“From natural disasters to cast mishaps, from visa snafus to failing voices, the team at Spoleto Festival USA has been there, done that and has the war stories to prove it. And here you thought those beads of sweat on their foreheads were from Charleston humidity.” – The Post and Courier (Charleston)
Arturo Luz, Neo-Realist And Key Figure In Art Spaces In The Philippines, 94
As an artist, “Luz was best known as an artist who liked to use spare lines and dramatic compositions in his practice that included painting, collage, printmaking, sculpture and photography.” But he was much more. “As an art administrator and curator from the 1960s onwards, he championed a modernist visual language in sharp contrast to prevailing fashions favouring classic European painting and sculpture.” – The Art Newspaper
The Hollywood Bowl Is On Plan C, Full Reopen
As vaccines spread and COVID-19 numbers drop, “concert and theater venues are scrambling to keep up and figure out when and how to welcome back the crowds they depend on. For the Hollywood Bowl — perhaps the most celebrated outdoor venue in the nation — that has meant making plans, and ripping them up again, as it rides rapidly changing county and state regulations and shifting public attitudes ahead of its planned July 3 opening.” – The New York Times
An Opera By The Dean Of Black American Composers Finally Retakes The Stage
William Grant Still’s one-act Highway 1, U.S.A. has barely been seen since its 1963 premiere, but it’s being brought back to life this summer by Opera Theater of St. Louis with a cast headed by Nicole Cabell and Will Liverman and no less than Leonard Slatkin conducting. Yet it wouldn’t have happened at all if not for COVID. – The New York Times
Getting New York’s Comedy Clubs Reopened Is No Laughing Matter
With capacity restrictions, social distancing rules, other safety measures, and eager-but-nervous audiences and performers, venues from mighty Caroline’s to tiny Stand Up NY have some difficult tricks to pull off. There are some good jokes, though. (Brian Scott McFadden: “I spoke with my agent and I can’t get COVID because I have a deal with Ebola.”) – Gothamist
Liam Scarlett’s Death Did Not Happen The Way Everyone Presumed It Did
The British choreographer, aged 35, died in April, one day after the Royal Danish Ballet announced it was cancelling its staging of his Frankenstein over #MeToo allegations against him; similar accusations led to his firing from London’s Royal Ballet in 2020. The widespread assumption was that Scarlett committed suicide after the release of the news from Copenhagen; in fact, he had been admitted to a hospital, unconscious, four days earlier. – The Guardian
Arts Groups To UK: Thanks For Offering Us Relief Funding — Now Could You Please Actually Send It?
“Hundreds of arts organisations that received grants in the Culture Recovery Fund’s second round are still waiting for money to be paid out, causing damaging cashflow problems and delaying projects, … despite the second round of CRF being specifically designed to support companies during April to June.” – The Stage
The Two Women Who Preserved The Stories Of The Tulsa Race Massacre
The first, Mary E. Jones Parrish, was a relative newcomer to Tulsa when the events of May 31, 1921, went down. She was an educator, but “the massacre compelled her to become a journalist and author, writing down her own experiences and collecting the accounts of many others. Her book Events of the Tulsa Disaster, published in 1923, was the first and most visceral long-form account of how Greenwood residents experienced the massacre.” – The New Yorker
Newark’s Quirks: Examining the Museum’s (& Sotheby’s) Art Sale Shenanigans
In my previous post on the Newark Museum of Art’s dicey deaccessions, I didn’t analyze the overall sale totals, my customary practice when covering auctions. Here’s why: It took a while for me to assemble the information I needed, because Sotheby’s now intentionally withholds the figures that I’ve habitually relied upon to evaluate results. – Lee Rosenbaum
How Italy’s Art Police Turned The Tide On Tomb Raiders
It takes extraordinary measures to deal with the thieves. “Looters have been plundering Italy’s cultural sites for decades, but since 2012 their trade has not been as fruitful, owing to an intensified crackdown by Italy’s art police. … In 2020, the squad found 24 illegal digs, arrested 68 thieves and recuperated 17,503 archaeological artefacts. The unit carries out controls of archaeological sites on the ground or above by helicopter. A scuba-diving team also patrols archaeological sites along the Italian coast.” – The Guardian (UK)
The Fonts Of The NYT Book Review
The history of the New York Times Book Review is pretty interesting for word nerds. “Although photos already appeared in other parts of the paper, these came only later to the Book Review. The publication turned instead to typography — some of it quite fanciful — to set its distinctive-looking pages apart.” – The New York Times
Misconduct Allegations Rock LA’s Largest LGBTQ Theatre Company
Celebration Theatre’s longtime AD Michael Shepperd was accused of sexual misconduct over more than a decade – and the accusers say that the theatre mishandled those complaints until last week, when an internal investigation prompted the theatre to let him go. When there’s a power differential, can a small theatre be a “safe, sex-positive” space? – Los Angeles Times
Faye Schulman, Who Fought The Nazis With A Rifle And A Camera, 101
Her rifle was important during the war; her camera became more important after: “As one of the only known Jewish partisan photographers, Mrs. Schulman, thanks to her own graphic record-keeping, debunked the common narrative that most Eastern European Jews had gone quietly to their deaths.” – The New York Times
The ‘Paddington 2’ Stranglehold On Rotten Tomatoes Is Over
There’s a bad review of Paddington 2? Yes” “The new Paddington 2 review slammed the warm-hearted adventure film for having deviated from the spirit of Michael Bond’s children’s books, being ‘contrived and ridiculous,’ with Paddington being ‘over-confident, snide and sullen,’ claimed ‘considerations of race and identity, key to the Paddington character, are not addressed,’ and added that voice actor Ben Whishaw sounded ‘like a member of some indie-pop band coming down from an agonizing ketamine high.'” – The Hollywood Reporter
Under Biden’s Plan, NEA Funding Would Rise
On the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, President Biden proposed a 20 percent increase in funding for an agency the previous president always threatened to cut entirely. “According to the endowment’s analysis, the Biden spending plan would be the largest single-year increase in its funding since the jump between 2009 and 2010 when its budget rose from $155 million to $167.5 million.” – The New York Times
Alix Dobkin, Who Wrote Songs Of Liberation, 80
Dobkin was an early idol in the women-loving-women movement. “Long before K.D. Lang transformed herself from a country artist into an androgyne pop idol and sex symbol, smoldering in a man’s suit on the cover of Vanity Fair being mock-shaved by the supermodel Cindy Crawford; long before Melissa Etheridge sold millions of copies of her 1993 album, Yes I Am, and in so doing came out as a gay rock star; and long before the singer-songwriter Jill Sobule’s ‘I Kissed a Girl’ hit the Billboard charts, the folk singer Alix Dobkin chopped her hair off, formed a band and recorded Lavender Jane Loves Women.” – The New York Times
There’s No Actual Mayor Of Easttown, But Residents Have Some Thoughts On Mare
The chair of the Board of Supervisors of Easttown says the real town isn’t much like the show. “‘I can’t remember when the last homicide was here, if ever,’ said Marc Heppe (pronounced “heppy”), chair of the Easttown Township board of supervisors. … The big conflicts are over ‘a lot of NIMBY stuff’ — new development and more traffic. But locals are proud of the show.” – Los Angeles Times
Gearing Up For Summer Reading
You ready for 75 nonfiction books in 90 days? (Oddly, LitHub also has recommendations for a mere 38 fiction works in the summer, but hey, perhaps fiction is slower than nonfiction for some people?) On your marks, as Memorial Day approaches. Get set! Hit up your local indie bookshop … and … GO. – LitHub
Millions Lost: Australian Ballet Hit Harder By Pandemic Than Most Of Country’s Large Arts Orgs
“The Australian Ballet forfeited $32 million [Aus] in ticket revenue [and posted $2.4 million in operating losses] for 2020, a pandemic blow that it has only survived thanks to an outpouring of community and government support, plus a decision to raid its reserves and sell off investments. … It bucks the trend of many other major arts organisations including Victorian Opera, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Sydney Symphony Orchestra which chalked up pandemic profits on the back of continued government funding without the costs of performance.” – The Age (Melbourne)