Chinese archaeology has a very different history from Egyptian archaeology. It has largely been done by local, Chinese archaeologists, for one thing; it was not an imperialist project. And it was also tied, early on, to nationalist claims of identity. – Washington Post
Jazz Trombone Great Curtis Fuller Dead At 88
“Mr. Fuller was among the dozens of musicians to emerge from the fertile mid-century jazz scene of Detroit, where he learned to play intricate, fast-paced bebop lines on the unwieldy slide trombone. When [he] arrived in New York in the mid-1950s, he immediately became a major figure in the hard-bop movement.” He played with many of the greatest jazz bands of his era, including the Jazztet, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and the ensembles of Miles David, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, and Woody Shaw. – The Washington Post
Nicholas Kenyon’s New History Of Western Music
The book’s subtitle, New Adventures in the Western Classical Tradition, makes its soft boundaries clear. As managing director of London’s Barbican Centre, and former director of the Proms, controller of Radio 3 and music critic of the Observer – and therefore a colleague and friend to those of us in the business of classical – Kenyon has heard and programmed as much music as anyone. – The Guardian
Companies Are Struggling To Become Data-Driven. The Toughest Part? Culture
The goal is to “invite people who have not been thinking about this topic to really think about it in their day-to-day work. It really creates the culture of control, culture of responsibility and understanding.” – Protocol
A New York Times Critic Sees His First Play Since COVID — In The Central American City He Once Fled
Jose Solís: “Theater in my hometown? ‘A lot has changed since you’ve been gone,’ said Inma López, a producer and ensemble member at Casa del Teatro Memorias. … Theater in Tegucigalpa went from the didacticism of political plays that toured colleges and high schools in the 1980s, to becoming an essential part of city life.” – The New York Times
A Bitter New Orleans Graffiti War Over… Dan Marino?
To outsiders, street painters of all sorts might seem to be natural allies. But that’s not always the case. Rivalries and territorialism are always part of the picture. For some, street painting is meant as a gift to society; for others it’s pure rebellion; for most it’s somewhere in between. After two weeks of turf war, the wall at the corner of St. Claude Avenue and Marigny Street was the equivalent of a smoking battleground that bore the scars of Krylon combat. – New Orleans Times-Picayune
A Multi-Million-Dollar Trade In Fake Native American Art
We’re talking about everything from Navajo turquoise and silver to Zuni inlay. It’s a huge tourist draw and one of New Mexico’s most important industries. But today, con artists are flooding the Indian jewelry marketplace with cleverly disguised counterfeits, cheating consumers out of millions of dollars. – KRQE
In Egypt, 250 Ancient Tombs Discovered, Some More Than 4,000 Years Old
The burial places, all cut into rock, were found by accident in one part of a larger necropolis in Upper Egypt. Some date back to the end of the Old Period of ancient Egyptian history, about 4,000 years ago; the most recent are from the late Ptolemaic era, which ended with the defeat of Cleopatra VII by Octavian (who later became Caesar Augustus) in 30 BC. – Al-Ahram
Dutch Museum Directors Protest Testing Museum-Goers
In an open letter published yesterday in the Dutch newspaper NRC, 100 notable cultural figures, including Stedelijk director Rein Wolfs, artist Renzo Martens, Rijksmuseum director Taco Dibbits, and Van Gogh Museum director Emilie Gordenker, wrote that the law would enact too many barriers for museum goers. – Artnet
The Sweet Old Professor Who Saved Iceland’s Ancient Literary Heritage From Danish Fire
Árni Magnússon, who undertook Iceland’s first-ever census and land survey, was a near-obsessive manuscript collector; he gathered many thousands of medieval documents, sagas, and other materials and sent them back to his house in Copenhagen. And in 1728, when the worst fire in the city’s history and destroyed more than a quarter of the buildings and nearly every book in town, Magnússon managed to get most of the manuscripts (though none of his own books) out of his house before it collapsed in flames, rescuing a huge portion of what we have of old Icelandic literature today. – Literary Hub
Helmut Jahn Just Died In A Bike Accident — Might His Iconic Chicago Building Follow?
The Thompson Center is Chicago’s premier example of Jahn’s work, and the project that made him famous. Intended to take government from distant to literally transparent and accessible, it became a vital and diverse, if increasingly shabby, space; its spectacular atrium was the apparent inspiration for Jahn’s later, massive Sony Center in Berlin. – Chicago Reader
Norman Lloyd, Whose Career Spanned Most Of Hollywood’s History, Dead At 106
He started his working life onstage with Eva Le Gallienne and Orson Welles; acted in films by Welles, Chaplin, Renoir, and Hitchcock (he was the villain in Saboteur); produced and directed episodes of Hitchcock’s TV series (which saved him from the blacklist); had a key role in the primetime medical drama St. Elsewhere; and racked up countless other credits on both sides of the camera and the theater stage. He played his final role, in the Amy Schumer vehicle Trainwreck, at age 100. – The Washington Post
With New Hosts, NPR’s ‘Invisibilia’ Podcast Is Reorienting Itself
“‘Something we’ve thought about for a long time is how the show has historically had a strong emphasis on the individual and the internal world and how there was an absence of perspective about the larger structures that the individual exists inside of,’ said [producer Abby] Wendle. To describe the intended shift in somewhat reductive terms, then, this new iteration is an effort to step away from the purely psychological and towards the more structural, societal, and sociological.” – Vulture
Most Plays Are Just Better Without Intermissions
Charles McNulty: “I prefer to experience plays the way I experience films at the movie theater — uninterrupted. At night when I awake momentarily from dreaming, I can rarely, if ever, restart the same dream when I fall back to sleep. The spell is broken. … Playwrights do the dreamwork for us, but our absorption is required. And unless a complicated set change demands an extended time out, I’d prefer not to have to return to the workaday world until the play is over.” – Los Angeles Times
Race Is On To Save Boston Mansion Designed, Inside And Out, By Louis Comfort Tiffany
“The mansion was recently listed for sale — along with an adjoining building — with an asking price of $22.5 million. That has caused a measure of distress among some people who have worked for years to restore what they regard as a crucial monument to Tiffany’s genius.” – The New York Times
One Down, Two To Go: Met Opera Reaches Labor Agreement With Chorus
“The union, the American Guild of Musical Artists — which also represents soloists, dancers, actors and stage managers — is the first of the three largest Met unions to reach such a deal after months of sometimes-bitter division between labor and management over how deep and lasting the pandemic pay cuts should be.” – The New York Times
Turner Prize Finalist Group Calls Out Turner Prize: ‘Extractive And Exploitative’
From the statement released by Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S.), one of five art-and-social-justice collectives nominated for this year’s prize: “The urgency with which we have been asked to participate, perform, and deliver demonstrates the extractive and exploitative practices in prize culture, and more widely across the industry — one where Black, brown, working-class, disabled, queer bodies are desirable, quickly dispensable, but never sustainably cared for. … We demand the right to thrive in conditions that are nurturing and supportive.” – Artnet
Status Report: When And How Various Countries Are Restarting Their Arts Scenes
Here’s where plans currently stand in Australia, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Spain, as well as the U.S. – Reuters
Balanchine’s Biggest Fan – Nancy Lassalle, 93
“She was the ultimate board member,” said Albert Bellas, chairman emeritus of the S.A.B. “She was financially supportive, knowledgeable and committed.” She was also a daily presence. – The New York Times
Fear My Book? Ban My Book?
“Those who seek to ban my book and others like it are trying to exploit fear — fear about the realities that books like mine expose, fear about desire and sex and love — and distort it into something ugly, in an attempt to wish away queer experiences.” – The New York Times
Scotland Says Theatres Can Reopen. Theatres Say “No”
In a survey conducted by the Federation of Scottish Theatre (FST), 96% of members responded that it is not economically viable for them to reopen under the current restrictions. – The Guardian
Maybe Hollywood Could Just Give Up On The Golden Globes Entirely
Kyle Buchanan: “That’s the thing about awards: These trophies are only as important as the recipients believe them to be, and now that the illusion of the Golden Globes has been punctured, stars might find it hard to go back to suspending their disbelief. … In the meantime, it’s possible that another awards show” — such as SAG or Critics’ Choice — “could move to early January to effectively take the Globes’ place on the awards calendar next year.” – The New York Times
The WPA is history
New York City has announced a new program, City Artist Corps, inspired by FDR’s Works Progress Administration. There are two major problems with launching a WPA-styled policy in 2021, one in terms of the choice of policy, and one in terms of the very conception of arts policy. Let’s look at these in turn. – Michael Rushton
A Soldier’s Tale for Today — Premiered
As I put it in a program note: “It’s a COVID-period entertainment: compact, flexible, rejecting Romantic symphonic upholstery in favor of a dry, caustic sonority conducive to bitter entertainments, light-hearted yet not evasive.” – Joseph Horowitz
Setting Of James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ Is Being Turned Into A Hostel, Sending Literary Folk Into A Tizzy
The unassuming 18th-century townhouse at 15 Usher’s Island is where Joyce’s great-aunts ran a music school, and their annual Epiphany dinner was the model for the gathering in the final story of Dubliners. Two Irish investors who bought the house for €650,000 (cheap by current Dublin standards) have gotten permits to convert the four-story building into a 56-bed tourist hostel — and outraged writers from Edna O’Brien and John Banville in Ireland to Rachel Kushner and Salman Rushdie abroad have signed an angry petition put together by Colm Tóibín. – The New York Times