“In just the past few years, [SEIU] has organized close to 10,000 Florida adjuncts, in what is one of the most remarkable and little-noticed large scale labor campaigns in the country.” – Splinter
ChamberQUEER: Identity, Inclusiveness, And Audience Participation
“Meet ChamberQUEER, a plucky new group dedicated to unstraightening the smaller musical spaces that fill [New York City]. … National Sawdust Log recently sat down with two ChamberQUEER co-founders, Danielle Buonaiuto [she/her] and Andrew Yee [they/them], to talk about their plans for the current year and beyond.” – National Sawdust Log
More Information Makes Things Complicated. No Wonder We Prefer Simple
“Reality is annoying like that: at every level of examination, it raises more questions than answers. There are always details that don’t fit, exceptions to rules, consequences that can’t be predicted. That’s why humans, who famously cannot bear too much reality, have evolved a method of coping with all this complexity: we lie to ourselves about how much we understand.” – New Statesman
The 40 Most Powerful People In Comedy For 2019
With categories like The Suits, The Legends, The Auteurs, The Breakouts, The Dynamic Duos, The Arena Fillers, and The Advocates (that’s for the agents and managers), “The Hollywood Reporter polls industry insiders and mines the data to assemble the second annual list of the artists and executives with the clout to make the world laugh.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Berlin Philharmonic Inaugurates New 650-Seat Concert Hall In Swiss Mountain Village
The little town of Andermatt had been in decline because of the gradual closure of an army base. But an Egyptian developer who fell in love with the area has begun creating a large ski resort, with “hotels, apartments and chalets, restaurants, new infrastructure, a golf course – and a concert hall good enough to attract the world’s best players.” – The Guardian
If Ideas Drive History, What If They’re Really Bad Ideas?
“If ideas drive history and most ideas are bad, as Felipe Fernández-Armesto believes, what follows for politics? A sceptical sort of anti-utopianism, perhaps, which regards any large scheme for human improvement with suspicion.” – New Statesman
Girish Karnad, India’s Greatest Playwright, Dead At 81
As a young man, he got a graduate degree from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar before coming home to make his career on stage and screen. He appeared in almost 100 films (Bollywood blockbusters and arthouse) and directed a dozen (including several award winners), “but it is for his plays, in which he often used myths, folklore and historical events to examine the cultural, economic and social changes in post-independence India, that he will be remembered.” – The Guardian
The Printing Press Was Invented Centuries Before Gutenberg
“Movable type was an 11th-century Chinese invention, refined in Korea in 1230, before meeting conditions in Europe that would allow it to flourish — in Europe, in Gutenberg’s time.” – Literary Hub
Meet America’s Leading Trans Choreographer
“[Sean Dorsey] is an openly transgender choreographer and activist with a professional dance company that has been thriving for 15 years. His company is more in demand than ever. … His mission has always been to honor the lives and stories of the forgotten and censored LGBTQ and transgender elders before him.” – Forbes
What’s Next At The Shed? A Multi-Million-Dollar Sci-Fi Kung-Fu Aerialist Contemporary Dance Musical
That sounds unlikely enough, but the creative team for Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise is even more unlikely: choreographer Akram Khan, director-producer Chen Shi-Zheng (The Peony Pavilion, Monkey: Journey to the West), and the guys who wrote Kung Fu Panda. – The New York Times
The New York Times Just Called Them ‘America’s Most Astonishing Choir’. And Just Sounding Beautiful Doesn’t Interest Them.
“[Here’s what makes] The Crossing one of the country’s most exciting vocal ensembles: an embrace of the new, a social conscience and fearless technique, brought together in a marriage that transcends mere prettiness. A Crossing program is often politically charged — taking on issues like homelessness, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster and corporate personhood — without being didactic. The group is uninterested in, ahem, preaching to the choir, preferring works that are suggestive and ambiguous.” – The New York Times
New U.S. Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo, Is First Native American To Hold Post
“Poet, writer and musician Joy Harjo — a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation — often draws on Native American stories, languages and myths. But she says that she’s not self-consciously trying to bring that material into her work. If anything, it’s the other way around.” – NPR
Following Sexual Harassment Accusations, Stephen Lord Resigns As Michigan Opera Theatre’s Chief Conductor
One day after “allegations that he sexually harassed singers, pianists and conductors all over the country and used his position and prestige to silence them” were reported, Lord stepped down from both MOT and Opera Theater of St. Louis, where he was Music Director Emeritus. – Detroit Free Press
Remember Frances McDormand’s ‘Two Words: Inclusion Rider’? Hollywood Seems To Have Forgotten
More than a year after the 2018 Best Actress Oscar winner called for her colleagues to demand a rider to their contracts obligating producers and studios to diversify their crews, “it is hard to identify more than a handful of productions that have adopted the rider outright.” – The New York Times
At Versailles, Louis XIV’s Royal Chapel Gets Restoration
“The intricate work to clean and restore its extraordinary windows, statues and other features is being carried out under the strictest security measures to avoid any repeat of the fire that severely damaged Nôtre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in April.” – Yahoo! (AFP)
Leading Uighur Writer Dies At 70 After Detention In China’s ‘Re-Education’ Camps
Nurmuhammad Tohti was imprisoned in one of the camps, which are estimated to be holding up to one million ethnic Uighurs from China’s Xinjiang Province, from last November to this past March. Relatives say he was denied medication for heart disease and diabetes and was released only when completely debilitated. – The Guardian
Staff At Scotland’s Arts Funder Deemed Two Organizations ‘Unfundable’ — Then The Bosses Funded Them Anyway
The last-minute interventions were revealed as part of a (none-too-favorable) independent review of Creative Scotland’s operations and processes that followed a major controversy over funding decisions last year. – Arts Professional
The Best-Selling Romance Novelist’s Baroque Tale Of Her Husband Trying To Poison Her (Is It True?)
About five years ago, the lawsuit claims, her hair and teeth started falling out and she developed intense nausea, tremors, disorientation, bone loss, facial swelling, and a peculiar metallic taste in her mouth. Tests of her hair, blood, and nails appear to reveal that she’d had high levels of toxic heavy metals in her system, including lithium, barium, arsenic, and mercury. Her suit notes that her husband had taken out a hefty life-insurance policy on her and “stood to gain millions of dollars upon her demise.” – New York Magazine
Publishers Are Changing The Deals They Give To Libraries For Ebooks
“These days, the question driving the debate is whether publishers should sell ebooks to libraries at a higher price for a perpetual license, or at a lower price for a license that needs to be renewed,” with several major publishers moving from the former to the latter model. – Melville House
How to Attract Visitors to an “Esoteric” Exhibit
We’ve all seen museums do a lot of odd things in recent years in attempts to draw people into their galleries – cat video contests, crowdsourcing curatorial decisions, and so on. Some may have “worked,” in the sense that they did attract visitors – but generally only for the one exhibit or particular gesture of outreach. Instead, the Getty, with Book of Beasts, generally took the high road. No dumbing down, no “unicorn days,” no silly contests. – Judith H. Dobrzynski
Bravo De Salvo! Unpacking Donna’s Sudden Exit from the Whitney Museum’s Deputy Directorship
With less than two weeks’ notice, the Whitney Museum has announced that Donna De Salvo “has decided to leave” the museum where she served with great distinction for the past 15 years, in order to “pursue other interests.” Adding to the mystery of why this news was sprung on us so precipitously, Adam Weinberg, the Whitney’s director, enigmatically commented: “We wish her the best as she embarks on the next phase of her career.” – Lee Rosenbaum
How “The United Nations Of Graffiti” Flipped The Switch On A Counterculture Art Form
In the early days, by creed, a graffiti artist would ask neither for permission nor compensation. Now, after courting the former, artists at 5Pointz were receiving the latter. Graffiti was once a countercultural threat that conservative forces roundly maligned as a racially coded stand-in for urban delinquency. Now, graffiti had not only helped catalyze gentrification of one of the city’s fastest growing neighborhoods, but was also being handsomely rewarded for it, with legal recognition by a judge and jury. – The New Republic
La Scala’s Next Superintendent Will Be Dominique Meyer Of Vienna State Opera: Reports
Italian media are reporting that the mayor of Milan, who is ex officio chair of La Scala’s board, said after a meeting that Meyer was the choice; for now, English-language outlets report that the mayor said only that a candidate whom he couldn’t name had been selected (but that all the speculation points to Meyer). The contract of the current superintendent, Alexander Pereira, expires in 2020 and (beyond a possible two-year extension) is not being renewed. – The Guardian
Shades of Meaning
At the CircuitWest Showcase in Perth, Australia, I discussed with artists, producers, and presenters the issues around community engagement in a state (Western Australia) where, outside the capital, the cities and towns are small and far from each other, and the visits from touring artists are necessarily brief. – Doug Borwick