Author: Matthew Westphal

If There’s A No-Deal Brexit, Many British Performers May Have To Give Up Touring In Europe At All

“Music industry figures have said a no-deal Brexit would make touring ‘simply unviable for many artists’, after new government guidelines for cultural, heritage and sporting professionals touring Europe signalled … [that] touring parties would face extra issues with documentation, travel and the transport and sale of goods as they take their work to individual EU member states.” – The Guardian

Staffers Convince Intiman Theatre’s Board Not To Shut The Company Down

Barely more than a week ago, the board of the Seattle company said there wasn’t money to continue operating even for another month and was prepared to close. (This just nine months after Intiman finally retired $2.7 million in debt.) Artistic director Jen Zeyl and her colleagues insisted that they could raise $200,000 by the end of the year, and the board has agreed to let them try. In fact, they’re already more than halfway to the goal. – The Seattle Times

Uffizi Director Backs Out Of New Job In Vienna, And Austrians Are Furious

Just a couple of months ago, it looked like the foreign administrators brought in to reform Italy’s museums would all be chased out of the country by the populist government. Then that government fell, and the new one reappointed the culture minister who had hired the foreign experts in the first place. So Eike Schmidt decided he wanted to stay in Florence and continue his work at the Uffizi Gallery. But the fact that he’d already accepted an offer to direct Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum has made things a bit awkward. – The New York Times

The Grimms’ Fairy Tales Weren’t Published For Children, And The Originals Would Shock Many Parents Today

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm assembled their book of stories as folklorists, not children’s authors, and they intended their book for adult students of German culture, not for parents to read to the kiddies at bedtime. And the stories themselves could be violent: for example, “Cinderella” ends with white birds pecking out the stepsisters’ eyes. – National Geographic History

Donor Myopia

With virtually no public money flowing in, U.S. arts organizations have, understandably, been most concerned with the interests of those who fund the enterprise. This narrowness of attention, this “donor myopia” has created a system in which the broader population can be very nearly unseen. – Doug Borwick