Existential crises have a way of forcing clarity. Whether the arts and the larger creative world are in crisis I leave for you to decide. But with weekly news of financial and organizational meltdowns, political pressures and an almost primordial angst about threats of AI, some things may be becoming
Diana Wyenn, Director, Choreographer & Creative Director of Interlochen’s Imagine US, shares her leadership strategy leading complex creative processes.
Wishing that Stephen Miller, Gregory Bovino, Tom Homan, Kristi Noem, J.D. Vance, bigmouth Trumpscheisse, and the rest of his ilk were frozen in one of these ice floes?
Yesterday Rebecca Lowe mentioned in a note how much she enjoys reading the philosopher G.A. Cohen. I do too, and it reminded me of his part in an interesting, and I don’t think ever resolved, debate in arts policy. I’ll get to Cohen later, but first some background. Most people (I know
Tonight marks the 14th anniversary of Carl Weissner's departure. He left us unexpectedly in the late hours of Jan. 23, 2012 or in the hours before dawn on Jan. 24. His absence has not diminished among his friends, though the date of his death has grown more distant.
This past week I’ve been sent different, interesting takes on the state of cultural policy research. My friend James Doeser, who is very smart about these things, has a short post “The crisis of cultural policy in the 21st century” that is well worth your time. Friends and former colleagues
The following article is an abridged adaptation of my January 22 NPR report on recent developments in government and the arts — at the NEA, the NEH, and the Kennedy Center — under President Donald J. Trump. I write: “The arts sector feels invaded by aliens. The incursion is so
For readers familiar with his work, it will come as no surprise that Swiss novelist Christoph Keller's prose in English, an adopted language, has the idiomatic flare of a native speaker. Nor is it a surprise that much of his latest novel is again set in downtown Manhattan, where he
The fear and concern are real. The issues are real. But we're trying to conjure up rules for 21st Century technologies with a 20th-Century vocabulary that's ill-equipped for the job.
Neil Barclay, President & CEO of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, talks the evolving landscape for BIPOC organizations and avenues for sustainability.
My forthcoming novel, The Disciple: A Wagnerian Tale of the Gilded Age, may be my best book. A prequel to The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York (2023), it’s already available via pre-order. (And if you order both books, you get a discount.) My story tracks the prodigious American impact
A couple of my recent blogs – here and here — have saluted John Luther Adams as “among the most esteemed present-day American composers for orchestra. . . . Encountering Adams’s Become Ocean on a 21st-century symphonic program is so fundamentally enthralling that it risks cliché. It is the proverbial oasis in the
In the evolving world of AI, marketing is moving from getting messages out to engaging in dialog with the consumer. Messages get lost in the Sea of Messages. Persuasion asks what you're interested in first and engages you in opportunities.
