“Tara Brooke Watkins discusses how Oklahoma! has shaped the state’s cultural identity, the Tulsa race Massacre, and Spinning Plates’s production of the musical with an all-black cast.” – HowlRound
The Most Visited Single-Artist Museum In The World? It’s Not The Van Gogh Museum Anymore
“The art collective teamLab’s new, immersive museum in Tokyo attracted more visitors than the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam last year, and twice the combined number of visitors to the three Dalí museums in Spain. … In its first year of operation, teamLab Borderless in Tokyo attracted 2.3 million visitors in total. A further 1.2 million visitors enjoyed the collective’s temporary immersive light experience in Japan’s capital.” – Artnet
Study: Speaking Of Yourself In The Third Person Might Make You Smarter
Imagine, for instance, that you are arguing with your partner. Adopting a third-person perspective might help you to recognise their point of view or to accept the limits of your understanding of the problem at hand. Or imagine you are considering moving jobs. Taking the distanced perspective could help you to weigh up the benefits and the risks of the move more dispassionately. – Aeon
No, Carpe Diem Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does
For Australian philosopher Roman Krznaric, author of Carpe Diem Regained, the “hijacking [of carpe diem] is an existential crime of the century–and one we have barely noticed.” Krznaric is concerned that the philosophy has come to mean something else, almost the antithesis of what Horace’s words actually meant. – JSTOR
Bank Discovers AI Writes Better Ads Than Their Ad People Do
In tests, JPMorgan Chase found that Persado’s machine-learning tool crafted better ad copy than its own writers could muster, as measured by the higher click rates—more than double in some case—on digital ads for Chase cards and mortgages. – Quartz
Is Classical Music Journalism Leaving Reviews Behind?
“More and more, critics are going beyond reviews that focus on musicality and technique to report on problems concerning diversity, politics, and workplace culture. Independent publications such as I Care If You Listen, NewMusicBox, and National Sawdust’s The Log reflect a more diverse creative landscape and a more politically-conscious audience. There’s an increasing drive, [Jennifer] Gersten tells CJR, ‘to ask what a given concert is doing for the reputation of an institution and for the field at large … Can we use this concert, this particular piece, as a sign that there are better things to come?’” – Columbia Journalism Review
Antiquities Trafficking Sting Recovers Over 18,000 Objects; 59 Suspects Arrested
“Among the goods seized in the multinational operation, which was dubbed Pandora III and organised by Europol, were an ancient Mesopotamian crystal cylinder seal, a 15th-century bible that had been stolen in Germany over 25 years ago and 109 ancient coins.” – The Art Newspaper
Blame Video Games For Violence? Not According To Any Of The Studies
Though researchers have toiled on the subject for many years, none has categorically found that playing video games has harmful effects. Indeed, the absence of conclusive evidence was remarked upon by conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia in 2011 when California attempted to criminalise the sale of violent video games to minors. – Irish Times
In A Time Of Upended Norms, Obits Of Our Heroes Provide Sense Of Normalcy
Phil Kennicott: “Death and remembrance, at least, come with the customs and norms that have been shredded in most of the rest of public life. If nothing else, death still inspires a pause in ordinary life and, in the case of artists, a respectful consideration of their habitually ignored accomplishments.” – Washington Post
Debating Shakespeare With Justice John Paul Stevens
“He had recently read my book “Contested Will,” about the controversy over the authorship of William Shakespeare’s plays. Like most scholars today, I freely acknowledged that Shakespeare had co-authored plays, and Stevens wondered if I might be open-minded on the subject of his having collaborated with the Earl of Oxford.” – The New Yorker
It Will Soon Be Easier For Artists To Enter The UK To Work
Rule changes mean that from autumn, employers wanting to recruit non-European artists will no longer have to advertise the role to citizens of the European Economic Area first, and artists will no longer be subject to a salary threshold of £30,000. “We accept there is a national shortage,” the MAC wrote in a wholesale review of the labour market in May. – Arts Professional
Four Major Dance Critics Stepped Down Last Season. What Does That Mean For Dance Criticism As A Whole?
“Last May, The Guardian reported that Judith Mackrell would step down from her post after a 23-year run, and Alastair Macaulay announced he was giving up his position as The New York Times‘ chief dance critic, effective this past January. Luke Jennings left The Observer in the UK in December, and this winter, The New Yorker quietly replaced Joan Acocella with the historian Jennifer Homans. … In one fell swoop, criticism has lost decades of experience and memories, and these writers won’t be easily replaced.” – Dance Magazine
Can Korngold’s monster opera be saved? Even by Bard?
Getting to know opera via recording is like on-line dating — no reason why it shouldn’t work, and it often does. Then you walk into something like Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane with well-founded hopes, and you leave trying to reconcile what you thought it was on recording with what you’ve just experienced. – David Patrick Stearns
What Stands May Fall
I didn’t read any of the program notes for the Wendy Whelan-Maya Beiser-Lucinda Childs-David Lang piece the day at Jacob’s Pillow. I didn’t even read the spoken text. Why then, did I find tears pricking at my eyes as the piece neared its end? – Deborah Jowitt
Is Dance A Sport Or Not? Does It Matter?
Lauren Wingenroth: “A Google search of that question will yield hundreds of results of impassioned arguments about whether or not we should consider dance a sport. The fact that breaking was recently provisionally added to the 2024 Summer Olympics program is certain to make the conversation even more heated. I would like to make a counterargument: Those on both sides of the issue seem to agree more than they disagree. So who cares?” – Dance Magazine
Oh No – One Of Our Favorite Sources Is Closing Down
Pacific Standard has about 20 full-time employees, 25 writers on contract and dozens of freelance writers who contributed to the publication, Nicholas Jackson said, adding that the employees were offered severance packages. – Los Angeles Times
Watching A Play, In Black And White: Two Critics Discuss How Who You Are Affects The Way You See African-American Theater
“In a cultural medium whose producers, audiences and critics are still predominantly white, [Jackie Sibblies Drury’s] Fairview challenges playgoers to think about how the different backgrounds and assumptions they bring to the theater may produce vastly different results once inside.” Jesse Green and Salamishah Tillet talk about that issue with respect to Fairview and African-American plays more generally. – The New York Times
Does Imagining Our Extinction Change Who We Are?
As ideas go, human extinction is a comparatively new one. It emerged first during the 18th and 19th centuries. Though understudied, the idea has an important history because it teaches us lessons on what it means to be human in the first place, in the sense of what is demanded of us by such a calling. – Aeon
Finally, There’s A Distributor Willing To Handle Errol Morris’s Steve Bannon Documentary
“After [premiering at] Venice, American Dharma screened at the Toronto and New York film festivals and picked up strong reviews. But the idea of Bannon getting a platform at all ignited a backlash … that made the film radioactive for buyers. … [Now] Utopia, co-founded in February by musician and director Robert Schwartzman (nephew of Francis Ford Coppola), has acquired U.S. rights to the film from the Oscar winner behind The Fog of War.” – The Hollywood Reporter
David Zimbalist: Time To Clean House At Curtis Institute
“The program at Curtis is one of the most intense and stressful of any educational programs in the world. My cousin [a former director of the school] believed in its mission. It will and must continue, but it is time for Curtis to clean house. The fact that there were those who allegedly used their roles as mentors inappropriately is bad enough, but the cover up that has been waged in their defense is far worse.” – Philadelphia Inquirer
Yeah, The Nicholas Cage New York Times Magazine Interview Is As Weird As Everybody Says
Not David Marchese’s writing; he does a fine job. But Cage showed up for the interview wearing “oversize sunglasses, a dragon ring the size of a walnut and a black velveteen jacket over a Bruce Lee T-shirt.” He says that he has based various performances on his pet cobras, Woody Woodpecker, Stockhausen, and Pokey. (That’s Gumby’s sidekick, the orange horse.) He talks about his grail quest that was and was not metaphorical. (The Holy Grail, he has determined, is the Earth.) And he says about his acting, “I’m [now] at the top of my game.” – The New York Times Magazine
The Shanghai Symphony Has Been Playing For 140 Years, Even Through The Cultural Revolution
It was the first symphony orchestra in the entire Far East, founded in 1879. (That’s only 37 years after the New York Philharmonic, the United States’ oldest orchestra.) Says music director Long Yu, “You can find all the programs through the First (World) War, Second (World) War, Cultural Revolution and till today – they have not stopped playing concerts. … They did function in the Cultural Revolution – Chinese folk songs, but they still played. It is amazing.” – Chicago Tribune
New York Mag Gives Decolonize This Place A Museum Target List
Now that Warren Kanders (“the tear-gas CEO”) has been chased off the Whitney’s board, “which institution might wind up in the crosshairs next? We looked at the makeup of various museums and ranked whose ties make them likely targets of outrage.” – New York Magazine
Tourists Are No Longer Allowed To Sit On Rome’s Spanish Steps
If they do, they can get €400 tickets. And if they try to wade in the Trevi Fountain the way Anita Ekberg did in La Dolce Vita? €450. Those guys in centurion costumes who pose with tourists at the Colosseum are now forbidden, and there are plenty of other new rules “intended to ‘guarantee decorum, security and legality’ by prohibiting actions that are ‘not compatible with the historic and artistic decorum'” of the historic center of the Eternal City. – The New York Times
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Loses Its Director. What Does That Mean For The Yet-To-Open Building?
“Where they are right now — making that transition between heavy construction and the other things a museum does — is the most fragile and sensitive time for any organization,” said Justin Jampol, director of the Wende Museum of Cold War History, which opened in Culver City less than two years ago. “It’s a big switch and it has a very stressful impact on the organization.” – Los Angeles Times