“Grand Central Terminal, the main building on Ellis Island and the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory at the New York Botanical Garden – all among the greatest New York City landmarks – look better today than they have since their earliest years. Many hands were responsible. John Belle was the common denominator. Mr. Belle, the retired founding partner of Beyer Blinder Belle, … died last week at 84.”
Dropping The Naked Ladies Was A Good Move For ‘Playboy’
“Americans are liking what they are not seeing in Playboy. The 63-year-old men’s magazine has seen newsstand sales jump 28.4 percent in the first six months after its decision to drop nude photos from its pages, industry statistics show.”
London Has A Plan For ‘Artist Zones’ To Shield Creatives From Ever-Rising Rents
“Dedicated ‘artist zones’ could be created in areas such as Hackney Wick and Peckham to offer protection against developers and soaring rents, under proposals being worked on by the deputy mayor for culture.”
Cindy Sherman, Martin Scorsese To Receive Japan’s Highest Cultural Honor
“The annual Praemium Imperiale recognizes career achievements in five categories: painting, sculpture, architecture, music and theater or film.”
Burning Man’s #SoWhite Problem May Finally Be Getting (A Little) Better
Steven W. Thrasher: “In the summer of 2015, … I interviewed about 30 black people and some other people of color at Burning Man (pretty much all the people of color I could find who would talk to me) … When I returned this year, there was a burning question on many people’s minds: did I think there were more black people at Burning Man a year later? In a word: yes.”
Objects And Even Chores Can Give Meaning To Life, If You Find The Play In Them
Ian Bogost: “Normally we think of play as the opposite of work. Work is the thing you have to do, and then there’s play, the thing you choose to do. But if you think of play as being in things, there are things that are playable, then it becomes the work of figuring out what a thing can do.”
Preserving Disappearing Languages From All Over The World – In One City
“[Toronto’s] roughly 2.8 million residents come from about 200 distinct ethnic origins and speak more than 140 languages and dialects. Of these, [linguist Anastasia] Riehl says, at least a ‘few dozen’ are endangered and several probably don’t even have proper names. “Large multi-ethnic cities like Toronto become the last context for these languages.'”
Gawker Media’s New Owners Delete Six Existing Posts, Staff Rebels
“[Editorial staffers and the new owners at Univision] fought over the decision to delete six posts from the embattled digital media company’s stable of sites … Also expected to be discussed at the meeting was staffers’ request that Univision indemnify them personally for stories published – a request that the media giant denied, sources said.”
Berlin’s Most Famous Nightclub Is Now Officially A Cultural Venue
“A vast dance club housed in a former East Berlin power station, Berghain has somehow managed the impressive feat of becoming world famous while still retaining a reputation as having an underground edge. Now, a regional court has to an extent enshrined its status in law, by ruling that it may join the city’s museums and concert halls in being taxed not as an entertainment business, but as a venue for culture.”
Why WebTV (Remember WebTV?) Was Doomed
“Terrible product ideas are a dime a dozen, but what about ideas that are fascinating, and perhaps executionally sound, but conceptually flawed? How often do they come about? And how often is it that they stick around the market for 17 years, despite fairly limited public interest? … On September 18, 1996 – 20 years ago this week – a startup firm released a device that meant to bring the internet to the living room.”
Meet America’s New Chief Librarian
Carla Hayden is about to take over as the Librarian of Congress. She’s “aware of but undaunted by the library’s challenges, including outdated technology, a storage crisis for its rapidly growing collections and a demoralized staff. A 2015 government report found widespread mismanagement of its IT systems, which wasted millions of dollars and hampered operations at the Copyright Office and elsewhere.”
Robert Gottlieb: My Life As A Reader
“Not since Max Perkins worked with Hemingway and Fitzgerald has there been a more admired editor than Robert Gottlieb. His has been, he would admit, a privileged and enviable life, which is really just another way of saying that it has been a life filled with books.”
Some Art Dealers Who Are Experimenting With Models Other Than The Gallery Norm
“Metaphors aside, it is clear how the current art fair-driven system has created a fixed pattern, with little room for negotiation: Small galleries from the periphery can participate at small fairs, and hopefully sell to collectors they would never meet otherwise. Meanwhile, big galleries, such as Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Marian Goodman, and David Zwirner but also Thaddaeus Ropac, Almine Rech, Perrotin, and Massimo De Carlo, become bigger and bigger—from ship to galleon, from galleon to fleet—opening new branches all over the world. But what about the middle sized galleries?”
Want More Diversity In The Film Industry? First You Need Numbers…
To women in an international industry with a depressing record on job equity in the key creative roles, the sunny but no-nonsense Serner is a guru delivering a message of cheerful determination. To hear her tell the story, at a recent TIFF industry panel about how to get more women working as film directors, all it takes is willpower to overcome systemic discrimination and unconscious bias. The Swedish numbers now vary from year to year, but in the best years, half of publicly funded film projects are lead by women, not because the institute set quotas but because it insisted that the individual commissioners who decide on funding become aware of the issue.
Alexis Arquette, The Lady Chablis, And The Barriers They Broke
“In the 1990s, if you wanted to see a trans actor on the big screen, you had remarkably few options. Despite a plethora of films with large transgender roles, … trans actors were almost entirely sidelined from major productions. … But that wasn’t even a conversation in the 90s, when Arquette and Chablis became two of the first trans actors to play trans roles in major mainstream films.”
‘Disruptive And Insulting’: Berlin State Ballet’s Dancers Are Furious That Sasha Waltz Was Made Their New Director
“Berlin’s mayor Michael Müller had last week appointed Waltz and Swedish ballet chief Johannes Öhman as co-directors of Germany’s largest ballet company from the 2019/2020 season on. But in a scathing petition posted on the company’s homepage on Sunday, the dancers said: ‘Unfortunately, the appointment has to be compared to an appointment of a tennis trainer as a football coach or an art museum director as an orchestral director.'”
Alec Baldwin Sues Art Dealer For Fraud For Selling Him The Wrong Ross Bleckner Painting
“The suit asserts that [Mary] Boone deceived [Baldwin] by promising a painting, Sea and Mirror, by the artist Ross Bleckner, that had been sold at Sotheby’s to a Los Angeles collector in 2007, but in fact supplied another similar Bleckner painting, also called Sea and Mirror.”
The Cultural Appropriation Wars Ambush A Literary Festival
“Officials in charge of an Australian writers festival were so upset with the address by their keynote speaker, the American novelist Lionel Shriver, that they censored her on the festival website and publicly disavowed her remarks. The event, the Brisbane Writers Festival, which ended Sunday, also hurriedly organized counterprogramming, billed as a ‘right of reply’.”
Here’s The Full Text Of Lionel Shriver’s Speech About Cultural Appropriation
“I’m afraid the bramble of thorny issues that cluster around ‘identity politics’ has got all too interesting, particularly for people pursuing the occupation I share with many gathered in this hall: fiction writing. Taken to their logical conclusion, ideologies recently come into vogue challenge our right to write fiction at all. Meanwhile, the kind of fiction we are ‘allowed’ to write is in danger of becoming so hedged, so circumscribed, so tippy-toe, that we’d indeed be better off not writing the anodyne drivel to begin with.”
BBC Chair To Quit After Four Months On The Job, Following Strong Hint From Prime Minister
“The chair of the BBC, Rona Fairhead, is to step down after Theresa May indicated she would have to apply again for the job she was reappointed to by David Cameron just four months ago. In a statement, Fairhead said that after ‘much thought’ she had concluded it was appropriate not to re-enter the appointment process.”
‘Marjorie Prime’ And ‘The Profane’ Win 2016 Horton Foote Prize
“The 2016 Prize for Outstanding New American Play will go to Jordan Harrison for Marjorie Prime. The 2016 Prize for Promising New American Play will go to Zayd Dohrn for The Profane. Each award comes with $20,000.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.13.16
The New York Philharmonic’s New Hall Is An Opportunity To Rethink The Orchestra Experience (And Amplify It)
Last week Michael Cooper made a plea to the New York Philharmonic for some upgrades to the concert amenity experience when the orchestra overhauls Geffen Hall in 2019. … I’d like to second his suggestions and add a few. … read more
AJBlog: diacritical/Douglas McLennan Published 2016-09-13
Reflections on a Symposium
Last week I provided daily summaries of The Robert E. Gard Foundation’s Our Communities: A Symposium on the Arts … With the advantage of a few days distance (and rest) it’s probably worthwhile to lay out a little more of the “sense” of the gathering. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2016-09-13
Regrets, I’ve had a few
Five things I wish I could do:
• Speak French • Sing really well • Play bridge • Dance • Cook
Five things I wish I had:
• A Morandi etching • A grand piano …read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-09-13
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This Year’s Man Booker Prize Shortlist
“Though this year’s short list is not nearly as internationally diverse as last year’s — nominees hail only from the U.S., U.K., and Canada — there’s a significant chance a person of color could follow in the footsteps of last year’s winner, Marlon James, and take home the prize.”
Is This Plaster Of The ‘Little Dancer’ Really By Degas? One Expert Says Yes
“In a twist to a longstanding debate that for years has riveted a corner of the art world, one of the leading experts on Degas has decided that a long-disputed plaster of that artist’s Little Dancer, which shows the ballerina in a slightly different pose, is indeed an earlier model of his famous 1881 sculpture Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans.”