ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

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An End To International Touring For Orchestras?

Orchestras still face the possibility of disruption by future waves of the virus, making planning difficult. In some bustling international markets, including China, quarantine rules are so strict that tours are nearly impossible. - The New York Times

BP To End Longterm Sponsorship Of London’s National Portrait Gallery

Pressure group Culture Unstained called the news "a major win for the campaign against fossil fuel sponsorship". - BBC

How a Small Quebec Publisher Flipped The Page On Diversity

What happens when a press does more than increase its roster of writers of colour? What happens when diversity is built into its very structure? Mémoire d’encrier suggests that the results can be transformative. - The Walrus

Analyzing The Books That Paris’ Shakespeare & Company Lent In The 1920s

The Shakespeare and Company Project is a relational database and web application. The Project uses documents from the Sylvia Beach Papers at Princeton University Library and other libraries to give researchers and the general public access to the world of Shakespeare and Company. - Cultural Analytics

UK Culture Secretary: We Have To Save The BBC

“Our responsibility is to save the BBC from itself, because it is that polar bear on a shrinking ice cap,” she said. “It’s a global British brand, which must be protected.” - Deadline

The Streaming Problem

The streaming age has been hard on independent musicians. In 2020, analytics company Alpha Data examined data based on 1.6 million artists who released music to streaming services and found 90 per cent of plays were generated by one per cent of artists. - The Conversation

De Wain Valentine, Who Pioneered The Use Of Plastics As An Art Medium, Dead At 86

In particular, he was the first to use polyester resin and Plexiglas to make sculptures. (He learned how to shape and sand them in shop class.) His goal as an artist, he once said, was "to cut out large chunks of ocean or sky and say: 'Here it is.'" - ARTnews

Public Broadcasters Having Difficulty Meeting DEI Goals

Managers and staff who are leading DEI initiatives at their stations describe unanticipated delays in implementing action plans, misunderstandings over the roles of staff committees, and concerns about the intensity of the work yet to be done. - Current

Whatever Happened To The Statue Of Voltaire In Paris That Got Pulled Down In The Summer Of 2020?

It hasn't been seen since; many people feared that city authorities decided to melt it down, as the Vichy regime did with its predecessor in 1941. Finally, a deputy mayor has said it will be back "sometime this year" and explained why it's been gone so long. - The Observer (UK)

Understanding The Evolutions Of Traditions

Although small modifications do not undo a tradition, small changes can aggregate into significant deviations. For example, if someone is tall, then if they were a half a millimeter shorter, they would still be tall. A minor change is minor. But these small changes can aggregate. - 3 Quarks Daily

How Aleshea Harris Puts Black Life Onstage

Hilton Als: "Harris's aim as a playwright is to remove the kitchen sink and slather the stage with blood and celebration. … Just as Tennessee Williams made 'deliberate cruelty' a major concern of his work, Harris aims to show how love can make you a target." - The New Yorker

The New Online Choreographers

Among this blossoming crop of teachers and influencers, and the legions of creators making their moves into memes on TikTok, Angela Trimbur, 40, stands out. Underpinned by an intimate, self-revealing aesthetic, she fluidly navigates from sweaty group class to phone screen to ambitious project. - The New York Times

Serge Diaghilev Was Not A Good Guy: Bronislava Nijinska

The pathbreaking choreographer once wrote, " He victimised the ballet artists when they left his company and tried by all means possible to prevent their employment by other companies. … To create one's own and to destroy somebody else's – this was his principle." - The Observer (UK)

Could Our Conscious Minds Exist In Virtual Worlds?

Once one has been presented with the hypothesis that we could exist as the conscious beings we are in a purely fabricated world of experiences, or even that we already may exist in such a world, one is presented also with a certain set of obvious issues to consider. - The New Atlantis

“What Does It Mean To Make Black Film History Accessible?” Why Maya Cade Created The Black Film Archive

"My driving question for all of this ... has been: What does this mean to a Black person? And not just the Black people I know or hope to know. But what does this mean to a Black person who may not be familiar with film?" - The Hollywood Reporter

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