Kyle Buchanan: “Of course, the decision to blow up the best-picture category wasn’t greeted with nearly as much enthusiasm in June 2009 … Industry veterans worried that the expansion would sap a nomination of its prestige factor, and many of the publicists and producers who had won previous best-picture fights felt particularly aggrieved, like high achievers learning that the SAT had become easier after they took it. … [Even so,] I’d go so far as to say it saved the show.” – The New York Times
Tim Crowley Saved Marfa, Texas And Built It Into An International Destination. Is He Now Ruining It?
When Donald Judd, the artist who came to the West Texas desert village and attracted other artists there, died in 1994, he left his foundation with $400 in the bank and Marfa faced doom. Then Crowley, a Houston attorney and developer, and his gallerist wife came to town and pumped a lot of money into it, buying properties, building businesses and bringing in new and prosperous residents. But over the last few years, as Crowley’s plans have gotten bigger and more commercial, many Marfans think that this man who owns the whole town has started messing it up for everyone else. – Texas Monthly
Examining The Arguments Over Jeanine Cummins’s ‘American Dirt’
The author got a seven-figure advance, the first print run is half a million copies, the book jacket features gushing blurbs by famous writers, and the book got loads of coverage in The New York Times. But then the Twitterverse came after it, observers called out plot points that strain credibility, and even Cummins herself said, “I don’t know if I’m the right person to tell this story.” And then Oprah got involved. – Vox
NEA Releases Results Of Latest Survey Of Public Participation In The Arts
Among the key findings: 74% of American adults engage with the arts via electronic media, 54.3% attend arts events, and 53.7% create or perform art themselves. Three states, D.C. and metro Cleveland have particularly high rates of attendance at performances, while Vermont, Montana, and metro Dallas lead in art show attendance, and nearly 90% of adults in greater Philadelphia and Baltimore engage with the arts via electronic media. – National Endowment for the Arts
Klimt Thief: “We Have Given A Gift To The City”
Last Friday, when art historians confirmed its authenticity through X-rays to see if the original painting was there, Ermanno Mariani got the curious call, and the voice was oddly familiar. The man on the phone said he was the person Mariani had previously interviewed about the theft. Mariani also received a letter claiming, “We are the authors of the theft of Klimt’s Portrait of a Lady, and we have given a gift to the city by returning the canvas.” He turned the letter, written in large block writing, over to police. – The Daily Beast
An Extraordinary Boots-On-The-Ground Arts Philanthropist In Atlanta
“My desire to give evolved from going to a lot of museums, art galleries and live performances,” he says. “It took years to develop my taste, but once I was on the ground, seeing what these entities could do, it was easy to want to step up and help. I actually wonder why more people don’t do it because I can’t imagine anything more satisfying.” – ArtsATL
Stories Are An Oral Tradition. They Work Differently When You Don’t Hear Them
Once upon a time, none of these stories had yet been fixed on a page (or a clay tablet), but were carried in the physical bodies of the people who committed them to memory. Long before Johannes Gutenberg and his printing press, and 1,000 years before cloistered monks and their illuminated manuscripts, the principal storage facility for history, poetry, and folktales was the human head. And the chief means of transmitting that cultural wealth, from generation to generation, was the human voice. – LitHub
A New Museum That’s Betting You’ll Pay For A More “Experience” Experience
The museum is betting that in a city where tickets to the Museum of Ice Cream cost $38, visitors will be willing to pay for the privilege of experiencing photography in a way that feels more like socializing than doing homework. (Admission for adults is $28; more than at the Museum of Modern Art, which charges $25, but less than for MOIC.) – Artnet
One Of The Last Full-Length Interviews Of Monty Python’s Terry Jones
“The BBC came very close to erasing all of the original Python tapes, at least from the first season. What happened was that we got word from our editor that the BBC was about to wipe all the tapes to use for more ‘serious’ entertainment — ballet and opera and the like. So we smuggled out the tapes and recorded them onto a Philips VCR home system. For a long time, these were the only copies of Python‘s first season to exist anywhere. If these were lost, they were lost for good.” – Vulture
Our Conception Of Time As A Process Has Evolved
Over the past few centuries, philosophers of time have worried about divine eternity, absolutism and Kantian idealism. Our current fixation on presentness, and whether it is a real feature of the world, is a 20th-century fad. Ironically, it’s rooted in a Dormouse who rejected the reality of time altogether. – Aeon
Frank Gehry And His Favorite Buildings, And How He Thinks About Buildings
“I don’t play music and I don’t paint, but I always thought architecture was an art and I try to practice it that way. Architecture is intuitive. It’s humanly expressive. You’re putting yourself on the line. You start out not being understood, and you keep going because you have to. And it’s harder to explain.” – New York Magazine
Were Egyptian Hieroglyphs Basically Ancient Emoji?
On the surface, yes, of course they were — and there are some modern-day emoji that look surprisingly like their Pharaonic predecessors. The differences, though, are deep. – The New York Times
Survival Of The Fittest? Turns Out Collaboration Might Be More Important
Put simply, life is beginning to look ever more complex and ever more collaborative. All this has fractured Western biology’s consensus on Darwin. – Slate
The Case Of The Non-Review Book Review And What It Says About Us
Should Jeanine Cummins have written the book? Lauren Groff doesn’t know. Should she have reviewed it? She doesn’t know! “Perhaps this book is an act of cultural imperialism; at the same time, weeks after finishing it, the novel remains alive in me,” she writes. – The New Republic
How Two Belgian Avant-Gardists Rebuilt ‘West Side Story’ From Top To Bottom
Despite his success with revisionist productions of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller plays, Ivo van Hove seemed an unlikely choice to direct a major revival of the Bernstein-Laurents-Sondheim musical. Even less likely was the selection of austere formalist Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker to choreograph the first production whose dance wasn’t based on Jerome Robbins’s exuberant movement. Yet their participation was blessed by Stephen Sondheim, the only one of the show’s creators still living. Writer Sasha Weiss spent several months watching them cast and develop the production — and then rework their ideas (in one notable case, at the cast’s insistence). – The New York Times Magazine
Italy’s Carabinieri Art Squad, Catching Thieves, Looters, And Traffickers For 50 Years
The Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale was founded in 1969 as the world’s first law enforcement service to specialize in art and cultural heritage. Its agents have worked from Rome and Venice to London and New York to war-ravaged Palmyra to recover stolen treasures, and it has developed an international databse of 1.1 million missing objects. – Artsy
One Of New York’s Most Storied Experimental Venues Is Letting Artists Run It For A Year
“Performance Space New York [formerly P.S. 122], the historic performance arts nonprofit in Manhattan’s East Village, will shift to a new, artist-run model for 2020. A cohort of NYC-based artists and collectives will direct the organization’s programming, working in collaboration with its staff, board, and leadership. The artists will have ‘full transparency into the organization’s inner workings’ and control of its annual production budget to pay their own wages and develop programs … The only requirements of their tenure is that the spaces must be utilized.” – Hyperallergic
Detroit Symphony Chooses Its Next Music Director (It Was Love At First Sight)
Jader Bignamini’s first performances with the DSO were unexpected: in 2018, due to cardiac surgery, outgoing music director Leonard Slatkin had to cancel the final concerts of his tenure with the orchestra, and Bignamini stepped in. It was, says the DSO’s board chairman, “the right time, right place, right chemistry.” The new maestro begins his initial six-year term this fall. – Detroit Free Press
Sasha Waltz And Johannes Öhman To Leave Staatsballett Berlin
“According to a company press release [about the two artistic directors], Öhman is leaving to accept a directorship at Swedish contemporary dance presenter Dansens Hus. Waltz” — whose appointment was greeted with fury by the company’s dancers (though they later patched things up) — “has chosen to depart at the same time rather than become sole artistic director, though she will continue to be artistically involved with the company through 2021 as a choreographer.” – Dance Magazine
Longtime Boston Symphony CEO Mark Volpe Announces Retirement
“In an era when many of his peers have been buffeted by economic challenges, Mr. Volpe, 62, has kept the orchestra on firm footing by capitalizing on what he has referred to as its ‘multiple brand strategy.’ … During his tenure, the Boston Symphony may not have been as flashy as, say, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which has changed how orchestras think about programming and community engagement. But Boston has steadily expanded in ambition and reputation, and avoided the labor unrest that has hit some of its peers.” – The New York Times
For The First Time Netflix Reveals How Many Watched “The Queen”
The third season, which stars Olivia Colman as the Queen, was watched in 21 million homes in its first four weeks. That was 40% more than saw the second season over the same time period, Netflix said. – BBC
New Crop Of Plays Treats History Of Blacks In Britain
“From an African girl who was ‘gifted’ to Queen Victoria to a slave who took on his master in a British court, several little-known but remarkable chapters of black British history are being put in the spotlight on stage this year.” – BBC
Recent Listening In Brief: Yelena Eckemoff
Yelena Eckemoff, Nocturnal Animals (L&H Productions)
Russian-born pianist and composer Eckemoff, long a New York resident, collaborates with a superb rhythm section of Scandinavian musicians. They are inspired by creatures that populate the world’s forests of the night. – Doug Ramsey
Enrollment In Art History Programs Down 28 Percent In UK
The number of UK domicile first year students (first degree) selecting historical and philosophical subjects fell by 5% between 2017-18 and 2018-19, contributing to a 17.5% decline in popularity over the past ten years. Tucked within this category sits art history, which fared a particularly rocky 28.5% drop over the decade. Between 2017-18 and 2018-19, Languages also fell by 6.2%, whilst creative arts and design saw a 1.5% decline. Conversely, business and administrative Studies saw a 7% growth from last year’s figures, with agriculture and medicine also growing in popularity. – The Art Newspaper
Terry Jones Of ‘Monty Python’ Dead At 77
“After huge success with Python in the 1970s and early ’80s, including [directing and acting in] the feature films Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life, Jones went on to work on a huge variety of projects. With [Michael] Palin, he created the successful TV series Ripping Yarns and forged a post-Python directorial career with Personal Services, Erik the Viking and The Wind in the Willows. He made a series of TV documentaries (specialising in medieval history), wrote nearly 20 children’s books, and contributed a string of comment pieces for the Guardian and Observer denouncing the ‘war on terror’.” – The Guardian