Peter Marks: “Sometimes, cheap theatrics are redeemed by a memorable line. In the desultorily expanded version of Twelve Angry Men that played out Wednesday on Capitol Hill with Michael Cohen in the hot seat, Rep. Jamie Raskin came up, gratifyingly, with a gem.” – The Washington Post
The Dutchman Who Discovered Two Rembrandts
“Jan Six is a 40-year-old Dutch art dealer based in Amsterdam, who attracted worldwide attention last year with the news that he had unearthed a previously unknown painting by Rembrandt, the most revered of Dutch masters — the first unknown Rembrandt to come to light in 42 years. The find didn’t come about from scouring remote churches or picking through the attics of European country houses, but rather, as Six described it to me last May, while he was going through his mail.” – New York Times Magazine
Uh, Hold The Champagne For Disney And Fox (And Hulu)
This story is complicated, but basically, Fox executives, including two who are in line to be top executives at Disney, just got hit with a $179 million ruling that they committed fraud against the stars and executive producer of the massive hit Bones, which ran from 2005-2017. But it has larger implications. “What we have exposed in this case is going to profoundly change the way Hollywood does business,” the lawyer said. Will this news also break Hulu? – The Hollywood Reporter
How Do Artists Get To Be Famous? Study Says It’s Who You Know
While past studies have suggested that there is a link between creativity and fame, Paul Ingram and Mitali Banerjee found, in contrast, that there was no such correlation for these artists. Rather, artists with a large and diverse network of contacts were most likely to be famous, regardless of how creative their art was. – Artsy
Are Outsider Artists Held To A Different Moral Standard?
“I asked a few art dealers why we hold mainstream artists to different ethical standards. While one disagreed with the premise of my question, another posited a simple rationale: Our acceptance of artwork with upsetting or offensive motifs ultimately depends on the creators’ intended audience.” – Artsy
Thomas Krens Says Museums Should Be More Like Theme Parks (Seriously)
In a speech in North Adams, Mass., which he wants to transform into “the number one cultural destination in the country,” the man who tried to plant Guggenheims all over the globe argued that museums should become experience destinations with “a for-profit model based on private investment; integrated use of technology like digital modeling and augmented reality; and the ability to draw from ‘deep pools of content’ with ‘huge narrative potential.'” (Oh, and they should maintain “impeccable aesthetics.”) – Hyperallergic
A Crowdsourced Archive To ‘Provide The Foundation’ For Rebuilding Aleppo
The project, called Aleppo Built Heritage Documentation and based in Berlin, “[has] assembled the largest repository of information on Syrian heritage outside the country — more than 200,000 photographs, as well as archaeological reports, maps, plans, drawings and oral testimonies.” – The Art Newspaper
Philippe Vergne, Pushed Out Of Directorship Of LA MOCA, Lands New Job
The 53-year-old curator, who left Los Angeles after the controversy over his firing of chief curator Helen Molesworth (among other troubles), will be director of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, Portugal’s second city. His predecessor there left last September after another controversy, this one over a Robert Mapplethorpe show. – ARTnews
Art Institute Of Seattle Faces Closure
That’s unless someone buys the troubled institution. “According to a Seattle Times report from last October, in 2017 a faith-based nonprofit called Dream Center Foundation bought the Art Institutes franchise, as well as South University and Argosy University. The company then started closing Art Institutes all around the country. Of 31 total AIs, only 18 remain. Going into this fall, the Times reports, the Seattle campus had laid off all but 3 full-time professors.” – The Stranger
Red Fish, Blue Fish, Racist Fish? A Dr. Seuss Debate Breaks Out
That tension between Seuss and Seuss-free classrooms is emblematic of a bigger debate playing out across the country — should we continue to teach classic books that may be problematic, or eschew them in favor of works that more positively represent people of color? – NPR
Looking At Nudes In The #MeToo Era
Museums and galleries – especially those representing a canonical European art tradition – burst with images of women disrobed and displayed for the delectation of men. Of course, there is nothing new about recognising the extent to which the spectacularisation of the female body has been part of a structure of oppression of women by men. – The Guardian
Translating The Hebrew Bible As The Poetry It Is
Few English-speakers are aware that much of ancient Jewish scripture is written in sophisticated verse, full of wordplay and soundplay. Translators have concentrated on the meaning of the words, sacrificing what Robert Alter calls the “music” of the original text. He has done a new translation that concentrates on that “music,” and here he explains how he did it — and why it matters. – Aeon
Kathleen Turner (Yes, That Kathleen Taylor) And What She Learned Making Her Opera Debut
Once she understood the training that goes into distinguishing such voices, she began to fully appreciate the difference in acting styles from what the audience might expect in a non-musical. Opera’s bend towards high drama can only be conveyed through vocal ability, which deprioritizes Turner’s acting preference of a more natural technique. – The Observer
Ira Gitlin, One Of America’s Greatest Jazz Writers, Dead At 90
“[His] criticism appeared regularly in publications like DownBeat and JazzTimes. He wrote two books about bebop, the challenging form of modern jazz that emerged in the 1940s. And, along with Leonard Feather and Nat Hentoff, he was among the most prodigious writers of liner notes, annotating more than 700 albums. In 2017 he was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts.” – The New York Times
Why Rebels And Non-Conformists Tend To Look The Same – A Study
This is the hipster effect—the counterintuitive phenomenon in which people who oppose mainstream culture all end up looking the same. Similar effects occur among investors and in other areas of the social sciences. How does this kind of synchronization occur? Is it inevitable in modern society, and are there ways for people to be genuinely different from the masses? – MIT Technology Review
There’s A Massive Bidding War For TV Showrunners. Blame Netflix
Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy, J.J. Abrams and their fellows are now getting nine-figure production deals, with next-rung creators like Mindy Kaling and Seth MacFarlane landing eight figures. Why? First Netflix, and then deep-pocketed Amazon and Apple, are competing with traditional studios to lock down the intellectual property those individuals create and supervise, and there are very few people who can do what they do. – Fast Company
Rothko Chapel To Get Renovation, Including New Skylight
“[The $30 million project] will erect three new buildings to support the chapel’s ongoing social justice programming and is replacing the building’s ceiling apparatus with a new skylight and digital lighting system. This will cast gentle natural light by day and uniform illumination by night for the first time on Mark Rothko’s 14 monumental black canvases.” – The New York Times
This Company Didn’t Fire Sergei Polunin For His Homophobic Post, But They Asked Him About It. And What Did He Tell Them?
In January, the ever-troubled ballet star caused another stir with some offensive (and incoherent) remarks on Facebook, and he was promptly let go from a guest spot with the Paris Opera Ballet. The Bavarian State Ballet kept him on (despite pushback) to star in Spartacus but asked for an explanation. He said “that he wanted to provoke people to raise awareness about the dangers of obesity.” – Deutsche Welle
UK’s National Theatre Will Hold Special Casting Day For Trans Actors
“The event, the first of its kind held by the NT, will take place on April 15 in London, and is aimed at ‘professional actors who identify as transgender, trans*, genderqueer, non-binary, gender fluid and intersex’. … The Old Vic’s casting team will be attending alongside the casting department from the NT, and other industry creatives.” – The Stage
Why Isn’t The Wexford Opera Festival Getting, Or Even Being Told About, Its State Funding?
The Arts Council of Ireland released details of its 2019 grants two weeks ago, and Wexford was missing from the list with no explanation or target date for a decision. “When this kind of issue is out there and nobody wants to say anything meaningful about it you can reasonably suspect that there’s something to hide. And when the Arts Council delays decisions it usually spells trouble.” Michael Dervan looks into what’s going on. – The Irish Times
This Made-In-Taiwan Video Game Has Hidden Jokes About China’s President. The Wrong People Found Them
“Devotion, by the Taiwanese indie developer Red Candle Games, was released on 19 February and was initially popular among horror enthusiasts. However, the discovery of a number of hidden jokes” – in particular, a Chinese pun on the names of PRC president Xi Jinping and Winnie the Pooh – “has ignited a firestorm of online criticism.” Devotion has now been pulled from worldwide distribution. – The Guardian
Alice Sheppard: Why I Dance
“Of course, nondisabled people appreciate this moment. But what it actually means to see and feel strapping on stage, to hear and recognize the sound of Velcro unfurling is different, more complex, for those of us in the disability community. For some, the choice to strap publicly was controversial, too private to show on stage; for others, it was revelatory, a moment of celebration. Strapping and intimacy became a regular aspect of post-show conversations.” – The New York Times
Research: Listening To Music Doesn’t Boost Creativity (In Fact It Hurts It)
Newly published research debunks the notion that listening to music can increase creativity. Its three studies suggest precisely the opposite, indicating that background music, with or without lyrics, “consistently disrupts creative performance in insight problems.” – Pacific Standard
Propwatch: the cigarettes and hoof pick in ‘Equus’
Ned Bennett’s galvanic production for English Touring Theatre and Stratford East sets Peter Shaffer’s play at the time of the 1973 premiere, and the production’s props assemble like a toolkit of the 1970s and its discontents. So what’s in the 1970s toolkit? – David Jays
More Allegations About Daniel Barenboim And Bullying
The New York Times has communicated with seven former or current members of the Staatskapelle. All highlighted examples of Mr. Barenboim’s behavior that they said was bullying and went beyond what was normal for a conductor. – The New York Times