Centuries have gone into the making of these rules and assumptions — and a bit of sleight of hand, as well. Men were not always inclined toward minimalism. For a good portion of human history, they were flamboyant in their dress, prone to peacocking their social rank, financial success and sexual prowess from 100 paces. – Washington Post
Lauren Lovette, Retired NY City Ballet Star, Moves Into Her Next Career: Choreography
“For Lovette, becoming a choreographer was something she grew into. ‘When I was 18 and I had just joined the New York City Ballet and the corps, I remember doing a piece next to Justin Peck … and I thought, ‘That’s a choreographer. I’m not. I’ll just stick to dancing. I don’t think I have what it takes.’ And it was my boss. Peter Martins, who ever since that day thought that my piece was really good, even if I didn’t think so. Every year, in passing, he’d say, ‘She’s a choreographer.'” – Los Angeles Magazine
What Made Ida Lupino The First Lady of Film Noir
“In The Bigamist, … no one gets beaten up or shot. No one robs a bank or a payroll, and the culprit’s downfall is signaled by nothing more violent than a baby’s sudden cry from out of the dark. Yet it qualifies as a noir, this smoky, black-and-white study in human failure, thwarted desire, and quiet desperation. When you add that The Bigamist is implicitly critical of the conventional moral standards governing romantic triangles, you get a sense of what distinguishes Ida Lupino’s films, as well as why I have dubbed her ‘the First Lady of noir.'” – The American Scholar
Yiddish Theater Was Basically A Historical Accident
The great flowering of Yiddish-language drama in the late 19th and early 20th centuries reached its apogee in New York, but it was born in the Romanian city of Iași and grew up, very quickly, in Odessa — a place in which public performance in Yiddish was illegal except for five crucial years. – Tablet
Smaller Museums Across U.S. Try To Reach Communities They’ve Missed Before
“This is an existential moment for museums across America, with many facing yawning budget deficits alongside calls for deep structural change — and visitors only trickling back through their doors as the pandemic’s chill on cultural life slowly lifts. For some directors of small and midsize museums, the events of the last 12 months have given fresh urgency to their outreach initiatives — particularly to Black communities — and their efforts to make their collections relevant to a restless and reform-minded younger generation.” – The New York Times
France Takes Its €300 Culture Pass For Young People Nationwide
“After a regional trial run, French president Emmanuel Macron is launching his program to fund cultural activities for young people nationally. Culture Pass, as the initiative is called, is now open to all 18 year olds in France, and will be extended to high schools across the nation in 2022.” – Artnet
What Happens To Literary Culture When Book Reviews Go Away
“The ubiquity of social media is often offered up as a solution to the paucity of mainstream book criticism. While it is no longer possible to earn a living as a working critic, the internet has provided us with arguably more amateur criticism than at any other point in history, from BookTube to Bookstagram to Twitter Books. But the vast majority of this coverage goes unrecognized by a large swath of the reading public, with individual commentators usually maintaining small, fragmented audiences that are frequently genre-specific or otherwise limited in scope.” – The Walrus
Media Companies Are Consolidating Again. Sound Familiar?
For decades before the internet, TV was dominated by the Big Three: CBS, ABC, and NBC. Movies were probably brought to you by Paramount, Warner Bros., MGM, or one of a handful of others. Now all of those assets, after being scooped up and realigned by bigger companies or telecoms, have come out in a new form, one that focuses more on where content will ultimately wind up when it hits streaming rather than where it debuts. – Wired
Colleges Give Record Average 59 Percent Discount On Tuition This Year
The average discount rate for first-time undergraduates reached 53.9 percent — an all-time high — during the 2020-21 academic year, according to NACUBO’s preliminary estimates released Wednesday. In other words, for every $100 in tuition colleges appear to charge on paper, they do not collect $53.90 from first-time undergraduate students. – Inside Higher Ed
COVID Protocols In Place, Canada’s Movie, TV Production Is Busier Than Ever
Canada’s film industry has managed to continue through the pandemic, in many cases as busy — or more — than before global industry shutdowns. In emails to CBC News, film boards across the country reported healthy industries. – CBC
How The Crowd Amplifies And Defines Art
Until last year, the crowd was the trademark of the city. All through the day and night, people shoaled together, hurrying through streets, dawdling in parks, jostling at protests, concerts and football matches, like so many bees in a hive. Pre-pandemic, any film that wanted to kindle an atmosphere of eeriness needed only to show one of the world’s great cities empty of people to instantly convey disaster. – The Guardian
How James Bond Complicates Amazon’s $9 Billion Bid To Buy MGM
Other companies have kicked the tires on MGM at various points during a stop-and-start sales process that has been dragging on for months. Industry insiders say that the true value of the studio is more in the $5 billion to $6 billion range along with the assumption of some debt. Even then, they are skeptical that MGM’s prize asset, its stake in the 007 franchise, can be properly monetized. – Variety
Why Conservatives Are Afraid Of The 1619 Project
For the past five years, conservatives have been howling about the alleged censoriousness of the American left, in particular on college campuses. But the denial of tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones shows that the real conflict is over how American society understands its present inequalities. – The Atlantic
Are Christie’s Warhol NFTs Fake?
Christie’s is collaborating with the Andy Warhol Foundation to stage an NFT sale comprising little-known digital art works from the Pop master’s archive. After the house announced the sale on Wednesday, some experts objected to it, claiming that the works being auctioned were essentially copies. – ARTnews
San Francisco’s Guaranteed Income For Artists Program Gets A Financial Boost From Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey
StartSmall’s gift will extend the pilot, administered by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in partnership with Mayor London Breed, in two ways. The first 130 artists will receive $1,000 monthly payments for another full year, for a total of 18 months. It will also fund a second round in which of 50 more artists will receive 18 monthly payment. – San Francisco Chronicle
Adapting A Bestselling Historical Novel For The Stage During A Global Pandemic Isn’t Easy
But, of course, Hilary Mantel isn’t really into easy. She and actor Ben Miles had to figure out their newest Thomas Cromwell adaptation: “You can only do so much on Zoom, Mantel said, ‘because every line has to find its precise form for the next line to play off it. You have to have precision. We would pass our drafts to and fro, getting them to work and then polish them up line by line. We had to be good clerks to each other.'” – The Guardian (UK)
Should We Call Great Women Artists By Their First Names?
Maybe. It depends entirely on the scholarship, and the artist. And then there’s research: “The same artist with different names can be confusing even if the change happens just once, as in maiden name (the term itself is rife with problematic patriarchy) to married name. It’s a historical hitch in tracking a person, but also a literary one. Just how should a biographer refer to a woman artist in her youth if she later married and made work under a different name? Using different appellations for the same person is strange, but so is describing a young girl with her later married name.” – Hyperallergic
When An Actor Agrees To Take A Subject’s Secrets To The Grave
Actor Diego Boneta could only play famously secretive musician Luis Miguel for Netflix after studying the musician for years – and hiring both an acting and a vocal coach to help him sound, and seem, more like Miguel. But he needed something else: Time with Miguel himself. Boneta says, “He shared some things that he asked me to not share with anyone else, not even the writers. … ‘This is just for you Diego, to help you.’ We shared that secret. It created a complicity between us.” – Los Angeles Times
Librarian Ruth Freitag, Who Helped Isaac Asimov And Carl Sagan With Research, 96
Freitag, “a reference librarian at the Library of Congress for nearly a half-century, was unknown to the general public. But she was, in more ways than one, a librarian to the stars. Known for her encyclopedic knowledge of resources in science and technology, Ms. Freitag was sought out by the leading interpreters of the galaxy. She developed a particular expertise in astronomy early in her career.” – The New York Times
Please Stop The Streaming Wars
It may be time to just quit everything. “My eyeballs are considering taking themselves off the market entirely. They’re sick of being courted, coaxed and, frankly, pressured into choosing this streaming service over that one, trying to keep up with all the glitzy platforms while not ignoring the quieter but equally worthy requests coming from those who may not be able to afford the lavish campaigns.” – Los Angeles Times
What Might Opera Look Like In A Post-Pandemic World?
Let the Long Beach Opera show you. “Guests have the choice of watching this production “tailgate-style” or from inside their automobiles. The action occurs throughout a parking structure with multiple screens projected live on big screens.” Safe, and very Southern California as well. – Los Angeles Times
Show Our Arts Orgs The Money, Please
U.S. arts organizations are still waiting for that cultural institution money to flow. “Business owners are wary of the promise after weeks of delay and confusion over the initiative, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, which many had cheered as a lifeline. Each day applicants vent their frustrations on an online forum, regularly polling one another on whether any applications have yet been officially approved or rejected.”- The New York Times
Alix Dobkin, ‘Head Lesbian’ And First Star Of Womyn’s Music, Dead At 80
“In the early 1970s, long before the rise of lesbian or gay-friendly acts such as K.D. Lang, Melissa Etheridge, Ani DiFranco and the Indigo Girls, Ms. Dobkin was writing and recording songs that celebrated lesbian life. … [She made] music history in 1973 when she released Lavender Jane Loves Women, generally considered the first full-length album by, for and about lesbians.” Dobkin went on to spend decades performing on the lesbian coffeehouse-bookstore-music festival circuit, becoming such an institution that her fans called her “the Head Lesbian.” – The Washington Post