Nearly two years after the ABT star retired from the stage and returned home to the Argentine capital, she’s been named director of the ballet company at the Teatro Colón.
How Nicole Kidman Put Together Her Own All-Star HBO Series
A lot of actors start production companies in which they’re not all that involved in the actual producing. Not Kidman with Big Little Lies: she got the rights to the book, got Reese Witherspoon on board, and the two of them lined up a director, a screenwriter, a big-name cast, and the studio themselves. Sarah Lyall gets the story.
How Boundaries Help You Be More Creative
“We tend to think of creativity as something artistic—the quality that produces masterpieces. But it’s actually an important part of just getting everyday stuff done. It’s what allows a programmer to complete her first line of original code, a product manager to identify a new market for an existing product, and an elementary-school teacher to find an entertaining way to teach subtraction. And when it comes to situations as different as these, constraints seem to improve our performance.”
The Artist’s Job Now? Radical Empathy
“Radical empathy, as I define it, is the act of reaching out with an open heart and mind, even if we feel the person or community we are reaching out to is undeserving of such openness. It’s the notion that, if we swallow our own hurt long enough to extend empathy to our opposition no matter what (that’s the radical part), we will establish connections capable of yielding far greater fruit than any amount of soap-boxing or condemnation ever will. Radical empathy is how the artist and arts institutions will foster communication and connection across communities. Radical empathy is the artist’s new job.”
Steven Spielberg – Genius From The Perfectly Ordinary
“From a certain angle one can see Spielberg as one of those archetypal children of the mythic suburbs, cheery on the outside and nervewracked on the inside, a myth on which his own films have worked variations time and again. So much of his early trajectory feels so generic.”
‘Nevertheless, She Persisted’ And The Age Of The Weaponized Meme
“You couldn’t have designed better fodder for a meme had you tried.” Megan Garber writes about how and why Mitch McConnell’s now-notorious mansplain about Elizabeth Warren became the feminist slogan tweeted ’round the world.
Another One Down – Seattle Stranger Staff Art Critic Quits
“Jen Graves, who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for criticism and a nominee for the best art reporting award from the U.S. section of the International Association of Art Critics, was an increasing rare entity: an art critic working full time at a major city newspaper. The number of people in that role has dwindled in recent years as the media business has struggled and publications have cut staff.”
Bard College President: We Must Defend America’s Universities
Leon Botstein: “The presidents of our colleges and universities must defend the principles that have enabled institutions of higher education to flourish. These are freedom and tolerance, and openness to individuals no matter their national origin or religion. The actions and spirit of the new administration threaten the American university’s core values.”
Alex Ross: Art, Artists And Political Protest
“Ultimately, artists of integrity will have no choice in how they respond to the Great Besmirchment. Those who thrive on politically charged material will continue in that vein. (In contemporary classical music, Ted Hearne is a master of that mode; recent works have addressed WikiLeaks, race relations, and the Supreme Court.) Yet those who devote themselves to numbered string quartets or painterly abstractions should not feel pressure to forsake their destiny. The task of the audience is to absorb art’s conflicting messages and remain alert to unexpected revelations.”
Andrew Wyeth’s Love Letters
The painter’s correspondence with girlfriend Alice Moore, whom he dated as a young 20-something, has recently surfaced, and it changes some of what biographers thought they knew.
Asghar Farhadi Explains What ‘The Salesman’ Is Really About
Humiliation. In a Q&A, the filmmaker, up for what could be his second Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar (though he won’t be at the ceremony), talks about the painful dynamic between the couple at the center of the story.
Hollywood Organizes For Political Action
United Talent Agency (UTA) on Wednesday canceled its annual Oscars party and said it will instead hold a rally in Beverly Hills two days before the Feb. 26 Oscar ceremony to protest “anti-immigrant sentiment” in the United States. “If our nation ceases to be the place where artists the world over can come to express themselves freely, then we cease, in my opinion, to be America,” UTA chief executive Jeremy Zimmer said in a statement.
What Would The Subjects Of Oscar-Nominated Documentaries Say If They Got Up On That Stage?
“Five of the 10 feature-length and short documentaries nominated for Oscars are directly or indirectly about refugees. … Several of the documentarians wanted to bring their subjects to the Oscar ceremony, but plans were upended by President Trump’s [travel ban].” So the Times‘s Carpetbagger asked what they’d say if they got the chance.
U.S. Universities Must Fight To Defend Immigrants, Science, And Actual Facts, Writes Leon Botstein
The conductor and president of Bard College, himself an immigrant, in a New York Times Op-Ed: “Not since the era of witch hunts and ‘red baiting’ has the American university faced so great a threat from government. … What, then, are we, the leaders of our institutions of higher education, to do when faced with a president who denies facts, who denies science?”
Where Did The Alt-Right Come From? Italian Futurism
Jay Griffiths lays out how the ideas and propaganda techniques of the early-20th-century movement can be heard and seen in the words and actions of Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos, Nigel Farage, and Donald Trump. (Her thorough conflation of libertarianism with the alt-right and fascism is less convincing.)
Oprah Sells A Klimt For $150 Million
While the painting, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II, was hanging at MoMA last year (she lent it anonymously in 2014), David Geffen approached her to say that Larry Gagosian had a buyer lined up. (Gossip!) And she made quite a profit.
How Iván Fischer And His Orchestra Triumphed Over The Travel Ban
The conductor’s current tour with his Budapest Festival Orchestra hit a big snag just before it started: one of the cellists has dual citizenship in Hungary and Iraq and was initially denied entry to the U.S. Then Fischer sprang into action.
Sotheby’s Sues Dealer Over Fake Frans Hals
Last year the auction house discovered that the Portrait of a Gentleman that it had sold to a collector in 2011 was a forgery – and it reimbursed that collector. So Sotheby’s is taking dealer Mark Weiss to court to get its money back.
Bolshoi Ballet Has ‘Recovered’ From The Acid Attack And The Ugliness That Followed
Historian Simon Morrison (Bolshoi Confidential) talks with Here & Now‘s Robin Young about how turmoil has abounded at the theater for all of its 241 years, and how the ballet company has stabilized following the horrific attack on former ballet artistic director Sergei Filin (and after Filin’s subsequent involuntary departure from the company). (audio)
Henry-Louis De La Grange, 92, Dean Of Mahler Scholars
His four-volume, 3,600-page biography of Mahler made him the world’s pre-eminent expert on the composer. His collaboration in countless concerts, festivals, exhibitions, and documentaries played a huge part in establishing Mahler’s place in the modern concert repertoire.
Surprise: Innovative Chicago Opera Theatre Director Says He’ll Move On
“Under Andreas Mitisek’s artistic leadership, the 43-year-old company moved boldly into more productions of modern and contemporary work. It also began producing away from its sophisticated but hard-to-fill home base at the Harris Theater. During the last few years, COT also eliminated its debt, established a cash reserve of more than $850,000 (thanks largely to a MacArthur Foundation grant), and took in its largest gift ever, a $1.5 million donation from Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson.”
Right-Wing Protesters Disrupt Syrian Artist’s Installation In Dresden
The piece by Manaf Halbouni, described as a “Monument” to Aleppo and its people, consists of three buses stood on end in front of Dresden’s restored Frauenkirche. The city is the home base of the anti-immigration group Pegida.