“The Cambodian government is convinced that two life-size 10th-century statues that have anchored the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Southeast Asian galleries for nearly two decades were looted from a jungle temple and plans to ask for their return.”
Month: June 2012
Ballet Comes To Your T.V. – In A Big Way
Television embraces classical dance, from dramedies to flat-out dramas (“The Black Swan effect”) to reality shows. Why? “The area is ripe for exploration. … The ballet world is also filled with hierarchies, rivalries, romance and heartbreak, which mirror the fictional story lines of scripted dramas.”
Kansas Gets Its Arts Support Back (All It Took Was Massive Public Pressure)
“If anything, this is an even bigger win for the rest of the US than it is for Kansas. For years, conservative ideologues have been trying to kill funding for the arts at the state level, but the threat of losing matching federal funds from the NEA had always held them in check. So finally, one governor follows through and eliminates funding entirely, and he gets lambasted mercilessly for it all year and has to reverse his stance in the very next budget.”
Director Steps In As Injured Actor Bows Out
Actor/director Samuel West happened to be in the audience during a Saturday matinee when one of his actors had to leave the stage after a fall from a ladder. Naturally, he stepped in.
A Union Deal For Backup Dancers, Singers, And Everyone Else In Music Videos
“The deal means that for the first time, music video performers and choreographers will have nationwide guarantees for health and retirement benefits as well as guaranteed fair pay, safe working conditions, and reuse fees.”
Sotheby’s Lockout Of Art Handlers (Finally) Ends
The ten-month dispute between the unionized handlers and the auction house is resolved.
Time To Hack The Book Cover (Do You Even See Book Covers On Your E-Book Reader?)
“Digital is forcing our hand back into this classic, holistic book design ethos. An ethos that considers the design of a book in its entirety instead of in pieces. The covers for our digital editions need not yell. Need not sell. Heck, they may very well never been seen. The reality is, entire books need to be treated as covers. Entry points into digital editions aren’t strictly defined and they’re only getting fuzzier.”
More Income Inequality? That’s Great For The Art Market!
“The art market, in other words, is a proxy for the fate of the superrich themselves. Investors who believe that incomes and wealth will return to a more equitable state should ignore art and put their money into investments that grow alongside the overall economy, like telecoms and steel. For those who believe that the very, very rich will continue to grow at a pace that outstrips the rest of us, it seems like there’s no better investment than art.”
Hey, Art Schools: Time To Stop Training Artists For Exploitation?
“For cultural workers, more than just food and rent, work is bound up with desires around creativity, ego, authorship and individual performance. These also circulate within the pedagogies of art. In fact often, art school training puts the emphasis on the work coming first over and above everything else including individual subsistence.”
Lip Smackingly Good – Or Actually, Lip Smackingly Ready For Speech
How did humans start speaking? Other primates tell us: All this talk began with some seriously intense lip smacks.