“The Rockettes are all about power and cheery domination — they are a glittering army in heels — but there is no hierarchy. Their power is group power. It’s a collective whose uplifting force is greater than what any single dancer could achieve. There is something reassuringly American about them, their natural athleticism, their beauty, their wholesome sexiness.” — The Washington Post
Author: Matthew Westphal
Meet The First Dancer To Go From AileyCamp To The Main Ailey Company
As a 12-year-old on Chicago’s South Side, Solomon Dumas was interested in the arts but had never thought much about dance. Then his mother sent him to AileyCamp. “After that camp, I was completely obsessed.” — The New York Times
Hermitage’s Director Makes His Museum Major Player In Cultural Diplomacy
With a big Piero della Francesca exhibition at the St. Petersburg mother ship and exhibitions, exchanges, and even satellite museums abroad and regional Russia, Mikhail Piotrovsky, compares his Hermitage to the Sputnik program: “a mobile cosmic system with satellites in different orbits.” — The Art Newspaper
Italy’s New Nationalist Government Makes Leonardo Da Vinci A Battleground
“Nationalism — taboo for half a century following World War II and the fall of Mussolini — is suddenly in, as every possible political dispute is cast in chauvinist hues. Culture had long been a relatively neutral terrain. Not anymore. And deliberately so.” — The New York Times
What Rome’s Official Christmas Tree Says About Italy
Last year’s tree arrived half-dead, shedding needles and nicknamed Spelacchio (“Mangy”) — yet people grew so fond of it that they attached handwritten notes to it and created a Spelacchio Twitter account. This year’s tree is 65 feet tall, lush, covered with 60,000 lights, and sponsored by Netflix. (The ornaments have red Ns on them.) Journalist Ilaria Maria Sala argues that this is all too fitting. — The New York Times
Naked Boys Reading (Yes, This Is An Actual Literary Event)
This “cheeky literary salon” (ahem) has been taking place for six years in an east London gay bar: curators pick readings on a particular theme and willing audience members (of varied ages and shapes) read them, on a stage and in the buff. The Economist‘s audience engagement editor shares his experience reading at a science fiction night. — 1843 Magazine
Warring with Warhol: What I Most (& Least) Appreciated About the Whitney’s Retrospective
Although I gave Andy Warhol — From A to B and Back Again (to Mar. 31) a mixed review last week, one focus of the Whitney Museum’s widely praised extravaganza particularly interested me. It’s an aspect that general audiences, who usually pay more attention to the art than the writing on the walls, could easily miss. — Lee Rosenbaum
‘Miriam, Part 2, The Chair’
“A woman trapped in domestic boredom moves toward a nervous breakdown. Institutionalized, she attempts to create a performance for a shortly expected visit from her children, but can find no words to express her feelings. Only her instrument can serve as an expression of her deepest emotions.” — William Osborne & Abbie Conant
The 15 Biggest Art History Stories Of 2018
There were new finds of art from ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Mesoamerica, as well as discoveries of art tens of thousands of years old in Indonesia and South Africa. Two stolen paintings were discovered in odd places: a de Kooning in a New Mexico bedroom and a Degas in the baggage compartment of a bus. And then there were the Michelangelo bronzes identified by their abs. — Artsy
Edward Gorey And Frank O’Hara Were The Lucy And Ethel Of Harvard’s Postwar Gay Underground
“Insatiable in his cultural cravings, all-embracing in his tastes, unreserved in his opinions, O’Hara was in many ways Gorey’s intellectual double, down to the fanatical balletomania. … They made a Mutt-and-Jeff pair on campus, O’Hara with his domed forehead and bent, aquiline nose, broken by a childhood bully, walking on his toes and stretching his neck to add an inch or two to his five-foot-seven height, Gorey towering over him at six two.” — Literary Hub