ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

ISSUES

Culture Shift: Gen Z Kids Are Abandoning Real-World Sports For E-Games

It’s clear that the rise of e-sports has come at the expense of traditional youth sports, with implications for their future and for the way children grow up. Lack of young players in the pipeline could be a problem for professional sports. - The New York Times

The Senate Confirms Biden’s Pick For The NEA

Maria Rosario Jackson will be both the first African American and the first Mexican American to lead the NEA. - Washington Post

Saturday Night Live’s Last Show Of The Year Represented Just How Bleak Things Feel

Especially in New York, where last-minute omicron-variant cancellations led to a very strange night. "The rigid format—with every sketch introduced by one of the performers reading a hastily written lead-in—yielded a disconcerting, even apocalyptic, atmosphere." - The Atlantic

Chris Noth Accused By Third Woman Of Sexual Assault

A now-30-year-old tech executive has texts and other evidence from the alleged assault in 2010, by the then-35-year-old The Sex and the City star. (The actor was dropped by his talent agency on Friday.) - The Daily Beast

Sydney’s Arts Venues Are Getting Very, Very Worried About Omicron

As summer arrives, COVID is spreading again in New South Wales; experts expect 25,000 new cases per day in the state by late January. Administrators are looking nervously at London and New York, where performances or even runs get cancelled when company members get infected. - The Guardian

The YouTuber Working To Reinvent Philanthropy

Kevin Scally, chief relationship officer at Charity Navigator, the world’s largest nonprofit evaluator, says MrBeast is part of an encouraging trend of social media influencers using their power to fight homelessness or raising COVID-19 relief funds. - Toronto Star

Arts Venues In Britain See “Catastrophic” Attendance Declines Because Of Omicron

"Nathan Pearce from theatre ticket agency Seatplan said: 'As soon as Omicron was reported as a serious threat we saw a 30% drop in sales almost overnight. And when Boris made his announcement we saw another 40% drop.'" - BBC

Britain’s National Lottery Gave Blighted Towns $330 Million To Spend As They Wished. What Did They Do?

While the specifics differ (as do outcomes, somewhat), the common thread seems to be that these towns built gathering places — community centers or gardens, cafes, public squares with seating and playgrounds. And they've made a real difference. - Fast Company

Hong Kong’s M+ Was Ambitious. But Its Time May Already Have Passed

M+ seemed inevitable, so right. But if you looked closely enough, divisions between the city and its various cultural saviours were starting to emerge. - Apollo

Weren’t The Golden Globes Supposed To Just Go Away?

Why are they still here? "Hollywood as a whole called on the HFPA to exit stage left, take a beat and come back stronger (and more diverse, more legitimate) in 2023. But, alas, Monday is happening." - Washington Post

How Art, Music, And Drama Teachers Are Helping Kids Re-Adapt To School

Teachers in the arts "have a unique ability to affect students' agency, the sense of being able to take what is a mess or chaos and make order out of it ... even if one is feeling lost in oneself or in the context of one's daily circumstances." - KQED

Dying American Shopping Malls Are Obviously Symbolic. But Of What?

"A dead mall, while eerie and odd, is strangely difficult to interpret. Tempting to see it as an Ozymandias-like portent of the collapse of capitalism, but it's surely not, or not quite. … How are these castles to consumerism crumbling while the system they represented lives on?" - Slate

Evidence Vikings Landed In North America Nearly 500 Years Before Columbus

Scientists have known for many years that Vikings — a name given to the Norse by the English they raided — built a village at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland around the turn of the millennium. But a study published in Nature is the first to pinpoint the date of the Norse occupation. - NBC News

The Uyghur Cultural Traditions Being Wiped Out Under Beijing’s Crackdown

There's been plenty of coverage of the built heritage of the Uyghurs that has been razed in recent years, but intangibles — literature, traditional music and dance, meshrep gatherings for poetry and storytelling — have been either banned or edited into hollow performances for tourists. - The Guardian

Transformative Director Of NYC’s City Center Steps Down After 18 Years

During her tenure, Arlene Shuler has transformed City Center from a mostly rental space for dance companies to a producing house that commissions and presents, on average, around 60 percent of its annual programming. The New York Times

Our Free Newsletter

Join our 30,000 subscribers

Latest

Don't Miss

function my_excerpt_length($length){ return 200; } add_filter('excerpt_length', 'my_excerpt_length');