Theatre working conditions often aren’t ideal for anyone, much less people whose bodies and minds have been harmed by the virus. “Theatre artists and practitioners with chronic illnesses and disabilities have long documented how the industry is inaccessible or even unkind.” Can theatre change? – American Theatre
How Toronto’s Royal Conservatory Of Music Survived The Shutdown
With now over 60,000 students having taken online practical and theoretical exams, it became a sink-or-swim moment testing RCM’s ability to keep anxious students engaged and motivated. –Ludwig Van
Abu Dhabi, Hoping To Become Cultural Tourism Destination, Pumps More Billions Into Arts
The capital of the United Arab Emirates, whose government wants to diversify its economy away from oil and catch up with Dubai as the UAE’s major draw for foreign visitors, is adding $6 billion over five years to its budget for the cultural sector. While some of the funding will support media, music, and cultural heritage, much of it will go toward completing the museums — most notably, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, with a building designed by Frank Gehry — that will join the now-open Louvre Abu Dhabi on the emirate’s Saadiyat Island. – Artnet
The New King Of The Hollywood Musicals
Making Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights helped Chu figure out what he’s trying to say with his films. Through them, he’s arguing for telling fresh stories via beloved, old-school Hollywood styles. But he also wants to do more than entertain; he wants to help audiences reflect on their own connections to what’s happening on screen. – The Atlantic
Film Festivals Crank Up As The Movie Business Hangs In Balance
With Cannes on the verge of reigniting international festival activity and Telluride keen on reclaiming the Oscar influencer throne, festivals are mobilizing to become the frontlines for an industry that must assess an uncertain future. – IndieWire
King Philip II’s Raphael Tapestries Are In Danger — From Pigeons
“The exquisite set of Raphael tapestries currently on display in the grand gallery of Madrid’s royal palace has survived five tumultuous centuries of wars, rebellions, bombs, bullets and fire – only to find itself menaced by the more quotidian threat of opportunistic pigeons and their droppings. … The [summertime] need to ventilate the gallery, which gives on to the palace grounds, means opening the windows to both fresh air and pigeons.” – The Guardian
How Social Media Is Changing Lit
Complaining about other, more successful writers is one of the most popular activities on Twitter, as is devising elaborately exacting standards of correct speech and vigorously, if informally, prosecuting those who violate them. – Slate
A First Look At Stratford’s New $70 Million Theatre
Its physical beauty is a far cry from the rough-and-ready look of the previous Tom Patterson Theatre: a converted curling rink. – Toronto Star
NFTs Of Artists Vandalizing Their Art — What Could Go Wrong?
When the artist is the instigator of damage (to their own work, or that of another, such as Robert Rauschenberg erasing a Willem de Kooning work), the act of vandalism becomes part of an artistic strategy. – The Art Newspaper
Museum Endowments Soar During Pandemic — But…
Disappointingly, however, that silver lining has been tarnished by an unconscionable rush to the auction house by numerous museums eager to take advantage of a very bad decision made last year by the Assn. of Art Museum Directors. To ward off expected catastrophe, AAMD hastily relaxed a fundamental prohibition against using income from the sale of museum art to pay for museum operations, which includes collection care. – Los Angeles Times
Chicago’s City-wide Debate On Its Monuments
No other American city has opened up this sort of wide-ranging dialogue about how cities make monuments. Swept up in this inquiry are five statues of Abraham Lincoln, as well as monuments to George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and the Italian Fascist Italo Balbo. – Bloomberg
Latest Hot Music Market: Meditation Apps
With no dance floors or concert halls to fill, many listeners turned toward gentler, unobtrusive music to help quiet their restless minds. In response, artists who might not have publicly ventured into this sometimes esotericterrain now feel emboldened to do so. – The New York Times
A New Era In Our Relationship With “Non-Human” Things
For the first time, Timothy Morton wrote, we had become aware that “nonhuman beings” were “responsible for the next moment of human history and thinking.” The nonhuman beings Morton had in mind weren’t computers or space aliens but a particular group of objects that were “massively distributed in time and space.” Morton called them “hyperobjects.” – The New Yorker
How Did We Finally Get To A Consensus On Repatriating The Benin Bronzes? (A Roundtable)
“To better understand this critical turning point, Artnet News brought together three key figures for a conversation about the restitution of the Benin bronzes: Victor Ehikhamenor, a Lagos-based artist and trustee of the Legacy Restoration Trust, an organization working on the Benin bronzes’ return; Pitt Rivers Museum curator Dan Hicks, author of The Brutish Museums; and Marla Berns, director of the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles. Here’s what they told us.” – Artnet
Santa Fe’s Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Announces Big Expansion
The museum owns the former Safeway building, where its Education Center is located; the 1870s Bergere House, where museum administrative offices as well as library, archives and research center are located; and the two-story, 19,362-square-foot office building at Marcy Street and Grant, where the Sommer Udall Law Firm and the museum have offices. – Santa Fe New Mexican
Alvin Ailey ADT In The Age Of BLM: Artistic Director Robert Battle
“The foundation is the experiences of African Americans in this country — and knowing that is not monolithic. Within the diversity in African American culture, people, and experiences, it’s finding ways to engage to tell those stories that reflect the time in which we live. Not all choreographers I bring in are African American. That’s important because there are two things we are demonstrating. One, the notion of telling our own story, but also that my dancers are versatile and can do the work of Wayne McGregor as well as Rennie Harris as well as Alvin Ailey. … I talk about works that have to do with social justice, but even a love duet is a revolutionary act.” – San Francisco Classical Voice
TV’s Tricky Question: To Include COVID In Storylines Or Not?
“It was an issue, if not the big issue, that writers across Hollywood had to face: how to plan a season amid an evolving crisis. Would their universe feature COVID-19, see it in the rearview mirror or pretend it never even happened? And if featured, what would that world even look like? It’s not as though any of them had a crystal ball. … But quickly the choice — a decision made in writers’ rooms [throughout the industry] — became clear: They had to work the ever-changing real world into [their shows’] universe.” – Los Angeles Times
Staffers At ‘The New Yorker’ Threaten Strike, Picket Anna Wintour’s House
The magazine’s salaried employees formed a union three years ago and have been negotiating for higher pay (at a publication known for low wages) ever since. About 100 of them went to the street outside the Greenwich Village townhouse of Condé Nast’s global editorial director on Tuesday, carrying signs in their publication’s recognizable headline typeface reading “Fair pay now” and “You can’t eat prestige” and chanting “Bosses wear Prada, workers get nada.” (The New Yorker is the one Condé Nast title that Wintour does not supervise.) – The New York Times
New York’s $25 Million City Artist Corps: Here, At Last, Are The Details
“Just over a month ago, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that as part of NYC’s post-pandemic recovery, the city will be investing $25 million in … a new recovery program aimed at hiring over 1,500 artists to create works throughout the five boroughs this summer and beyond. Today, he finally revealed more info about exactly how this program will work, and how artists can apply to take part in it.” – Gothamist
Where That Hudson River School Painting Sold By The Newark Museum Will End Up
Thomas Cole’s Arch of Nero wound up being one of the symbols of the ongoing argument about US museums’ deaccessioning of artworks in order to get through the financial difficulties caused by the pandemic. Fortunately, the destination of this particular painting is neither inappropriate nor far away: the purchasers are placing it on long-term loan with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. – ARTnews
Uncertain But Hopeful, Carnegie Hall Announces Reopening Plans
“The upcoming season will be more modest than usual: about 90 concerts, compared with a typical slate of 150, though more may be added depending on the state of the pandemic. With the virus still raging in many parts of the world and variants circulating, Carnegie said it planned to require concertgoers to show proof of vaccination. It has not yet decided whether to mandate masks inside its three spaces.” – The New York Times
Mehretu’s To-Do, “Day’s End” & Diller-Dally: Inside & Outside the Reopened Whitney
As CultureGrrl readers will remember, my first post-pandemic visit to a museum — the Metropolitan — did not end well. Happily, things went more smoothly for me at the Whitney ten days later. – Lee Rosenbaum