Author: Matthew Westphal

Here’s The Group That Created The Google Spreadsheet Showing How Much Museum Employees Actually Make

“Founded at the end of May 2019 by a ‘nonhierarchical group of arts and museum workers who are friends and colleagues,’ Art + Museum Transparency prefers to answer questions collectively. ARTnews contacted the group to inquire about what it took to put the spreadsheet together, and the good they believe it can do.” – ARTnews

Audiences For Children’s Theater Are Quite Diverse. The Creators, Not So Much.

“A new study finds that about 80 percent of the shows presented around the country are by white writers, and 85 percent of the productions are led by white directors. Also of concern: Much of the industry’s diversity is concentrated in a small number of productions about people of color, while the shows that dominate the industry’s stages, generally adapted from children’s books and fairy tales, have overwhelmingly white creative teams.” – The New York Times

Organizers Of Woodstock 50 Sue Investors That Yanked Funding And Caused Event’s Collapse

“Woodstock 50 organizers are suing their former financial partner Dentsu Group and several of its affiliates, accusing the company of ‘destruction of the festival’ and ‘sabotage.’ … The [event, planned for last August,] was marred with a number of publicly aired setbacks and legal battles, including Dentsu and the festival legally severing ties last April, when Dentsu pulled its financial backing and also initially canceled the festival, which festival organizers argued Dentsu did not have the legal right to do.” – Rolling Stone

U.S. Museums Are (Finally) Developing Art Therapy Programs

“Although psychologists have long recognized the benefits of art therapy, … few American museums have devoted resources toward creating programs. But the demands of a grief-stricken public are now compelling cultural institutions around the country to create trauma-aware initiatives that put their art collections and educators at the forefront of a mental health crisis created by the pandemic and the worldwide protests over police brutality and racism after George Floyd’s killing.” – The New York Times

Vera Lynn, Britain’s Singing Sweetheart Of World War II, Dead At 103

“At the start of the second world war, Vera Lynn … was an up-and-coming dance band singer. By 1945” — thanks to her hits “We’ll Meet Again” and “The White Cliffs of Dover” — “this working-class young woman had become a symbol of the British wartime spirit, with a status comparable to that of the patrician prime minister, Winston Churchill. After the war, her friend Harry Secombe liked to joke that ‘Churchill didn’t beat the Nazis. Vera sang them to death.'” – The Guardian

‘Dracula’ Wasn’t Inspired By Transylvania — It Was Inspired By Ireland

The town of Sligo, specifically, and the dire cholera outbreak there in 1832. Dracula author Bram Stoker’s mother lived through that epidemic, and there’s evidence, circumstantial but convincing, that it was her memories of the pestilence on which Stoker built the original vampire novel; Transylvania, which the author never visited, was simply a stand-in location. – Atlas Obscura

Martha Graham’s Lost Spanish Civil War Solo, Reimagined Twice

The choreographer created Immediate Tragedy in 1937 as Franco’s Fascist campaign raged on. Before the COVID-19 shutdown, the Martha Graham Dance Company had been working on a reconstruction of the piece, using photos, a written description by José Limón and other archival material. But once the studio was closed and the dancers were quarantined, company artistic director Janet Eilber decided to reconceive the re-creation for multiple dancers working remotely. Gia Kourlas finds out how she and the company did it. – The New York Times

Kristin Linklater, Revered Vocal Coach For Actors, Dead At 84

“For more than a half-century, Ms. Linklater taught vocal technique to A-list stars like Patrick Stewart, Donald Sutherland and Sigourney Weaver; to students at New York University, Emerson College and Columbia University; and to people far removed from the performing arts who simply wanted to be less timid vocally. … Two books she wrote … have become part of many actors’ kit bags: Freeing the Natural Voice: Imagery and Art in the Practice of Voice and Language (1976) and Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice: The Actor’s Guide to Talking the Text (1992).” – The New York Times