“Music venues, theaters, and movie houses help make cities desirable, interesting, and economically humming—but they simply cannot operate in a pandemic. Following one of them through the past six months reveals a lot about how America’s economic relief left many kinds of businesses behind—and how much worse off these places will be unless a presently gridlocked Congress does something.” – Slate
UK Gallery Employees Call Out Bad Behavior In Instagram Account
The page has published dozens of accounts of alleged abuses of power in the art trade since it was started in July, amid similar calls by accounts such as @changethemuseum and @abetterguggenheim, which accuse institutions of discriminatory practices. – The Art Newspaper
Art Paris Fair Opens Live With Surprisingly Robust Crowds
The fair went ahead on September 10 through 13, offering a model of what a socially distanced art fair could look like, with controlled crowd flow and attendees capped at 3,000 at a time in the main thoroughfare under the cavernous glass roof. Nonetheless, it welcomed some 56,931 visitors, just 10 percent fewer than last year. – Artnet
‘Tenet’ Was Hollywood’s Great Hope To Revive American Moviegoing. It Didn’t.
It worked overseas: the Warner Bros. blockbuster has grossed $207 million altogether, but less than $30 million of that has been in the U.S. Worse, the much-touted $20 million first-weekend domestic gross turns out to have been heavily padded. These figures are scaring studios off their major release schedules. “Now the question isn’t whether theaters can return to normalcy,” writes David Sims, “but whether they can survive this pandemic at all.” – The Atlantic
Three Choreographers On The State Of Ballet: ‘It Can’t Be Business As Usual’
“Trey McIntyre, Amy Seiwert, and Gregory Dawson [talk about] what they are doing to keep their companies afloat and … about their perspectives on dance, ballet, digital dance offerings, and the state of the art.” – San Francisco Classical Voice
US Senate Report On Money Laundering Contains Warning For Art Market
Focusing on purchases of art from major auction houses by Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, two Russian nationals described as ‘oligarchs’ by the report, the Subcommittee makes a series of pronouncements about the supposed prevalence of money laundering in the art market, and the need for regulation to address this perceived problem. – Apollo
Virtual Theatre As An Opportunity Space
“We’re working with authors, artists and companies we’ve always wanted to and reaching audiences around the world in numbers that would be completely unattainable with previous ways of working. This is our working practice now. It’s not an addition – it is the core.” – The Stage
The Wagner Problem
By making music ideological and semantic in new ways, Wagner made it much easier to talk and write about—which is one reason why he has always been so appealing to intellectuals. A book like Alex Ross’s Wagnerism, a survey of Wagner’s influence on art and ideas over the last 150 years, could not be written about any other composer. – The New Republic
Alex Ross: Classical Music Grapples With Race
Since nationwide protests over police violence erupted, in May and June, American culture has been engaged in an examination, however nominal, of its relationship with racism. Such an examination is sorely needed in classical music, because of its extreme dependence on a problematic past. – The New Yorker
As Ever More Viewing Happens Online, Will The French Drift Away From Dubbed Films And TV?
“As streaming platforms take over more and more of the screen time in France, some fear the curtain will fall over the French dubbing industry as more people get used to watching subtitled versions of films rather than the VF (version française).” In fact, the voice-over/dubbing industry is growing, with demand for its services high. Here’s why. – The Local (France)
The Puzzling Connection of Translating Our Thoughts Into Words
The gulf between our solitary thoughts and the words that would convey them to others constantly confronts us all. The thoughts we struggle to articulate might be as momentous as a transformative moral epiphany or as ordinary as an insight into a movie or the hurtful behaviour of a friend. – Aeon
How Do London’s Theatre Workers Feel About Reopening Before The Virus Is Contained?
Relieved. Worried. Excited. Frustrated. In short, ambivalent. “Performers are constantly living on the edge, even without COVID so now there’s even more pressure than ever to get back to work.” – The Guardian
London’s West End Starts Announcing Reopenings, Even As COVID Cases Rise
The theatrical corporation Nimax announced that it would open the doors of six of its West End theatres, restarting such shows as Six (the pop musical about Henry VIII’s wives), The Play That Goes Wrong, and Magic Goes Wrong at roughly half the usual seating capacity. – The New York Times
For First Time Since The 1980s Vinyl Outsells CDs
A report on the first half of 2020 across the recorded music industry reads: “Vinyl album revenues of $232m were 62% of total physical revenues, marking the first time vinyl exceeded CDs for such a period since the 1980s.” The report acknowledged that vinyl records accounted for only 4% of total recorded music revenue. – The Guardian
Museum’s Plans To Sell Pollock To Diversify Trivializes An Important Issue
The museum’s origins date back more than a century, when it became the first to be dedicated specifically to American art. It’s shocking that the Everson has now chosen to sell off an irreplaceable artifact — a rare formative work by the first American painter with profound international impact. – Los Angeles Times
Dvořák and the American Experience of Race — An Antidote to “Checkbox Diversity”
Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony may not have been the work of a Black composer. But Dvořák embraced the African-American experience to a degree that would be controversial today. – Joseph Horowitz
‘She Has Developed A Completely New Video Language That Warms This Cool Medium Up’ — On Pipilotti Rist
“She has done more to expand the video medium than any artist since the Korean-born visionary Nam June Paik. Rist once wrote that she wanted her video work to be like women’s handbags, with ‘room in them for everything: painting, technology, language, music, lousy flowing pictures, poetry, commotion, premonitions of death, sex, and friendliness.’ If Paik is the founding father of video as an art form, Rist is the disciple who has done the most to bring it into the mainstream of contemporary art.” – The New Yorker
A New Yorker Writer Watches Herself And Her Mother Get Turned Into Chinese Propaganda Grotesques
Jiayang Fan: “I find a story about my mother and me in the Global Times, a state-controlled Chinese newspaper with twenty-eight million followers on Weibo. It has been picked up by the country’s most popular news aggregator and then energetically disseminated on various platforms. The more I read, the more fascinated I become by the creation of this alter ego. I am watching a portrait of myself being painted, minute by minute, anonymous hands contributing daubs and strokes, the more lurid the better.” – The New Yorker
The Artist Trap: How Do You Get Paid In The Digital Age?
There’s still plenty of money to be made in art, or writing, or music. It’s just not being made by the creators. Increasingly, their quest for personal artistic fulfillment is part of someone else’s racket. – The New Yorker