“When the American Library Association introduced the Caldecott in 1938, the United States was an industrial giant but still a cultural stepchild of Europe. … So librarians wanted to jump-start American creativity by limiting Caldecott eligibility to American citizens and permanent residents just as they had done for their literature award, the Newbery, over a decade before.” Needless to say, the situation has changed. – The New York Times Book Review
Shuffle: Orchestrating a Diverse Classical Music World
“It’s no secret that classical music has a diversity problem. Major symphony orchestras around the country are primarily white, as are their audiences. And as these audiences continue to shrink, more conservatories and orchestras are getting serious about becoming as diverse as the cities they serve.” – WKSU (Kent, Ohio)
Queering Theatre Criticism
“Linnea Valdivia discusses the weight of reviews in theatre, the failure in arts journalism to approach queer stories with respect and empathy, how a critic should react if they misgender an artist, and more.” – HowlRound
Researchers: Humans Had Language Millions Of Years Ago
Authors argue that the anatomical ingredients for speech were present in our ancestors much earlier than 200,000 years ago. In fact, they propose that the necessary equipment—specifically, the throat shape and motor control that produce distinguishable vowels—has been around as long as 27 million years, when humans and Old World monkeys (baboons, mandrills, and the like) last shared a common ancestor. – The Atlantic
BP To Arts World: Stop Judging Us By Our Past
“Speaking at a public forum in Westminster this week, [BP’s UK chief] Peter Mather said ‘the most important debate of our generation’ – climate change – was best served by BP continuing to sponsor major institutions like the British Museum, National Portrait Gallery and Royal Opera House, rather than ‘demonising’ the company for its contribution to carbon emissions. … ‘If I come back in five years and we’re just doing the same thing in oil and gas, then I think might have lost our licence to operate in this [arts sponsorship] space.'” – Arts Professional
Unique Red Granite Bust Of Ramses II Discovered In Egypt
“An Egyptian archaeological mission from the Ministry of Antiquities has unearthed a red granite royal bust of King Ramses II emblazoned with the Ka, a symbol of power, life force and spirit. The discovery was made during excavations on privately owned land in Mit Rahina village in Giza, after the landowner was caught carrying out illegal excavation work at the site.” – Archaeology News Network
The Black Ballerina Who Was Told To Wear Blackface For ‘La Bayadere’
When she was an 11-year-old performing as a local dancer filling in at a Mariinsky Ballet performance in LA, Dana Nichols didn’t know she would be asked to perform in blackface until just before the dress rehearsal. “All I could manage to say was, ‘Do I need this?’ I became that thing in the room that no one had ever had to confront. Our chaperones exchanged glances and finally responded with an uncomfortable ‘Yes.’ One woman laughed nervously as she indicated that I still had to wear the makeup because my brown skin was many shades lighter than the color of the bodysuit and the paint selected to cover our skin.” – Dance Magazine
A New Opera Company For Orange County? Not Likely
LA Opera continues to stage traditional and spectacular productions, Long Beach Opera forges ahead in its scrappy and innovative way, San Diego Opera provides yet another outlet for listeners. The market for opera in Southern California may already be saturated, and it may be a settled question: asking for a fully-staffed, active and sustaining professional company in Orange County that consistently delivers top-quality, fully-staged productions before packed and enthusiastic houses? It may be too much. – Voice of Orange County
Actor Danny Aiello, 86
He memorably portrayed blue-collar heavies and hotheads in films such as “The Godfather: Part II,” “The Purple Rose of Cairo” and “Do the Right Thing,” and played against type as a middle-aged mama’s boy in “Moonstruck.” – Washington Post
How Awards Distort Our Movie And Music Culture
Awards are, it must be said, an absurdity. It is not only possible but crucial to insist on the importance or value of art without giving it a trophy. For the many who are interested in the arts, both mass-marketability and the potential for conferred prestige (i.e. awards) should be irrelevant. If those markers are your interest above the work itself, you can turn to metrics, algorithms, and trending topics, which have robust and widely-available platforms for consumption and analysis. Instead, in discussing and deciding what’s available to watch, what’s worth or not worth watching, and how movies are shaping our society, we must try to de-emphasize the validating mechanisms the industry itself provides. – The Daily Beast
Cost Of The Edinburgh Fringe Is Shutting Out Working Class Artists
“So, who can afford to perform at the Fringe regularly? Who can absorb a grand loss every year? Who can work unpaid for 17 weeks at a time? The answer is people who already have money. People who have the financial resources to take that hit year-in and year-out while they build a profile, while they experiment, while they get better at their job. Not me, and not any of my fellow working class artists – that’s for sure.” – The Stage
ARTnews’ Top 200 Collectors List For 2019
“There is this great shift in what’s going on in collecting,” said Sara Friedlander, Christie’s head of postwar and contemporary art. “Collectors across the board are looking for something new that is also of great quality—in concert with what’s happening curatorially in museums and in scholarly gallery shows.” The result, she said, is “shifting the conversation away from simply dead white men to artists of color and women.” – ARTnews
Study: Surgeons Perform Better With Music Playing In The Operating Room
As the study noted, music is already played in operating theatres as a matter of course by most doctors and nurses — about two-thirds, as it turns out. Participants said that listening to music reduced stress and made them feel more relaxed. Patients also reported that music played before their surgeries reduced stress levels. Almost all the respondents preferred classical music of some kind, with a slight preference for Mozart piano sonatas. Classical music was used in six of the studies, and music of choice in the others. – Ludwig Van
At Putin’s Request, Russia’s Major Museums Are Opening Regional Satellites
The Hermitage in St. Petersburg has just opened a branch in Omsk, the Pushkin in Moscow is setting up in Samara and Nizhny Novgorod, and both museums are making plans to open outposts in Yekaterinburg. Similar plans are in the works from Kaliningrad (wedged between Poland and Lithuania) to Tomsk in Siberia to Khabarovsk in the Far East and (especially) Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan. – The Art Newspaper
NPR Changes The Formula For What It Charges Local Stations
Among stations with annual membership income above $4 million, the median change in fees is a 9% increase, according to NPR; among stations with income below $250,000, an 8% decline. – Current
‘The Inheritance’ Was A Huge Success In London, So Why Isn’t It Catching On In New York?
Isaac Butler: “Usually when a piece from the U.K. fails to resonate in the U.S. (or vice versa), we can chalk it up to intangible cultural differences between our two countries and their famous separation by a common language. But this was an American play, with a mostly American cast, about New York City, the AIDS crisis, gay history, and what members of a community owe to each other. Why has it ended up struggling so much over here? The answer is partly political, … [but] more deadly, I think, are basic problems of playwriting craft: If The Inheritance is failing to connect, it is because its structure as a work of drama is unsound.” – Slate
Brazilian Film Industry Suffering Under Bolsonaro Government
Brazilian cinema – put on the map by global hits such as City of God and Aquarius – has suffered a succession of blows since Bolsonaro took office in January, from a general lack of interest in the arts to more pointed attacks on films dealing with themes such as sexual diversity and race. – The Guardian
World’s Tallest Ballet Dancer, Fabrice Calmels, Is Leaving Joffrey After 19 Years
“I think I’m at the top of my game. I’m not retiring, I’m not doing this because of health. And I love teaching and coaching.” And, while he loves Chicago, he’s moving to L.A. “First of all, California is warmer, and I need that for a little while. Also California makes sense because a lot of things that I want to do could be movie-related. I also feel like it’s far away from ballet … and I like that challenge.” – Pointe Magazine
Native American Languages Are Disappearing. There’s A Bill In Congress That Can Help Preserve Them.
“On Monday, in a small step to preserve this tradition, the House passed the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Programs Reauthorization Act, named after the legendary Tewa linguist. With the Senate vote already in the bank, the measure is headed to President Trump’s desk. Like a variety of other set-term appropriation bills, the legislation, which was first passed under George W. Bush in 2006, has to be renewed by Congress every five years to maintain the funding. And like so many other necessary pieces of legislation, it is still deficient.” – The New Republic
Artistic Director Of Houston’s Shuttered METdance Launches New Company
METdance, the city’s largest company after Houston Ballet, was disbanded this past summer, having never recovered financially from 2017’s Hurricane Harvey. Before the summer was over, Marlana Doyle had started both a school, the Institute of Contemporary Dance Houston, and the Houston Contemporary Dance Company, which gives its first performances this weekend. – Houston Chronicle
So Many Good, And Successful, Movies By And About Women This Year — Why Are They Getting So Few Award Nominations?
Films such as Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, Melina Matsoukas’s Queen & Slim, Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart, and Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers have been nearly shut out of the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations. Reporters Nicole Sperling and Brooks Barnes look into the reasons. – The New York Times
Strikes Over Pension Reform Have Cost Paris Opera And Ballet €2.5 Million A Week
“The Opéra de Paris’s pension regime is one of the oldest in France, dating back to Louis XIV. It is costly as ballet dancers are allowed to retire at 42 and technical staff can leave with a full pension in the their 50s. However, their generous regime is one of 42 that are for the chop after President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial shakeup of the French pension system.” – The Telegraph (UK)
Is A Banana And Duct Tape Art? Maybe That’s The Wrong Question
If you don’t like something that’s presented as art, if you think it’s offensive or stupid, go ahead and say it’s offensive and stupid. I’m an art critic, I will be right there with you. But to say simply that it’s not art is, for me, a cop-out. – Washington Post