“Founded in 1982, the Kolkata-based company [Seeagull Books] publishes everything from literary fiction and poetry to philosophy and even cultural anthropology. But these books aren’t what you’d find on the catalogues of publishing giants such as HarperCollins or Penguin Random House. At Seagull Books, the focus is on translated writing from around the world, much of which has never before appeared in English, in India or anywhere else.”
America’s Original Fourth TV Network, Now Forgotten
“Long before FOX was hailed as the true fourth network, there was DuMont, an underfunded and largely forgotten broadcast pioneer whose lost recordings have become the stuff of minor legend. … Debuting in 1946, the network was actually started as a ploy to sell televisions.” (includes video clips)
It’s Time To Rediscover The Greatness Of Mary McCarthy
Ignore Norman Mailer and his evaluation of McCarthy’s books. “This is a perfect moment, in terms of the progress of our political development as well as the sand through feminism’s hourglass, for the Library of America’s release of McCarthy’s complete fiction. The two volumes comprise a body of work that retains startling and unsettling relevance. “
The First-Ever Perfume Concert (It Was A Stinker)
“On a New York stage in 1902, a poet and art critic named Sadakichi Hartmann attempted the first perfume concert, and it was a disaster. Intended to last 16 minutes and transport the audience to Japan through a series of smells, it was cut short at four by the jeers of the crowd.”
How To Keep Your Body Going Through A 20-Year-Ballet Career: Half A Dozen Tips From Someone Who’s Done It
“The luminous principal dancer Xiao Nan Yu, who just marked two decades with National Ballet of Canada, shares how she’s kept her body strong for long-term success.” (For one thing, never blow off morning class.)
A Conference For Young Male Dancers Who Are Feeling Marginalized
“With so few male dancers in classes, a sense of alienation, as well as bullying and a lack of recognition are common experiences. ‘I allowed the boys we were approaching to tell us what they need, what is missing in their dance studios, what they’re looking for,” [co-founder Michael] Vadacchino says about programming [the first Male Dancer Conference, to be held next month in New York’s West Village]. ‘There are little to no all-male large group settings in the dance world. With the exception of some major ballet competitions and large ballet conservatories, there is no event designed specifically for male dancers and their needs.'”
Music Academy Of The West Returns To Business – Music Of Our Time
“We have started to make music of today part of our normal way of doing business. We’re not restricting music of living composers to a far corner of the summer and calling it ‘new music week.’ That sort of new-music ghetto is, to me, not the best way to present it. It suggests that new music is its own thing, and not connected with anything else. We think this music belongs on the same concert as Beethoven, Dvorak, and Stravinsky.”
Does The ‘Scaffold’ Controversy Demonstrate That Museums Are Colonialist By Their Very Nature?
“We asked several American curators to consider the controversy‘s lessons for the larger museum world. Their e-mail responses, which have lightly edited for clarity, set a new tone for how cultural institutions can work with local indigenous communities.”
When Arts Institutions Stagnate, Some Like To Blame The Board – And That’s Unfair, Says Anne Midgette
“Boards are less a problem than a symptom of a larger, systemic issue: a pervasive loss of creativity in large performing arts institutions. I’m not the only one to notice that our largest performing arts institutions have become fundamentally inartistic bureaucracies … Companies have to work so hard to maintain their status quo, to keep the funding coming in and the performances going on, that many of them have lost sight of a truly creative approach. They don’t have the time or resources to break the mold.”
It’s Time For ‘A Move Away From Culture By And For An Elite To Culture By And For All’
Stella Duffy of the Fun Palaces movement: “Our commitment to ‘excellence and quality’ as defined by mainstream, metropolitan-based thinking many decades ago, might need to shift to a new version of ‘excellence and quality’, one defined by a new generation of makers and creators – and this time from every part of society. If we want cultural democracy, genuine culture for all, elitism must make way for creativity and community-led culture. We need to offer everyone not only access to the products of creativity, but access to the means and processes of creativity.” (By, say, funding Duffy’s project.)
All That Arts Funding Going To London Benefits The Entire Country, Says London Mayor
Sadiq Khan, responding to Arts Council England’s decision to shift some funding from the capital to the regions: “I’m not saying we deserve a bigger slice of the cake for the sake of it. I’m saying that actually, if the arts in London does well, the whole country benefits.” (Well …)
There’s A Revolution Happening In The Arts Right Now (And It’s Changing Everything)
“This new radical democratization threatens critics, just as it does well-paid artistic directors, executive directors, curators and all kinds of other gatekeeper types in the cultural universe, which explains why some say we/they react defensively to any grass-roots rebellion.”
Is The Structure Of Today’s Arts Institutions The Problem With Today’s Arts?
“What is the real vision that we’re looking for in the performing arts? Maybe it needs to go beyond simply what goes on the stage. Maybe someone needs to bring vision to the fallacy, almost universally accepted, that the only way to sustain the arts we love is to shore up a system of oversized institutions that no longer seem to work well in today’s culture. Might there be a better way to reconceive orchestras and opera houses, and to allocate the considerable resources that go into the performing arts every year, while fostering creativity — rather than convincing everyone that art needs to be packaged in layers of institutional bubble wrap so it doesn’t get broken?”
Catching Up With The Beat Poets (They’re Still Alive?)
“Late last spring, I drove up the coast from Los Angeles in search of surviving members of the Beat Generation. Interview times had been procured with the poets Ferlinghetti (now 98), McClure (84), Snyder (87), and Diane di Prima (82), as well as Beat-adjacent novelist Herbert Gold (93). When I told people about my plan, the most common response was, “They’re still alive?” After all, the loose collective’s three most famous avatars are long gone. William S. Burroughs and Ginsberg died within four months of each other in 1997. After chronic alcoholism, Kerouac’s organs finally burst in 1969.”
One London Library Not Suffering From Cuts During The Long Retrenchment Of British Public Life
In a neighborhood where the town council announced there would be no austerity measures at its libraries, “Books are only a small part of the library’s mandate. When the council elected to spare its libraries from cuts, it announced that they would be redeveloped as ‘community hubs.’ Among the groups using the library’s facilities for regular open meetings are stroke survivors, cancer survivors, seniors, dads, knitters, aspiring songwriters, Pilates enthusiasts, and philosophy buffs.”
What Ever Happened To The Steady Stream Of John Grisham Movies?
Superheroes. “Grisham didn’t offer any guesses, other than that in recent years, it’s nearly impossible to produce any film that’s not a superhero franchise. ‘Hollywood has changed so much in the last 20 years that it’s just very difficult,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to get a movie made.'”
Is This The First Q&A To Be Conducted By Photo Chat? (That’s Actually Less Important Than Artist Guadalupe Rosales’ Work, Though)
The artist has been creating an archive of ’90s Chicano youth in Los Angeles via her Instagram account, and now a six-week residency at LACMA. “Archiving and preserving and talking about these materials,” she explains, “sometimes that can be more important than making a photo.”
Olivia De Haviland Is 101, And She Is *Not* Having That ‘Feud’ Miniseries
Indeed, she’s suing FX and Ryan Murphy Productions. “In a complaint filed Friday in L.A. County Superior Court, de Havilland claims she has built a reputation for integrity and dignity by refraining from gossip and other unkind, ill-mannered behavior — but the series opens with Zeta-Jones doing an interview as de Havilland and creates the impression that she was a hypocrite who sold gossip to promote herself.”
Is This The Year The World Will Get Re-Excited About Canadian Literature?
Maybe? “Few writers have seen, first-hand, the way Canadian literature is embraced internationally more than Madeleine Thien. She has been travelling, seemingly non-stop, since her Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning Do Not Say We Have Nothing, a novel both global in scope and profoundly Canadian, was published last year. What she’s discovered, she says on the phone from Umbria, Italy, which she was visiting for a music festival organized by the Canadian classical pianist Angela Hewitt – this immediately on the heels of a two-week prepublication tour of Japan – is that Canadian literature is not viewed the same way, but changes from country to country, region to region.”
Streaming Isn’t Always So Great For The Foreign Film Fan, But Things May Be Changing
Basically, “if you’re someone who cherishes international and art house cinema, it’s a good time to have Roku.” (And AppleTV. And maybe a Chromecast? Then there’s the Indian movie channel on Amazon … )
The Author Whose Viral Post About Her Stroke Led To A Book Bidding War
Alexander Chee interviews Christine Myung-Oak Lee. Lee on what she learned during the release of her memoir, something she’ll use for her book tour with her novel: “Writers have ‘perfect readers’ — the readers who understand exactly what you’ve written, but these are always few. In this way, the MFA workshop is great training ground for book reviews and public reception of one’s work — you learn that not everyone, which includes very intelligent people, will love your work.”
Hawaii Five-O Producers Won’t Give Asian American Stars Equal Pay To White Stars, So They Leave Series
What year is this, again? “CBS’s final offer to Kim and Park was believed to have been 10-15% lower than what O’Loughlin and Caan make in salary. O’Laughlin and Caan each have deals that also provide them percentage points on the show’s back end.”
Seven Minutes Of Information About What Happens Backstage At The Met Just Before The Curtain Rises [VIDEO]
What’s happening in the wig shop, the orchestra green room, the opera ballet rehearsal room and many more departments that each fied into the master illusion.
Lisa Kron: ‘Fun Home’ Was *Not* ‘De-Butchified’ For The National Tour
The playwright takes to an open letter to respond to a controversy about Mature Alison’s tour costume. She is not in agreement with the original post. “The producers, the creative team, and I have never stopped our guardianship of the queer, feminist, lesbian, middle-aged, art-making, truth-seeking heart of our show. I love Kate’s version of Alison. I feel good about the change in her costume. You may disagree. But was this decision, or any other, ever made to ‘de-butchify’ the show? No way. Not on this femme’s watch.”
Michael K. Williams Is Sloughing Off The Shadows Of Omar
After Williams’ star turn as Omar made him a celebrity in East Flatbush, “what followed was something of an existential crisis. Months removed from filming, Mr. Williams struggled to shake the grave psyche of his character. He was racked by doubts both personal and political: Had he lost hold of his identity? Was he glorifying the ills of his community, or exposing their roots? He couldn’t divine the answers.”