It strikes me as strange to mourn a format, particularly when the new format has made storytelling more accessible and widespread than ever before. Virtual reality transcends literacy, language, ability and geography; it’s collaborative and adaptive and inherently empathetic, permitting us to walk any number of digital miles in someone else’s shoes; it’s even affordable, thanks to the team of rogue librarians behind @AlexandriaRising, who created the sliding-scale pricing system. – The New York Times
Author: Douglas McLennan
Smaller Galleries Weigh The Cost/Benefits Of Participating In Art Fairs
While it may be the right time for a newer or smaller gallery to try to get into the bigger fairs like FIAC, Frieze and Art Basel, the costs can be almost prohibitive. – The New York Times
The Outsized Role Instagram Is Playing In Dance
Dancers who are already stars in their field, like American Ballet Theatre principal dancers Isabella Boylston and James Whiteside, have had their photos liked, commented on, and reposted by A-listers like Jennifer Garner and Sarah Jessica Parker. And today, SJP’s simple “like” carries far more cultural cachet than if she were, say, to catch a matinee performance of Giselle. Why? Because that appearance on SJP’s personal feed means that some Sex and the City fan (or, if you’d rather, The Family Stone fan), who has never seen so much as a pirouette, is suddenly introduced to the art form, with a trusted endorsement to boot. – The Observer
What A Movie About Jordan Peterson Says About Today’s Arts World
The Rise of Jordan Peterson is not a propaganda film. It’s a film about propaganda. It’s about the way facts have become helpless in the face of distortive framing. Whereas we once entrusted our arts institutions to highly trained specialists whose authority lay in their expertise and taste, today’s cultural arbiters often find themselves going along to get along. In the process, they risk defeating the very purpose of their job, which is to discern good art from bad art and to know what’s propaganda and what’s not. – Medium
How Sesame Street Thrives After 50 Years
“Sesame Street” was inclusive before anyone really knew what that meant, the first safe space. It is a friend to everyone, which has a lot to do with why it’s the first TV show to receive Kennedy Center Honors. – Washington Post
How Art Basel Transformed Miami
The Art Basel Miami Beach fair features 269 exhibiting galleries. Nearly two dozen satellite fairs have also sprouted around Miami. Add in pop-up shows, celebrity-studded product rollouts, as well as Miami’s own galleries and museums all putting on their best faces, and you have the circus that local boosters have taken to calling “Miami Art Week.” – The New York Times
What The NY Phil’s New Home At Lincoln Center Will Look Like
Justin Davidson: The current scheme, a joint Philharmonic–Lincoln Center project, is relatively modest. The auditorium stays where it is but gets gutted and rebuilt (again). In 2022, the orchestra moves out for an extended summer break, from May to November, returns for an abbreviated season in the reconfigured but unfinished hall, and spends most of 2023–24 touring, floating, and sojourning in its ancestral home at Carnegie Hall. The new Geffen reopens in March 2024. (Lincoln Center and the Philharmonic say that they’ve already raised two-thirds of the money.) – New York Magazine
The Online Image Business Is Being Gutted (Or Saved, Depending On Your Perspective)
The stock photo business is highly competitive, with Getty and its rivals, such as Adobe and Shutterstock, steadily cutting prices to keep market share. Last month, for example, Getty announced plans to move entirely to a “royalty-free” pricing model that would make stock images even cheaper for clients. But if lower prices have benefited Getty’s customers, they’ve also meant less money for stock photographers. – Seattle Times
How Pink Martini Became A New Vision For An Orchestra Collective
“After college, I actually wanted to be the mayor of Portland,” Thomas Lauderdale recalls, “but working in the campaigns and political fundraising can be so dreary. And the music at those rallies really sucked.” Therein was the impetus for forming the band. Lauderdale had become the de facto social director of Portland’s underground political scene, staging rallies, parties and functions at coffeehouses, private homes and auditoriums citywide. – Monterey County Now
Some Schools Used Science To Change The Way They Taught Reading. So Why Hasn’t It Caught On?
Danville’s method relies on new reading science. It has roots in an old way of teaching but is based on new cognitive neuroscience research that has revealed how brains process sounds and symbols. It borrows from linguistics, the study of language and its structure. Students do not memorize lists of words for spelling tests, yet the average Danville fourth grader is spelling at the sixth-grade level. – Seattle Times