“The site, launched in 2014, offers investment advice to subscribers—the current cap is ten—who pay $3,500 per quarter for early access to a ranking of emerging and blue-chip artists. Like a brokerage analyst’s report, it uses terms such as “buy,” “sell,” and the even more alarming “liquidate” to guide clients. ArtRank’s algorithm arrives at its valuations through a combination of publicly available data such as past sale prices, forthcoming exhibitions, and social media posts from art world influencers as well as insider advice from collectors and dealers.”
Crowdfunding Has Become Increasingly Important For The Arts
“In the US, Kickstarter famously helped raise more funds for the arts than the National Endowment for the Arts. In the UK crowdfunding for the arts has also grown rapidly, with models such as rewards-based crowdfunding – the model most popular with artists and creatives – facilitating £42m worth of donations in 2015, a growth of more than 60% from £26m in 2014.”
Is The Only Way To Make Theatre Budgets Work By Underpaying Workers?
“The debate over these overtime rules — in this article, in my head, in my heart, in our boardroom, in a courtroom, in our communities as well as among members, sponsors, and donors, has to include asking whether the only way to balance a budget is by marginalizing those who pour all of their passion, time and talent into their organizations.”
Vinyl Records Are Hot Right Now (But For Classical Music?)
The new shops carry everything from folk to electronica to hip hop, but in many of them, the classical “section” amounts to a single milk crate on the floor near the back.
A Different Kind Of Year-End List: The Ten Best Audiobooks Of 2016
Laura Miller: “During this long, ugly year of shouting there’s been something profoundly restorative about just listening: popping in a pair of earbuds, taking a long walk (or clearing out a neglected closet), and immersing yourself in a world of someone else’s making.”
Text Of Andrew Norman’s Award Speech In Which He Questions The System
“The music of the past is undoubtedly transformative, powerful, and amazing; it is one of the great legacies of Western civilization, and it deserves and demands to be heard for generations to come, but I wonder sometimes if we aren’t sacrificing this art form’s future in order to preserve its storied past.”
Artists Should Be Entrepreneurs? Why?
“In the wake of this deprofessionalization, we find ourselves without professional careers, and so observe with common sense that we must go into business for ourselves, we must be entrepreneurs. Common sense, of course, as an expression of dominant cultural ideas, is the most ideological of the senses. We’ve become hybrids, hyphenates—just like actor-managers were. While we can think of this positively, that yes, we have diverse interests and opportunities as artists, we should remember the economic conditions that force us to be hybrids: single professional career tracks that would pay for our bills and our retirements are closed off.”
Westminster Choir College’s Parent University Considers Closing And Selling It
Back in 1992, facing severe financial problems, the revered school for choral conductors and singers merged with nearby Rider University. Now Westminster is healthy again and Rider is in fiscal trouble – and eyeing the cash it could get for Westminster’s Princeton campus.
Theatre, Out Of Its (Scripted) Echo Chamber In The Wake Of Brexit And Trump
Lyn Gardner isn’t cool with the usual suspects thrashing it out on stage without considering their audience. “If the arts, and theatre in particular, wants to genuinely respond and enter into meaningful dialogues with those who feel excluded and disenfranchised, it needs to look outward not inward.”
In Hallmark Christmas Land, Everyone Is White (And Straight), And It’s Canada’s Fault
Um. “When asked to elaborate on the nature of his company’s difficulties regarding hiring actors and actresses of color, Abbott cited the fact that the majority of production takes place in Canada … and the channel’s high volume of production.”
Can A Hit Norwegian Show About Sexy Teens Make It In The U.S.?
In Norway, the show “Skam” has become a hot button for national conversations about consent, dating, pressure and much more. So let’s rephrase the question: Will the English-language versions of “Skam” be as careful to get everything about teenagers’ lives right?
A Writer Says That Art Can – And Must – Turn Hatred Around
“Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it. Art can take something as dark as the Hay Institution for Girls, as hateful as that graffiti, and in applying the transfiguring power of ‘something else,’ it can give us the strength not to turn away and normalize, but to keep looking—and in doing so to question, provoke, understand, reject, change.”
The Tragic Fire In Oakland Is Going To Make Informal Artists’ Colonies Much More Rare
Artists band together in unsafe living conditions all over expensive urban areas like New York, the Bay Area, Los Angeles and more. Now property owners, freaked out by the Ghost Ship fire, are handing out evictions – and the artists have no place to go. (Meanwhile, the warehouses are becoming condos for tech workers.)
At Long Last, Daniel Barenboim Achieves One Of His Major Dreams
The Barenboim-Said Academy opened Thursday in the heart of downtown Berlin. “‘I’m sure you will believe me if I tell you that I once felt this day would never happen,’ he said. … The building contains a brand new concert hall, designed pro bono by Frank Gehry and named after Pierre Boulez, an avid supporter of the idea and a good friend of Mr. Barenboim.”
So, How Much Did You Know About Hitler Doing Speedballs?
Who knew that after somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 million books, movies, TV shows and documentaries about the Nazis, there was something left to learn? “Though elements of this tale have been told, the extent of narcotic consumption by Nazi soldiers and Hitler has surprised even those who have spent decades researching this era.”
Mika Kurosawa, The Godmother Of Contemporary Japanese Dance, Has Died At 59
Kurosawa lived in New York in the early 1980s and was deeply influenced by that city’s experimental dance scene. “She was rebelliously devoted to dance; the trappings of fame or popularity were antithetical to her approach.”
The Panel Mediating On Objects Stolen By The Nazis Says That Yes, A Rare Violin Is In That Group
The violin disappeared after its owner, a Jewish man who ran a music business in Speyer, couldn’t escape Nazi Germany and committed suicide; it reappeared in 1974.
Today’s AJBlog Highlights
- Amateur work On Facebook and Twitter I’ve been talking about bad graphic design in classical music. Why does bad design matter? Because we need a new audience. Our new audience comes — will come — from the … read more
- Looking for love in Bodunk In the online edition of today’s Wall Street Journal, I review a new off-Broadway musical, the stage version of The Band’s Visit. Here’s an excerpt. * * * As delightful as well-done big-budget musicals can … read more
Where Risk Lives – Increasingly Not In Big Institutions But In The Small Nimble Startups
Just as Hollywood studios have abandoned making movies that don’t promise blockbuster potential, so have major publishers narrowed their interests to “big” books. Increasingly, risks in new authors are taken by small, nimble presses with small staffs. They invest in these writers, and, when they become successful, bigger publishers snap them up.
Increasingly, “risky” authors, those who’ve been rejected over and over again by traditional publishers or dozens of agents, are being picked up by small presses whose modus operandi is to take risks on literature that is exciting, innovative, or that they deem important either stylistically or politically. Then the big publishers swoop in and profit from the hard work and risk-taking of the small presses.
That is a good thing, in a way, because it means everyone makes more money from the art and a wider audience is reached. But it does seem like big publishers are hedging their bets more and more often, operating as if they are not too big to fail. It is a shame that the heavy lifting is being left to those who are only big in ambition.
As our creative industries are being de-institutionalized, large institutions are less and less able to be nimble and experiment than are smaller startups without legacy costs.
Remembering Pauline Oliveros And Her Radical Vision Of Listening
Considered as a healing practice—or a “tuning of mind and body”—Oliveros’s “Sonic Meditations” are, to an extent, unique in the history of musical experimentalism. In these works, experiments were not conducted on the music; the music was an experiment on the self. Anyone searching today for the complete box set of “Sonic Meditations” won’t find it, because, as the composer wrote, “music is a welcome by-product” of this composition. The experiments remain in each listener. Oliveros’s aims were clear: these works were intended to be transformational, even therapeutic, enacting lasting changes on the body and mind.
Tragic Oakland Fire Spotlights Artist Housing Problem
“The horrific event could lead city officials to go after illegally converted warehouses across Oakland, especially as evidence mounts that building inspectors knew of numerous problems with the Ghost Ship property but didn’t take action. Already, Oakland tenants housed in similar spaces are receiving eviction notices, and Mayor Libby Schaaf announced that the city is considering new fire and emergency exit regulations for its buildings. But any decision to condemn residences where artists are living illegally or force their owners to bring them up to code has led to worries that Oakland might hemorrhage more artists as housing costs continue to rise.”
Dutch National Ballet And Rambert Contemporary Dance Begin Joint Project To Develop Choreographers
“Contemporary dance company Rambert has announced an artistic development partnership with the Dutch National Ballet to nurture choreographers and composers from both companies. The partnership will begin with a joint programme of exchange between both companies and the artists working within them.”