There is ample absurdity to wring from the fine-art ecosystem, where hierarchies and quid pro quos rule. Players ruthlessly engage in an unspoken competition for limited opportunities and resources—be they grants, residencies, publications, exhibitions, panel spots, teaching gigs, public commissions, or sales. And all of the above is adjudicated by gatekeepers who, like the gods of Olympus, deal fate...
Trump failed to purge all the old élites, largely because he was forced to depend on them, and the Proud Boys never came close to matching the ferocity and reach of the Red Guards. Nevertheless, Trump’s most devoted followers, whether assaulting his opponents or bombarding the headquarters in Washington, D.C., took their society to the brink of civil war...
Until the arrival of the coronavirus, the prevalent model was not particularly friendly to rapid response. Symphony orchestras did a good deal of planning two or three years in advance, although that was mostly big-picture stuff — there was still plenty of room for changes at the detail level. - San Francisco Chronicle
The announcement means the departure of one of Washington’s longest-serving theater chiefs and an opening in a company with a prestigious literary pedigree: It is an arm of one of the world’s great classical collections, the Folger Shakespeare Library. - Washington Post
If the owner is explicitly saying the business itself won’t survive, keeping the building around as a cultural monument raises additional questions about what culture, exactly, is being preserved. - Curbed
"In many ways, the Book Review’s history is that of American letters, and we’ll be using our 125th anniversary this year to celebrate and examine that history over the coming months. In essays, photo stories, timelines and other formats, we’ll highlight the books and authors that made it all possible." - The New York Times
In DANCELIVE by Herman Cornejo, shot by Steven Sebring using his specially developed in-the-round camera system, viewers can "watch from up close and see their movements from all sides and different angles, the visual equivalent of surround sound. … QR codes … will allow viewers to use their phones to interact with the online images, moving them forward...
The V&A partnered with the Factum Foundation to create the high-resolution color, infrared and 3-D scans in 2019. And last year, in honor of the 500th anniversary of Raphael’s death, the museum refurbished the cartoons’ gallery, known as the Raphael Court, by repainting the walls, replacing light fixtures and taking other steps to make the cartoons “more visible and...
For two months, many thousands of farmers have been staging a massive sit-in with their tractors on the highways around New Delhi, demanding that the Indian government withdraw a package of agriculture laws that the farmers say will slash their income and make them prey to Big Agribusiness. And some of these farmworkers, with sympathetic writers and artists, have...
After the open letters are published, the articles are out, and the declarations are made on social media, what happens to the people behind them? Artnet News spoke with a number of whistleblowers to find out what followed their news-making efforts and the emotional costs of going public. - Artnet
"The third season of the award-winning podcast, which arguably set in motion the current boom for non-fiction audio series, was set in the Cleveland justice system. Unlike the first two seasons, which featured one case, it looked at the system overall." HBO's adaptation, a limited series, will focus on one Cleveland police officer and the young man he's accused...
Before the pandemic, in-person classes offered by the Remy Bumppo Theatre Company tended to be small, with only 8 to 10 students. But over the last months, the theater has dropped prices between 50% and 80% and, it wrote, watched enrollment triple. - Chicago Tribune
Since this year's 78 contestants from 20 countries can't travel to Switzerland, they're submitting pre-recorded videos. The jury members (masked and socially distanced, of course) will meet in Lausanne to watch and judge those videos together, keeping to the same schedule they would in a normal year. - Pointe Magazine
Despite the long tradition of anti-urbanism in the U.S. that always seems to see the demise of cities just around the corner, they will survive because they are one of humanity’s greatest inventions. - The Conversation
The long-overdue work that larger institutions have started on in the wake of last summer's Black Lives Matter protests has been the day-in-day-out project of some other groups. Joshua Barone talked to people at seven of them — among them the Sphinx Organization, Imani Winds, and Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra — about what they do and what advice they'd...
