“Our motto is ‘big, cheap theater.’ ” “I’d rather make a glorious failure than an apologetic win.” “We’re the cockroach of the arts — we may be ugly, but we’re really hard to kill.” – Seattle Times
The Birth Of Newsletters, 600 Years Before Substack
“Newsletters began in mid-fifteenth-century Venice. Subscribers would receive handwritten letters twice a week rounding up interesting events. Sixteenth-century merchants used similar news sources to keep track of exchange rates, taxes, and other business news. The form’s popularity expanded in England after the country’s first postal service took off around 1660. This opened the door to news writers, who could use the mail to gather information from distant correspondents and then send the information to readers on a predictable schedule.” – JSTOR Daily
Steppenwolf Theater Artistic Director Anna D. Shapiro Resigns
“The decision, one of many such wholesale changes as the Chicago theater slowly emerges from the COVID-19 crisis of closures, is not unexpected by close observers: Shapiro long ago signaled her intention to leave at the end of her current contract and the ensemble and board of directors has been engaged in succession planning.” – Yahoo! (Chicago Tribune)
Lynda Hartigan, Peabody Essex Museum’s Passed-Over Deputy Director, Belatedly Gets the Top Spot
Two years ago, when the Salem, Mass. museum named Brian Kennedy, then director of the Toledo Museum, to succeed longtime director Dan Monroe, I wondered why Lynda Hartigan hadn’t gotten the nod. Now, after a brief detour to Toronto as deputy director at the Royal Ontario Museum, Lynda is returning to direct the museum that she so ably served, beginning as chief curator in 2003. – Lee Rosenbaum
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association Vowed To Change
From there? Things have been falling apart. NBC’s contingency plans if the group that runs the Golden Globes doesn’t get it together by their self-imposed deadline of May 6. “Among the more drastic options that could be considered: putting the Globes on hiatus, keeping the show but jettisoning the HFPA, or scrapping the awards altogether.” – Los Angeles Times
Will LA MOCA Recover Its Footing?
Yes, LA MOCA is having trouble again. “MOCA’s current trials have come just as the museum was hoping to emerge from a tumultuous history that has included two short-term directors, a raid on its endowment to pay the bills and a proposed merger with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.” – The New York Times
The Great Mural Wall Of Los Angeles Gets An Extension
Judy Baca’s 2,700-foot mural Great Wall shows the history of the city, from pre-historic California through the 1950s. But the 1950s were a long time ago – and now a grant means the mural can stretch to a mile, bringing it up to the 2020s. – Hyperallergic
Fred Jordan, Who Defied Censorship And Published The Avant Garde, 95
At Grove Press, Jordan and Barney Rosset led the charge to publish as they wished. “Grove’s lawyers were instrumental in overturning anti-pornography court rulings against D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer in 1959, William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch in the early 1960s and the Swedish erotic film I Am Curious (Yellow) in the late ’60s.” – The New York Times
Can This Modernist Gem Be Saved?
The planned demolition of the Derby Assembly Rooms, product of a 1970 architectural competition and former host to big acts from The Clash to Elton John, has the city divided and architecture preservation societies infuriated. – The Observer (UK)
How Genre Fiction Can Help Literary Fiction Deal With Assault
Crime fiction is, roughly speaking, concerned with plot – and literary fiction (again, roughly speaking) with the interior of characters’ thoughts. Sometimes, that means literary fiction doesn’t deal well with the more plot-driven side of rape narratives, and crime fiction doesn’t deal well with the emotional effects. So: “Especially where complex stories about sexual assault are concerned, mixing genres can open up our storytelling capacities, giving writers—and readers—access to ever more empathy and nuance.” – The Atlantic
Move Over, Thomas Edison And The Lumiere Brothers
Britain may no longer have an empire, but at least it could have this: the title of the “true” father of cinema. “Film director and historian Peter Domankiewicz believes [Bristol inventor William] Friese-Greene will soon be reinstated as one of the great figures in the development of the moving image: the one who got there before Thomas Edison, the Lumière brothers and George Méliès, the Frenchman whose story was told by Martin Scorsese in the hit 2011 film Hugo.” – The Guardian (UK)
Asian American Choreographers And Dancers Demand Recognition
After the shootings in Atlanta, the already planned 10,000 Dreams Virtual Choreography Festival transformed into something that Asian American ballet dancers and choreographers have been missing and wanting for years – community. “There was a deep moment where we sort of were committing to building a network, building a community, taking up space, being loud, being bold. This festival really came out of that impetus of saying, ‘No, we’re going to take up space, we’re going to make some noise, and we’re going to show you how brilliant we are.'” – Washington Post