Author: Matthew Westphal

The Real Problem With Cancel Culture

“The entire cancel culture conversation, including the debate over whether or not it exists at all, has largely missed a crucial point. While celebrities, successful artists, and other too-big-to-fail types can survive a cancellation (or even seek one out as a means of drumming up publicity), the rest of us are trapped in an increasingly deranged surveillance state fueled by the disappearance of our most essential resource: trust.” – Tablet

Epistolary Memoir, An Old Genre Having A New Heyday

The recounting of a life in the form of a letter may go all the way back to Benjamin Franklin, but it’s currently seeing a revival, kicked off by Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me and carried by major works by Imani Perry, Terese Marie Mailhot, Ocean Vuong, and others. “The new epistolary memoirs, however,” writes Parul Sehgal, “are less interested in stitching a life into a tidy narrative shroud than in ripping it from its seams.” – The New York Times

Dallas Placed 149th Among U.S. Cities On The Arts Vibrancy Index. Here’s How One Organization Is Trying To Change That

“The Arts Community Alliance (TACA) … has been raising money for the arts in Dallas since 1967. Today it doles that money out in the form of more than 60 general operating, artist residency and new works grants each year. … But in addition to providing monetary support, a big part of TACA’s role in Dallas is what [TACA’s executive director] calls arts leadership. It more or less means helping carve a path forward for the local arts community as a whole.” – SMU Data Arts

Sean Dorsey Has Blazed A Trail For Trans Dance Artists

“Now in its 15th season, Dorsey’s award-winning San Francisco company, Sean Dorsey Dance, is heralded for intersectional dance-theater works that celebrate trans, gender-nonconforming and queer identities. Along the way, Dorsey, 47, has become the first trans choreographer to receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (seven grants to date, totaling $115,000), and the first U.S. trans artist presented by the American Dance Festival and New York City’s Joyce Theater. Today, he’s the role model he always wished he had.” – Dance Magazine

How Theatres Can Strengthen Themselves For The Next Great Recession

“In this paper we first explore the U.S. economic and financial outlook to better understand the environment and its risks. Then we follow trends for theatres’ finances and operations, starting with the years prior to the last recession, to identify key trends in the not-for-profit resident theatre industry. We conclude with recommendations of steps to take for recession preparedness given the identified vulnerabilities.” – SMU Data Arts

Why Orchestras Giving Free Concerts Is A Very Bad Idea

Aubrey Bergauer: “Giving it away for free, whether by regularly scheduled programming or by striking or locked out musicians, is not getting the job done. It’s not growing audiences, it’s not building tons of new support, and — please hear this — it hurts us when people don’t see how much it costs to produce this art. [Here] are five reasons why free concerts are not serving us well.” – Medium

Oldest Known ‘Last Supper’ Painted By A Woman On Public View After 450 Years

Plautilla Nelli’s 23-by-6½-foot depiction of Jesus and his disciples was painted for her sisters at a convent in Florence in 1568. When that convent was shuttered by Napoleon’s forces in 1808, the canvas was moved to a nearby monastery, where it was hanging in a (very) humble refectory when it was discovered by an art historian in the early 1990s. And it’s actually thanks to Napoleon that the painting is now on view in a museum. – Atlas Obscura

Alicia Alonso, Cuba’s (Very) Long-Reigning Doyenne Of Ballet, Dead At 98

“Alonso received recognition throughout the world for her flawless technique and her ability to become one with the characters she danced, even after she became nearly blind. After a career in New York, she and her then-husband Fernando Alonso established the Cuban National Ballet and the Cuban National Ballet School, both of which grew into major international dance powerhouses and beloved institutions in their home country.” She remained director of the company until her death, serving for 71 years, and named a successor only this past January. – Pointe Magazine

36 Pieces Of Computer Code That Changed The World

“We construct top-10 lists for movies, games, TV — pieces of work that shape our souls. But we don’t sit around compiling lists of the world’s most consequential bits of code, even though they arguably inform the zeitgeist just as much. So Slate decided to do precisely that. … The editors polled computer scientists, software developers, historians, policymakers, and journalists. They were asked to pick: Which pieces of code had a huge influence? Which ones warped our lives?” – Slate