The MacArthur Fellow, who has also won the National Book Award and lives with her partner and two children in Brooklyn, is building Baldwin Arts, an artists colony for writers, composers, and visual artists of color. Lots of free time there, right? “We all find our space. In my bubble, I’m working on a book or a screenplay, going back and forth between the two. I really do try to find that sweet spot, those four or five hours a day of uninterrupted writing time.” – The Cut
Is America Turning Out Too Many PhD’s?
The overproduction of Ph.D.s has been an issue for years in the U.S., which has a higher rate of doctorate holders than almost any other rich country. – Bloomberg
The Art World’s 12 Biggest 2020 Controversies
Museums and galleries faced financial challenges that threatened their very existence, as Black Lives Matter uprisings forced a reckoning with the art world’s structural racism and controversial monuments that celebrate shameful histories around the globe. – Artnet
LA Movie And TV Production Shuts Down
Production shutdowns are expensive, and a delay of a few weeks would disrupt series’ delivery dates and air pattern. This is especially crucial for broadcast series whose current seasons are already airing. – Deadline
An Enormous Expansion Of Melbourne Contemporary Museum
The proposed new building, the NGV Contemporary in Melbourne, will be Australia’s largest gallery of contemporary art and design, says Tony Ellwood, the director of the National Gallery of Victoria. It will span 30,000 sq. m, one third of which will be exhibition space. – The Art Newspaper
Has The Gagosian Gallery Left San Francisco?
As of Thursday, Dec. 31, the gallery phone was disconnected and the exterior banner as well as signage in the window had been removed. Mentions of the San Francisco location have also been stripped from the Gagosian website, which serves as an online hub for its myriad galleries. – San Francisco Chronicle
The Biggest Archaeological Finds Of 2020
As always, Egypt was fruitful ground for archaeologists, with the discovery of the first ancient Egyptian funeral parlor, the world’s oldest Illustrated book, and a mummy buried with a secret painting gallery, among other finds. But the biggest news in Egyptian archaeology this year was undoubtedly the excavation of over 100 painted sarcophagi in Saqqara, an ancient burial ground south of Cairo. – Artnet
When Theatre Comes Back To Stages It Will Be Different. But That’s OK
“While there have been times during the past year when theatre and all who work in it have felt helpless, unloved and ignored, there is also plenty of evidence that it does matter and can make itself matter – not just to its own community but beyond. When theatre doesn’t just think of itself, when it thinks beyond the next show and the box office, it can and does make a difference – over and over again.” – The Stage
More Museums Are Presenting “Sponsored Content.” Is This A Problem?
“On either side of the Atlantic, museums have teamed up with corporations in an effort to utilize their spaces—and collections—in order to reach new audiences and make a little extra dough.” – Artnet
Reverse-Engineering Zoom To Make Online Theater
“Jared Mezzocchi has been systematically exploring what Zoom and the editing program Isadora can offer theatre practitioners during the pandemic. He has been working in the field for over a decade and has explored it from multiple points of view — designer, director, playwright, artistic director. … We Zoomed in November to talk about the production, how to reverse-engineer Zoom, Isadora as the way forward, and more.” – HowlRound
What Recent Research Reveals About Narcissists
“There’s a difference between everyday selfishness and real narcissism – and there’s a distinction between a normal personality trait and the harmful, rare personality disorder. As the research around narcissism has evolved in recent years, psychologists and psychiatrists have learned more about these differences.” – Psyche
Angela Hewitt Gets Custom-Made Replacement For Her Smashed Piano
Her horrible 2020 began in January when movers dropped her four-pedal Fazioli, the instrument on which she made every recording she’d done since 2003. Paolo Fazioli, the eponymous piano maker, had five new pianos made for her to choose from, and it took her about half an hour to pick one. Is it her new best friend? “I guess it is. Sorry old one. Not that I’m promiscuous.” – The Guardian
Inside The Largest Trove Of Nazi Propaganda
Today, one of the world’s largest collections of Nazi propaganda sits in a climate-controlled warehouse at Fort Belvoir, in northern Virginia. Much of it is virulent; most of it is never seen by the public. – The New Yorker
Progress Report: BIPOC Representation In American Theatre
“Time will tell if theater grantmakers adopt the coalition’s demands en masse, and some of the demands have yet to make it into grantmakers’ toolboxes in a meaningful way. But at the very least, We See You has done a huge service for funders by creating a checklist of familiar, provocative, and disruptive action items.” – Inside Philanthropy
In China, Foreign Films Have Lost Half Their Market Share In One Year
“Imported films accounted for only about a sixth of China’s total box office in 2020, a nearly 55% decrease year-on-year, industry data tracker Maoyan Entertainment said Monday. The decline highlights the chaos COVID-19 has wrought on Hollywood release schedules as well as the diminishing appeal of foreign content in what has just become the world’s largest film market.” – Variety
Author Of ‘War Horse’ Insists He Wasn’t Trying To Censor Shakespeare’s ‘Merchant of Venice’
“[Britain’s Sunday Times] described [Michael Morpurgo’s] ’21st-century sensibilities’ as having prevented the inclusion of the play in Tales from Shakespeare, his retelling of 10 Shakespeare plays for children aged six and older.” Morpurgo says that this way of describing his decision is bogus: he had to choose only ten plays, and he felt they should be stories appropriate for eight-year-olds, which The Merchant of Venice is not. – The Guardian
Unknown El Greco Painting Discovered In Spain
The small canvas depicting Christ carrying the cross and wearing the crown of thorns, owned by a private individual, was authenticated after two years of study by a team at the University of Lleida. – ARTnews
Lee Breuer, Experimental Stage Director, Dead At 83
“A tenacious outsider who refused his sole Tony Award nomination — for his biggest hit and only Broadway show, the Sophocles adaptation The Gospel at Colonus — Mr. Breuer flourished in the scrappier realm of Off Off Broadway, even as the scale of his works and ambitions took him to larger stages, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Delacorte Theater in Central Park and the Comédie-Française in Paris.” – The New York Times
The Institutions That Used To Support Creative Work
“Artists in the middle of the twentieth century flourished not because the economy was inherently favorable to them, but as a result of powerful economic winds and the groups that joined in an attempt to harness them. Together, creative class groups wielded the crowbar of politics in an attempt to pry some autonomy out of consumer capitalism. If these standards of living were sharply eroded over the last 50 years, it is partly because the institutions that once upheld them had also fallen away.” – The New Republic
Quibi Didn’t Last, But Its Shows May Move To Roku
The short-form site crashed and burned mere months after rolling out millions of dollars worth of shows, but Roku is already offering ad-supported free content through its own channel on its own devices. – Variety