“Adopt actual social service initiatives. Organizations should shy away from an exclusive approach and move more towards a ‘for the people and (inspired) by the people’ methodology. It’s about inviting people in that may not even know they want to engage with the arts.”
Our Culture Is Based On The Enlightenment. Now Those Ideas Need Defending
Immanuel Kant defined the Enlightenment as the “progress of mankind toward improvement” through the “freedom to make public use of one’s reason on every point,” and Vincenzo Ferrone claims it is this critical process that has driven public opinion and politics, giving us the language of human rights, tolerance, and individual liberty.
“Hard To Overstate His Significance In Italian Culture” Dante Turns 750
“I teach Dante to American undergraduates, and I struggle to convey to them his place in Italian culture. The obvious comparison is to Shakespeare, but this is like trying to make sense of Mozart by means of Coltrane: the number of centuries that divide Dante from Shakespeare is practically as large as the number that separates Shakespeare from us.”
How Hollywood Has Failed The Great Comic Books
“To love American cinema is to love comic-book movies, and to want better comic-book movies in the future. What made the first round of actual comic book movies from Superman (1978) to Batman (1989) so disheartening was that they were distinctly bad. They were bad for a number of reasons.”
UNESCO Warns That Antiquities In Palmyra World Heritage Site Are Threatened By ISIS
“Palmyra is home to a UNESCO world heritage site and is famous for its 2,000-year-old ruins, including a Roman aqueduct and necropolises. Syria’s antiquities chief said on Saturday that the militants would destroy the ancient ruins if they took control of the city.”
What Orchestras Can Learn From The Failed “Concert Companion” About Innovating
They must “build innovation into the core product so that eventually innovation becomes part of your incremental track. It’s a 10-year window and requires a real investment in innovation.”
Study: Experiencing Awe Builds Compassion, Humility
“Reminding participants of a time when they experienced awe … increased their tendencies to endorse ethical decisions across a variety of scenarios.”
Utah Symphony And Opera Musicians Sign New Contract, Get Raise
“The deal includes an average 3.5 percent increase in base salary in each of the next three seasons for the musicians, who endured $3.8 million in salary cuts over the past seven years as the orchestra weathered a nationwide economic downturn and its aftermath.”
Why The New Shakespeare “Portrait” Is So Not Him
By the time we get to Shakespeare, a lot of logic has been sidestepped. And now we really do enter Dan Brown territory. Starting from the heraldic tradition of the “sign of 4”, he embarks on a series of elaborate moves involving Latin and coats of arms to produce the name “Shakespeare.”
Remember When The Tech Revolution Was Supposed To Be For The Masses? Now Not So Much
“We are once again living in a go-go time for tech, but there are few signs that the most consequential fruits of the boom have reached the masses. Instead, the boom is characterized by a rise in so-called on-demand services aimed at the wealthy and the young.”
Jerry Saltz: How Kim Kardashian Is Achieving Art World Cred
“I think that we may be turning a corner away from what I think of as takedown culture. It all comes from cynicism, the feeling that the system is corrupt and that everything is rigged and nothing is what it seems. We all love a good critical catfight, but somehow, with these catfights and cynical demonizations becoming the way of mainstream media, I perceive the wider culture and the art world slowly trying to separate out and isolate this behavior for what it is: Headline-grabbing, grandstanding, gasbags, people scared of change, or afraid of going deeper.”
Study Says Typical Kids’ Dance Classes Don’t Provide Enough Physical Activity
“Only 8% of children and 6% of adolescents achieved the 30-minute recommendation for after-school moderate-to-vigorous exercise. In children, the type of dance really mattered. Hip-hop was the most active kind of dance, with 57% of class time being devoted to moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Jazz took second place, followed by partnered class, tap, salsa and finally ballet, where 30% of class is spent in moderate-to-vigorous activity.”
Maria Abramovic Complains Jay Z Took Advantage Of Her. But Who Took Advantage Of Whom?
Maria Abramović has crossed a line that even Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst are wary of. Someone was bound to do it eventually. She has not just taken art out of the gallery but into a realm of rock concert hysteria and teen adulation. To put it kindly, you can say her fans resemble the star-struck kids in old films of the Beatles. But what is the cultural price of mass intoxication? Is it a good thing?
Handicapping This Year’s Tony Nominees For Best Actor
While 20 have been nominated, only four will win. “Here, a look at who’s ahead, who can upset and who should just be happy to be there.”
Heel-gate Ends: Cannes Film Festival Apologizes
“We apologise. There was perhaps a small moment of over-zealousness,” Cannes Festival director Thierry Fremaux said, apparently referring to the security guards who prohibited women without heels from walking the festival red carpet.
Bruce Lundvall, 79, Influential Jazz Recording Exec
Mr. Lundvall’s career in the recording industry encompassed more than half a century, with success across multiple genres. Blue Note had been an important jazz label for decades but had been dormant for years when he revived it under the umbrella of EMI Records in 1984, intent on celebrating its legacy while moving forward.
PEN Warns That China Censors Foreign Translations Without Authors’ Knowledge
“A report Wednesday from the PEN American Center says translated versions of foreign books may be excised because of political sensitivities, like Taiwan, Tibet and the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on democracy protesters. But references to sexually explicit material and gay and lesbian issues are also frowned upon.”
Toronto’s Luminato Festival Gets Anthony Sargent As New CEO
Sargent, 65, recently stepped down after his latest triumph: leading the team of Sage Gateshead in creating an internationally acclaimed new venue for music in northeast England. Previously Sargent worked for the BBC as concerts planning manager, including the work of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and helped create the BBC Millennium Music Live project.
Landmarks Commission Rules Against Altering Modernist NYC Classic
“The interior of the Four Seasons restaurant, a vision of Modernist elegance with its French walnut paneling and white marble pool of bubbling water, should not be changed, New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission decided on Tuesday.”
Artist: We Should Prescribe Drugs For Creativity
“Basically what I’m proposing is the idea of using performance-enhancing drugs in education,” Leon Ewing told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Wednesday. “We already prescribe amphetamine-like medication for focus and docility. What if we medicated for creativity?”
Pandora Buys Music Data Service To Track Popularity
“Next Big Sound has quickly become a standard part of the analytical sphere of the music industry, digesting the ebbs and flows of artists’ popularity through activity on YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia and elsewhere. It sells its analyses to record companies and other outlets, and its reports on music consumption are frequently cited by the music press.”
How Pandora Can Make A Success In The Music Streaming Business
“As is the case for most digital-media content providers, growth increasingly depends on maximizing the reams of data compiled about users — totalling some 79.2 million for Pandora as of March 31. For Pandora, advertising is especially important because the great majority of its users choose to listen to ads rather than pay for a subscription to avoid them.”
Stewart Copeland On The Differences Between Pop And Classical Music
“Composing music for readers is all about homework. You have to get it right in the quiet in front of your score. You put it on the page, flop it out on the stands and count them in. With bands, you don’t have any score – you think on your feet. It’s not about homework. It’s about being ready to follow the trend or lead the trend. It’s much more spontaneous.”