It remains to be seen whether his cultural benefactions will be augmented by bequests. I’m guessing that museums on the receiving end of such bequests, unless encumbered by unacceptable conditions, won’t abjure them as toxic. Nor should they. – Lee Rosenbaum
Author: Matthew Westphal
Propwatch: the photo album in ‘Appropriate’
In Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast has some advice about hoarding: Don’t hold onto anything you don’t want your kids to have to sort through once you’re gone. For the Lafayette family in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate, it’s an album stuffed with vintage photos of lynchings from the American south. – David Jays
Advice For Dance Companies On Creating Outreach Programs That Actually Reach Out
“By offering vulnerable populations the opportunity to make choices, work collaboratively and express themselves creatively, dance has the power to be transformative.” Writer Rachel Caldwell offers examples of how that happens from Urban Bush Women, Dimensions Dance Theater, Keshet Dance Company, and Gibney. – Dance Magazine
At 90, Bob Newhart Is Back To Touring As A Standup Comic
“What I’ve learned is: I love the danger. This thing I thought I hated all my life, that’s why I was doing it. If the show is at 8, and it’s 6, what will I be doing? Pacing. After 60 years, still pacing. I like that feeling.” – The New York Times
Adrienne Kennedy, An American Original
A special package on the great African-American playwright as she approaches her 88th birthday (Sept. 13), including a Q&A with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, a feature on the undergraduate playwriting seminar she taught at Harvard in 1997 (a class which is said to have changed many of the students’ lives), and tributes from a dozen colleagues and former students, including Natalie Portman, Ishmael Reed, Michael Kahn, Robert O’Hara, and Aleshea Harris. – American Theatre
V&A Director Defends Accepting Sponsorship From Fossil Fuel Companies
Tristram Hunt: “I think that the pre-history of fossil fuel companies in muddying the science about climate change, in lobbying, in their political acts, have been pretty criminal and they will be judged on that. But, I also think they will be part of the solution to dealing with climate change and they are engaged with it. … So, I don’t have a problem with having relationships with those organisations, like for example BP who are thinking very carefully about a zero-carbon future.” – The Art Newspaper
‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Co-Writer Quit Sequels Because She Was To Be Paid Less Than Male Colleague
“Co-writer Peter Chiarelli, as an experienced feature scribe who broke out with 2009’s The Proposal, was to be paid a significantly higher fee than [Adele] Lim, a veteran TV writer who never had penned a feature until [director John M.] Chu hired her to work on the screenplay.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Lee Salem, Perhaps The World’s Most Influential Newspaper Comics Editor, Dead At 73
As editor at Universal Press Syndicate, beginning in 1974, “he signed up Calvin and Hobbes and Cul de Sac and For Better or For Worse. He discovered The Boondocks and Cathy. He guided Doonesbury and Fox Trot and The Far Side … [And he] was renowned within the industry for having his creators’ backs in times of controversy and then dealing with rankled newspaper editors and persistent media inquiries with a gentlemanly charm.” – The Washington Post
Boris Johnson’s Government Promises 4.1% Increase In UK Culture Funding
According to the government’s spending review for 2020-21, “the budget of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) will increase by 4.1% in real terms to £1.6bn, after inflation is taken into account.” The Treasury announcement said that there will be “over £300m to support the UK’s world-class national museums and galleries … [and] over £500m for Arts Council England and Sport England.” (Guess it’ll come out of all that money Britain will no longer be sending to Brussels, right?) – The Art Newspaper
Met Museum To Hire Its First Curator Of Native American Art
“The successful candidate will be tasked with overseeing the museum’s vast collection of indigenous American artifacts, including the Charles and Valerie Diker Collection of more than 116 objects hailing from 50 different Native American cultures from the 2nd century to the early 20th century,” and will oversee expanded programming on indigenous work. – Artnet