“News that the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the arts would fall victim to budget constraints raised a collective groan from the nation’s arts advocates earlier this year. Many wondered where else they could find national information on U.S. students’ engagement and performance in music and visual arts. A partial answer to that question just came from an unexpected place: NAEP’s 2019 math assessment.” (One of the takeaways: “There are also disparities by students’ race, ethnicity, family income and school location.”) – Ed Note
Hewlett Foundation Announces Changes in Arts Grantmaking Program
“While the foundation will continue to support nonprofit arts organizations that are creating, producing, and presenting performances across the region and will continue to fund organizations working to ensure that Bay Area youth have access to high-quality arts education, it will also provide, through new focus areas, support for artists and artists’ networks and will work to help arts leaders become more effective advocates for their communities.” – Philanthropy News Digest
Turns Out Barack Obama, On Top Of Everything Else, Is An Excellent Editor
Adam Frankel, a former member of Obama’s speechwriting team: “‘Something about this draft just doesn’t feel right.’ That, or something like it, is probably the most frequent feedback a speechwriter ever receives, and it is typically accompanied by precisely zero suggestions on what to do about it. I never heard Obama utter those words. In fact, I was always struck by the precision of his edits. If a certain sentence or structure had problems, he’d tell us exactly how to fix them.” – Literary Hub
Ballet Helps Veteran Recover From PTSD
“‘Keep your fingers straight and off the trigger. Do not point the rifle at anyone you do not intend to shoot.’ That’s Roman Baca, a U.S. marine and Iraq War veteran. But he’s not speaking to the company of soldiers he led during his tour as a sergeant in Fallujah, Iraq. Here, Baca is instructing a company of ballet dancers” in the documentary short Exit 12: Moved by War. (video) – The Atlantic
Why Do We Even Need Fiction? Asks Isaac Bashevis Singer
“Why invent things when nature and life supply so many strange events? … Why bother proving a lie when truth needs no preface? I sometimes fear that all of humankind may sooner or later come to my conclusion: that reading fiction is a waste of time. But why should I be afraid? Just because I would personally be one of the victims? No, it’s not just that.” – Los Angeles Review of Books
Cookie Monster’s Lifelong Love Affair With Art
“I’ve suspected there is something life-affirming in Cookie Monster’s unabashed love and joy for cultural stimuli — so pure and brash that if he could eat it all, he would. Cookie Monster was once a bad example, designed to teach children about self-control — one mustn’t always eat cookies — but so much of Sesame Street’s ethos is about love and kindness for others, for the nuances of the human race, for oneself.” – Hyperallergic
The Paralyzed Dancer Who Chooses to Dance
“I learned that the dancer inside me doesn’t care about this wheelchair. She just wanted to find a way to keep dancing. I think I’m living the life I was born to live. That was an accident, this is a choice.” WWL-TV (New Orleans)
Sabotage? Andras Schiff Went To Conduct The Montreal Symphony. It Didn’t Go Well
The Hungarian-born pianist, who was scheduled to play and conduct in the Maison symphonique on Oct. 23 and 24, ended up performing only before intermission in both concerts. Schiff withdrew from the second half of the program after an acrimonious rehearsal in which OSM sources say he criticized the players unfairly and even accused them of “sabotage.” – Montreal Gazette
Normalizing The Edges. But At What Cost?
At what cost is an externally or even cerebrally normalised life, a life of routine and regulation, elevated over a life that flops and flutters but also throbs? At what price is a life that sails over the many-sided intricacies of emotion and the ripples of discontent? – Aeon
How Sesame Street Got To Be 50 And Stay Relevant
“The reality is that Sesame Street’s impact can no longer be measured as ‘Who is sitting in front of the TV watching? If you think of Sesame Street as a television show, that’s long been inaccurate. It’s a cultural product.” – The Guardian
Seattle Is Losing Its Film And Music Production Business
The incredible economic tech bubble Seattle is experiencing is pushing out film and music jobs and companies. As people have had to make the hard choice to leave town to pursue their careers, Seattle is also losing that sense of a creative community that once made it worth all the other struggles. – The Stranger
Inside The 1811 Louisiana Slave Rebellion Re-Enactment
“It took years [for the organizer, artist Dread Scott,] to raise the funds of over $1m, which included money from 500 individual donations, to pull off the spectacle. But as word of mouth about the project got out, African Americans from all over the country signed up.” Reporter Oliver Laughland joined the re-enactors as they marched 26 miles from the LaPlace, La. plantation where the original rebellion started to the center of New Orleans. – The Guardian
A Body-Language Expert Analyzes Conductors’ Gestures
Consultant Lauren Tan watched footage of Leonard Bernstein, Gustavo Dudamel, Manfred Honeck, and others for what their hands, eyes, faces and postures can show the rest of us about non-verbal communication. – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Seattle’s Intiman Theatre May Be Pulling Itself Away From The Edge Of The Cliff
“Shortly after a fundraising gala-brunch on Saturday, Nov. 2, Intiman announced it had raised $130,000 in one month (including the brunch), putting the theater close to its year-end goal of $200,000. Meeting that goal would leave the organization, which has operated with a roughly $1 million budget in recent years, with $150,000 cash on hand going into 2020.” – The Seattle Times
Indie Publishers Nervous As Amazon Cuts Way Back On Orders For Holiday Gift Season
Several independent presses tell PW that the mega-retailer’s weekly orders have fallen since late October; one publisher says the most recent order was down 75% from this time last year. The apparent reason? Amazon’s warehouses don’t have space for the books. – Publishers Weekly
Another Movie About Nigerians Disqualified From Oscars’ Best International Feature Category
Last week, controversy broke out when Nigeria’s first-ever submission for what used to be called the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar was ruled out because a large majority of the dialogue is in English. Now Austria’s submission, a story of Nigerian sex workers in Vienna titled Joy, has been rejected for the same reason: two-thirds of the dialogue is in English. – The Hollywood Reporter
UK Publishers, Booksellers Wrestle With Selling Right Wing Books
With a divisive election looming and rising rates of hate crime, the question of how best to engage with opposing views is, says David Shelley of the publishing giant Hachette, hotly debated in acquisitions meetings. “It’s important to uphold free speech, but social justice is also a big part of our mission,” he says. He is proud that Hachette publishes authors from across the political spectrum, from Labour’s Jess Phillips to the controversial rightwing commentator Rod Liddle. “But we wouldn’t want to publish any book that played a part in oppressing minorities, or went against our inclusive ethos.” – The Guardian
Art Auction Guarantees Are Losing Popularity. Will This Crash The Market?
After an unprecedented expansion in recent years, third-party guarantees may have lost their magic. Their use appears to have peaked. Now, the trade is left wondering: Have guarantees become too popular for their own good? And what will happen to the market if a tool it once relied on is put back in the shed? – Artnet
Last Year Archaeologists Dated Cave Paintings In Spain Back To The Neanderthals. Were They Wrong?
Published in the Journal of Human Evolution, the critique, led by New York University archaeologist Randall White and co-authored by 44 international researchers, suggests that the dating technique used in the earlier report might not be reliable. “There is still no convincing archaeological evidence that Neanderthals created [southwestern European] cave art,” the document states. – Artnet
French Theatre That Kids Find More Compelling Than Their Screens
In an era of limitless on-demand entertainment, the timeworn art of French marionette theater continues to capture minds and hearts in this country in ways that smartphones, video games and the most seducing technologies can’t. – The New York Times
Bill Mays And Bobby Shew Then … & Mays Now
It was a coincidence that could not have been more welcome if it had had been planned; One day, the mailwoman brought two new albums that feature pianist Bill Mays. – Doug Ramsey
National Galleries Scotland Is The Latest Arts Organization To End Its Ties To BP
The 2019 BP Portrait Award will still take place in December, but that will be the last time NGS will host that show (at least, as sponsored by BP). The holdouts, that is, those arts organizations still sponsored by BP, now include the National Portrait Gallery, where this move will increase pressure. – The Guardian (UK)