“The [UK] scheme, called Donate, encourages people to give money to arts groups via a mobile phone or tablet device. To start it off, 11 institutions have signed up … The idea is that people will be so cheered by what they have seen – whether a play or an exhibition – that they will feel moved to donate electronically, perhaps as little as £3.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Opera Gets Its Own Version Of The Oscars
The International Opera Awards, whose inaugural ceremony will be in London on April 22, “are global in scope and come in 21 categories, offering a chance to compare achievements in opera like never before” – for instance, a Norma from Leeds vs. a Lulu from Brussels and a Peter Grimes from La Scala.
Faulkner’s Past Isn’t Dead; You Can Buy It At Auction
An early, unpublished story, “along with a stack of hand-corrected manuscripts, letters, a hand-bound poetry book and Faulkner’s Nobel medal, are headed to Sotheby’s for auction in June.”
Narco-Cinema, Mexico’s Favorite Straight-To-Video Genre
“After the arrest in 2010 of Edgar Valdez Villarreal, who the authorities said was the head of a violent Mexican drug cartel, customers at Video Mexico in Austin told Eduardo Betancourt, the owner, something he should have known: the man’s life was already the subject of a low-budget movie.”
Was Ancient Egypt A Proto-Feminist Society?
“As independent citizens equal to men under the law, Egyptian women could own their own property, buy and sell it, keep hold of it despite marriage … They did work in the public sphere alongside men at every level of society, … [and] surviving accounts also reveal they received the same pay as male colleagues for undertaking the same work.”
Who Was Mary Magdalene?
“Was she, as depicted in the Four Gospels, the most favoured friend and closest disciple of Jesus Christ, forever graced by being the person he first met after his resurrection? Or was she the fallen woman so brilliantly reconstructed by Pope Gregory in the sixth century as a superb and effective act of misogynist propaganda?”
Virgin Mary Appears On Broadway; Conservative Catholic Group Is Predictably Outraged
“The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property published a lengthy statement on its website in which it called the play” – Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary – ‘blasphemous’. … The group also noted that the play is written by ‘an avowed homosexual’ and ‘is being performed and directed by open lesbians, namely, Irish actress Fiona Shaw and Deborah Warner’.”
Theatre’s Great Special Effect: The Quick Change (It Always Gets ‘Em)
“After all, actors on screen have been changing shape before our eyes – whether from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, or from Lon Chaney Jr. into the Werewolf – for almost as long as there have been moving pictures. … In theater, on the other hand, something as rudimentary as an instant change of costume makes grown-ups gasp.”
Shia LaBeouf Cheers For The Show He Was Fired From
The actor, “who was fired from the Broadway play Orphans last month after clashing with the director, Daniel Sullivan, and his co-star Alec Baldwin, attended the first preview performance of the play … sitting in the first row on the aisle and leaping to his feet before any other audience member to give a standing ovation at the end.”
San Francisco’s Fine Arts Museums Finally Settle On Director
“The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco have named Colin Bailey as their new director. Bailey, who most recently served as the deputy director and chief curator at the Frick Collection in New York, will head the De Young Museum and the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.”