Whether Woodstock would have happened without Sky River is, of course, anybody’s guess, but Sky River absolutely would not have happened without an even less-heralded event called the Piano Drop, a one-day Dadaist spectacle held on April 28, 1968, in a tiny town (its population was just 455) northeast of Seattle called Duvall. As the name of the event suggests, the Piano Drop featured a dropped piano (which organizers hoped would land on a specially prepared wood pile with a resounding crash), plus music by Country Joe and the Fish. Depending on whom you talk to, at least 3,000 and as many as 5,000 people showed up for this experiment in sonic mayhem.
How To Attract New Audiences To The Arts? Report Says Focus On Fun
Key to the success of projects is promoting “the ‘fun’ and ‘social’ aspects of participation as opposed to focusing on the artistic aspects of activities”. The report notes that using “exclusive ‘arts’ language and jargon” acts as a barrier to encouraging local communities to get involved.
The Holiday When People Give Their Beloveds Books Along With Roses
It’s April 23, el dia de Sant Jordi (St. George’s Day), the Catalan counterpart to Valentine’s Day – except that it’s a book and not a box of chocolates that goes along with the bouquet for your true love. Natasha Lomas gives us a look at the celebration, for which €20 million worth of books are sold each year.
Can Theatre Spur Action On Climate Change?
“The time for reckoning is over. It’s time for action. And for action to be effective, we need inspiration. Doomsday scenarios won’t galvanize us; we need hope and a capacity to imagine the future we want to create. In short, we need new narratives. And who better to provide those than writers?”
My Dinner With Georgia O’Keeffe, When Her Eyebrow Burned Off
“I saw O’Keeffe rise unsteadily to one knee, and then to her feet. She looked shaken. ‘Well,’ she said, with a thin smile, ‘It seems we’re not having chicken.'” Calvin Tomkins remembers a visit to the artist at her summer home in New Mexico, the Ghost Ranch, in 1973.
Creative Class Cities – What Ails Ye
“If I understand [Richard] Florida, he’s arguing that today’s troubles are a consequence of the success of a few cities such as Seattle, and especially New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. And they are also victims because of affordability. As Florida correctly puts it, these cities have ‘wildly disproportionate shares’ of advanced industries, startups and talent. But what really caused this?”
The Trumpet Virtuoso Who Reinvented Himself As A Teaching Virtuoso
Tim Wilson was a star trumpeter. But he began to go blind. Now – instead of playing Puccini’s “La Bohème” at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House, the 58-year-old maestro is working up to 14 hours a day coaxing “Jingle Bells” out of beginners and pouring much of his life savings into bringing music back to a school where 95 percent of students live in poverty. If he can take kids who can’t play a note and teach them a song, Wilson believes, they will not just feel successful, but see new possibilities everywhere in their lives.
Art Appraisers Who Lowball Values To Cheat The IRS
The I.R.S. has long viewed the valuations given for artworks in income, estate and gift tax returns as a “potentially high abuse area,” as described in several recent reports. It sometimes uses a group of dealers, museum curators and scholars, known as the Art Advisory Panel of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, to advise the agency on works worth more than $50,000. According to annual reports by the panel, about 58 percent of the 1,840 works it reviewed from 2011 to 2015 were valued improperly.
The ‘Language Warrior’ Who Racks Up Literary Awards
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o didn’t think he’d ever become a writer, much less a novelist, short story writer, playwright, and essayist with his work translated into more than 60 languages. Now, he’s fighting for recognition for his native language, Gĩkũyũ. He says, “No language is ever marginal to the community that created it. Languages are like musical instruments. You don’t say, let there be a few global instruments, or let there be only one type of voice all singers can sing.”
What’s Going To Happen If The Writers Do Strike? (It’s Not Good)
A last-minute deal could happen, but “if writers walk off the job, scores of productions would be halted at a time when Los Angeles is enjoying a surge in the number of TV shows that shoot in the region.”
Making Art At The March For Science, AKA The A In STEAM
There was poetry, there were colorful signs, and there were scientists who only went into science because they read Margaret Atwood. The marches weren’t supposed to be political, but “one of the poems in Ms. Roberts’s handout,’“Advice from a Caterpillar’ by Amy Gerstler, felt like it could serve as a manual for resistance, or at least for survival. ‘Behave cryptically to confuse predators,’ it read: ‘change colors, spit, or feign death. If all else fails, taste terrible.'”
Apple Caught Uber Tracking IPhone Users Even After They Deleted The App
And the #deleteUber movement gets more fuel for its fire: “The practice, called fingerprinting, is prohibited by Apple. To prevent the company from discovering the practice, Uber geofenced Apple headquarters in Cupertino, changing its code so that it would be hidden from Apple Employees.”
For This (At Least) Don’t Blame The Russians, Judge Tells Sotheby’s Expert
A Sotheby’s expert valued a Bruegel painting (one generations of English speakers know from William Carlos Williams’ poem “The Dance”) at $500,000, but it sold for more than four times as much. Did the expert lowball it, or did Russians spike the auction price? The I.R.S. has an opinion.
We Could Understand Donald Trump Better Through Reading ‘Richard II’
In medieval times, nobles believed a crowned and invested king had “two bodies” – one that was material and earthly, and one that was heavenly and bestowed by god. But “the character Richard II — like Trump — shows us how this agreement to live by a fiction can go wildly wrong. Richard does not realize that he is not really superhuman but that his subjects only grant him their willing suspension of disbelief if he plays the part he has been assigned.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs For The Weekend Of 04.23.17
Metrics at the museum
The Washington Post‘s Philip Kennicott decided to try visiting the popular Kusama exhibit at the Hirshhorn not as a critic, with all its special viewing privileges, but as an ordinary member of the public. The … read more
AJBlog: For What it’s WorthPublished 2017-04-23
Recent Listening: Cuong Vu Plays Michael Gibbs
Cuong Vu 4TET, Ballet (Rare Noise) Trumpeter Vu and three fellow Seattle adventurers explore pieces by Michael Gibbs. It was guitarist Bill Frisell’s idea to bring the British composer to the University … read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2017-04-22
SHIFT — a weird PR gaffe
Resuming my blog after a gap… I’m sorry that I said some provocative things about the SHIFT festival in DC, and then fell silent. I hadn’t planned that. But life intervened, taking me by surprise, … read more
AJBlog: SandowPublished 2017-04-21
Almanac: Igor Stravinsky on music critics
“I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a painting by Goya.” Igor Stravinsky (interviewed in the Evening … read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2017-04-21
Smart Move In Brooklyn
A lot of people today are interested in “design.” Unless they are furnishing a home, not all that many are interested in “decorative arts.” They are, of course, fraternal if not identical twins. Yet decorative … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear ArtsPublished 2017-04-20