gets To Fund Culture? (Is There A Scale Of Evil?)
“Museums depend heavily on philanthropy. How do they start dissecting what’s okay and what’s not in terms of their policies?” says Komal Shah, a trustee of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Tate Americas who worked for many years in the tech industry. “There’s no black and white. Since I come from the tech world, I’m wondering if at some point Google or Facebook was deemed evil, do museums stop taking their money? And what is considered evil? How do you really define?” – Artnet
Can Theatre Motivate Action On Climate Change?
“It’s all about awareness and action. The artist’s job is to raise consciousness and cut through the complacency. I asked playwrights to meditate on the theme of, ‘Wake up—act now!’ We’re creating awareness, and stimulating action.” – Pacific Standard
Refugees, Migrants And The Role(s) Of The Arts
According to the annual Global Trends Report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, released on June 19, nearly 70.8 million people worldwide had been displaced as of the end of last year. Add to that approximately 13.6 million individuals displaced so far in 2019. “We are now witnessing the highest level of displaced persons on record,” says the UNHCR, a fact that affects all aspects of modern society and social progress, including the arts. – Clyde Fitch Report
San Francisco School Board May Reverse Course, Save Racist Murals
The controversy exploded into a national and international story, with historians, politicians, educators, artists and others arguing that the board was whitewashing an important artwork, and history itself. In the last few days, the local branch of the N.A.A.C.P. joined the opposition. – The New York Times
Funding Data Reveals Problematic Diversity Funding At Arts Council England
“Diversity data is not considered when applications are checked for eligibility, so we do not think unconscious bias is playing a role. However, as an organisation we recognise the importance of tackling unconscious bias – this is particularly important to consider when eligible applications are being reviewed by panels – and have rolled out training on this for all staff.” – Arts Professional
As Plantation Museums Turn Their Focus To The Enslaved, Certain Tourists Are Not Happy
“‘It was just not what we expected.’ ‘I was depressed by the time I left.’ ‘… the tour was more of a scolding of the old South.’ ‘The brief mentions of the former owners were defamatory.’ ‘Would not recommend.’ These are a few of the apparently negative reviews posted online about guided tours of Southern plantations.” – The Washington Post
How Can Arts Organizations Trying To Lead On Equity Issues Oppose Paying Overtime For Their Own Workers?
That’s what most of Seattle’s major arts organizations are doing, writing to protest Washington State proposals that would dramatically increase the number of workers eligible for overtime pay. “It’s illuminating that the argument Seattle’s arts organizations are making isn’t about whether paying overtime is fair, but whether it’s affordable.” – Post Alley Seattle
The Arts World Still Isn’t Good At Making Accessible Spaces For Art
“In 2019, inclusive spaces that are comprised of voices from the neurodiverse and disabled community are still extremely rare. Despite the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 29 years ago, neurodiverse and disabled communities continue to face collective discrimination from failures to accommodate in access, transportation, employment, education, and many other arenas. Unfortunately, the art world is no exception.” – Hyperallergic
Using Theatre Games To Teach Police Officers And Civilians To Communicate With Each Other
Brooklyn director Terry Greiss worked with the NYPD to develop a program called To Serve, to Protect, and to Understand, which brings officers and civilians together with meals and acting games and ultimately gets them to tell and act out each other’s stories. In New Jersey, a similar program called Walking the Beat involves police with high school students. – American Theatre
Dance-As-Job-Creator
In Nigeria, 65 percent of the population is under the age of 18. Unemployment is endemic. One community organization created a jobs program through dance. “At the end of the day, dance is a business.” – BBC
The Bronze Ceiling? What the Gender Gap in Public Sculpture Tells Us About the Barriers for Women in Art
“Speaking to colleagues and journalists at the show’s opening, curator Clare Lilley was frank that she would have liked to include a 50/50 split of men and women — but had been unable to do so. Given the recent focus on the issue of representation and Lilley’s awareness of the issue, the question lingers: Why? The curator, who is also director of programs at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, went on to explain that she saw a lack of financial support from galleries for ambitious sculpture by women.” – Artnet
African American leaders object to erasure of controversial school mural in San Francisco
“Amos C. Brown, the president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP, said in an interview today that the artist was simply ‘presenting a critique about the warp and woof of George Washington’s legacy’ as a slaveholder and the ‘genocide’ committed against Native Americans by American pioneers. ‘You have to let the artist and the historian tell the whole story,’ says Brown. ‘We have to hold up a mirror to America’s good and America’s bad.'” – The Art Newspaper
Transamerica/n: celebrating the underrepresented history of trans art
“In a unique new exhibition, works from artists such as Andy Warhol and Nan Goldin, highlight the progression of transgender models and subjects.” – The Guardian
Is “Yesterday” The Future Of British Asian Film?
“Today I ask to what extent it is a positive development that there are no discussions of race and religion in Danny Boyle’s and Richard Curtis’s film Yesterday, whose protagonist Jack Malik is from a South Asian, possibly Muslim, background.” – 3 Quarks Daily
Tiny Grant Maker North Star Points the Way to Big Shake-Up in Philanthropy
“Its ‘participatory grant making’ model, where control of the money is ceded to the community it serves, has drawn notice from bigger foundations and young philanthropists.” – The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Here’s A Place Where Prescribing The Arts As Medical Treatment Seems To Be Working
Four cities in Denmark are running pilot versions of a program called Kulturvitaminer (culture vitamins), partly funded by the national health ministry, that gets people on long-term sickness/disability leave or unemployment involved in cultural activities — as both viewers and participants. – The Guardian
Ballet has a diversity problem. Here’s what some people, in Seattle and elsewhere, are doing to change that.
“Making a ballet company more diverse doesn’t happen overnight — and it needs to happen at the level of its youngest students, to create generations of dancers who look like all of us. PNB’s been reaching out to the community in this way for 25 years now, with the DanceChance program, created by founding artistic director Francia Russell in 1994. Its goals are ‘to enrich the lives of every child in the program; to build a school and company that reflects the beautiful diversity of the Seattle community; and to train and nurture the next generation of dancers.'” – The Seattle Times
‘What the Constitution Means to Me’ Is Setting a Theatrical Precedent
“While it was nominated for two Tony Awards, it did not win any of them. It has no stars, a tiny cast, and no special effects, and everyone both onstage and backstage are Broadway newbies. And yet it has attracted a staggering amount of celebrities to its audience … And it’s written by a woman, features a mostly female cast, and has women as its lead producers, in an industry in which women are still severely underrepresented on every level of production.” – American Theatre
Beyond the Bathrooms: Cultivating Meaningful Trans Inclusion in Theatrical Spaces
“There have been quick and outwardly-positive changes that highlight inclusivity, but broad and meaningful change requires long-term work and systemic shifts in how theatres operate. … It’s true theatres have been putting out more stories featuring trans characters. However, the majority of productions still have entirely cisgender casts, include far too many femme-acting men in dresses as a punchline, and present other harmful jokes at the expense of the trans community.” – HowlRound
Power play: reclaiming the story of Canada’s missing and murdered
“Tara Beagan’s drama about a Blackfoot woman seeking to avenge her sister’s murder confronts the violence suffered by Indigenous women from the standpoint of those affected.” – The Guardian
‘Museums Are Contested Sites’: The Art Institute of Chicago’s James Rondeau on the Museum’s Postponement of a Show of Mimbres Pottery
“There need to be multiple voices channeling that learning, from multiple stakeholders who have a cultural authority in this conversation. And I think that’s somewhat new, but it felt really good to stand up and say, ‘We know an awful lot, we have a great deal of expertise, we have a great deal of authority, but in this case it’s insufficient. We actually don’t know enough, and we need to keep learning and we need partners in that learning.’ That felt like a fantastic thing to be able to lead with.” – Artnet
Who is arts journalism for? — From ‘Dragon Ball Z’ to ‘Us’ to the newsroom: Finding my place as a Black writer
Kyle V. Hiller: “I’ve long felt that my relationship with pop culture, media, and art have lacked something. It took me years to realize that I just wasn’t finding voices like my own represented in arts journalism. When that clicked, I actually found myself becoming more reclusive about my interests and my perspectives. … The numbers are going up. I’m living proof of that. But that doesn’t mean we can stop advocating for diversity in arts journalism.” – Broad Street Review (Philadelphia)
A San Francisco Ballet Principal Makes Connections By Cutting The Hair Of Unhoused People In His City
Benjamin Freemantle started cutting his own, and his friends’, hair out of necessity when they were all lowly, and low-paid, dance students. Then he grew into both dance and haircutting, and eventually, after extending that skill to a guy who slept in his alley, “‘I had the idea—it was a little scary—to go into the Tenderloin, which is our homeless district,”‘he says. He brought a stool, his haircutting set—basic shears from Amazon, combs, a brush and a spray bottle—and a sign that read ‘Need a Haircut?'” – Dance Magazine