“The purpose of this study was to explore a fledgling community-school music partnership, Making Music, and to examine the benefits and challenges of this partnership. The partnership was initially conceived to fill gaps in the music curriculum in an urban school district where few middle schools housed music programs and music at the elementary and high school levels were inconsistent. What made this partnership unusual was that any school participating in the program received free music instruction on a weekly basis, but only for three years.” – Arts Education Policy Review
The Woman Who Single-Handedly Created An Indian Style Of Opera Constructed On Indian Classical Music
Shanno Khurana first became a star performing in Punjabi folk operas in 1950s Delhi, but she was a fully classically trained singer who wanted to do serious classical work. So she devised and composed fully through-sung music-dramas based strictly on classical ragas and following their rules, and she toured her operas all over India right through the 1970s. (She’s still alive today, and still occasionally concertizing at age 91.) – Scroll (India)
The 25 Years And Seven Serious Tries It Took Terry Gilliam To Make His Don Quixote Film
There were the NATO jets overflying the filming location. The prostate infection that took out the lead actor. The woman who claimed she could get financing from the deposed president of Tunisia. Another lead actor who died just before filming was to start. The Portuguese producer who rescued the project and then sued to kill it. Bilge Ebiri talks with the director about the very long, very strange journey. – New York Magazine
Here, Meet The Whiting Award Winners
What’s the Whiting Award – and who are these people? (It’s a $50,000 award for early-career writers, so no surprise you don’t know most of them yet.) – NPR
First Study: Demographics of Artists Represented In American Museums
Seriously – are we surprised? A first-of-its-kind study analyzes the race and gender of the artists represented in the permanent collections of 18 major American art museums, and finds that three-quarters of them are white men. Women represent only 12.6 percent of this elite group, and African-Americans of any gender only 1.2 percent. – Pacific Standard
Lupita Nyong’o Can Only Do So Much Acting At A Time
“I’m not creative all the time, I’m just not. Each role depletes me in some way, and I know that I do my best work when I’ve had time to remain fallow.” – The New York Times
Fistfight At The Opera: Lawyer Punches Designer In Dispute Over Seats At Covent Garden
“Matthew Feargrieve, 42, was accused at Westminster Magistrates Court of repeatedly punching Ulrich Engler on the shoulder in the performance of Wagner’s Siegfried at the world-famous [Royal Opera House]. It is understood the dispute began because Mr Engler allegedly grabbed a coat belonging to Mr Feargrieve’s wife from an empty seat and threw it on her lap.” – The Telegraph (UK)
Finally, An Online Space Where Black Artists In UK Can Find Each Other
“Make Online has been created by [Talawa] Theatre Company for artists across the UK, and is described as an online community that will give black British artists ‘ownership and agency of their careers’. It is available for black artists at all stages of their careers to develop networks with their peers and the wider industry through open discussions and event listings, as well as access job postings, commissions and castings.” – The Stage
More And More Art Auctions Are Moving Online
This development reflects broader trends in the retail industry, where high-street shops are disappearing as more and more sales take place online. According to figures from Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, the ranks of e-shoppers are constantly swelling—about 80% of consumers in the Netherlands, the UK and Sweden purchase goods online. – The Art Newspaper
When Gustav Mahler Rode The New York Subways
Oh yes, he traveled by subway during his years (1908-11) as director of the New York Philharmonic. (He’d have taken one of the BMT lines to conduct at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the now-gone Ninth Avenue El to get home on the Upper West Side.) “Yet claiming Mahler as a New Yorker … is complicated,” writes David Patrick Stearns. “Connect the dots one way, New York was Mahler’s nightmare and possibly his undoing. Connect the dots another way, and Mahler himself was a nightmare no matter where he was.” – WQXR (New York City)
Kansas City Symphony Names A New Executive Director
He’s Daniel Beckley, who most recently was vice president and general manager of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Beckley succeeds Frank Byrne, who’s retiring this year after a 19-year tenure.
Instead Of Trashing Or Replacing Its Old-Style, Stereotyped Colonists-Meet-Indians Diorama, This Museum Is Interrogating It
The American Museum of Natural History in New York has a 1939 diorama purporting to show a diplomatic meeting between governor Peter Stuyvesant of New Amsterdam (today’s Manhattan) and some Lenape Indians, and — not everything in it is wrong (Stuyvesant really did have a pegleg), but in 2019, you can’t call it accurate. So the Museum decided to make the diorama an exhibit on old stereotypes, with labeling explaining the differences between what’s shown and what’s known of the site’s actual history. Reporter Ana Fota has a look. – The New York Times
Louisville Orchestra And Teddy Abrams Renew Contract For Five Years
“The youthful musical director of the Louisville Orchestra, who has built a national reputation as a creative and innovative force on the music scene, has signed an ‘unprecedented’ five-year contract to helm one of Louisville’s cornerstone institutions through the 2024-25 season.” – Louisville Courier Journal
Old Photos Of Enslaved African-Americans Should Belong To Their Descendants, Not Museums, Argues Lawsuit
Just as the law now requires that Native American remains and artifacts should be returned to today’s Native tribes, the descendants of a pair of slaves seen in historic daguerreotypes now owned by a Harvard museum claim that they’re the rightful owners of those slaves’ images, which are, says their lawsuit, “spoils of theft.” – The New York Times
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award 2019 To Annabelle Lopez Ochoa
“A versatile choreographer whose work includes flamenco, hip-hop, classical ballet and contemporary dance pieces, … Ms. Lopez Ochoa will accept the award, which comes with a $25,000 cash prize, on June 15 at the Jacob’s Pillow season-opening gala.” – The New York Times
Keeping Professional Theatre Going For 30 Years In A Far-Flung Pacific Archipelago
Wan Smolbag Theatre in the 70-island nation of Vanuatu is the only professional stage company in the entire South Pacific made up entirely of Pacific Islanders. Three decades after its founding, it’s now the largest locally-based NGO of any kind in Vanuatu: with over 100 employees, Wan Smolbag has expanded into film and into providing social services. – The Stage
New $1 Million Art Prize Is World’s Largest
“Set to be handed over for the first time this October in Shanghai, the Nomura Art Award will give a single contemporary artist with an established body of work the funds to ‘support an ambitious new project that the winner did not previously have the means to realize,’ as the announcement puts it.” – Artsy
In Theatre For Young Audiences, Newer And More Representative Voices Are Being Heard
“Many of us, not only in TYA but also in the wider theatre world, are more strongly than ever focused on listening and talking to young people — truly hearing their voices — and reflecting their stories on our stages … including telling more daring stories that cross into areas long considered taboo.” Kim Peter Kovac gives an overview of those voices — Latinx, African-American, Asian-American, Indigenous, and international voices. – HowlRound
Hudson Yards Owners Modify Policy After Claiming They Owned Any Pictures You Take
Now visitors “retain ownership of any photographs, text, audio recordings or video footage depicting or relating to the Vessel” that they create. But if you want to send that photo out to your Instagram fans, you still “hereby grant to Company and its affiliates the right to repost, share, publish, promote and distribute the Vessel Media via such social media channel and via websites associated with the Vessel or Hudson Yards (including my name, voice and likeness and any other aspects of my persona as depicted in the Vessel Media), in perpetuity.” – The New York Times
Pioneers Of Post-Modern Dance Reflect On What Happened, 60 Years Later
Part of postmodern dance’s power lay in the fact that, for all of its foreignness, it was also familiar. Here were movements taken from the street or home and performed by able but merely human bodies in intimate settings — namely at downtown galleries, lofts or the freewheeling Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, either in the main sanctuary or upon the painted lines of the basement basketball court. – The New York Times
My Particular Beef
One day, Edythe called me into the bedroom and said it was time for us to have a real meal, a roast beef. “You can do it, it’s easy.” That’s the first thing I cooked all by myself, a year or so before my bar mitzvah. And it’s what I cooked yesterday, for the second time in my life, 60 years later. – Jeff Weinstein
ArtPlace America Engagement Resources
I recently had the opportunity to engage with Lyz Crane of ArtPlace America in a discussion about creative placemaking and community engagement. In the course of that discussion she shared some resources that ArtPlace has made available that can be of considerable benefit to anyone involved in community engagement. – Doug Borwick
Tainted ‘Tintoretto’: Venice Mayor Mars Kaywin Feldman’s Blockbuster Debut at National Gallery
Having heard Luigi Brugnaro, Mayor of Venice, expound on Tintoretto’s “values” during yesterday’s livestream of the National Gallery of Art’s press preview for the Venetian artist’s first full-scale retrospective in America, I’m convinced that museums need to lay down some content guidelines (especially for non-museum professionals) to discourage pronouncements that are inappropriate for exhibition openings.” – Lee Rosenbaum