Now that Baghdad is once more clambering back to its feet after ISIS’s territorial defeat, observers wonder: Can the school regain anything of its past glory or will it – and the city around it – continue their long, slow decay? – Smithsonian
Month: September 2019
All Over The U.S., Public School Systems Are Losing Their Librarians
More than 9,000 full-time school librarian positions were eliminated from 2009-2016, a 15% reduction, with teachers and their assistants having to add librarians’ former duties to their workloads. And in the relatively few places where positions are being added (e.g., Los Angeles), the nature of the work is changing quite a lot. – CityLab
Toxic or Tonic? The Late David Koch’s Munificent Cultural Philanthropy
It remains to be seen whether his cultural benefactions will be augmented by bequests. I’m guessing that museums on the receiving end of such bequests, unless encumbered by unacceptable conditions, won’t abjure them as toxic. Nor should they. – Lee Rosenbaum
Propwatch: the photo album in ‘Appropriate’
In Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast has some advice about hoarding: Don’t hold onto anything you don’t want your kids to have to sort through once you’re gone. For the Lafayette family in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate, it’s an album stuffed with vintage photos of lynchings from the American south. – David Jays
Audience Members Loudly Enjoy Play, Man Shushes Them. But Why?
“I wish I could have told him that his outburst about our outbursts (if gasps and laughs are outbursts) betrayed the DNA of theater itself. Unless he plans on buying out venues to watch plays alone, he’s much better off consuming entertainment in the privacy of his own home. (Seriously, stay away from movie theaters, sir!)” – Los Angeles Times
Advice For Dance Companies On Creating Outreach Programs That Actually Reach Out
“By offering vulnerable populations the opportunity to make choices, work collaboratively and express themselves creatively, dance has the power to be transformative.” Writer Rachel Caldwell offers examples of how that happens from Urban Bush Women, Dimensions Dance Theater, Keshet Dance Company, and Gibney. – Dance Magazine
Inside Portland Opera’s Crisis
One of the biggest missteps was transitioning from a fall and winter schedule to a spring and summer schedule. Implemented in 2014, the transition was an attempt to address the opera’s already unstable earnings. It had the opposite effect. – Willamette Week
At 90, Bob Newhart Is Back To Touring As A Standup Comic
“What I’ve learned is: I love the danger. This thing I thought I hated all my life, that’s why I was doing it. If the show is at 8, and it’s 6, what will I be doing? Pacing. After 60 years, still pacing. I like that feeling.” – The New York Times
The Diminished State Of Art Criticism
“The six most influential art critics, according to the respondents, were all white, mostly men and mostly older. They included one woman, Roberta Smith (The New York Times), Holland Cotter (also NYT), Jerry Saltz (New York magazine), Peter Schjeldahl (The New Yorker), Ben Davis (artnet News) and Christopher Knight (Los Angeles Times). The titles producing the best art criticism, the respondents said, included The New York Times, Hyperallergic, The New Yorker, Artforum, Art in America and ARTnews, all except one based in New York. European writers would maybe have added a few others: Frieze magazine, Art Review, the Financial Times and—for German speakers—the critics in influential papers like the Frankfurter Allgemeine and Die Welt.” – ArtAgency Partners
Adrienne Kennedy, An American Original
A special package on the great African-American playwright as she approaches her 88th birthday (Sept. 13), including a Q&A with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, a feature on the undergraduate playwriting seminar she taught at Harvard in 1997 (a class which is said to have changed many of the students’ lives), and tributes from a dozen colleagues and former students, including Natalie Portman, Ishmael Reed, Michael Kahn, Robert O’Hara, and Aleshea Harris. – American Theatre