“‘It’s easy to talk about the issues facing the dance sector, but I thought we had to do something,’ McGregor says, citing the cost (“around £2,000 per week,” or over $2,500) of renting a studio in London. As part of [his] FreeSpace [program], 5,000 hours of studio time will be gifted to 25 artists over one year. In exchange, for each week spent in the Studio they are asked to devote one day to outreach projects.
Author: Matthew Westphal
‘We Are Not Going For The Bilbao Effect!” Insists New Spanish Museum (Even Though They Hired A Starchitect)
“The idea was not to create an icon,” avers the director of the Centro Botín in Santander. “The building is not trying to show off or give the impression that Santander is more than it is.” “I suppose our strategy was the opposite of the Guggenheim,” says architect Renzo Piano, who designed the building not to be visible from the city center. “How many Bilbao effects can you have after all?”
Syrian Refugees To Be Trained To Rebuild Palmyra
“The World Monuments Fund is launching a £500,000 scheme to train Syrian refugees living in and around the Zaatari camp on the Jordanian border in traditional stone masonry. The aim is to develop skills so that cultural heritage sites that have been caught in crossfire or destroyed by [ISIS] can be rebuilt once peace is restored to Syria.”
Derek Walcott Museum, On His Home Island, Shut Down, Allegedly Due To Unrelated Political Fight
“A museum on the site of the boyhood home of the [Nobel-winning] poet and playwright Derek Walcott has closed amid a funding shortfall that has been linked to disputes over controversial tourist developments on St Lucia.”
Angolan Author Wins €100K International Prize Chosen By Libraries
José Eduardo Agualusa and translator Daniel Hahn share the International Dublin Literary Award 2017 for A General Theory of Oblivion, which was a finalist for this year’s Man Booker International Prize. Candidates for the IDLA are nominated by librarians and library readers all over the world.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 06.21.17
Artifacts Reinvented
Sally Silvers’ three new works at Roulette, June 15 through 17.
I love pondering the palimpsest that is New York City. Sometimes when a building’s skeleton is all that’s left, … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2017-06-21
When Secondary Characters Get Novels Of Their Own
Anjum Hasan looks at the phenomenon of “minor-character elaboration” – from Jean Rhys’s The Wide Sargasso Sea (the story of Jane Eyre‘s madwoman in the attic) to Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (how Ulysses’s wife and queen passed the twenty years waiting for his return) and onward. (Hasan also includes Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, though we think that wasn’t the same thing.)
‘Power Chords And Pollock’: A Theory Of Punk Rock And Abstract Expressionism
“It was after seeing the sharp distinction in approach, methodology and effect between Rancid and the concert’s headliners, Green Day, that a theoretical superstructure for punk rock struck me – one which can be linked to the history of art.” Noah Charney – who grants that “normally you don’t find ‘punk rock,’ ‘theoretical superstructure’ and ‘history of art’ occupying the same sentence” – makes the case.
Why Is Diana Vishneva Leaving ABT? She’s Too Busy!
She’s opening a studio in St. Petersburg that will teach yoga and gymnastics as well as ballet; she’s running a dance festival that covers both that city and Moscow; she loves being a guest with other companies and wants to do more of it. In a Q&A with Gia Kourlas, she talks about her plans, ballet training today, and what she loves about American audiences.
James Salter: The Final Interview
Alexander Slotnick: “I conducted the following interview with James Salter in the Fall of 2014. It was published in the University of Virginia’s literary journal Meridian several months later, and Jim died shortly thereafter, on June 19th, 2015, at the age of 90. As far as Literary Hub‘s editors and I know, this was Jim’s last interview. It’s republished here in full with thanks to Meridian and Jim’s family.”