Matthew Westphal – Page 1791 – ArtsJournal Wayback

A Black, Female Hamlet? Absolutely!

Wilma Theater artistic director Blanka Zizka: “Hamlet is a remarkable play, and one that I have always wanted to direct, but I had to wait for an extraordinary actor, and it was not until I met Zainab that I knew it was time for our production.”

Play Reimagining ‘Three’s Company’ Fights Off Copyright Lawsuit

A Federal district judge ruled that David Adjmi’s 3C “represented a ‘drastic departure’ from the TV show, which ran from 1977 to 1984 and remains in syndication.”

Women Of The Floating World: The Lives Of Japan’s Edo-Period Courtesans

While most of the art depicting the Yoshiwara pleasure district in what is now Tokyo was basically marketing made by and for men, we can still get a picture of the complex world in which the women there lived and worked.

Did The Internet Ruin April Fool’s Day?

“It used to be that an April Fool’s joke was, very obviously, an April Fool’s joke. … [But] the World Wide Web is an epistemological free-for-all.”

Six Facts About Trust And Gullibility

What we need for April Fool’s Day: “Here’s a brief wander through some of the most interesting findings Science of Us could dig up on trust, skepticism, and gullibility, specifically as they apply to our relationships with each other.

An Illustrated Guide To “The End Of Art”

“[Arthur] Danto, who was both a critic and a professor of philosophy, is celebrated for his accessible and affable prose. Despite this, Danto’s best-known essay, ‘The End of Art,’ continues to be cited more than it is understood. What was Danto’s argument? Is art really over? And if so, what are the implications for art history and art-making?” Tiernan Morgan & Lauren Purje explain – with pictures!

Radio France Network In Turmoil As Strike Enters Third Week

“Radio France, an umbrella group for several stations, including France Inter, France Info and France Culture, is 90% state funded through licence fees. After announcing a projected budget deficit of €21.3m (£15.6m) for this year, there are fears of widespread redundancies amid threats of outsourcing production and cleaning contracts.”

Head Of Philadelphia Cultural Fund Has Not Had An Easy 12 Years

“When June O’Neill took over as executive director of the Philadelphia Cultural Fund 12 years ago, she barely had time to find her desk before Mayor John F. Street announced he was slashing the fund and eliminating the city’s Office of Arts and Culture. That was followed by the 2008 fiscal crisis, which saw the fund, an independent nonprofit that receives its budget entirely from the city, cut [by] 42.5 percent … [She’s] been through it all.”

“A Standing Rebuke To Classical Music’s Hierarchies”: Ian Bostridge Writes On Schubert And The Lied

“By the beginning of the twentieth century, because of Schubert, song had become a musical form to rival the symphony, the string quartet, and the piano sonata. … Its aesthetic claims are complex and multifaceted: the response to text, the compression of drama (the thrill of the opera in a matter of minutes), a melodic sweep and harmonic language as worthy of attention and analysis as anything in Western classical music. In this sense the lied is a standing rebuke to classical music’s hierarchies, in which the biggest – or most expensive – is best.”

Author: Matthew Westphal