Although last week’s Syracuse Symposium was nominally about Deaccessioning After 2020, it was mostly focused on the new museum imperative — advancing DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Access) by any means possible, even at the cost of dismantling, monetizing and redefining the “permanent” collection to further those sociopolitical goals. – Lee Rosenbaum
How The Dance Student Convention/Competition Network Is Emerging From The Pandemic
“Now, against all odds, programs are rising from the ashes to bring you meaningful training and performance opportunities both in person and online. We asked four prominent competition/convention directors to give you the inside scoop on what to expect from this season. … First: Things are going to be OK.” – Dance Spirit
Appeals Court Rules Against Warhol Foundation In Case Of Prince Portraits
“In a major loss for the Andy Warhol Foundation, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that the famed Pop artist did not make fair use of Lynn Goldsmith’s 1981 portrait of Prince for his own 1984 series of similar-looking images. The decision effectively overturns one made in 2019 by the Southern District Court of New York, which ruled in favor of the Andy Warhol Foundation, and the case will now return to a lower court.” – ARTnews
Truman Capote Heir Sues Over ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’ Remake That Nobody Has Greenlighted Yet
“Alan Schwartz, the trustee of a Truman Capote charity, is advancing a new copyright claim that arises from how Paramount has circulated a screenplay [internally] with the intention of turning it into a feature and selling it to a streaming platform. The project remains unproduced; nevertheless, Schwartz alleges … that because of the infringement, his side has already been damaged in the amount of at least $20 million.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Cambodia Nixes Theme Park/Resort At Angkor Wat
The $350 million development, called Angkor Lake of Wonder and planned for just beyond the temple complex’s southern boundary, was to be “a Khmerfied Disneyland of sorts complete with multiple hotels, an indoor digital theme park, expansive botanical gardens, a network of touristic canals, and a ‘Siem Reap China Town’ entertainment and retail district.” Developers struck a deal last May with the Cambodian government, which did not block the plan until UNESCO and the World Monuments Fund protested. – The Architect’s Newspaper
The New Yorker’s Unionized Staffers Vote To Authorize Strike
“Union workers at The New Yorker, Pitchfork and Ars Technica said Friday they had voted to authorize a strike as tensions over contract negotiations with Condé Nast, the owner of the publications, continued to escalate. … At The New Yorker, the unionized staff includes fact checkers and web producers but not staff writers, while most editors and writers at Pitchfork and Ars Technica are members.” – The New York Times
Have We Been Traumatized By The Proliferation Of Therapy-Speak?
“Around every corner, trauma, like the unwanted prize at the bottom of a cereal box. The trauma of puberty, of difference, of academia, of women’s clothing. When I asked Twitter whether the word’s mainstreaming was productive, I was struck by two replies. First, overapplying the term might dilute its meaning, robbing “people who have experienced legitimate trauma of language that is already oftentimes too thin.” And, second, invoking “trauma” where “harm” might suffice could play into the hands of “people who despise and fear vulnerability.” – The New Yorker
A New “Golden Era” For The Arts When Things Reopen?
Antonio Pappano, music director at the Royal Opera House, said he expects “an explosion of desire” from audiences when they return to theatres, concert halls, museums and galleries. – The Evening Standard (UK)
Alberta Badly Wants TV And Film Productions To Film In The Province
The province used to have a cap “that limited film and television productions to a maximum $10-million tax credit claim.” That cap is now gone. – CBC
The Choreographer Behind Those Dancing Robots
Monica Thomas: “I spent time watching the robots move to get a sense of joint flexibility, etc. I then made a dance on my body to act out each part. I hired dancers to learn this choreography, which allowed it to be put together in one sequence for filming. I gave a video of the whole dance to Boston Dynamics, as well as each robot’s part.” And that was just the beginning. – Dance Magazine
Will Lawmakers Finally Reconsider Conservatorship Laws In The Wake Of The Free Britney Movement And Documentary?
It’s not just the documentary, of course, but … “Public scrutiny of the court-ordered guardianship has exploded with the #FreeBritney movement backed by fans turned activists and the recent New York Times documentary Framing Britney Spears.” – Los Angeles Times
Disabled Performing Artists Are Imagining New Worlds On – And Off – Stage
What has to change: “Disabled people may be artists, musicians, singers, or actors, [but] our experiences and stories rarely find their way to the stage. When we do appear in scripts or on stages, almost invariably those stories focus on the non-disabled people around us and cast us as villains, punchlines, or charity projects for the protagonists. Ableism runs deep in theatre and other performing arts communities. It shows up not only in the stories we tell but also in the ways in which we tell those stories—and it shows up in the spaces where we learn, rehearse, and perform.” – American Theatre
Hey Amazon, What’s Your Problem Admitting That Leonardo Was Gay?
Amazon Prime Studio’s use of a fictional woman (“a complete piece of tosh, invented by a 19th century Romantic”) to bring Leonardo and his life to the small screen isn’t just fiction, it’s flat-out wrong. Suggestion: “Why not go to the National Gallery when it reopens and look at Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks. The most hypnotic figure in it is an angel whose long curly hair matches Vasari’s description of Salaì and whose tender pale face is magically androgynous. This angel is the most beautiful and most queer bit of painting in Britain. The Leonardo I want to see on screen is the man who painted this.” – The Guardian (UK)
Yseult Is A Chanson Singer Whose Very Existence Is Riling Up The French
The singer Yseult, a Parisian whose parents are from Cameroon, won the award for Best Newcomer at the French Grammys in February, and she has millions of fans and YouTube views. But when she won and said, “This is not just a victory for me, it’s a victory for my brothers and sisters. We have snatched this, our freedom, our independence, this space. We deserve it,” traditional French media – which is freaked out, to put it mildly, about what it sees as identity politics – hit back hard. – The Guardian (UK)
New York Theatres Are Dark, But Their Windows Aren’t
While the interior is idle (or getting a revamp, in some cases), the windows to the street have a thing or two to say about art, poetry, and the power of words – and, in some cases, even dance. The Brooklyn Ballet performed 20-minute “jewel-box dances” from The Nutcracker in its street-level windows in December, using barriers to prevent crowds. “It was a way to bring some people back to something they love that they enjoyed that they might be forgetting about. … It did feel like a real performance.” – The New York Times
Hint To BAFTA: You Can’t Fix A Diversity Problem With Racist Casting Directors
Yikes: “India Eva Rae, who joined Bafta’s Elevate programme in 2019, told the BBC that a casting director told her she was an ‘exotic talent,’ and that they ‘can’t understand the English coming out your mouth.’ Rae also said that she had been told not to report the incident by a ‘mentor’ on the scheme: ‘This mentor told me and other members of the group that we will never work again if we speak up.'” – The Guardian (UK)
Hollywood Stylists Want Their Zoom Oscars Back
Some of the fashion world is really not happy with the guidelines for the in-person Oscars. One fashion writer, echoing many stylists who enjoyed their freedom: “Honestly, all it’s done is make me wish that all the invitees would show up en masse in flannel nightgowns and Ugg slippers, just to thumb their noses at it.” – The Guardian (UK)
Hollywood Has Failed Asian American Women For Decades
And, they say, it’s past time for a change. Netflix has been particularly good at offering changing depictions this year, but the history of Asian women’s depictions in Hollywood is far from fixed. Film scholar Celine Parreñas Shimizu: “The notion of a self-sacrificing, suicidal, servile, suffering, sexually available Asian woman is a prison from which we need to be liberated. … I’m looking forward to the vast expanse of other characters and other stories we can see.” – Washington Post
The Boom And Bust Of The TikTok Artist Life
The app is garnering millions of views, and some artists earn thousands (or more) for each short video they post. Some young artists are even “bypassing art schools and student loans, quitting their survival jobs and pursuing careers as full-time artists on TikTok. But the app’s insatiable demand for content is also bending their aesthetics in unexpected ways. What happens when viewership plummets, copycats encroach and fans start dictating an artist’s taste? Fortunes can suddenly fizzle.” – The New York Times
Leon Black Won’t Run For Re-Election As Chair For, But Will Remain On, MoMA’s Board
Black, who is also stepping down both as CEO and chair of his private equity firm the Apollo Group, was facing “mounting pressure from prominent artists and activists about his financial ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.” – The New York Times
Here Are The Winners Of This Year’s National Book Critics Circle Awards
The organization’s annual awards, which it typically gives out in the spring to works published the previous year, are unusual in that book critics, rather than authors or academics, select the winners. The awards are open to any book published in English in the United States. – The New York Times
Director James Darrah: You Can’t Design Yourself Out of Something That Doesn’t Work
The new director of Long Beach Opera talks about making more with less. “There are people who are really comfortable with being very elite and exclusive and get wrapped up in the cachet of it all — the red carpets and the evening wear. I don’t think that’s helping sustain the art form. It alienates younger generations who don’t care about that glitzy “opera star” opera. I talk to my friends who aren’t in the opera world. Their point is: “If you produce something compelling and accessible and resonant with the real world, then your company is worth investing our time and money in.” That has been my biggest wake up call in the last year.” – Voice of Orange County
We Need To Stop Treating Literature As Self-Improvement Projects
“We experience art as a repository of our humanity, a representation that tries to capture the meaning we seek in our lives. Treating art as a means to an end feels degrading, like reducing the worth of a service worker to the service she performs. The best self-improvement scheme I can think of is to prove ourselves better than that.” – Slate
Author Larry McMurtry Dead At 84
“Over more than five decades, Mr. McMurtry wrote more than 30 novels and many books of essays, memoir and history. He also wrote [or co-wrote] more than 30 screenplays, including the one for Brokeback Mountain … for which he won an Academy Award in 2006.” But he was best known for three novels which were adapted for the screen: The Last Picture Show, Lonesome Dove, and Terms of Endearment. – The New York Times
‘It Was Bloody Cheek Of Me To Even Try’: The Musicologist Who Dared To Complete Unfinished Mozart
Timothy Jones’s completion of several fragmentary violin-piano sonatas by Mozart “is unusual, though, in its choose-your-own-adventure approach. Jones, testing different aspects of Mozartian style, made multiple completions of each fragment, and the [new] album includes some of that variety, giving a heady sense of how open-ended creative production is.” – The New York Times