As the pandemic and the consequent furlough of Met employees drag on, and as negotiations over a new contract have broken down (the old contract expired at a very bad time), the backstage workers’ union IATSE Local One has launched a campaign urging donors not to give the Met money until the furloughs end. The union is even lobbying lawmakers to withhold stimulus money. – NPR
Why Literary Canons Are Important
“For those who view the very notion of the canon as inherently elitist, it’s worth noting that the phenomena mostly clearly implicated in its formation were the democratizing processes of the late 19th and early 20th century: the massive extension of free education—not just to little white proto-patriarchs, but to girls, and children from diverse communities as well—together with the technological improvements in the replication and dissemination of literary texts.” – LitHub
What Is Native American Comedy?
“I’ve debated different scenarios in my life about “What is Native?” And that is like the million-dollar question, at least within Indigenous communities at this moment. There doesn’t seem to be a consensus, and I love that, because it just demonstrates how diverse we are — that there is no singular definition — and that’s okay.” – New York Magazine
The Group Of Seven Has Defined Canadian Art For 100 Years. It’s Time To Move On
After 101 years of reproducing the Group of Seven’s art to the point of saturation, it feels like the time has come to give other, contemporary voices the same opportunities. – The Walrus
He Invented New Instruments To Express The Soul Of His Troubled Homeland
Joaquín Orellana, one of Guatemala’s leading composers, calls his creations útiles sonoros (“sound tools”), and many of them are de-and-reconstructed versions of his country’s national instrument, the marimba. “The ingenuity of Orellana’s inventions,” writes Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, “often hovers between playfulness and cruelty.” – The New York Times
Defining The Struggle Inside to “Do The Right Thing”
“From the first-person stance, you navigate the world as an agent trying to realise your projects and satisfy your desires. From the second-person perspective, you understand yourself and the world through the lens of other people, who are a locus of projects and preferences of their own; projects and preferences that make legitimate demands on your time and attention. From the third-person stance, you understand yourself as one among many, called to fit yourself into the shared standards and rules governing a world made up of a multitude of creatures like you.” – Aeon
Think The Arts Stand Apart From Political Issues? They Can’t Be
As we are now experiencing in new ways with COVID-19, we cannot have a just arts sector within an unjust world. And moreover, we do have the means and the agency to make change, not just for the arts sector, but for our global community. What we need is a new narrative. – HowlRound
Longing For The Challenges Of The American Booksellers Association
Sometimes, virtual isn’t going to cut it – and certainly won’t replace “the interstitial socializing, the sidewalk conversations on the way to the next bar, the hungover confessionals of the diner booth, the 4 am rants about art and life and the absurdities of corporate publishing. … Finding their way through it all, giving it purpose and passion, are the booksellers, the newbies and the veterans alike who invariably leave me with a deeply renewed faith in the importance of books in our lives.” – LitHub
Facebook’s Ban On Australian News Has Harmed Small Aussie Arts Orgs
Small arts organizations got caught up in the massive trawler net of Facebook’s rush to react to a new Australian law meant to generate funding for news organizations. “By the close of business on Thursday, over 300 arts organizations were impacted by the snap ban. While Facebook worked over the ensuing 24-hours to reinstate a number of pages, irreparable damage had already been done.” – Hyperallergic
Women Are Getting Stronger, Deeper Roles In A New Generation Of Bollywood Movies
Some of the change is due to a worldwide audience. Netflix and other streaming services “have a certain sensibility that they want to see in the kind of narratives that they are promoting on their platform. That has been a great boon for women filmmakers, women writers, women behind the camera and in front of the camera.” – The New York Times
The British Family Providing Lockdown Relief With Musical Parodies
The Marsh family of Faversham are dealing with Britain’s lockdowns by performing parodies. “This six-voice choir, with its sweet harmonies and the occasional wobbly note, is creating songs that dramatize the mundane moments of lockdown life, from too much screen time to the horrors of remote learning.” – The New York Times
Getting In The Archive Sub-Basements To Discover How Librarians In Paris Resisted The Nazis
A researcher comes up against French bureaucracy: “To learn more about the day-to-day life of Parisians during the war, I turned to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF). This modern library is made up of four buildings in a configuration that resembles four open books; however, the public resources are less accessible than this design would suggest, with the tomes for the general public on the basement level and the research library in the sub-basement.” – LitHub
The Remarkable, And Continuing, Artistic Career Of Lorraine O’Grady
Before she burst onto the art scene with performance art with an edge, O’Grady “had worked for the Labor and State Departments, including as an intelligence analyst in the period leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis; attempted a novel in Europe; dropped out of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; run a translation agency in Chicago; been a New York rock critic.” Then, in 1980, she changed her life again. – The New York Times
Phoebe Waller-Bridge Of ‘Fleabag’ Fame Is Now The President Of Edinburgh Fringe Society
It’s an honorary, spokesperson role during a year when Fringe Fest may be online or may be in-person, or both, depending. Fleabag got its start at Fringe in 2013. Waller-Bridge: “From leaking caves to cobbled streets to the glamour of the Traverse Theatre up to Arthur’s Seat, this festival is a beating heart of an industry that has been all but crushed by the pandemic, and I’m proud to be a part of the fight with the Fringe Society for its much needed survival and glorious return.” – BBC
Art House Pulls 19th Century Romanian Jewish Community’s Burial Register From Auction
The register of Jewish burials in the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca between 1836 and 1899, is one of very few documents left after more than 18,000 Hungarian-speaking Jews were deported from the city and murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Their homes and synagogues were ransacked, leaving almost no record of their lives and existence; the presence of this book on the auction list came as a shock. Says one survivor, “We have few documents or books, so this manuscript is a vital source of information about the community in the 19th century.” – The New York Times
Peter G. Davis, Classical Music Critic For The New York Times And New York Magazine, 84
Davis “presided over the field during boon years in New York in the 1960s and ’70s, when performances were plentiful and tickets relatively cheap, and when the ups and downs of a performer’s career provided fodder for cocktail parties and after-concert dinners, not to mention the notebooks of writers like Mr. Davis, who often delivered five or more reviews a week.” – The New York Times
The Show’s Going On Down Under
This sounds wildly exotic and dangerous to most theatregoers in the U.S. right now: “A few days ago, Kylie Estreich went to a theater in Sydney to see a Broadway show. In person. With hundreds of other people. She showed her ticket, went to her seat, and sat elbow-to-elbow with her masked mother on one side and a masked stranger on the other.” I’m sorry, what? That’s right, Australia has it figured out. – Washington Post
Is There A Way To Change, And Improve, Arts Nonprofits?
Issues: “Change will feel snail-like as long as white organizational leaders, tenured professors, board members, and funders control and dictate, the pace of inclusion and the adoption of anti-racist practices.” So it’s time, says one nonprofit leader, to change the game entirely. – Hyperallergic
Why Are So Many Writers Having Difficulty Writing During COVID?
“The problem with writing is it’s just another screen, and that’s all there is … I can’t connect with my imagination. I can’t connect with any creativity. My whole brain is tied up with processing, processing, processing what’s going on in the world.” – The Guardian
Cancellation Of New London Concert Hall Adds To UK Musicians’ Woes
“It’s a further confirmation of the parochialization of British music and the arts,” said Jasper Parrott, a co-founder of HarrisonParrott, a classical music agency, in a telephone interview. The mood among musicians was low, Parrott said, especially because of changes to the rules governing European tours that came about because of Brexit. – The New York Times
American Shakespeare Center Loses Director, Will Be Actor-led
Ethan McSweeny has served as artistic director of the American Shakespeare Center since 2018. He announced his resignation effective Feb. 11, 2021. – Washington Post
Dolly Parton To Tennessee: Please Don’t Put A Statue Of Me In The State Capitol
“I am honored and humbled by their intention but I have asked the leaders of the state legislature to remove the bill from any and all consideration. Given all that is going on in the world, I don’t think putting me on a pedestal is appropriate at this time. … Perhaps after I’m gone if you still feel I deserve it.” – CBS News
New Concert Hall For London Was A Doomed Project
Martin Kettle: “Justifying the cost, the priority, the location and the uses to which the hall would be put were all delicate tasks in any case. It was hard not to see it as an elite project, only distantly connected with wider public need at a time when funding was being squeezed.” Then came Brexit, followed by COVID. “It was a nice idea in some ways, but the case for it was never strong.” – The Guardian
Arts Groups Get Snagged In Facebook’s Australia News Ban
As the Australian government pushed the social media giant, along with Google, to pay news outlets there for use of their material for links, the search engine made deals, while Facebook decided to block all news links in the country as of Thursday. That morning, more than 250 Australian cultural organizations found their Facebook pages wiped clean: it seems they qualified as “news publishers” under the company’s definition. Facebook is making them fill out an appeal form online and then simply wait. – The Guardian