Former production coordinator Melinda McLain: “In rehearsal I saw him, at least once, grab one of the supernumeraries and just lay a kiss on her. … I also had young singers come and seek advice about how to repel his advances. And older singers, more principal singers, were concerned about their own marriages because of the inappropriate touching — some of which I saw myself, but also was reported to me by these singers so that we could figure out how to keep them out of his way.” (audio) – KCRW (Los Angeles)
Month: September 2019
Robert Frank, Influential Photographer Of Postwar America, Dead At 94
“[His] book, The Americans, published in this country in 1959, inspired generations of photographers, writers, filmmakers and musicians and made Mr. Frank one of the most important visual artists of the 20th century. … His images of lonely people, lonesome roads and smoldering tensions of urban life were a riposte to the honey-hued picture essays of popular magazines of the time such as the Saturday Evening Post and Life.” – The Washington Post
Neil Montanus, Who Took The Enormous Colorama Photos Displayed At Grand Central Station, Dead At 92
“Every weekday [for four decades], 650,000 commuters and visitors who jostled through the main concourse could gaze up at Kodak’s Coloramas, the giant photographs that measured 18 feet high and 60 feet wide, each backlit by a mile of cold cathode tubing, displaying … the wonders of color film.” Neil Montanus shot more of those photos than anyone else. – The New York Times
Italy Might Keep Its Foreign-Born Museum Directors After All
“Now that a new coalition government has been formed, sidelining the right-wing nationalist League, Dario Franceschini, the center-left politician who was behind the hiring foreign experts in the first place, is back as culture minister—which means the museum directors might be able to keep their jobs after all. And with Franceschini back, the directors of Italy’s state museum may not lose the autonomy that allowed them to modernize as they saw fit, another reform that the previous culture minister had tried to reverse.” – artnet
Study: Forty Percent Of UK Arts Organizations Pay Junior Staff Less Than Living Wages
Research by the Visitor Experience Forum and BOP Consulting on practices at 140 museums, galleries and visitor attractions found that 39% of respondents paid their entry level visitor experience staff less than the Living Wage. – Arts Professional
Let The Uproar Begin: English National Opera To Take Away Critics’ Companion Tickets
“Financially it is not sensible for us. And a lot of people criticise the critics, so it will be quite good to let others have a go and, I suspect, find out that it is not as easy as it looks.” – The Guardian
Do Arts Organization Boards Need To Be Battlegrounds?
Darren Walker: “Unfortunately, some people have framed having a diverse board as oppositional to having a wealthy board. These are one-dimensional ideas. I’m simply saying that you can have both, and you should have both. It would be a grave error to demonize wealthy people. That is something that I find regrettable about the discourse around the Whitney board, around this whole controversy.” – artnet
The Shocking Costs Of Doing Art History Research
“It sometimes seems to me that academic success is designed for people who are already wealthy, just as first-class seating in airplanes is designed for tall men. Underfunded humanities are an extension of unpaid internships and poorly paid fellowships in museums. Do we really believe that our disciplines are just a decoration and offer viable careers only to those with trust funds?” – Times Higher Education
Scientists Find Anomaly In Dead Sea Scrolls That Casts Doubts On Origin
“This inorganic layer that is really clearly visible on the Temple scroll surprised us and induced us to look more in detail how this scroll was prepared, and it turns out to be quite unique.” – The Guardian
In 1913, Edith Wharton Created An Anti-Heroine For The 21st Century
Jia Tolentino: “More than a century after The Custom of the Country was published, Undine’s habits, given a superficial makeover, could be rebranded not just as aspirational but feminist. Today, she would learn how to defend her life story as that of a woman going after what she wants and getting it — and what could be more progressive than that? This pitch would be bullshit, but plenty of people would believe it. Our twenty-first-century Undine would have a million followers on Instagram. She’d be a Page Six legend.” – The New Yorker