“I am not going to get rid of the conceptual art that was acquired for the collection and is exhibited. But I intend to diversify the offer, introduce other narratives. No one said that you should only deal with pro-environmental, gender, or queer art that is promoted by the Western cultural institutions.” - ARTnews
The United States is facing an unprecedented wave of schoolbook banning. PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for freedom of expression, tallied 1,586 book bans in schools over the past nine months, targeting 1,145 books. - Washington Post
The bronze sculpture of Marjorie Tallchief was part of a monument at the Tulsa Historical Society honoring the "Five Moons," American Indian women from Oklahoma who became renowned ballerinas during the mid-20th century. The thieves sold the cut-up bronze to a recycling center for $250. - MSN (The Washington Post)
Solving the external problem has to come first. Then a good nonprofit strategizes the second part. Good faith efforts require that to happen in that order. Sadly, almost all nonprofit arts organizations – at best – try to do this in reverse order. - Alan Harrison
The 1631 printing of the King James Bible gets its nicknames, and its fame, from a typo: the printers omitted the word "not" from the Seventh Commandment, rendering it "Thou shalt commit adultery." Only about 20 copies now remain; this is the first discovered in the Southern Hemisphere. - The Guardian
You bet. The relationship an audience has to a Broadway star is all the more intense for being in-person. Knowing a body in space, the parabolas of certain gestures, the side angles of expressions, the timbre of a wisecrack, the mood of a certain strut lend an illusion of kinship. - Los Angeles Times
"The Queen's Ball: A 'Bridgerton' Experience" is one of several costume parties quasi-theatrical pop-up events based on famous media franchises (Star Wars and Game of Thrones, for instance) to materialize recently in downtown spaces left vacant in the wake of COVID. Kriston Capps pays a visit. - Bloomberg CityLab
It’s been a slow burn, but Hollywood is finally recognizing a trend corporate America long ago seized upon: The spending power of the 50-something woman. This is the largest demographic, according to a 2018 Forbes report, earning annual salaries of over $100,000. - New York Post
A handsome young Black man surprising Chinese immigrants with fluent Mandarin can amass quite a following on social media. Frankie Light is one of several people who pick up various languages (or, at least, phrases), spring them on native speakers, and post the video on YouTube. - The New York Times
“My goal was very simple: Smithsonian will be the place people point to, to say ‘This is how we should share our collections and think about ethical returns,’” Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, said in an interview. - The New York Times
"The theatre gave no reason for dropping Timofey Kulyabin's production of the opera Don Pasquale and Kirill Serebrennikov's ballet Nureyev, which will be replaced by productions of Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Aram Khachaturian's ballet Spartacus," the latter a piece of patriotic populism from Soviet days. - The Guardian
"Bleak subscriber numbers and the company's response have stirred a mix of angst and uncertainty among many rank-and-file workers. Some are worried that the streaming heavyweight may have hired too fast and grown complacent as subscriber growth skyrocketed in the early days of the pandemic." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
Japan National Orchestra Co. was founded and is led by 27-year-old CEO Kyohei Sorita, a concert pianist convinced that his band (for now, really a chamber orchestra) can make a profit. JNO has even issued stock, 70% of which is owned by a manufacturer of high-precision machine tools. - Bloomberg
The West End run of ALW's latest musical will conclude on June 12. But the company was told after the Sunday matinee on a holiday weekend in Britain, and many who weren't on that day — including star Carrie Hope Fletcher — got the news the wrong way. - BBC
