After Nobel Lit Cancellation, A New Academy Plans To Award Alternative Prize

The scandal, which kickstarted debate about the academy’s patriarchal nature and fights in the Swedish media between academicians, led to a wave of resignations and to the postponement of this year’s prize “in view of the currently diminished academy and the reduced public confidence”. In its place, more than 100 Swedish writers, actors, journalists and other cultural figures have formed the New Academy, which will hand out its own award this autumn, following the same timeline as the Nobel.

Ambitious New Arts Center Rises In The Occupied West Bank

Rising from a series of limestone terraces above a scrubby valley of olive trees, this metallic box is the new $21m (£15.95m) home for the AM Qattan Foundation, an arts centre that its founders hope will stand as a “beacon of culture” in the occupied West Bank. “It is more than just an arts centre,” says Omar Al-Qattan, the Beirut-born, British-educated chairman of the foundation. “We hope it might be a modest microcosm of urban public life, something that Palestinian cities lack.”

Should Theatre Come With Trigger Warnings? Cue The Debate

The debate about if and when to use them has the theatre community deeply divided. These new type of audience advisories warn of specific plot points that may provoke psychological trauma in some audience members. But some theatre professionals worry these warnings strip theatre of its power to provoke an emotional reaction and are a form of self-censorship.

What Classical Music Could Learn From Kanye West

Since entering the pop-music world, the judgments I would have made when I was in classical music about pop, I increasingly understand why they would have been irrelevant. And it’s made me appreciate that most classical music isn’t about the technical shit either. Pop includes a lot of what is called “extra-musical information.” The lyrics, that’s not music, that’s words representing outside ideas. The artwork, the music videos—all this stuff that’s not the music, but that is used to create the product. But it turns out that’s true in classical music. There’s no Mahler No. 9 without knowing his daughter died.

The Motion Picture Academy Greatly Expanded Its Membership. Is It Affecting Oscar Choices?

So how would we know if we were in the middle of a real Oscars revolution? For starters, how about a foreign language film earning a best picture nomination for the first time since 2012’s “Amour”? In this dramatic membership expansion, the academy has, to its credit, cast a wide net, inviting hundreds of international filmmakers, actors and crafts people. (“What it is is we realize now how much talent there is out there,” academy president John Bailey told me last year.)

More Women Than Men Work In The Arts. We Need To Understand

We need to examine the reasons why the arts administration field grew to be female dominated, and ask questions such what are the short and long term trends?; how can more of a balance be achieved?; and what are the predictable negative and positive consequences of the trend continuing? We need to know the extent to which the female domination of the sector is at the lower ranks, and not in the higher leadership positions; whether or not pay inequity still exists between the sexes, and to what extent, in our field, and the extent to which comparative low pay vs. other fields keeps people of both sexes from entering the arts; why more men are not enrolling in, and graduating from university arts administration programs; and how we can move to a more balanced gender situation in our field — at all levels — while, of course, making progress on all the other diversity fronts that challenge us.

The Art Market Has Forgotten About The Art

Life is awash with inducements to stupidity and greed. The bizarre, defiantly anti-utilitarian practice of making and enjoying art can function as a respite, a space for genuine reflection and reevaluation – as R.M. Rilke learned while staring at a broken ancient statue of Apollo, art can help us see that we must change our lives, if we want to live truly well in our short time. In our time that space is being increasingly colonised by the same venal lusts that already run so much of the wider world.

World’s Oldest Conductor Dies At 101

Edward Simons apparently became the world’s oldest active conductor when he took up the baton at age 100 to conduct Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings on Sept. 10, during the “2017 Annual Concert for Remembrance, 9/11,” at Grace Episcopal Church in Nyack. Guinness World Records currently lists Spain’s Juan Garcés Queralt, who conducted a concert at age 99 and 311 days, as the oldest, but is reviewing an application to recognize Simons’ achievement.