“The Washington Consensus of the 1980s claimed that free trade and deregulation were the most promising growth policies for developing countries. The Silicon Valley Consensus suggests that innovative cities grow faster, that startups are the only real hope for job creation, and that high-tech growth helps rich and poor alike. But, like the Washington Consensus, the Silicon Valley Consensus offers a false promise.”
This City Lost (Yes, Lost) Three Schieles And A Klimt – Now It Must Pay The Owners $9 Million
“The Austrian Supreme Court has ordered the city of Linz to pay €8.24 million ($8.96 million) plus 4 percent interest to the heirs of a local collector for losing a Gustav Klimt drawing and three pictures by Egon Schiele.”
Have Recent Productions Of Mid-20th Century Theatre Classics Blurred History?
“A series of recent productions that came to New York with great acclaim have implicitly questioned whether we can still see these plays for what they are, or whether they need to be made new to avoid seeming stale. These productions took plays that are deeply rooted in a particular time and place—and that deal, urgently, with the issues of their day—and ripped them up forcefully to re-pot them in fresh soil.”
A Chicago Theatre Announces A Lin-Manuel Miranda Musical Cast Dominated By White Actors
“There is no viable excuse for this kind of whitewashing anymore, least of all — in a city as diverse as Chicago — the ‘not enough actors’ excuse.”
Stunning Chronophotographs Capture the Patterns of Birds in Flight
“For the past five years, the Barcelona-based photographer [Xavi Bou] has captured different bird species soaring around the Catalonia region to form his ongoing Ornitographies series, using a particular method he has honed to compress multiple seconds into a single frame.”
A Play About Critics Moves A Critic To Ponder Her Younger, Less-Compassionate Self
Laura Collins-Hughes, reflecting on Brenda Withers’s new play The Kritik: “I did what so many young critics do. In love with the sound of my own voice, unaware of how lastingly harmful meanness could be, I was sometimes far harsher than I should have been.”
Why Is Whether Or Not Athletes Dope So Important To People?
Consider the anger at Lance Armstrong once the truth came out. Consider all the time and money spent on catching and eliminating athletes who dope. “If technology can help sports officials perform their jobs more efficiently and fairly, why can it not be used to help athletes do their jobs more effectively? The answer is quite simple: Athletes have to be human.”
Filmmaker Mohamed Khan, 73, Leader Of Egypt’s Neorealist Cinema Movement
“Khan’s films included The Street Player (1984), The Wife of an Important Man (1987) and Dreams of Hind and Camilia (1988) – all of which were named among the ‘100 Greatest Arab Films of All Time’ by the Dubai International Film Festival.”
How To Fund The Arts? The City Of Birmingham Comes Up with 50 Ways
“Through discussions and consultation, the Enquiry has generated almost 50 suggestions for ways to boost investment in the city’s arts and culture, which it presents in a new report. These are broken down into four sections: public sector investment, alternative finance, collaborative working and philanthropic giving.”
Can Audiences Hooked On Binge-Watching TV Be Wooed To Binge-Reading Books?
“As TV dramas get better and better, book publishers are hoping to convert binge TV watchers into binge readers. Serialized books have a long history in publishing — Charles Dickens famously released many his novels in serial form.”
Our Digital Expanses Have Made Us Confidently Arrogant. Where’s The Value In Humility?
“The internet and digital media have created the impression of limitless knowledge at our fingertips. But, by making us lazy, they have opened up a space that ignorance can fill.”
Musician Payments For Streaming Are A Mess. So Apple Has A Plan (But…)
“Apple recently made a proposal that could fundamentally transform the way streaming services pay songwriters and music publishers. As part of a government rate-setting process known as the Copyright Royalty Board tribunal (CRB), Apple recommended that services pay a fixed penny rate per stream. This structure is a major departure from the way streaming services have traditionally paid royalties. Moving to a penny rate would be a tremendous step toward transparency in music publishing. But be careful of the fine print.”
Unmentionables: Euphemisms Are Like Underwear, Best Changed Frequently
John McWhorter: “What the cognitive psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker has artfully termed ‘the euphemism treadmill’ is not a tic or a stunt. It is an inevitable and, more to the point, healthy process, necessary in view of the eternal gulf between language and opinion.”
What Are The Most Popular Songs Right Now? It’s Increasingly Difficult To Tell
Stream, steal, or buy: Those are your choices. The premium streaming services represent just one batch of countless channels by which consumers can hear music. And so Billboard now bears the complex task of incorporating traffic from an ever-widening variety of platforms — YouTube, Vevo, Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Pandora, Vine, Twitter, etc. — into a standardized accounting that ranks all these songs together.
Diversity-In-Casting Arguments Crop Up Again, This Time Over A Concert Performance
The project in question is the in-progress stage adaptation of the 1998 Dreamworks animated feature The Prince of Egypt, about the life of Moses. The script and score will get their first public reading in a free outdoor performance next month on Long Island, and a social media fracas broke out over the false impression that the cast for the reading is all-white. (In fact, five out of the 15 Equity performers currently engaged are nonwhite.)
St. Louis Symphony Reports Rise In Ticket Sales And Attendance
Total ticket sales for all performances reached $6.87 million, up 3.8 percent compared with last season. Even though there are three fewer concerts this year, attendance rose more than 1 percent to 190,817, officials said.
Photographer Puts Her Images In Public Domain; Getty Picks Them Up And Charges Others To License Them; Photographer Sues Getty For $1 Billion
“In December, documentary photographer Carol Highsmith received a letter from Getty Images accusing her of copyright infringement for featuring one of her own photographs on her own website. It demanded payment of $120. This was how Highsmith came to learn that stock photo agencies Getty and Alamy had been sending similar threat letters and charging fees to users of her images, which she had donated to the Library of Congress for use by the general public at no charge.”
The Problem With Yahoo: The Snapchat Generation Barely Even Knows What It Is
Om Malik: “The $4.8-billion acquisition of Yahoo … by a telephone company, Verizon, is a watershed moment in the history of the Internet. It caps off an era – Web 1.0, for lack of a better term – that will soon be remembered much like telegraphs and rotary phones.”
The Real Problem With Playing Pokémon Go At The Holocaust Museum Isn’t (Just) A Lack Of Respect
“The museum, like the video game, relies on careful curation to furnish an alternate experience of reality. Playing Pokémon Go at a memorial isn’t just disrespectful – it interferes with the augmented reality you’re already in.”
Here Comes The First Feature Film (Co-)Written By Artificial Intelligence Software
Perhaps fittingly, it will be a horror film. “Impossible Things will be partly written by software that has analysed successes in the genre [and] uses that data to formulate a script that [incorporates] successful plot points. The goal: engineer a hit film.”
New Boss Has Big Plans For Texas Ballet Theater
Incoming executive director Vanessa Logan’s goals include “joining the national touring circuit and expanding the group’s presence in Dallas … [as well as making TBT] a tier-one ballet company within the next 10 years. For that, the organization will have to reach an annual budget of at least $14 million.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.27.16
Recent Listening In Brief: Zeitlin On Shorter
Denny Zeitlin, Solo Piano: Early Wayne (Sunnyside) Over the years, Zeitlin has made clear his affinity for Wayne Shorter’s compositions. In previous Sunnyside albums he explored … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-07-27
Community within
As a community artist, I operate with the philosophy that creativity is a pledge to embrace and value one’s own existence and self-reflection is a process for changing awareness and behavior. … read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2016-07-27
A misshapen Venn Diagram
Erin Salazar, is an artist, muralist, seamstress, public art curator and Creative Community Fellow. She shares what community means to her in this time lapse video: … read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2016-07-27
Actively making a place better
I’d like to share these images of what Community means to me. These images were taken recently outside the Old Dutch Church in Kingston, New York. The Reformed Protestant congregation hung 49 rainbow flags along … read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2016-07-27
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US Tourist Mistakenly Locked On Roof Of Milan Cathedral Overnight
“Police said the 23-year-old man told them that he was in the bathroom when security made a final pass, and found himself locked inside the landmark cathedral when he went to leave on Monday night. He decided not to create alarm and spent the night on the spired rooftop, reporting himself to authorities when they reopened on Tuesday.”
Designs For New Cultural Quarter For London
“New images have been released of the planned cultural quarter in London’s Olympic Park that will house a 550-seat dance theatre for Sadler’s Wells. The Stratford Waterfront area, previously known as Olympicopolis, will also contain new dance studios run by Wayne McGregor Random Dance, a new campus for University of the Arts London and a second, east London venue for the Victoria and Albert museum.”
Baker’s Dozen: Man Booker Prize Announces 2016 Longlist
“In the third year that the prestigious British literary award has been open to any author writing in English, the U.S. nabbed five entries on the long list.”