Just 2% of the cultural sector is made up of people aged 16-19, despite these making up 3.2% of the working population – a representation gap of over a third. – Arts Professional
Portland Loses An Arts Institution – And It Happened Out Of Sight Of The Community
“Closing the college and selling off the campus is the worst possible outcome for just about everybody. It ends a craft community and keeps anyone else from ever joining it. Sometimes, your community isn’t large or committed enough to go on, and then, yes, that’s the end of things. But asking your community to help you figure it all out should be the prior step.” – Oregon Arts Watch
How Your Body And Your Brain Work Together To Perceive The World
If you pay attention to your heart and bodily responses, they can tell you how you are feeling, and allow you to share in the emotions of others. Interoception can enhance the depth of our own emotions, emotionally bind us to those around us, and guide our intuitive instincts. We are now learning just how much the way we think and feel is shaped by this dynamic interaction between body and brain. – Aeon
Classical Music Is Broken Online. What iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music And The Others Should Do About It
It’s difficult to find music, hard to catalog, and just an overall pain in the neck to manage. The problem? “We’re treating around 300 years of music from various countries, forms, philosophies, and so on as one genre. As far as modern commercial music, we don’t group the past 50 years together” – Mac Rumors
Met Museum Closes Show And Returns Golden Casket To Egypt
“Less than two years after an acquisition, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that it had handed over a first-century BC gilded coffin to the Manhattan district attorney for return to the Egyptian government after discovering that it had been looted in 2011.” – The Art Newspaper
Roughly 2,000 Objects Have Been Recovered From Ashes Of Brazil’s National Museum
Among the items found are meteorites, bones of an ancient human and dinosaurs, gemstones and minerals, and pre-Columbian artifacts. (Curators warn, however, that some of the 2,000 items may be fragments of the same object.) – Smithsonian Magazine
Bozeman (MT) Symphony Music Director Resigns Following Accusations Of Bullying
The orchestra’s board launched an investigation into conductor Matthew Savery after 14 people, including musicians, former staffers, and board members, sent a letter complaining of both a hostile work environment and a shrinking donor base caused by Savery’s alleged bullying and verbal harassment. – Bozeman Daily Chronicle
Artist Foundations Are Now Worth More Than $7 Billion. What’s Driving Them?
According to new research, assets owned by artist-endowed foundations more than doubled in the five-year period between 2011 and 2015, rising 120 percent to $7.66 billion from $3.48 billion. In comparison, the assets of all foundations nationally grew 40 percent during the same period. – Artnet
The Way Musicians Understand Beethoven Is Different From The Ways Listeners Do. Here’s How
Anne Midgette: “There’s a big gap between the way classical music is introduced to lay listeners and the way musicians experience it. We tend to offer classical music to audiences like a history lesson, in explanations studded with names and dates that are useful enough as context but that don’t really get to the heart of what you hear. Musicians, however, experience it differently. So I went in search of a new view of the Emperor Concerto by talking to some of the artists who have played it recently, and although I’ve heard it dozens of times, I learned more than I ever dreamed I was missing.” – Washington Post
SFMoMA To Sell Rothko Painting To Help Diversify Its Collection
The move, said director Neal Benezra, will “enhance (the museum’s) contemporary holdings, and address art historical gaps.” Significantly, he said, it will also address the need “to broadly diversify SFMOMA’s collection.” – San Francisco Chronicle
City Opera Sounds An Ominous Note As Board Chair Steps Down
The chairman of the board also happens to be New York City Opera’s biggest benefactor. And: “Its board is down to a mere three members. It has largely spent the more than $5 million in bequests it received after emerging from bankruptcy, and its modest endowment is shrinking. The company’s most recent financial report notes that its difficulties ‘raise substantial doubt about New York City Opera, Inc.’s ability to continue as a going concern.'” – The New York Times
Robert Winter, Who Took Los Angeles Architecture And Its History Seriously, Has Died At 94
Winter made the city’s architecture come alive for the people he taught (at Occidental) and those he took on quirky, packed bus tours of the city he adopted. “Winter’s gift to the city was An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles, a field guide of sorts that identified, cheered and occasionally mocked L.A.’s diverse architecture. The book, now in its sixth edition, was embraced as a bible by many.” – Los Angeles Times
The Lincoln Memorial Is Iconic, But It Might Have Been Very Different
So many things could have gone wrong. For instance: “As ideally situated as it seems today, many officials charged with building the Memorial did not want to locate it at West Potomac Park, the once-marshy fringe of Washington’s National Mall. Bizarre alternative proposals included Virginia’s Arlington Cemetery—in the former Confederacy.” Then let’s talk about the statue. – The Wall Street Journal
It’s Great To Have A Diverse Cast, But What About The Writers?
The BBC has a new series about a Chinese family running a restaurant – but the writers aren’t from the community. Writers and actors from film, TV, and theatre have signed a letter that “calls for all scripts on the series, called Living With the Lams, to be authored by British East Asian Writers.” – The Stage (UK)
Dave Smith, Disney’s Archivist And The Keeper Of The Company’s Secrets, Has Died
The man with expert knowledge on everything in the company’s past has died at 78. “In an industry that’s notorious for neglecting its past, Smith stood out as perhaps the most respected, if unheralded, member of a small group of in-house studio historians. Smith is credited with helping Hollywood understand the cultural value of its past, starting at Disney in 1970 when rival studios were auctioning or dumping their histories.” – Los Angeles Times
Italian Film Star Claudia Cardinale On A Life Working With Directors Like Fellini, Visconti, Leone, And Herzog
Cardinale’s voice was “too husky” and also too French (she grew up in Tunisia) for Italian cinema when she started. But then came 8 1/2. – Los Angeles Times
Brooklyn Gets An Oslo-Worthy Home For Fiction, And For Writers
Oslo has Litteraturhuset – a place for readers and writers to “to meet, write, debate, read, and discuss writing, ideas, and politics over food and drinks, all with the mission of promoting the greater good of art and literature,” but that kind of physical space “seemed an impossible fantasy” for New York. Until now. – LitHub
Propwatch: The celery in Berberian Sound Studio
Some props have long lives, and others, well: “The celery and carrot, the cabbage and water melons, all make a distinct if self-immolating impact.” – David Jays
What The Academy Should Drop From The Live Broadcast: The Shorts
The NYT‘s Carpetbagger: “These categories are an island unto themselves, whereas a nominee from any other race — be it an animated feature or a foreign-language film — can conceivably vie for best picture or at least be eligible for other Oscars. If there are categories that have to go, these three provide the cleanest cut.” – The New York Times
Behind The Scenes Of ‘The Great British Baking Show,’ They Really Are Friends
Imagine all of the contestants on Top Chef being buddies, or baking cakes for each other’s weddings. (Alert: This story spoils the season that had Selasi and Val on it.) – The Atlantic
What Was Up With The Crude Racial And Sexual Stereotype Jokes That Filled This Carnegie Hall Performance?
Everyone was in on the joke, or at least everyone on stage was. But the audience wasn’t sure what to do or how to react. “The concept, whatever its good intentions, tempts comparisons with the history of African-American performers in blackface, acting out stereotypes of themselves for predominantly white audiences. It also risks feeding the common perception of Asian-Americans as perpetual foreigners.” (Of course, not everyone agrees.) – The New York Times
Let’s Just Split The Elgin Marbles Between Britain And Greece
Half and half. Equal. “Of course, there would be disputes about who gets what. But those aren’t disputes that can’t be resolved. The marbles don’t consist of one major piece and a lot of minor pieces. There are almost only major pieces. This is a unique situation – and an opportunity – since in many restitution cases sharing doesn’t work.” – The Guardian (UK)
Andrea Levy, Chronicler Of Britain’s Windrush Generation, Has Died At 62
Levy didn’t start writing until she was in her 30s, but her fourth novel, 2004’s Small Island, won the Orange Prize and made her a household name in Britain and the U.S. – The Washington Post
Amazon Pulls Out Of Plans For Queens – When Company Culture Doesn’t Need Local Grief
Amazon had a deal and could have simply gone ahead. But the company had no allegiance to Queens and no need to be where it wasn’t wanted. “Amazon’s retreat from Queens shows us the dynamics of a new local power game — one in which giant tech companies play on the same field with governments, as equals, with equal influence over our economies and communities.” – Axios
Why Tamara Rojo And Akram Khan Were Brave Enough To Redo ‘Giselle’
Rojo: “I wanted to do a classical ballet from a new point of view, and I wanted the hardest one … I had seen the Björk film Dancer in the Dark, and I kept thinking: This is Giselle, and it is possible to tell this story in a new context.”
Khan: “When Tamara asked me, I did think a bit: Are you mad? I had barely seen a ballet, and knew nothing about Giselle.” – The New York Times