The artist, writer, and AIDS activist “was only 37 when he died, but he left behind an extraordinary body of work, particularly considering the uncongenial circumstances of much of his short life. A refugee from a violent family, a former street kid and teen hustler, he grew up to become one of the stars of the febrile 1980s East Village art scene, alongside Kiki Smith, Nan Goldin, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.”
This Civil Servant Wrote A Guide Based Entirely On Public Information – And Was Charged With Revealing Government Secrets
Said the magistrate, “This is one of the clearest cases for [an acquittal] that I’ve seen in my 26 years being here.”
Yes, We Need Shocking Theatre – But In Limited Doses
Michael Billington: “Several recent experiences have led me to believe there is a vital distinction to be made between the moral awakening that comes from shock and the visceral impact of unmitigated horror.” (E.g., King Lear versus Titus Andronicus)
Arts Funding Bloodbath In Australia: 65 Orgs Lose All Federal Grants
“More than half the applicants failed to receive organisational support from the Australia Council’s four-year funding round, and 65 previously-funded organisations no longer have funding.”
What Makes An American Essay ‘American’?
“The essay, in its American incarnation, is a direct outgrowth of the sermon: argumentative, insistent, not infrequently irritating. Americans, in my observation – and despite our fetish for the beauties of individuality and personal freedom – are always, however smilingly, trying to convince somebody, somewhere, of something, and our essayistic tradition bears this out.”
D.C. Dance Critic Jean Battey Lewis Dead At 91
“[She] oversaw The Washington Post‘s dance coverage for nearly 15 years during a modern-dance boom in the city and later worked for the Washington Times as its dance critic.”
Met Opera’s Young Artist Program Has A New Boss
“For 3½ years, Michael Heaston, 37, has been an artistic power behind the throne at the Washington National Opera, running the Domingo-Cafritz program and the American Opera Initiative … As of this month, he has started in an advisory capacity as executive director of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, and will take over the position full time Aug. 29.”
When Every Book Suddenly Had To Get Five Stars
“I was shaking my pom-poms for books. However, I wasn’t doing so because I was an industry shill, shallow, or self-interested. I failed to provide meaningful criticism, information, or recommendations because I was, like so many of my colleagues, frightened about the future of books and publishing. In desperate times, the desperate tilt at windmills.”
Will – Or Should – People Buy Two Seasons Worth Of Theatre Tix In Order To See ‘Hamilton’?
“Is this price gouging, or the arts equivalent of blackmail? The problem is a by-product of the escalation of ticket prices for theatre everywhere. The result is that it now costs many hundreds of dollars for a single subscription to a Broadway touring series, let alone a pair for those who don’t like to see theatre alone.”
Print Was Never Dead, But It’s Rising Again Anyway
“Publishing, like other industries before (and since), suffered a bad attack of technodazzle: It failed to distinguish between newness and value. It could read digital’s hysterical cheerleaders, but not predict how a market of human beings would respond to a product once the novelty had passed. It ignored human nature. Reading the meaning of words is not consuming a manufacture: it is experience.”
How Best To Preserve Hong Kong’s Protest Street Art?
“In Hong Kong, the goal is not only to preserve the objects for posterity. Although the protests have disbanded, Mr. Wong said, the hope is to display the objects in a way that can revive the spirit of the movement.”
The British Composers Who Took Minor Poems And Made Them Into Major Works Of Art
“Composers, however, have rarely hesitated … to treat their poets in cavalier fashion: changing titles, altering words, omitting or repeating lines or whole stanzas. Of course, poems have become known across the globe, carried by the power of music.”
New Policies Aim To Calm The Hamilton Lines, And Resale Fees, Down A Bit
First, Ticketmaster canceled the tickets of entities that had bought too many – and sold them to Hamilton fans who saw the tweet about new tickets in time. Them, “producers also announced via Twitter new rules for people waiting in line, often round-the-clock, outside the Richard Rodgers Theater, hoping to buy the few tickets released by the box office just before each show.”
The Toast Is Closing, And Here Are Some Of Its Finest Moments
“The Internet wept. It’s hard to believe that The Toast has only been in our lives for three short years, but in that time it has become a bastion of hilarity, comfort, and understanding.”
(Here is the announcement by the Toast’s owner/editors.)
Where Did Yves Klein Get Into All Of That Blue Paint, Anyway?
“Levin had called Klein’s blue paint ‘cheap poster-paint.’ Musgrave corrected him in a letter to the editor, pointing out that Klein ‘prepares and grinds his own paint, an exacting process which gives it its own especial depth, brilliance and beauty.’ This was Klein’s ultramarine blue, in which the radiance and intensity of the original dry pigment was not compromised or dulled by the medium binding it to the support.”
Barbican Chief Says The Arts Center Was Wrong To Cancel “Exhibit B” After Protests
“The scale of the complaints took us by surprise. We were not trying to cause offence and we were always willing to engage in debate. But I accept that we did offend and we offended doubly. We offended those who thought the production was racist and those who thought we prevented freedom of speech when we made the decision on advice from the police to cancel the show.”
So E-Books Are Down And Paper Books Are Up. What Happened?
“What went wrong? Clearly publishing, like other industries before (and since), suffered a bad attack of technodazzle: It failed to distinguish between newness and value. It could read digital’s hysterical cheerleaders, but not predict how a market of human beings would respond to a product once the novelty had passed. It ignored human nature. Reading the meaning of words is not consuming a manufacture: it is experience.”
Without Warning, Brussels Ends All Funding For European Union Youth Orchestra; Music Community Fights Back
EUYO chief executive Marshall Marcus writes about the extraordinary praise the band has received over its 40 years, the bureaucratic reason for the cutoff of money, and how the likes of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Barbican, and the Salzburg Festival are responding.
‘Geek Love’ Author Katherine Dunn Dead At 70
“Dunn had two little-known novels to her name, written in the early 1970s, when Geek Love became widely celebrated. … She seemed bemused by her sudden literary fame after years of struggling to earn a living by working freelance for a number of regional and national outlets, including as an advice columnist and as a boxing writer.”