“Venture up the Amazon or into a Masai Mara village in Kenya, explore a jungle bazaar in southern India or even a roadside shop in Arizona selling Navajo knockoffs, and the chances are excellent that most of the beads you will see were produced in this unlikely mountain village a stone’s throw from the Polish frontier and a short drive to Germany.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Edinburgh Fringe Appoints A New CEO
“Shona McCarthy, who spearheaded the reign of Derry-Londonderry as UK City of Culture, … will replace Kath Mainland, who is leaving the post next month after almost seven years at the helm of the event, which now sells almost 2.3 million tickets, compared to 1.5 million a decade ago.”
Al Jazeera America Is Shutting Down
“[Network] brass said the channel’s business model was ‘no longer sustainable'” and that the decision “was not a reflection of the quality of their work. Employees also were told that Al Jazeera will pursue a new global online strategy online with content delivered from the U.S. later this year.”
Why Al Jazeera America Was Destined to Fail
“But if Al Jazeera America’s brand was a handicap, its philosophy was a death sentence. The channel was founded on the utterly ill-conceived idea that Americans were starving for sober, ‘unbiased’ hard news coverage. In other words, it made the mistake of offering viewers the programming they claimed to want, instead of the programming that all available evidence suggests they actually enjoy.”
The ‘Not Without My Daughter’ Problem (It Drives Iranian-Americans Nuts)
“‘For Iranian men of my generation and American moms of my mother-in-law’s generation, this is a film that has seared itself into our consciousness,’ says Reza Aslan, an Iranian-American author and religious scholar. Upon the film’s 25th anniversary, it’s an interesting case-study of how early misrepresentations of an ethnicity in popular culture – one that the American public previously had no concept of – never really leave them.”
How Do You Get Millennials To Come Party At Your Museum *And* Stay True To Your Mission? Here’s How
“In recent weeks, the postings on Craigslist have taken on a desperate tone: ‘Looking for two tickets for … Jan 12th. Willing to negotiate price.’ … These hot tickets were for, of all places, the Franklin Institute – more specifically, Science After Hours, the museum’s monthly, no-kids-allowed science rave.”
Opera Philadelphia Lands $2.5M Grant For Its New ‘O’ Festival
“The grant, from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, based in Miami, is one of the largest ever to the company, which plans to launch the first iteration of the festival in 2017.”
San Diego Symphony Plans Permanent Outdoor Venue On Waterfront
“The San Diego Symphony won unanimous approval Tuesday to move forward with a $25 million, 10,000-seat waterfront concert venue on San Diego Bay. … Instead of a stage that must be set up and torn down each summer, the permanent facility would include a 4,800-square-foot stage large enough to house all the symphony musicians and covered by an acoustic bandshell.”
Brian Bedford, 80, Stage Actor Who Thrilled In The Classics
“[He] trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, alongside such classmates as Peter O’Toole, Alan Bates and Albert Finney. He never attained the cinematic stardom of those three, but he arguably exceeding their achievements by leaps and bounds in the theatre, an art to which he devoted the lion’s share of his efforts” – most notably at Canada’s Stratford Festival, where he spend four decades playing everyone from Macbeth to Tartuffe to Trigorin to Lady Bracknell.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.13.16
Arts funding and peer review
At The Scotsman, Euan McColm writes about the controversy surrounding Creative Scotland’s grant to artist Ellie Harrison, who will live in Glasgow for a year without leaving, in order to personally document what is known in social science as the ‘Glasgow effect’ … read more
AJBlog: For What It’s Worth Published 2016-01-13
Reasons for moving
One of the challenges of connecting aesthetics and “beauty” to arts organizations is that aesthetics and reason work on different terms. We all know the “reasons” to do things as a cultural manager … read more
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2016-01-13
The Tales They Tell
Big Dance Theater and Noche Flamenca dissect and reconnect narratives. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2016-01-13
My world, and welcome to it
On Tuesday afternoon I was sitting in the auditorium of Chicago’s Court Theatre, watching Charlie Newell reblock the final scene of his production of Satchmo at the Waldorf, which opens there on Saturday. Midway through… … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-01-13
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