Author: Douglas McLennan

Mid-Century Classic House Lost In Getty Fire

Southern California architectural historian Alan Hess called it a “real loss to the architectural heritage of Los Angeles.” “It was an early Ellwood design, but demonstrated all his distinctive and influential ways of interpreting modernism,” he said. “Though it remains in photographs, the loss of the actual building to experience makes us poorer.” – LA Curbed

How To Write About Those Outside Your Own Experience?

“Given all the excellent writing about the challenges of rendering otherness, someone who asks this question in 2019 probably has not done the reading. But the question is a Trojan horse, posing as reasonable artistic discourse when, in fact, many writers are not really asking for advice — they are asking if it is okay to find a way to continue as they have. They don’t want an answer; they want permission.” – New York Magazine

The Met Museum Attracts A Million People To Its Events Each Year. That’s Changing The Museum

Sandra Jackson-Dumont: “I’m trying to move the idea away from people being visitors to the museum to being users. You to go to a library to use it, right? You’re not a visitor to the library. I’ve been talking about how can we make this place the extension of what people do in their daily lives.” – ShondaLand

That Terrible Last Season Of Game Of Thrones? Turns Out Creators Really Didn’t Know They Were Doing

” They apparently kept being surprised at their experience, and not just through its now-infamous, unseen pilot, which the duo has long admitted was a complete disaster. It just seems like even as the show evolved into the success it became, the duo—who scripted the vast majority of the series, taking on even more work when the show began outpacing the source material from George R.R. Martin—were still, apparently, largely unsure about anything they were doing.” – Gizmodo

Beloved NY Broadway Show Revival Series Gets A New Curator

Lear deBessonet is best known as the founder of Public Works, a much-lauded program of the Public Theater that once a year stages a new musical adaptation of a classic story, which is performed by a handful of Equity actors and more than 100 amateur performers drawn from across the five boroughs of New York. The program has proved influential, spurring similar ventures in multiple cities across the United States and in England. – The New York Times

John Killacky – Artist-Turned-Legislator Changes His View On Arts Advocacy

“Since being elected to the Vermont House of Representatives last fall, my perspective has dramatically changed as to how best advocate for the arts and, in fact, how siloed arts organizations and their funders are. My legislative work focuses on economic development, tourism, heath, education, affordable housing, environment, and agriculture, as well as vulnerable populations: veterans, prisoners, the homeless, those suffering from substance use disorders, and survivors of physical and sexual abuse. Art is barely present in these conversations, but is so needed.” – Americans for the Arts Blog

Berkeley Symphony’s New Conductor On His Transformative Career Encounter With Marin Alsop

Joseph Young: “I went up to her and said ‘I really want to go to grad school for conducting’ and she said ‘why don’t you come study with me.’ That moment changed my life. Before that I had no examples. I had no mentor. All I knew was that I wanted to conduct orchestras. In that moment I had all of that. Someone from whom I learned there is a transcendental power in what we do in music, which I began to appreciate. Someone who showed me, by example, to be a leader not only of an orchestra, but of a community, as when I was with her in Baltimore.” – San Francisco Classical Voice