“How can a writer situated in one culture communicate its truth to readers in very different places?”
England’s State Arts Funder Should Be A ‘Development Agency’, Says Report By Its Bosses
“Arts Council England (ACE) must operate as a development agency and focus on developing financially sustainable arts organisations, a wide-ranging review by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has concluded. For ACE to fulfil this role, the review presents a series of recommendations …”
‘Hamilton’ Is A More Effective Show Now That Obama Has Left Office, Says Critic
Alyssa Rosenberg: “There’s no question that Hamilton is indelibly associated with the Obama administration.” (Lin-Manuel Miranda gave one of the first public performances of any portion of the show at the White House in 2009.) “But frankly, it was a relief to see [it] with some distance from the Obama era.”
Exploding Two Myths About Vermeer: He Wasn’t A Solitary, Isolated Genius, And His Paintings Aren’t Realistic
Alastair Sooke: “In Vermeer’s day, Delft was anything but a backwater … [and] it is inconceivable that Vermeer was unaware of developments in Dutch art happening elsewhere.” And, says Louvre curator Blaise Ducos, “The verisimilitude of these paintings is high, but the realism is low. They are not like photographs. Rather, they are scenes that are arranged and rearranged.”
‘Margaret Atwood Made a Feminist Out of Me’: 12 Authors on ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
Mara Wilson, N.K. Jemisin, Sady Doyle, Jenny Han, and others recall their first visits to the Republic of Gilead.
‘National Report Card’ Says U.S. Students Are Stagnating In Music And Art
“The findings come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, which regularly reports on U.S. student achievement, including math, reading and science. But only three times – in 1997, 2008 and now from 2016 – has it looked at music and visual arts. Overall, the national scores on arts achievement remained flat when compared with 2008, said Peggy Carr, the acting commissioner of NAEP. ‘Granted this is not the best score,” she said, especially when compared with U.S. students’ progress in math.”
A Long-Lost Stravinsky Piece Resurfaces And On First Hearing Alex Ross Is Disappointed. But Then He Listens Again…
Like thousands of other Stravinsky fans, I listened to a live stream of the première, my anticipation heightened by descriptions that the composer had supplied later in life. (He called it “the best of my works before ‘The Firebird,’ and the most advanced in chromatic harmony.”) Like many others, I felt mild disappointment.
Canada Struggles With Cultural Policy In The Age Of The Internet
“I think that we’re trying to have a cultural policy that is adapted to the digital age, whereby you believe in the importance of freedom of the Internet, you believe in the importance of net neutrality,” she said. It sounds nice, but an open Internet fits somewhat awkwardly alongside the existing regime of government support for Canadian culture.
The Human Brain Is A Sort Of Time Machine
Neuroscientist Dean Buonomano argues our brains are “constantly tracking the passage of time, whether it’s circadian rhythms that tell us when to go to sleep, or microsecond calculations that allow us to the hear the difference between ‘They gave her cat-food’ and ‘They gave her cat food.’ In an interview with Science of Us, Buonomano spoke about planning for the future as a basic human activity, the limits of be-here-now mindfulness, and the inherent incompatibility between physicists’ and neuroscientists’ understanding of the nature of time.’
What It Was Like Being A Black, Left-Wing Pundit Facing Bill O’Reilly On Fox News
Rich Benjamin: “Despite my disgust with the format and with Fox [News] in general, I felt that if I could get a sizable slice of O’Reilly’s viewership to think fairly, for a few moments, about undocumented immigrants, corporate wage theft, or police brutality, my time would be well spent. … I could gauge the quality of my performance on The O’Reilly Factor by the response from viewers. When I received no response, I knew my efforts had fallen flat. In other instances, just minutes after wrapping up an appearance, my inbox would be flooded with choice feedback from his fans.”
‘A Modestly Shattering Discovery’ – Alex Ross On The Lost Stravinsky Score That Surfaced Last Year
“Like thousands of other Stravinsky fans, I listened to a live stream of the première, my anticipation heightened by descriptions that the composer had supplied later in life. (He called it ‘the best of my works before The Firebird, and the most advanced in chromatic harmony.’) Like many others, I felt mild disappointment. Funeral Song contains no thrilling premonitions of the Stravinsky to come. … Yet, after spending more time with the piece … I felt a growing fascination. The music has a veiled power, and hints at otherwise hidden sources of inspiration. A spectre haunts the scene: the spectre of Wagner.” (includes sound clip)
For First Time Ever, Met Museum Chooses Choreographer As Artist-In-Residence
“The Metropolitan Museum of Art has been seriously getting into dance lately. But now it’s taking its love affair one step further: Gallim Dance director/choreographer Andrea Miller was just named the museum’s artist in residence for the 2017-18 season – the first dance artist ever chosen for that distinction! We caught up with Miller to find out exactly what this means.”
Novel About Medieval Sufi Mystic Wins International Prize For Arabic Fiction
Mohammed Hasan Alwan’s A Small Death retells the life of Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi (1165-1240), considered by some the greatest of Sufis and by others (conservative Muslims) an apostate, and his journeys across the breadth of the Islamic world. The award includes $50,000 for the author and another $50,000 toward the costs of translation into English.
A Museum Built For Failure (You’ll Learn Something)
“The purpose of the museum is to show that innovation requires failure,” Dr. West said as he introduced some of the exhibits in a video posted this month on the YouTube channel of Fredrik Skavlan, a Scandinavian talk show host. “If you are afraid of failure, then we can’t innovate.” He said he started the museum “to encourage organizations to be better at learning from failures — not just ignoring them and pretending they never happened.”
Why Does Our Musical Taste Get Frozen In Our Youth?
“It’s simply not realistic to expect someone to respond to music with such life-defining fervour more than once. And it’s not realistic, either, to expect someone comfortable with his personality to be flailing about for new sensibilities to adopt. I’ve always been somewhat suspicious of those who truly do, as the overused phrase has it, listen to everything. Such schizophrenic tastes seem not so much a symptom of well-roundedness as of an unstable sense of self. Liking everything means loving nothing. If you’re so quick to adopt new sentiments and their expression, then how serious were you about the ones you pushed aside to accommodate them?”
This Year’s NFL Football Draft Is At The Philadelphia Museum Of Art (Huh?)
“Standing on those steps and seeing that this is such a heroic moment, this is a culmination for these [draft picks], we set out on, ‘Could we create a theater? Could we build a theater here?’ ” said Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s senior vice president of events. “We know it’s going to be complicated. We know it’s going to be audacious. But this is what we have to do, and the Parkway itself was natural. It’s a home to so many iconic events over the years.”
Do We Really Need To Dress Up When We Go To The Opera?
“Americans might say that their freedom of self-expression is being denied if they are told how to dress. I think we can learn that self-expression and respect for certain traditions are not mutually exclusive. I have seen many of my fellow citizens dressed in attire more suited to a workout at the gym or for mowing the lawn in restaurants, offices and theaters. This detracts from the specialness of certain occasions.”
What Do The Residents Of The S-Town Make Of ‘S-Town’? Wellllll …
Connor Towne O’Neill travels to Woodstock, Alabama to ask the folks there about finding themselves the subject of a record-smashing podcast – and finds some fair-mindedness, some defensiveness, plenty of ambivalence and even more awkwardness. After all, they really do all know each other. (Warning: includes spoilers)
The Extraordinary Steppenwolf Theatre Leader Martha Lavey Dies At 60
An indefatigable, unstinting and intellectually voracious artistic director who reinvented Chicago’s most audacious and aggressive theater for a new era, Martha Lavey wrestled the Steppenwolf Theatre Company — kicking and screaming — into the 21st century. And in her cajoling, bullying, flattering, outwitting and otherwise leading its hugely talented but famously passionate and opinionated ensemble of tightknit actors toward reinvention and expansion for changed times, this artistic director of more than 20 years became one of the most important figures in the illustrious history of the Chicago theater.
NPR Pioneer Robert Siegel To Retire After 40 Years
“This is a decision long in the making and not an easy one. I’ve had the greatest job I can think of, working with the finest colleagues anyone could ask for, for as long a stretch as I could imagine. But, looking ahead to my seventies (which start all too soon) I feel that it is time for me to begin a new phase of life. Over the next few months, I hope to figure out what that will be.”
‘The Avant-Garde That Lost By Winning’ (Jerry Saltz Goes To Glenn O’Brien’s Funeral)
The wild man of art criticism/failed artist/Instagram auteur is haunted by the thoughts he had seeing the art-world stars gathered to mourn the ’80s impresario: “I don’t mean that these people and their ideals lost. On the contrary, these people represent a kind of total victory!”
What One Red State Will Lose When The NEA Is Gone
“If any state knows the value of publicly financed art, it may be South Dakota: One of its biggest tourist attractions, Mount Rushmore, is, among other things, a colossal federally funded sculpture. … [The NEA’s] generally small grants can have a bigger impact here than they would at the Metropolitan Operas of the world.” Michael Cooper visits the Coyote State to see in action some of the arts programs funded by the agency the Trump administration proposes to eliminate.
Pop Artist Marisol Leaves Entire Estate To Albright-Knox Art Gallery
The bequest from the artist, who died last May, is the largest gift of art in the history of the Buffalo museum, which made news last fall by raising $100 million in 12 weeks.
L.A. Dance Project Gets Its Own Headquarters
Benjamin Millepied’s young company “has signed a five-year lease for its own rehearsal and performance space in the downtown Los Angeles arts district, and will move to its new headquarters in October. [Its space will] include two studios and a performance space with a seating capacity of about 300.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.25.17
Combining Cultures
This year, Ballet Hispanico will celebrate its 47th anniversary. I know, I know. In the performing-arts world, we only go all out for a year that ends in zero or five. But what’s immodest about a company being proud of its achievements in other years? … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2017-04-25
“Moral Obligation”: My Chat with Cleveland Museum of Art’s William Griswold (plus Benjamin & Rub)
William Griswold has no interest in leaving the directorship of the Cleveland Museum for Art any time soon – not even for the top spot at the beleaguered Metropolitan Museum (for which I had presumptuously nominated him). … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-04-25
Ella Fitzgerald At 100
It is impossible to find the perfect performance by which to remember Ella, … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-04-25