“It’s very difficult to talk about surveillance until something happens like the Edward Snowden revelations,” said Barbara Jones, director of the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom. “A lot of people had not thought about these things, but librarians tend to be thoughtful people. People assume we’re protecting their privacy, and we have to tell them that has now been compromised. And that’s very sad.”
Natalie Portman’s Directorial Debut Is A Movie Shot In Israel And Entirely In Hebrew
“She’s been fearless in proclaiming her Jewishness, even though she now lives in a country where anti-Semitism is terrifyingly on the rise. I ask if Portman feels nervous about being Jewish in Paris. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘but I’d feel nervous being a black man in this country. I’d feel nervous being a Muslim in many places.'”
Henry Moore Foundation To Artist: Do Not Use Moore’s Work To Make A Political Statement – Not Even In Photoshop Mockups
“Three years ago, Kansas City-based artist A. Bitterman proposed moving a vacant, dilapidated house, located in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, to the lawn of the Nelson-Atkins Museum … In place of the house, Bitterman suggested, the museum should install its prized Henry Moore sculpture Sheep Piece (1971–72). The house and the Moore lie on opposite sides of Troost Avenue.” The proposal recently resurfaced in the press, and Moore’s people are having none of it.
The Chinese Art Of The Choreographed Crowd
No country, not even North Korea, is better than China at staging precise movements by huge numbers of people. “Whether the subject is military parades or world-record attempts, mass exercises or enormous performances, the images are frequently remarkable. … (Note: a few of these images can create a dizzying effect when viewed while scrolling, which is fun, but could be surprising.)”
Jerry Saltz Shares A Dozen Stories Of Sex In Museums
“Museums are incredibly sexy spaces to me, but I have never had sex in a museum. Over the years, though, I’ve heard from those who have. … So I asked people on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram if they’d send their stories or reports of sex in the museums. Here’s just a few of the stories I got back.”
Lost Songs From “My Fair Lady” To Be Performed For First Time Since 1956
“The numbers were removed from the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical after the show’s first preview in February 1956 on Broadway. They were discovered, alongside a ballet penned for the musical, in boxes at the Library of Congress.”
Millepied’s L.A. Dance Project To Play Cannes Festival
“When the luminaries of world cinema convene at the Palais des Festivals next week to open the annual Cannes Film Festival, they will be treated to a performance by a dance company from Los Angeles.”
Baltimore Symphony Enlists Designers To Reimagine What Musicians Wear On Stage
“If all now goes according to plan, four or five student designs of women and men’s garments will be presented to Baltimore Symphony players this summer. The design school has already taken the BSO musicians’ measurements with a 3-D body scanner. According to Gabbi Asfour, a fashion designer who leads the Parsons effort, once the musicians choose their garments, production will take about four months.”
The Keeper Of The Grammar
“‘Whom’ may indeed be on the way out”, she writes, “but so is Venice, and we still like to go there.”
Orchestra Ditches Its Sheet Music And Opens Up New Relationship With Music And Audience
“I had the feeling if we didn’t have music stands we would be forced into a new relationship and that, at a performance level, it would just bump us up. It is not that I think the audience is ADD and needs bells and whistles to enjoy the music. A lot of the music we do is storytelling.”
How Having Your Work Successfully Sell At Auction Can Hurt Your Career
“It can be a curse when artists appear early in their career at auction with high prices. This increases expectations and pressures that they cannot always cope with.”
The Remarkable Life Of Russia’s Greatest Ballerina
Maya Plisetskaya retired formally as a soloist when she was 63, but she never left ballet. On her 70th birthday, she debuted in “Ave Maya,” choreographed for her by Maurice Béjart. She danced “Ave Maya” again for her 80th anniversary and at 82 Plisetskaya, still steady on her high heels, once more danced Béjart’s piece at the Cap Roig Gardens festival in Spain.
Who Isn’t Consuming The Arts? And Why Aren’t They?
“When large numbers of people face barriers to participating in the arts in the way they might want to, we know that we’re missing opportunities to improve people’s lives in concrete and meaningful ways. What’s really behind this phenomenon of lower participation rates among economically disadvantaged people? And what can, and should, we do about it?”
Great Dead Comedians To Take The Stage Again – As Holograms
“The National Comedy Center, which is scheduled to open next year in Jamestown, N.Y., is to unveil plans for a comedy club that will feature holograms of stand-ups and comic actors from various eras.”
Why Amy Schumer’s Parody Of ‘Twelve Angry Men’ Is Both A Viral Hit And A Brilliant Satire
“The wonderfully absurd universe of the sketch – a woman [Schumer herself] literally on trial for the crime of not being ‘bangable’ – … [is] a parody with a tone that adheres remarkably close to its source material … with the fatal strike coming from the direction you weren’t looking.” (And the cast – Paul Giamatti, Jeff Goldblum, John Hawkes, etc. – is terrific.)
Meet The Man Who Plays Big Bird And Oscar The Grouch
A Q&A with Caroll Spinney, 81, who has performed two of Sesame Street‘s most enduring characters for the show’s entire 45-year history.
Alice Notley Wins $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
“Notley, who now lives in Paris, … has published more than 30 books, beginning in 1971 with 165 Meeting House Lane and continuing with two new volumes due this year, Certain Magical Acts and Benediction.”
What Do We See In Our Minds As We Read? And What Don’t We See?
Many readers know – or think they know – the answer to that question. “The problem is that upon close examination the reading experience is far more complex and far less visual than is commonly supposed.”
Life Is A Performance – Is That A Depressing Thought? It Shouldn’t Be
“The melancholy Jacques in As You Like It declares that, ‘All the world’s a stage,/ And all the men and women merely players.’ Macbeth cries, ‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,’ and Prospero sighs, ‘the great globe … shall dissolve / And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, / Leave not a rack behind.’ … But the metaphors themselves aren’t the problem. It’s the bitter taste we’ve baked into them.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 05.06.15
What is the place of cultural institutions within their communities?
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2015-05-06
Engage Now!
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2015-05-06
The New Whitney: An Irreverent Companion Essay for My WSJ Review
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-05-06
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Berlin Philharmonic Ready To Vote On New Leader
“No, there will be no white smoke, and these are not cardinals in the Sistine Chapel. These voters are the tenured musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic, and they are set to meet at 10 a.m. on Monday at an undisclosed location in Berlin to make one of the most prestigious appointments in classical music: a new chief conductor and artistic director, who will succeed Simon Rattle when he leaves the orchestra in 2018.”
“Repairs” Ruin Priceless Roman Mosaics
“Before and after photos taken by Daskapan show the extent of the damage. Some of the mosaic stones have been replaced with stones of different shapes and colors. Consequently, the facial expressions now appear awry and skewed.”
Report: Only 10% Of UK Actors Are Working Class
“Even when someone from working class origins is in the profession we are finding that they are about £10,000 less well off than other people, in theory for doing the same jobs.”
Artist Wins $25K Prize, Uses It To Buy Other Artists’ Work For Seattle Art Museum
“We don’t like it at all when people say, ‘You’re so generous. The intention of it wasn’t to be generous, really… I’d like it to be understood as an art project that was trying to start conversations and have symbolic value in the community around how artists and artworks are valued, how museums make value.”
Charlie Hebdo Staffers Get Standing Ovation At PEN Gala, Despite Controversy Over Honoring Them
“Two members of Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine, took the stage to a thundering standing ovation at PEN American Center’s literary gala on Tuesday night, capping a 10-day debate over free speech, blasphemy and Islamophobia that started in the cozy heart of the New York literary world and spread to social media and op-ed pages worldwide.”