Fans of the bestselling author/public radio legend will know that he is obsessed with picking up the litter along the roadsides near his West Sussex home. Now the local council has honored him in the most fitting way possible.
Australian Gov’t Orders Review Of Opera Funding
“No-one should be too surprised by the National Opera Review which promises to take a good look at Opera Australia, Opera Queensland, State Opera of South Australia and West Australian Opera. Governments want to know their money is well spent, and the conservatives have shown that they are not afraid to be radical in their approach to arts funding – and opera in particular.”
The New Fandom – It’s All About The Fans
“A lot of fans are basically fans of fandom itself. It’s all about them. They have mastered the ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Star Trek’ universes or whatever, but their objects of veneration are useful mainly as a backdrop to their own devotion. Anyone who would camp out in a tent on the sidewalk for weeks in order to be first in line for a movie is more into camping on the sidewalk than movies.”
50,000+ Artists Apply for 89 Affordable Studios In Harlem
“Developers for the space, known as El Barrio’s Artspace PS 109 and located between Second and Third avenues, fielded 51,313 online applications via a city website by the July 14 deadline, officials said. That’s on top of more than 2,000 paper applications filed.”
Maria Abramovic Raised A Ton Of Money For Her New Project. So Why Is She Staffing With Unpaid Interns?
“Abramović raised over $660,000 for her institute on Kickstarter in June and recently “collaborated” with Adidas. Yet somehow she cannot afford to pay people to work for MAI.”
Met Opera Extends Contract Deadline At Last Minute
“The Metropolitan Opera postponed a threatened lockout late on Thursday night, saying that it had done so at the request of a federal mediator who was brought in at the 11th hour to try to salvage its contract negotiations with the unions representing its orchestra and chorus.”
ABT’s Misty Copeland Is Now A Major Underwear Spokesmodel
“[Copeland] will become the new face of Under Armour’s ‘I Will What I Want’ campaign, which focuses on the apparel giant’s women’s business. To appreciate Under Armour’s out-of-the-box thinking in tapping a ballerina to front its national ads, one has to grasp the complexity of Copeland’s story.”
Big Data Reveals How Cities Beckoned The Brainy For 2,000 Years
“How do you keep them down on the farm, once they’ve seen Paris? You don’t, suggests a study of 150,000 historical figures that shows cities have … acted as cultural magnets” for many centuries.
Look What They’ve Done To St. Ignatius Loyola: They’ve Made Him Twee
“A Catholic publishing house” – Loyola Press, naturally – “is encouraging the people of the Internet to ‘find your inner Iggy’ and explore Ignatius’s vision of spirituality. In doing so, it appears that they have created the first-ever twee saint.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.31.14
How Has Opera Changed?
AJBlog: OperaSleuth | Published 2014-07-31
The Peter Gelb furor (3)
AJBlog: Sandow | Published 2014-07-31
Stanford: The New Art Place To Be
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-08-01
[ssba_hide]
Chicago Symphony Exec Named New Director Of San Diego Symphony
“Martha Gilmer’s role has been large. In addition to working with the music directors, their ideas and complex personalities and overseeing all programming, she worked with and enlisted guest conductors and guest artists and created new ongoing programs to move the organization into the 21st century.”
UK Teenager Quits School After His Drawing Goes Viral Online
“I reckon I wasted two years sat at school doing nothing. I didn’t expect this to happen a month ago. I feel honoured people appreciate my work and that I can hopefully make a living off it.”
Israeli Show Canceled In Edinburgh After Protests
“The hip-hop opera is presented by a company that receives money from the Israeli government which campaigners said made it legitimate to boycott, particularly due to the current situation in Gaza.”
Protests Over Light Installation In Toronto
The public art project, known as Nyctophilia, or love of the night, is set to be officially unveiled Wednesday night. In June, when the poles went up at the corner of Weston Rd. and Dennis Ave., it sparked a flurry of negative comments to the Star and other media outlets.
“Save The Corcoran” Court Hearing Has An Uninhibited Star Witness
Philanthropist Wayne Reynolds, who was first wooed for the Corcoran’s board chairmanship and then rejected, “led a packed courtroom Wednesday on a rollicking and highly critical narrative account of his interactions with gallery leadership, at one point likening the Corcoran’s executive suite to ‘a goat rodeo,’ and asserting that he could do better, if given a chance.”
Met Opera Proposes Federal Mediator For Last-Minute Labor Talks
“With time running out before a lockout of its workers threatened for later this week, the Metropolitan Opera proposed on Wednesday that federal mediators be brought in at the 11th hour to facilitate negotiations with several of the company’s unions. But it was unclear if the unions would agree to a mediator, or if there was enough time left to forge a deal.” (includes video)
Can This Program Hook A New Generation Of Young Dance Addicts?
An experimental program at Manhattan’s New Victory Theater has been presenting to youngsters – for free – three weeks of wide-ranging modern dance programming, with the companies doing the same material they perform for adult audiences. The dancers seem to love it even more than the kids do.
Poetry? There’s An App For That – Five Of Them, In Fact
The Times‘s app critic (yes, it has one) looks at an encyclopedic offering from the Poetry Foundation for discovering new poems; a Shakespeare app that includes all the sonnets and plays; two packages, for writing haiku and for longer verse; and an app devoted entirely to Eliot’s The Waste Land. (includes video)