Perhaps it is that architects speak in a special language, and what looks to me like an arbitrary and ugly assortment of random stark rectangles is, to them, a kind of Morse code saying “Hello! Come inside! Happy to have you here.” But if that is the case, it doesn’t redeem the buildings for architects to have designed them using a special insider code that makes their beauty only visible to other architects. – Current Affairs
Germany Takes Care Of Its Opera Houses, Even Through COVID — But There’s A Problem
“‘What we learned in the crisis was that the public purse was very much willing to keep [opera] alive in Germany,’ says Dieter Haselbach, a German cultural sociologist and consultant. ‘But in the long run the state-funded system covers a structural crisis which is an oversupply of theaters and opera houses, with [growing] competition from digital performances.'” – The Christian Science Monitor
Entire Board Of New Zealand’s National Organization For Museums Resigns
“The entire board of Museums Aotearoa has abruptly quit after concerns about its governance and management. The organisation’s remaining executive director, Phillipa Tocker, is refusing to comment on the situation, despite being implicated in a report that the board resigned over ‘fundamental disagreements’ with her.” – Stuff (New Zealand)
Carol Prisant, Elegant Writer About Design For The World Of Interiors, 82
Prisant was a 51-year-old antiques dealer with no professional experience writing when she wrote to the autocratic editor of the British magazine The World of Interiors, asking for a job. There wasn’t one open in New York, but the editor created one for her. “‘She told the truth, but always with subtlety and lashings of wit,’ Rupert Thomas, Ms. Hogg’s successor at the magazine, said by phone, ‘and managed to be clever and learned without taking herself — or her interviewees — too seriously.'” – The New York Times
What Do The Vaccines Mean For Ballet?
Let an infectious-disease doctor explain why dancers need to get vaccinated. It’s not just for themselves: “A significant part of the patronage of many ballet companies are those over the age of 60 and, therefore, at highest risk of death and complications if infected with COVID. Though a dancer may not get ill from COVID, if they are carrying the virus and expose their patrons to the illness, it is a losing situation for all involved. In addition, the dancers work side by side with choreographers, ballet mistresses, company directors, costume departments and the like, most of whom are older and, therefore, at risk for complications from COVID as well. The more people that are vaccinated, the less likely it is anyone becomes ill.” – Pointe Magazine
Game Of Thrones Is Ten Years Old, And It Feels Utterly Irrelevant
Not just irrelevant, but worse. HBO is celebrating, of course, but “whatever about HBO, how do the rest of us feel about Game of Thrones turning 10? Is our nostalgia tempered, for instance, by the fact the final seasons are now agreed to have been pretty dreadful? What, moreover, of the casual use of sexual violence as a plot device? Here we arrive at the awkward truth that much of what made Thrones Thrones is now regarded as problematic.” – Irish Times
The Brooklyn Art Library Wants Your Filled Sketchbook
But first, it needs to sell you a blank book. “The Sketchbook Project works like this: people interested in submitting a sketchbook order a blank one from the website. When it arrives, they fill it with art, writing, decoupage, pop-ups, or anything else that fits their chosen style or theme. Some of the more unique sketchbooks have included embroidered pages and back covers altered to unfold into long maps and drawings. One sketchbook opens into a puzzle; another is cut in the shape of a sandwich. Participants have up to eight months to send the completed sketchbook back, at which point it is cataloged and put into the permanent collection.” – Smithsonian Magazine
The Exploding Market For NFT Art
Most people still do not really understand it, but with the influx of cryptocapital into the NFT art market, all eyes are now glued to the possibilities of NFT art. “This whole mainstream sweep happened sooner than we anticipated,” says Jonathan Perkins, the co-founder of SuperRare, which launched in 2018. In its first year, it averaged about $8,000 a month in sales. By the second year, $100,000 a month. Last month — around the time it announced a series-A investment from the likes of Samsung, Ashton Kutcher, Mark Cuban, and Marc Benioff — $30 million a month. – New York Magazine
Fake News As A Virus
What’s different today is the speed, scope and scale of misinformation, enabled by technology. Online media has given voice to previously marginalised groups, including peddlers of untruth, and has supercharged the tools of deception at their disposal. The transmission of falsehoods now spans a viral cycle in which AI, professional trolls and our own content-sharing activities help to proliferate and amplify misleading claims. These new developments have come on the heels of rising inequality, falling civic engagement and fraying social cohesion – trends that render us more susceptible to demagoguery. Just as alarming, a growing body of research over the past decade is casting doubt on our ability – even our willingness – to resist misinformation in the face of corrective evidence. – Aeon
‘Navy Twerking’: Why All Australia Is Arguing About A Dance Clip
“A video of dancers twerking in hotpants at [the dedication of a new Australian warship] … went viral when it emerged on Wednesday. But the music video-style choreography — featuring thumps, thrusts and butt shakes — also came under attack. Conservative lawmakers led the chorus of those calling it ‘inappropriate’. Tabloids splashed headlines slamming military standards. But others found offence elsewhere — projecting shame onto the dancers, and labelling their routine as too ‘sexualised’. That in turn sparked backlash over the policing of women’s bodies.” (And that’s not even all of it.) “So how exactly did this ‘navy twerking’ saga unfold?” Here’s a step-by-step (ahem) timeline. – BBC
Now We Know This Wax Bust Is Definitely Not A Leonardo. How Do We Know? Sperm Whales
Back in 1909, a couple of very prominent German art historians decided, for various reasons, that a wax figurine of the goddess Flora that one of them had picked up at a London antique store simply had to be a genuine Leonardo da Vinci, and announced this with great fanfare. The London Times responded that no, the bust was actually sculpted by one Richard Cockle Lucas in 1860. “In the next two years, more than 730 heated articles were written debating the attribution. There were debates on the floor of the Prussian parliament. Two scholars challenged each other to a duel. … The debate got less aggressive over the decades, but never died down. Even modern technology hasn’t been able to settle the issue conclusively, because wax, as it happens, is a complicated medium to date.” But a new study has at least conclusively ruled out Leonardo, and here’s how. – The History Blog
Calculation: San Francisco Says Arts Venues Can Reopen. But Are Audiences Ready To Return?
How rigorously will patrons expect to be protected from the dangers of the COVID-19 virus? Have entertainment habits atrophied during a hiatus of more than a year, or has the shutdown only made the hunger for the arts even keener? – San Francisco Chronicle
A Dance Critic On How The Pandemic Has Changed Her Work
Deborah Jowitt: “Inevitable distractions occur when filming (or viewing) dances in this climate. Dog walkers may intrude. A pet cat may decide on a star appearance. Are those two dancers barefoot on gravel? Was getting wet necessary or an artistic choice? Watching performers dancing in their apartments encourages thoughts we should probably suppress. Wow, a really tiny space (wonder how much it rents for). Nice wood floor. Check that stove. Wait a second, what was that picture on the wall? Yet their artistic choices have delighted me, as well.” – Dance Magazine
Venice’s Gondola Tradition Is Endangered
The anthropologist Elisa Bellato has called this an ‘identity crisis’ for the artistic manufacture of the gondola. While the boat made with cheaper materials may be indistinguishable to the untrained eye, its authenticity – not to mention quality and craftsmanship – has been lost. Bellato suggests that this modern gondola is more of a simulacrum than a true specimen, emptied of the values and knowledge accumulated over centuries. – Apollo
Wouldn’t It Have Made More Sense For Netflix To Just Buy Sony Pictures Outright?
Last week the video-rental-service-turned-streaming-giant paid an estimated $1 billion for five-year exclusive U.S. rights to Sony’s theatrical releases and right of first refusal for the studio’s direct-to-streaming productions. If Netflix is going to spend that kind of money, shouldn’t it have just bought Sony outright? It’s what many people expected, and all the other major Hollywood studios have been gobbled up by other corporate giants. Josef Adalian explains why a purchase might have made sense for Netflix five or six years ago but not now. – Vulture
Key Missing Link In History Of Alphabet Identified
“Archaeologists digging in the ancient Canaanite settlement of Lachish have unearthed a 3,500-year-old pottery shard inscribed with what they believe is the oldest text found in Israel that was written using an alphabetic script. Earlier Canaanite texts are known, but they were written using hieroglyphs or cuneiform characters.” – Haaretz (Israel)
French Court Rules Art Galleries Must Remain Closed (Never Mind The Auction Houses)
Gallerists, angry that their competitors at auction houses were allowed to continue operating during France’s ongoing pandemic lockdown, and arguing that online sales don’t work for their business (collectors want to see the art they’re buying in person), sued the French state, the prime minister, and the health minister. France’s Council of State has dismissed the suit, ruling that public health concerns justify keeping the galleries closed. – Artnet
New Stats: HipHop, Rap Now Account For 22 Percent Of Listening In UK
When BPI started recording data like this in the 1990s, rap music only counted for 3.6% of the singles market. In 2020, it was 22%. – BBC
Louis Menand On The Pragmatism Of Lionel Trilling
As Menand puts it in his new book, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, “Trilling thought that people’s literary preferences tell us something about the kind of human beings they wish to be and about the way they wish other human beings to be—that is, something about their morality and their politics.” – The Point
We Live In The Age Of The Ghostwriter
“In the age of texting and emailing, the world is full of Cyranos: Getting quick, surreptitious help writing high-stakes messages has never been easier, whether that means enlisting friends to consult on a flirty note in a dating app or turning to a co-worker for assistance on a sensitive email to your boss. Although this sort of collaboration is widespread, people still generally assume that the messages they receive were composed by the sender alone.” – The Atlantic
Political Theatre Is Useless If It’s Just Preaching To The Choir – So What To Do About It?
“When political theatre preaches to the choir, it removes its potential to disrupt. Indeed, by having such a laser focus on bringing “awareness” to issues, much political art forgets to have a point of view. Art in the current landscape tells us that we live in a racist society or that violence against women exists, but it doesn’t tell us how to fight back. So, we’ve left behind activist theatre and are now engaging in an empty journalistic theatre.” – Howlround
Marketing Opera On TikTok (Maybe It Works!)
The Royal Opera House in London launched a TikTok channel last summer and has since picked up more than 400,000 followers, with some of its quickie videos picking up millions of hits and likes, especially Diana Damrau singing the Queen of the Night’s second aria from The Magic Flute. – The Telegraph (UK)