Last week the Brooklyn artist space National Sawdust announced it had hired away Steve Smith from the Boston Globe to start an ambitious new culture journal. Smith is a former NYTimeser, a serious journalist, and an ambitious hire. So why? According to Smith: Our new journal initiative is not meant to be an alarmed response to that changing status quo, but rather to foster awareness of the … [Read more...]
Archives for 2016
This Week In Culture – Some ArtsJournal Highlights
This Week: An artist collective skewers Trump... How Florence's Uffizi is dramatically addressing its problems... Our fetishizing of "authenticity" doesn't ring true... So what if Google is changing the way you think... An inspiring comeback after medical calamity by one of America's best musicians. The Naked Trump: Five American cities woke up this week to statues of a naked Donald Trump … [Read more...]
When All The Culture Around Us Starts To Look The Same
One of the biggest comforts of fast food is its familiarity. Generic from location to location, you know not only what the food will be and how it will taste, but that the ritual of the experience will be familiar too. It isn't that fast food people are necessarily unadventurous; but at least some of the time, they're drawn to the familiar. There's a parallel on the internet. Remember the sense … [Read more...]
Culture Trends: Five Stories From The Week’s ArtsJournal That You Shouldn’t Miss
This Week: Is the music industry's piracy war really about higher royalty payments?... There are signs the Golden Age of TV might be ending... Theatre's emotional toll on actors... LA as the next great center of contemporary music... Europe's tourist glut is damaging its great cities. Piracy Or Pay? The Music Industry's Latest War: The music industry is complaining that rampant piracy is … [Read more...]
How Do You Test For The Arts?
It's a more difficult question than you might think. There's a maxim in the education world that only subjects that are tested are funded. Thus an imperative for arts education champions to get the arts included in required standardized tests. In a STEM world, the arts don't exist. But how do you make standardized tests for the arts? Multiple choice questions might measure knowledge but do … [Read more...]
Five Essential Stories From Last Week’s ArtsJournal Haul, Context Edition
This Week: The ways in which we experience art are about to change in big ways... Auction houses are becoming shadow banks for the super-wealthy with money to stash... The Met Museum's super-successful year (at least at the admissions booth)... Predictably, Harry Potter slays sales records... Do we have a problem with the ways we develop artists' careers? How We Encounter And Experience Art … [Read more...]
When We Allow Technology To Police Our Culture…
Last year I was producing the live streaming of the Ojai Music Festival and we decided to use YouTube to carry the streams. In a small outdoor venue, the number of seats is limited to a few hundred, and streaming the concerts greatly increases the number of people who can hear/see the concerts. Typically, in the 48 hours after the stream, the audience about doubles the number who saw it … [Read more...]
Trump, The Tenor, And Fascism
Over on Slate this week Brian Wise posted a piece about Donald Trump and his playing of Puccini's Nussun Dorma at campaign events. Trump had been using a recording of Pavarotti singing the aria and the singer's family had contacted him to ask him to stop. Musicians have been complaining for years about politicians using their music at events without permission, and it's always fun to ridicule a … [Read more...]
Are We Building Artistic Leadership?
Are the arts about selling tickets to shows or about art? Of course performances and exhibitions don't happen if they don't have money to be produced, but - as evidenced at an arts marketing conference where I recently spoke - the business of selling tickets seems often to determine the measure of success rather than the art. "Art" is a positioning for selling tickets. I'm currently working on … [Read more...]
Is Opera The Real 21st Century Art Form?
A 2015 survey by blogger Mae Mai reported that 260 new opera companies started since 2000 in the United States. There are 80 opera companies now working in New York alone. Over the past couple months the New York Opera Fest showcased many of the New York companies. For the most part, these don't look like your grandpa's operas - just clicking the website confirms that. New opera embraces the … [Read more...]
Attention Deficit Disorder: Our Walled-Garden Problem
As the digital world pummels us with more information and choice, many of us react by walling off the things we simply won't pay attention to. It's a survival strategy. We increasingly define ourselves by the things we choose to pay attention to, and bestowing attention is a form of currency we are reluctant to squander. This is a problem if you're trying to grow an audience. Building a better … [Read more...]
Editor’s Picks: Five Highlights From Last Week’s AJ – How To Define Art Edition
This Week: In an age of artists what is the definition of being an artist?... Canadian study says arts workers are most at risk... What is R&D in the arts?... Edinburgh Festival's success shows the broadening impact of festivals... In the information age our opinions seem to be more arrogant. We're All Artists Now (So Maybe It's Worth Asking What Is An Artist?): We equate creativity with … [Read more...]
Editor’s Picks: Five Stories You Shouldn’t Miss, Factually Challenged Edition
This week: How did our culture get to the point we don't trust facts?... Are artists actually detrimental to neighborhoods?... Our notions of "greatness" need an overhaul... Europe's new cultural paradigm desperately needs artists... Are donors to museum building projects do their museums a disservice? Do Facts Matter Any More? (Let's Define "Facts" Please): It's as if we live in parallel … [Read more...]
Our Don’t-Miss Stories From Last Week’s ArtsJournal: Musical Prime Minister Edition
This week: A penetrating portrait of artist Chuck Close, a reality check on meritocracy as a concept, a look at anger and our access to visceral emotion in a media-saturated world, the enduring meritocracy of the Emmy as measure of success, and a Prime Minister exits stage right, humming. A Virtuoso Artist Profile: Wil S. Hylton's profile of Chuck Close for the New York Times endeavors to … [Read more...]
Do Artists Have A Vision For The Future?
Around the beginning of the 20th Century, some French artists were asked to design a series of cards that would imagine what life would be like 100 years in the future in the year 2000. The first cards were created for the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris and eventually there were at least 87 of them. This was the mechanical age, the dawn of automation. So it's not surprising that the artists' … [Read more...]