They corrected authors’ copy as well as proofs. They identified and mended typographical and other errors, to the best of their ability. They divided texts into sections and drew up aids to readers: title pages, tables of contents, chapter headings, and indexes. Some correctors composed texts as well as paratexts, serving as what might now be called content providers. – Lapham’s Quarterly
Rebuilding An Indigenous Dance Culture Post-Soviet
This is part of the traditional dance of the Mari, the region’s indigenous nation. Its sudden intrusion into an otherwise classical production is no coincidence. It is part of an experiment that seeks to tackle the some of the most crucial challenges facing the post-Soviet provincial stage: how to use Soviet traditions to create art for a new Russia, while still standing on par with global artistic developments. – Calvert Journal
Institutions, Sure. But How Do We Put Artists At The Center?
How do we sustain the infrastructure to make the kind of highly professional theater that we have come to revere without pushing the actual artists to the fringes of that ecology? How can we reimagine the American theater to acknowledge who our “first responders” are: actors, directors, playwrights, designers, composers, musicians, in all their plurality and diversity? Should we be asking our artists in this pandemic to make home videos that extol our work when we took them off the payroll the moment the pandemic hit? – Clyde Fitch Report
What Do Museums Have To Do With Police Brutality?
“Police shootings? I can’t imagine what special insight a museum director brings to the subject. But if you’re going to talk about them, at least say something smart.” – National Review
Won’t Artificial Intelligence Be Immortal?
It is common to assume that an AI could achieve immortality by creating backup copies of itself and thus transfer its consciousness from one computer to the next. This view is encouraged by science-fiction stories. But is it right? – Nautilus
Minority Artists Making Art About Their Difficulties As Minorities? Great, But There Are Ethical Pitfalls To Look Out For
Funding nonwhite creators to make work using stories from their own underrepresented communities may seem a self-evidently good thing, but there are potential dangers — to the artists themselves and to the communities involved — in telling those stories publicly, and the artists may not have the support to deal with the fallout. Dr. Ranjit Khutan, an expert in arts and public health, suggests four basic ethical principles for both funders and creators to keep in mind. – Arts Professional
15 Black Creatives In South Carolina Talk About Art And Protest
“[We] reached out to more than a dozen black artists” — painters, actors, musicians, poets, quilters, hip-hop artists — “across the state to discuss what they think is at the center of today’s protests and how their art has been part of the movement and catalyst for change.” – The Post and Courier (Charleston)
Neighborhood Minneapolis Dance Spaces Lost During George Floyd Protests
George Floyd’s murder may ultimately be a catalyst for positive change in Minnesota and beyond, but in the short-term, the local dance community has lost vital spaces and resources, including El Nuevo Rodeo, the cantina and dance club where both Floyd and his accused killer worked as security officers. By day, the cantina served as a rehearsal space for Latin American children’s dance groups, and by night it was the place to salsa. – Dance Magazine
The Public Art In The New LaGuardia Airport
With three of the four works accessible without a boarding pass, Terminal B just may be the best indoor space for contemporary art — no appointment needed — that the public is welcome to visit in phase one of New York’s reopening. – The New York Times
Norton Museum Director Suddenly Resigns Just 19 Months Into The Job
Elliot Bostwick Davis came to the Norton from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, after spearheading the addition of its groundbreaking Art of the Americas Wing. She joined the Norton in March 2019, a month after its $100 million Foster + Partners-steered expansion opened. The expansion triggered a growth spurt during which the museum welcomed 218,000 visitors, mounted 19 exhibitions and served 9,000 students with its schools programs in the year after its unveiling. – Palm Beach Post
Let’s Stop Defining Artemisia Gentileschi As The Rape-Victim Painter
“Indexing Gentileschi’s oeuvre back to the rape and trial reinscribes the painter as an adolescent sex object, rather than an eminent adult artist with a 40-year career across major European cities. It also means that several of her paintings have been misattributed or overlooked because they didn’t correspond to the tropes of stricken or vengeful women. – Psyche
“Lateral Thinking” Was Hugely Popular. Too Bad It Was Also Wrong
From the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies to schools and government ministries, few concepts in popular psychology travelled as far and wide as lateral thinking. Garnering in excess of 20 million readers across almost 40 countries, a BBC TV series, hundreds of paid-up and certified ‘Master Thinkers’, a network of educational and business champions, de Bono had, by the 1980s, become a peculiar type of public intellectual: one who refused to engage with critics and detractors. Criticism was, according to the father of lateral thinking and founder of the Cognitive Research Trust, a vestige of the adversarial and ‘intrinsically fascist’ Socratic method. – Aeon
Modigliani Scholar Sues Guy Wildenstein’s Nonprofit For Holding His Research ‘Hostage’
“[Marc] Restellini’s lawsuit against the institute asserts that it is in possession of roughly 89 boxes and various other containers of research materials that he had amassed over the years and that are rightfully his. The lawsuit accuses the nonprofit of holding this research ‘hostage.’ The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, however, says the records are theirs.” – The New York Times
HBO Max Drops “Gone With The Wind” From Its Library
The move followed an article in the LA Times by John Ridley, Oscar-winning scriptwriter of 12 Years a Slave, in which he described it as “a film that, when it is not ignoring the horrors of slavery, pauses only to perpetuate some of the most painful stereotypes of people of color”. – The Guardian
Some Dance Companies Are Moving Beyond Online Classes Into Zoom Rehearsals
“Ballet companies are in a bizarre holding pattern right now. With studios and theaters shut down indefinitely due to the coronavirus pandemic, how do they keep the repertoire alive and dancers in shape? A handful of companies, including Pennsylvania Ballet and Dance Theatre of Harlem, are pressing on with rehearsals, even with no confirmed performances.” – Pointe Magazine
How Diversity Is/Has Changing/ed American Theatre
In fostering greater identity complexity, the American theater today is realizing more of its mimetic potential — a potential long curtailed because of the restricted access of artists on the margins. As the theater belatedly opens up, the repertoire of representations expands, creating a more extensive vocabulary and grammar for self-understanding for us all. – Los Angeles Times
Even ‘Paw Patrol’ Is Getting Slammed For Depicting Cops As Too Benign
Amanda Hess: “It’s a joke, but it’s also not. As the protests against racist police violence enter their third week, the charges are mounting against fictional cops, too. Even big-hearted cartoon police dogs — or maybe especially big-hearted cartoon police dogs — are on notice. The effort to publicize police brutality also means banishing the good-cop archetype, which reigns on both television and in viral videos of the protests themselves. Paw Patrol seems harmless enough, and that’s the point: The movement rests on understanding that cops do plenty of harm.” – The New York Times
Live Video Theatre: What It Is, What It Is Not
Peter J. Kuo of ACT: “With the ability to gather in person on freeze, many of us in the theatre industry collectively held our breaths, waiting to exhale. Now, we find ourselves gasping for air. … I believe, with the community’s support, live video theatre can pump the oxygen into our respiratory systems. Not simply sustaining us through this pandemic, but growing our field into the future. The investment in this art form requires a mental shift among creators on how we define theatre, but the product and process will be strangely familiar and satisfying for artists and audiences of both theatre and film.” – HowlRound
Here’s Who Will Be Hurt If Philadelphia Eliminates All City Arts Funding
“The vast majority of the 349 recipient groups from the 2020 fiscal year are small, their audiences mostly neighborhood audiences who often see themselves reflected on the stages or in the galleries. More than a quarter have annual budgets under $50,000, and more than 60% are under $400,000, according to city records. … Here, eight recipient groups describe the impact of the [funding] on their organizations and their communities.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
‘The Simpsons’ Wins Peabody Awards’ Top Honor
The long-running cartoon series was given the Peabodys’ Institutional Award along with (less of a surprise here) the PBS documentary series Frontline, while actor Cicely Tyson, 95, receives the Peabody Career Achievement Award. Among this years’ honorees were entertainment series Succession, Fleabag, Ramy, Stranger Things, and Chernobyl; documentaries Apollo 11, Hale County This Morning This Evening, Surviving R. Kelly, and four programs from PBS’s POV; the children’s animated series Molly of Denali; and the WNYC podcast Dolly Parton’s America. – Variety
Poetry Foundation Leadership Resigns Following Demands And Criticism
Just a few days after a letter, written by 30 prominent poets and now co-signed by roughly 2,100 people, called for the resignation of the $250 million foundation’s president and board chair and a detailed plan for the organization to hire from and support the work of marginalized groups and to “eradicate institutional racism,” president Henry Bienen and board chair Willard Bunn have stepped down. – Chicago Magazine
Banksy’s Bataclan Mural, Stolen From Paris, Found In Italian Farmhouse
The memorial to the victims of the 2015 terrorist attack at the Paris rock club was painted at the venue in 2018 and was stolen by thieves using angle grinders the following year. French and Italian law enforcement recovered the mural during a raid in Italy’s Abruzzo region. – ARTnews
When to Stop? My essay in “A Moment on the Clock of the World” in the context of Covid-19 & Black Lives Matter
My essay, “To What End Permanence?,” seeks to get beyond the question of economic solvency to examine other signs that it may be time to shut a thing down and other motivations for closing. – Diane Ragsdale
Back to the ’60s (again): Ex-Whitney Trustee Warren Kanders’ Dow Chemical Moment
After initially resisting the resisters’ demands that it halt its production of napalm, Dow stopped making it in 1969. Now Warren Kanders, who resigned under political pressure last July from his position as vice-chairman of the Whitney Museum’s board, has announced a similar reversal. – Lee Rosenbaum
NY Philharmonic Cancels Fall Season
The decision not to resume performances before Jan. 6, 2021, at the earliest came the week after the Metropolitan Opera said it would not reopen before the end of December. Like the Philharmonic, the Met has been closed since March, and has furloughed its orchestra, chorus and stagehands and some administrative staff, while continuing to provide them with health benefits. – The New York Times