“His presence is guaranteed to make anything go viral, whether it’s a literary festival, a TV miniseries, or one of the most frequently staged Shakespearean tragedies. … Combine photos of him looking intuitive or alluring with pictures of fuzzy kittens and it’s a wonder the Internet doesn’t implode.”
What We Can Learn From Medieval Theatre
Carl Heap, longtime artistic director of the UK’s Medieval Players: “We soon discovered that it was not so much the material of medieval theatre that assured our success, but its style. Central to this style was the acknowledgment by the actors of a visible, lit, audience.”
S.C. Governor Leaves Arts Funding Alone For A Change
Every year Nikki Haley uses her line-item veto power to try to zero out the South Carolina Arts Commission’s budget, and every year the state Legislature overrides her veto and restores the funding. This year, for once, she didn’t bother, and the Commission’s $2.9 million budget is intact.
Would Charlotte, N.C. Enact A Dedicated Tax For The Arts?
That’s one of the suggestions – for the city, suburban towns, and the county – made by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Cultural Life Task Force, convened by local government to suggest solutions to what the task force found was a year-after-year shortfall of $8 million in the local arts sector.
Guess What? Game Of Thrones Isn’t *Really* Medieval (And Yes, That Matters)
“What Martin actually gives us is a fantasy version of what the historian Alfred Crosby called the Post-Columbian exchange: the globalizing epoch of the 16th and 17th centuries. A world where merchants trade exotic drugs and spices between continents, where professional standing armies can number in the tens or hundreds of thousands, where scholars study the stars via telescopes.”
Can Music Lessons Counteract The Effects Of Poverty On The Brain?
“Four or more years of musical training in childhood was linked to faster neural responses to speech, even for the older adults who had not picked up an instrument for more than 40 years.”
Warning: Most Of London’s West End Theatres Need To Be Replaced
“Speaking at the International Theatre Engineering and Architecture Conference in London, Howard Panter, who owns 11 West End theatres, said that theatres upwards of 100 years old were not built to last this long, and as such are ill-equipped to cater for modern-day audiences.”
Traditionally Rivals, Some Auction Houses And Galleries Are Starting To Collaborate
“The arrangements also give dealers, who mostly operate out of one venue, access to an auction house’s global spaces and collector base while the auction houses are able to present the more in-depth look at artists that dealers can provide.”
Why Should We Expect Symphony Orchestras To Champion New American Music?
“Do we really have to worry about whether symphony orchestras are doing their job as the headlining ambassadors of music and culture? The ambassadoring act isn’t what it used to be.”
UK Culture Minister: Arts Organizations Should Raise Their Own Money
“I can see absolutely no reason why every arts organisation in this country cannot raise philanthropic funds. I think there are all sorts of cultural, institutional barriers to that. I think that too many arts organisations think, ‘well, we live in an area where rich people don’t live, so they’re not going to back the arts’. I think that is pathetic, frankly.”
Two More Foundations Pledge $13M To Save Detroit Institute’s Art
“The New York-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has committed up to $10 million, and the J. Paul Getty Trust of Los Angeles has pledged $3 million to the federally mediated deal, … , which would protect the city-owned DIA from having to sell its treasures while easing cuts to city pensioners in Detroit’s bankruptcy.”
€100,000 Impac Dublin Literary Award Goes To South American For First Time
“Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez today emerged as the 2014 winner with the third of his novels to appear in English, The Sound of Things Falling, translated by Canadian Anne McLean.”
Crowdfunding For Stage Projects In Britain Is Catching On Fast
The number of donors increased by nearly 700% between the beginning of 2014 and the end of March; the amount pledged rose at a similar rate over the period – and then doubled from that in April.
Tony Committee Drops Sound Design Award; Sound Designers Make Noise
“Sound designers working on Broadway and at theaters nationwide erupted in outrage after a committee that oversees the Tony Awards decided Wednesday to eliminate future awards for best sound design of a play and of a musical.”
Now Everyone Can Sample, And Other Grammy Category And Rule Tweaks
The primary change is that “samples and interpolations of previously written songs [will] be allowed in all Grammy Award songwriting categories, including song of the year. … Previously, samples or interpolations were allowed in only the Best Rap Song category.”
An App That Makes You Dance, With Real Choreography
“Bounden works like this: two players hold the phone from opposite ends and guide a cursor through a sort of maze on the screen while music plays; the shape of the maze forces the players to twist, spin, and loop around and under each other, as in a dance. The underlying choreography was developed by Ernst Meisner of the Dutch National Ballet, and the app contains videos of company members performing the finished dances.”
If You’re Going To Forge An Artist’s Work, Spell His Name Right In The Signature
One of the paintings that Knoedler & Company sold as a Jackson Pollock was signed “Pollok”. “The gallery’s former president, Ann Freedman, insisted that she and her colleagues had had no reason to think that any of the paintings were counterfeit.”
The Sniffy, Scandalized Letter That Sealed the UK Government’s Ban of ‘Ulysses’
“In this 1922 letter, the British Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Archibald Bodkin, issued an official opinion on James Joyce’s book Ulysses: ‘In my opinion, there is more, and a great deal more than mere vulgarity or coarseness, there is a great deal of unmitigated filth and obscenity.'”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 06.12.14
Museum-Going: Getting Even More Virtual
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-06-13
Christopher Rouse: New music for existential terror
AJBlog: Condemned to Music | Published 2014-06-13
Frick Expansion Bonus: Opening the Upstairs Rooms
AJBlog: CultureGrrl | Published 2014-06-12
David Harding: The World’s First Town Artist
AJBlog: Aesthetic Grounds | Published 2014-06-12
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Sarah Brightman to Pay $52 Million To Be First Singer In Space
British singer Sarah Brightman is scheduled to begin training this year for a 2015 flight to the International Space Station where she hopes to become the first professional musician to sing from space, according to the company arranging the trip.
Jane Chu Confirmed BY US Senate As New NEA Chair
Before taking the helm at the Kauffman Center, Chu had served as fund executive at the Kauffman Fund for Kansas City; vice president of external relations for Union Station; and vice president of community investment with the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation.
Ruby Dee, 91, Actress And Civil Rights Activist
Over a seven-decade career in theater, television and film, often in partnership with husband Ossie Davis, she greatly expanded the range of roles black actresses could play in the U.S.; gave landmark performances in Shakespeare and soap opera, Hansberry and Fugard and Spike Lee; picketed theaters that refused to cast her African-American colleagues; and played a high profile in the wider civil rights struggle.
Culture Data: Follow It Or Be Informed By It?
The Culture Track research found that culture is “social first,” meaning a big part of the attendance decision is based on making connections and spending time with friends and family. This holds true especially for millennials, who are the least likely to participate in an event alone.
17 Bookstores Everyone Should See At Least Once
These amazing stores celebrate books in unique ways. The experience of being in them changes how you think about the books you buy.
Essential: Moving The Goalposts For Testing Artificial Intelligence
“As computers become more powerful and pervasive, our standards shift. Fifty years from now, a soccer-learning, header-calling, wise-cracking machine might seem more like a party trick than a thinking being.”