“Some forewords are transitive: acts of seduction that are at the same time documents of earlier seductions. … Other forewords are parasitical; like cuckoos’ eggs laid in crows’ nests they hatch and flourish at the expense of their hosts. … As for prefaces (and afterwords), these may be explanatory, apologetic, triumphal, tendentious, rueful, score-settling, spiteful, bibliographic, theoretical (as is the case with Chandler’s), or gently embarrassed (as is the case with Cheever’s) but the best of them — like Cheever’s — are also what I would call restorative.” — The Paris Review
Funding Boom In Higher Ed Benefits The Liberal Arts
There’s a growing consensus across the donor community that the liberal arts can effectively complement the STEM model. Throw in traditional support for endowments and digitization projects, plus gifts earmarked for philosophy studies, and it becomes clear that the liberal arts funding space is more diverse and robust than one would initially suspect. – Inside Philanthropy
Rubin Foundation Announces 2019 Grants In Art And Social Justice
“This year’s cohort includes smaller organizations that are at the forefront of using cultural production to address contemporary issues such as LGBTQ rights, distributive justice, court diversion for youth, and domestic violence. Grantees include Fourth Arts Block, Disability/Arts/NYC, Jack, Alice Austen House, Photo Requests from Solitary (A Project of Solitary Watch), Wendy’s Subway, and Forward Union. Among the larger institutions receiving funding are El Museo del Barrio, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, the Queens Museum, and the Studio Museum in Harlem.” – Art Forum
For The Bauhaus Centennial, Reviving Its Unique Ballet
The Berlin Academy of Arts and the Bavarian State Ballet are co-producing a revival of the 1922 Triadic Ballet by Bauhaus polymath Oskar Schlemmer. — Artnet
For Her Upcoming World Premiere, Composer Julia Wolfe Goes Shopping For Scissors
Reporter Michael Cooper joins the Pulitzer winner in the search for shears (“The big thing is the sound. I’m not really looking for how they cut.”) for her new piece about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, Fire in my mouth, written for the New York Philharmonic and The Crossing and arriving on stage this week. — The New York Times
Google Invests Millions In Wikimedia and Gives Access To Machine Learning Tools
“It’s certainly positive that Google is investing more in Wikipedia, one of the most popular and generally trustworthy online resources in the world. But the decision isn’t altruistic: Supporting Wikipedia is also a shrewd business decision that will likely benefit Google for years to come.” – Wired
Existential Threats
Toward the end of last year someone asked what was the most important reason for arts organizations to embrace community engagement: economic viability or cultural justice. But those issues are not separate ones. — Doug Borwick
The Oscars And The “Quality” Issue
Kevin Fallon: “The real dissonance, as this year’s Oscar nominees make clear, is between Oscar voters and critics. It’s not whether voters care if their movies have been seen by the general public that is the big question anymore. It’s whether they care if their movies are good.” – The Daily Beast
Actress And Singer Kaye Ballard Dead At 93
‘[Her] antic performances took her from vaudeville and nightclubs to Broadway, regional theaters, and film and television roles, including as a sitcom star [of The Mothers-in-Law] and a frequent guest on talk shows.” — The Washington Post
Takeaways From This Year’s Oscar Nominations
The nominations reflect a completely polarized votership many of whose various constituencies can’t stand one another! The resemblance to real life is uncanny. – New York Magazine
Ten Years After Pina Bausch Died, Her Company Moves On To New Choreographers
Four of Tanztheater Wuppertal’s dancers, including veterans and new members, talk about enterting the very different artistic worlds of Dimitris Papaioannou and Alan Lucien Øyen. — The Guardian
Why A Flashy New Concert Hall Might Be Just What London Needs Right Now
In a country grappling with austerity and Brexit, a plan for a 2,000-seat “center for music” seems to hark back to the more confident, stable time in the early 2000s when the Tate Modern opened. Indeed, there have been claims that it could do for the city’s classical music scene what the new Tate did for London’s standing as a center for modern and contemporary art. – CityLab
A Professional Mercenary Explains Why ‘The More Horrors I Witness, The Deeper I Cling To Opera’
Sean McFate: “For a man in my profession, there’s much to love. Like war, things usually go horribly wrong in opera. For instance, take Verdi’s La forza del destino.” But it’s more than that: “Opera is my lodestone in the darkness. Its beauty offsets war’s ugliness, and without such balance, we slip into numbness and eventual insanity, robbed of our humanity.” — Quartz
Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center Had A Plan To Finance Renovation Of Its Newest Theater. That Plan Has Fallen Apart
The Merriam Theater, which the Kimmel acquired in 2016, was the city’s most uncomfortable, problematic major venue, and the plan for fixing it involved partnering with a developer who’d build a skyscraper above it. But, after doing due diligence, no developer has agreed to do it. — The Philadelphia Inquirer
Broadway ‘Mockingbird’ Shoots Down British ‘Mockingbird’
“A British touring production of [the old Christopher Sergel adaptation of] To Kill a Mockingbird, which was to start next month, has been canceled after Scott Rudin’s company Atticus — the firm behind the Broadway hit [adapted by Aaron Sorkin] — threatened legal action … saying it held worldwide rights for professional stagings of the book.” — The New York Times
Oscars Hosting, Super Bowl Halftime, White House Dinner — Why Have Big-Name Entertainers Started Turning Down The Biggest Gigs?
Kevin hart blew his chance at the Oscars, and nobody wants to replace him; Rihanna and Cardi B both passed on the Super Bowl; the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has become so fraught that they’ve asked a historian to MC. These jobs have always been dangerous (look at the blowback if you say the wrong thing), but the opportunity used to be worth the risk. Here’s why that’s no longer the case. — The Guardian
Russell Baker, New York Times ‘Observer’ Columnist, Dead At 93
“Mr. Baker, along with the syndicated columnist Art Buchwald, was one of the best-known newspaper humorists of his time, and The Washington Post ranked his best-selling autobiography, Growing Up, with the most enduring recollections of American boyhood — those of James Thurber, H. L. Mencken and Mark Twain.” — The New York Times
Barnes Foundation Aims To Raise $100 Million For Endowment (And It’s Already Well On The Way)
“With its centennial year approaching in 2022, the Barnes Foundation is on a path to raise $100 million by that celebratory anniversary, its leaders said Tuesday. The campaign has quietly bubbled along for more than a year, bringing in its first donation in December 2017, and has raised $35.3 million so far in pledges and gifts.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer
Alicia Alonso, At Age 98, Finally Turns Over The Reins Of The National Ballet Of Cuba
“[The company has named] the beloved hometown prima ballerina Viengsay Valdés … deputy artistic director, which means she will immediately assume the daily responsibilities of running the company. Alonso will retain the title of general director, but in practice, Valdés will be the one making all the artistic decisions.” — Dance Magazine
UK Cinemas See Highest Attendance In 48 Years
“Britons went to the cinema 177m times in 2018, the highest number since 1970, when hits including M*A*S*H, Love Story and Airport helped attract 193m admissions … The lack of a Star Wars blockbuster failed to dampen enthusiasm, with attendance rising thanks to a diverse slate of US and domestic films.” — The Guardian
All-Or-Nothing? Following Dreams Is Fine, But It’s Not Everything
Advocates of dream-following, of commitment and career leaps of faith, often say: ‘You’ll regret it if you don’t.’ They might be right about that (actually, they almost certainly are). But here’s the rub: regret is not the sole preserve of the cautious compromiser. A failure to compromise can also beget future unhappiness. – Aeon
Rock ‘n’ Roll Laundry: Meet The Guy Who Washes The Clothes For The Superstars’ Touring Shows
“The world’s top specialist for tour laundry, [Hans-Jürgen] Topf has traveled with many of the world’s biggest music acts, including Madonna, Pink and Beyoncé. As tours have become bigger and more professionalized, their logistics have become increasingly daunting. … That’s where ‘der Topf,’ as he likes to call himself, comes in.” — The New York Times
Propwatch: the suicide note in Matthew Bourne’s ‘Swan Lake’
There aren’t many props in dance. Some may intrude on classical ballet; otherwise, anything that gets in the way of bodies is considered clutter. That’s not the case with Bourne’s Swan Lake, in which the prince’s suicide note turns out to be the key to the story’s emotional power. — David Jays
Cold Turkey Press: A Bibliography
I don’t know exactly how many chapbooks, folios, broadsides, and poetry cards Cold Turkey Press has published, but it must be in the hundreds. All of them — produced in handmade, illustrated, and limited editions — are unique manifestations of their publisher’s mind. — Jan Herman
‘Roma’ And ‘The Favourite’ Lead Oscar Nominations
Both films received ten nods each, including Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress. The Roma nominations are making a bit of history: it’s the first Netflix original title to get a Best Picture nod, Yalitza Aparicio is the first indigenous performer, and one of the relatively few non-English-speaking ones, to be nominated for Best Actress. — Los Angeles Times