“I am also interested in consent, by far the least attended to aspect of the play, which we encounter in the especially difficult junction between sexuality and trauma. At this strained intersection, consent is revealed at its most impotent, impossible to help clearly adjudicate desire.” – Los Angeles Review of Books
San Antonio Arts Presenter Abruptly Shuts Down
Just after New Year’s, ARTS San Antonio, one of the city’s top presenters of touring music, dance and theater artists, sent a message to donors and subscribers saying that the organization was insolvent and had ceased operations as of Dec. 31. There will be no refunds for tickets purchased for canceled performances. – The Rivard Report (San Antonio)
Book Print Sales Were Down 1.3 Percent In 2019
The decline was not unexpected, as sales in 2018 were driven by strong performances of a plethora of political books and the blockbuster success of Michelle Obama’s Becoming, which was the top seller that year with more than three million copies sold. In 2019, Becoming was the #1 title in adult nonfiction, selling about 1.2 million copies. – Publishers Weekly
Filmmaker Ivan Passer Dead at 86
Along with his classmate Miloš Forman, Passer was one of the key figures of the Czech New Wave in the 1960s, and after the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviets, the two escaped to the U.S. and resumed their careers in Hollywood. There Passer “directed a steady series of much-admired and often underappreciated films of economy, fidelity, humor and subtle beauty, among them Cutter’s Way, Stalin, Haunted Summer and Born to Win.” – Los Angeles Times
Time’s Up Creates Database Of Diverse Critics
The new database hosts profiles of underrepresented critics and journalists and invites media outlets, studios, networks, talent and film and television critics associations to find and contact them for screenings, interview junkets and publishing opportunities. – Los Angeles Times
Notre Dame Cathedral’s Roof, Destroyed By Fire, Should Be Rebuilt In Wood, Says Top French Architect
“Eric Wirth, vice president of the Guild of French Architects, … forcefully argued that wood — rather than concrete, material, or other materials that have been suggested — was the most ecological and structurally sound material during at a hearing at the National Assembly this week. …’If the structure had been made of steel, there would be no cathedral to speak of today,’ he said. In a fire, ‘iron holds for half an hour, an hour, and then writhes, pulls on the walls and collapses everything.'” – artnet
Sampling Every Sound A Stradivarius Can Make
Here’s a detailed look at a project by the Museo del Violino in the Italian city of Cremona (the Stradivari family’s hometown and to this day a center of instrument-making) to digitally record and preserve the sound of every note, as bowed and plucked in various ways, that can be made by a violin and cello by Stradivari, a second violin by Guarneri, and a viola by Amati. – Popular Science
LA Chamber Orchestra Names A New Executive Director
Ben Cadwallader has been executive director of Vermont Symphony since 2015. In 2016, he was one of nine arts administrators selected by the League of American Orchestras for its Emerging Leaders Program. An oboe player, he graduated from the Mannes College of Music at the New School in New York. – Los Angeles Times
What’s Lost With The Demise Of The New York Musical Festival
What’s worth saying with certainty is that there needs to be more opportunities for musicals to be developed and showcased outside the auspices of commercial or not-for-profit producers, with development that benefits the work and the artists first and foremost, rather than a financial imperative or looming production deadline. – The Stage
High Line Curator Named As Next Curator Of Venice Biennale
Cecilia Alemani, born in Milan in 1977, has directed the High Line’s art program since 2011, where she has commissioned large-scale works by artists such as Kerry James Marshall, Carol Bove, El Anatsui and Sarah Sze. – The New York Times
David Lang Didn’t Like How Beethoven’s “Fidelio” Turned Out. So He Rewrote It
“Before you get mad at me for saying that anything Beethoven wrote has problems, you should know that Beethoven himself was unhappy with the opera. He drastically rewrote it several times over the course of many years, each time tasking a new librettist to fix what the last had written. When the opera originally premiered in 1805 it even had a different name – Leonore, or the Triumph of Conjugal Love. Beethoven ended up writing four Leonore overtures; every time he rewrote the opera he wrote a new one.” – The Guardian
UK Puts New Regulations On Art Trade, Combating Money Laundering
Britain, with London as its hub, is the second-biggest art trading nation after the United States, with 21 percent of global auction and dealer sales in 2018, according to the report. But will the new regulatory framework put British-based dealers and auction houses at a competitive disadvantage? – The New York Times
These Big Movie Stars’ Superpower? They Dance
Who better to portray godlike aliens, aerial crime-stoppers and lethally elegant badasses than dancers? Dance training is excellent preparation for the bodily toll of action films and long days on the set. Perfectionism, physical presence, a taste for adrenaline — these attributes are par for the course for dancers. – Washington Post
What One Working Musician Earns On Different Streaming Platforms
Cellist Zoe Keating publishes her yearly streaming earnings in an effort to spark conversation about music royalties and help other artists better understand their finances. “I wanted people to see the difference between all of the services,” Keating said. “Down at the lower levels, no one knows what everyone else makes and no one knows what services pay. How can you make decisions if you don’t know what the numbers are?” – Business Insider
Major German Arts Construction Projects Are Careening Out Of Control
Ballooning budgets and years of delay are becoming a regular feature of prestigious cultural construction projects in Germany. For a country that thrives on a reputation for efficiency and engineering prowess, its recent record is sobering. – The New York Times
Worldwide Movie Box Office Breaks Record In 2019
This is the first time worldwide exceeds $42B and the first the international box office climbs past $30B. The results come in a year when domestic dipped by 4%. – Deadline
Experts: Don’t Blame Digital Effects For “Cats” Bomb
While the digital technology that helped create realistic fur in both films is “advancing all the time,” it can’t rescue a flawed approach to a project. “The techniques [you use] can’t do it. All movies are fake. There’s nothing real in them, and the illusion of that world that you’re building is created by the sum total of everything – not just one item in that.” – Variety
How “The Irishman” De-Aged Its Stars With Artificial Intelligence
When it came to de-aging De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino for The Irishman, the $140 million Netflix production opted for a specific kind of fountain of youth, created from artificial-intelligence software, first-of-its-kind motion-capture technology, and an experimental three-camera rigging system that rendered the Oscar-winning trio of septuagenarian actors as eerily smooth-skinned incarnations of their younger selves. – New York Magazine
*What* Teutonic Efficiency? Germany’s Cultural Building Projects Plagued By Delays, Budget Overruns, And Shoddy Construction
The gut renovation of Cologne’s opera house is running eight years late and more than double the original budget — and that’s only up to now, since the basements are full of ductwork, cabling and pipes that were badly coordinated and may need to be completely redone. Munich’s Deutsche Museum renovation, Berlin’s Humboldt Forum and the Pergamon Museum are all similarly late and roughly half a billion euros or more each; the Stuttgart opera house renovation may cost a billion. “For a country that thrives on a reputation for efficiency and engineering prowess, its recent record is sobering.” Catherine Hickley looks at why things are going so wrong. – The New York Times
He Left The Philadelphia Museum Of Art After Hitting On Subordinates. Now He’s Running Another Pennsylvania Museum
Joshua Helmer, 31, had been an assistant director at the PMA and was viewed as a rising star in the art world when, in early 2018, he “was separated” from the museum. Several female staffers say that he both asked them out (some said yes) and belittled their abilities, and two months ago he was actually barred from the PMA building. Just a few months after leaving Philadelphia, though, he was named director of the Erie Art Museum at the other end of the state — and he’s already been accused of trying to date an intern there. – The New York Times
One Day After Judge Banned Gay Jesus Satire, Brazil’s Chief Justice OKs It
In overruling the lower court’s injunction barring Netflix from continuing to stream The First Temptation of Christ, Supreme Federal Court President José Antonio Dias Toffoli said, “One cannot suppose that a humorous satire has the ability to weaken the values of the Christian faith, whose existence is traced back more than two thousand years.” – Yahoo! (AFP)