“The Open Society Foundations announced recently the launch of its Culture and Art program, which ‘seeks to advance diverse artistic practices and strengthen locally-led cultural spaces around the world through grantmaking, capacity building, and convening power.'” – Grantmakers in the Arts
Soprano Julia Bullock Is Forging A Major Career Entirely Away From Standard Opera Repertory
“Instead of singing Mozart or Verdi, she has made a precocious impact on the concert stage and as a curator, serving as artist in residence last season at the Metropolitan Museum of Art — where she delved deeply into the African-American experience, past and present — and this season in the same role with the San Francisco Symphony.” Says director Peter Sellars, “This is who we’ve been waiting for. You see someone who’s not just a vehicle, but an agent of change. She’s actually moving the whole art form into a new relevance.” – The New York Times
Can This Website Become An Amazon For Independent Bookstores?
This January, the American Booksellers Association Bookshop will launch Bookshop, “a mobile-friendly website with one-click ordering à la Amazon that … will sell physical books and digital audio but not e-books. It will also discount, but not nearly as deeply as Amazon … [and] experiment with various thresholds for free shipping.” – Publishers Weekly
Come to the cabaret aux Crazy Coqs
How often do we go to cabaret or a jazz club in London? In truth, not often. But I’ve been twice in the last year, to catch an autobiographical musical gig by the veteran movie, tv and stage star, Anita Gillette. – Paul Levy
Argentina Believed It Found A Trove Of Nazi Artifacts. Experts Aren’t so Sure
Police came across the more than 80 objects by accident during a house search of an antiques dealer in a suburb of Buenos Aires. They include daggers with swastikas, a ouija board and magnifying glass that were said to have been used by Hitler himself. – Der Spiegel
Rowan Williams: How Poetry Clarifies Our Language
As Auden says, poetry is “a way of happening”. It takes the passage of time, the reality of loss, the absorption in a sharpened kind of seeing or hearing, and makes all these into speech that can survive (as Auden also insists) and help others survive. Its task of “turning noise into music” is thus irreducibly political, a sustained resistance to commodified, generalised language and the appalling reductions of human possibility that this brings with it. Far from being a decorative adjunct to social or public life, it represents the possibilities to which all intelligent and humane social life should point. “Poetry saves the world every day.” – New Statesman
NY Is Trying To Diversify Its Monuments. Not So Easy, It Turns Out
Under Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, the city is aiming to build monuments at an unusually rapid rate to honor women, people of color and others previously overlooked. But the effort has become far more contentious than expected, as a diverse, vocal and highly opinionated city fights over the legacy it should leave in bronze and stone. – The New York Times
What Your Brain Looks Like When You’re Improvising
“What do the brains of jazz musicians look like as they create their art on the fly? Using an fMRI machine, Dr. Charles Limb found that activity in the medial prefrontal cortex shot up, while activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex plummeted. In short, the area of the brain responsible for self-monitoring shut off, and the source of self-expression lit up.” – Fast Company
Jerry Saltz And Justin Davidson Debate The New MoMA
“The great news is that along with the rest of us, Diller Scofidio + Renfro were finally beaten down by the reality of just how messed-up and cramped the billion-dollar Taniguchi building was. They fixed some of the problems and tacked on a few fun extras, and added about five Gagosians’ worth of space. But it still amazes me that the suits who make the museum’s real-estate deals sold MoMA short again.” – New York Magazine
It’s Theatre! No, It’s Film! (Actually, It’s Both)
“Fascinated by the relationship between theater and cinema, Christiane Jatahy has made a show that’s both. “One is the utopia of the other,” she tells us, though anyone who has ever despaired at badly shot video in the theater might wonder if screen and stage are actually enemies. But Jatahy has managed a strange and difficult trick. By precisely setting live film and live performance against each other, she makes them into a mise en abyme— a mirror that reflects another mirror, leading the eye into infinity.” – New York Magazine
Oops: Greece Asks Why Ancient Vase Given To Margaret Thatcher Was Sold At Auction
In a tweet, art historian Maria Paphiti found that the 2,700-year-old vase had been sold at Christie’s auction house in May for nearly 7,000 euros ($7,700). The vase was given to Thatcher by former Cyprus President George Vassiliou three decades ago. – Washington Post (AP)
Pioneering NY Gallerist Ronald Feldman Retires After 50 Years
Mr. Feldman, 82, founded the gallery with his wife, Frayda Feldman, in 1971 on East 74th Street. In 1982, the gallery moved to SoHo, establishing an early beachhead in Lower Manhattan that seemed to suit an institution that broke boundaries and championed a wide range of risk-taking artists and their (often political) works. – The New York Times
Why You Shouldn’t Trust Netflix’s Viewer Numbers
Yes, Netflix is sharing more information about how many people are watching its shows than it did just a year ago, and we now have a broad sense of which shows and movies are especially popular with its subscribers. But there’s plenty of reason to avoid these apples-to-oranges comparisons and take this data with a grain — make that a heaping scoop — of salt. – Los Angeles Times
LA’s MoCA Makes Investment In Performance At Geffen Contemporary
“All of the sudden performance seems to be the new authentic. When we can watch everything on Instagram and YouTube, it seems to be that people want to see [art] one-on-one — that’s what people are longing for.” – Los Angeles Times
Study: Movie Attendance Goes Up When Movie Casting Is More Diverse
In its latest data drop, analytics firm Movio has discovered “a correlation between a minority group’s representation on screen and that group’s audience turnout, with some groups attending in numbers at more than twice the usual rate.” The report also shows that consumers less inclined to head to the movies will turn up to the multiplex if they see themselves projected on screen. – Variety
Karen Kain To Retire From National Ballet Of Canada
The announcement comes nearly 15 years after Kain assumed the creative reins in 2005 and 50 years after joining the company as a dancer in 1969. Kain commissioned and acquired 65 works for the company, and is directing and staging a new “Swan Lake” in June 2020. – Toronto Star
Four Different Operas In 48 Hours – A Logistical Marvel
The new schedule of matinees on Saturday and Sunday means that the Met sometimes mounts four different productions in the 48 hours between Friday and Sunday evening — a truly herculean task that the company performs on a scale that is unusual, if not unique, in the world. – The New York Times
Where Is Leonardo’s Other “Prettier” Mona Lisa?
“The second painting that Leonardo aficionados will miss is what many believe is an earlier version of the “Mona Lisa,” which shows a much younger—and dare we say—prettier version of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, who commissioned the work in the early 1500s.” – The Daily Beast