“There is no disagreement among senior staff; they all agree that these steps are critical and should be pursued. But nothing has happened. Every time I meet with them they raise questions about the wording of the plan, the timing for involving more staff and board members in the planning process, and the need for further discussion.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Why’s It So Hard To Get Good New Broadway Musicals?
Scott Brown identifies a few particular problems, but ultimately says: “Musicals today – mindful of long odds, high costs, and the general precariousness of the form – are, I think, resisting their inner madness, and that’s a little like hating one’s own flesh. What basis besides madness can there possibly be for a form that’s as shapeless, idiosyncratic, and painstakingly artisanal as the novel yet as vastly collaborative and consensus-dependent as a Hollywood film?”
Bill To Protect Loaned Artwork From Seizure In US Runs Into Trouble In Senate
Loans to American museums have begun drying up (Russia has banned them altogether) because of fears that (despite existing law to the contrary) the loaned work could be seized pursuant to a lawsuit over whether the work was stolen or looted. The US House of Representatives quickly passed a law to clearly exempt museum loans from such seizure – except in Holocaust-related cases – but unanticipated objections have stalled the bill in the upper house.
England’s Northern Ballet In BBC Arts Troubleshooter Documentary
“The programme follows Michael Lynch, former Chief Executive of the Southbank Centre in London & the Opera House in Sydney, Australia, as he works with Northern Ballet’s dancers and staff to discover what’s going wrong and how they can prevent the impending loss of dancers following a 15% cut in Arts Council funding.”
What Doing Literary Translation Is Really Like
“The work can be dull and stressful but it is rarely unpleasant: you can do it in bed, for a start, and it often has the same sort of compulsive fascination as a crossword puzzle.”
The Only Way To Break Through Some People’s Prejudices May Be To Trick Them: Study
When a group of straight male students were given a story about a protagonist like themselves, but who was revealed late in the story to be gay, they showed more empathy to the character (and were less likely to stereotype him) than were students who knew the character was gay – or was straight – from the start. Results were similar when white readers read stories about black characters. Publishers already know (or sense) this, but catch hell when they act on it.
Beyond L.A.’s Giant Rock: The Logistics Of Getting A Henry Moore Sculpture Into A London Gallery
“The epic seriousness, the male and female interplay, the weathered air of age: Henry Moore’s Large Two Forms evoke all these things in their first ever indoor show at the Gagosian Gallery in London. Yet they also pose a rather mundane question: how on earth did that get in here? Extremely carefully, is the short answer.”
Read Ernest Hemingway’s Reporting For The Toronto Star
“The legendary writer’s reporting from the Toronto Star archives, featuring historical annotations by William McGeary, a former editor who researched Hemingway’s columns extensively for the newspaper, along with new insight and analysis from the Star‘s team of Hemingway experts.”
Meet ‘The New Elizabethans’
To celebrate Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, BBC Radio 4 listeners and a panel of historians and writers selected 60 of the Queen’s subjects (i.e., from the Commonwealth, not just the UK) who had the greatest impact on the 60 years of her reign.
Alain De Botton Wants To Make Pornography Better
Says the philosopher of his latest project, which will be based at a website called “Better Porn”, “Ideally, porn would excite our lust in contexts which also presented other, elevated sides of human nature – in which people were being witty, for instance, or showing kindness, or working hard or being clever – so that our sexual excitement could bleed into, and enhance our respect for these other elements of a good life.”