“[Her] professionalism and perseverance in the 1970s helped a generation of women infiltrate the boys club of television news … She broke ground on topics like sex abuse in the workplace and in prison. She also reported on a diet pill that was linked to lung disease; … racism in law enforcement; and publicly funded programs that provided horrific care for disabled children.” — The New York Times
NY’s Prototype Festival Shows How Hard It Is To Reinvent Opera
Anne Midgette: “Most of them could be called opera, but most of them have little to do with what you might see in an opera house. Opera houses are looking for ways to connect with new audiences; the Prototype festival shows just how far they need to change the template to really try to do it.” – Washington Post
Opera Roles Are Classified By Voice Types. Also Gender Types. Is This A Problem?
“Imagine a soprano who has just changed her voice type from mezzo-soprano to soprano. She’s immediately at a disadvantage if she lists every role that she’s performed on her resume, because it will immediately cause the review panel to question the legitimacy of her soprano-ness. The next inevitable step is that they’ll question her ability to sing the role for which she’s currently auditioning. This isn’t a gender issue any longer, but rather an issue of the current classification system’s inability to handle change.” – NewMusicBox
The Design Of A Book’s Interior Is As Important, And As Tricky, As That Of Its Cover
As print designer Jordan Wannemacher says, “You have to have a really strong grid, you have to consider the practical physical nature of the package (is there enough room for your hands to hold the pages on the margins? will the type of binding make elements close to the gutter disappear?), you have to design anywhere from 20-200+ unique elements while ensuring they are all cohesive and unified.” — Spine
US Is Now Out Of UNESCO For Second Time
As of New Year’s Day, the United States, along with Israel, officially left the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. The trigger for this withdrawal, which was announced 15 months ago, was UNESCO giving World Heritage Site status to the ancient West Bank city of Hebron — as a Palestinian city. (The Reagan administration withdrew the US from the organization in 1984; George W. Bush brought the country back in in 2002.) — The Architect’s Newspaper
Is It Possible To Teach Creative Writing With Value-Neutral Language?
Helen Betya Rubinstein: “I am convinced that we can teach creative writing without the language of failure or success, criticism or praise. … Even praise, like any other drug, will eventually poison art. Like criticism, it makes us forget what art is for.” — Literary Hub
This Florida Mall Aims To Become An Art Destination
“A few malls have art, a very few have good art, but almost none have the button-pushers and immersive installations that the Aventura Mall features. Artists on view include pioneers or buzzy contemporary players like Louise Bourgeois, Wendell Castle, Lawrence Weiner, Julian Opie, and Daniel Arsham.” — Architectural Digest
This One Nifty Chart Shows The Danger Facing Netflix
The problem: “most viewership on Netflix gravitates toward audience favorites that first aired on other networks, which Netflix itself doesn’t own” — which means it could lose the right to stream them. — Vox
There Are Two Golden Tractor Tires On The Grand Staircase At The Paris Opera
The gilded pieces of farm equipment, perched like two glowing wreaths, are part of an installation titled Les Saturnelles by artist Claude Lévêque. Some irked onlookers are comparing the piece to Jeff Koons’s widely reviled Bouquet de Tulipes and Paul McCarthy’s notorious sculpture Tree. — The Art Newspaper
How Ballet’s Leg Lifts Extended To 180 Degrees (And Sometimes Beyond)
To the end of the 19th century, no matter how virtuosic a ballet dancer could be, the leg was not to be lifted above the hip. Emma Sandall recounts how that changed, from Diaghilev through Balanchine to the pathbreaking hyperextension of Sylvie Guillem. — Dance Magazine
The Village Voice May Be Gone, But Its Annual Film Critics’ Poll Doesn’t Have To Be
“The [Voice] film poll was a fun and useful snapshot of the year in cinema from a healthy roster of film critics, and it’s one feature that a grieving fan desperately trying to duck family members over the holidays could theoretically replicate.” So that’s what Mike D’Angelo did. Here’s what he found. — Slate
US Supreme Court Rejects Olivia de Havilland’s Lawsuit Against Miniseries ‘Feud: Bette And Joan’
The 102-year-old actress objected to the FX series’ portrayal of her as a gossipy hypocrite who (this was very important to de Havilland) used dirty words. A California appeals court ruled against her on First Amendment grounds, and the Supreme Courts of both California and (now) the US have refused to reconsider the case. — The Hollywood Reporter
A Quarter Of Young Adults In UK Never Go To Theatre: Study
“A study of 2,000 18-to-30-year-olds found that 24% of respondents said they never attend theatre performances, with this figure higher among men than women.” (On the other hand, this means that 76% of the respondents do go to the theatre at least once a year.) — The Stage
The British Museum Thought This Was An Ancient Sumerian Vase. Turns Out It Was A Deadly Weapon
After years of displaying this 4,400-year-old object face-down, thinking it was a vessel for flowers, curators realized that was actually a vessel of grievous bodily harm: the head of a mace. — The Art Newspaper
Edinburgh Fringe Festival Is Now Scotland’s Most Lucrative Event
It’s now worth £200 million. Organizers say the event’s value – which has risen more than £25 million since the last official research was done in 2015 – demonstrates how it has become “an economic powerhouse in its own right.” – The Scotsman
Claim: A Change In Ireland’s National Theatre’s Policy Has Devastated The Theatre Community
It claims that the Irish theatre community is “in a critical situation” and that, although the Abbey may be financially buoyant, “the freelance theatre community, in particular, has been cast adrift”. – Irish Times
Leisure Gap: Men Are Watching More TV On Average Than Women
According to the government’s American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which tracks how people spend their days, men on average are watching three hours of TV or movies per day, while women average two hours and 34 minutes. – The Atlantic
How The Prado Museum Revitalized Itself
Central to this shift was the Prado’s hard-won independence from government interference. Once, directors came and went with each political quarrel, creating uncertainty and malaise. “The Prado was sometimes a weapon used by one political party against the other”. – The Art Newspaper
Gauguin. Spirituality and Max Hollein
Most Paul Gauguin exhibitions show him off as a sensualist who abandoned his family in France to canoodle with young Tahitian girls. So it was refreshing to see Gauguin: A Spiritual Journey last year at the de Young museum in San Francisco. The exhibit leaves out his most sensualist works and therefore presses visitors to see other aspects of his work. — Judith H. Dobrzynski
2018 In Classical Music By The Numbers
Bachtrack’s annual compilation of statistics about classical music worldwide. The headline? About 30,000 performances. Oh, and Leonard Bernstein got a big boost from his anniversary year with a surge in performances of his music. – BachTrack
Instagram Live Is The New Fireside Chat
As Beto O’Rourke and newly minted Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez use Instagram to show their domestic skills, Senator Elizabeth Warren uses it to announce a presidential bid, and … what happened to TV? “This is the future of political rhetoric: handheld, streaming, and dappled with DIY lighting.” – The Atlantic
To Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, The Merchant-Ivory Screenplays Were A Hobby
Notwithstanding the fact that she won Oscars for two of her scripts (A Room with a View and Howards End) for the filmmaking couple, she considered herself primarily a prose writer. Historian Maya Jasanoff offers a survey of her work, which she characterizes as a blend of Jane Austen and V.S. Naipaul. — The New Yorker
Have We Misunderstood The Connection Between Democracy And Social Justice?
Working at the intersection of moral and political philosophy, social science, and economics, Elizabeth Anderson has become a leading theorist of democracy and social justice. She has built a case, elaborated across decades, that equality is the basis for a free society. Her work, drawing on real-world problems and information, has helped to redefine the way contemporary philosophy is done, leading what might be called the Michigan school of thought. – The New Yorker