“In 1997, African American artist Kerry James Marshall painted Past Times, an artwork depicting a black family in high-class leisure – playing golf, playing cricket, as well as water skiing and driving a motorboat across a lake. It’s a take on a pastoral scene typically filled with European aristocratic types yet instead filled with black figures. Last week at Sotheby’s, it sold for $21.1m, breaking a new world record, making Marshall, according to reports, the highest-paid African American artist.” Says Marshall, “My ambition was never to make a lot of money. I was really just struggling to make the best pictures I could make.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
The Onion May Never Have Faced A Bigger Challenge Than President Donald Trump
Editor-in-chief Chad Nackers: “Obama was more of a traditional president as far as his decorum and even his preparation and policy. … You leap off of that and so things can be more surreal and absurd when you’re making fun of him. Whereas Trump is kind of starting from this point of already being kind of absurd. … The other challenge about this administration is that so many of their policies and things, like for the EPA, they almost feel like satire. … In a way, it almost feels like the resistance stuff is even more fun to make fun of. They are just so self-serious.”
Nobody Does A Book-Signing Like David Sedaris
“Nor did anyone mind when … he said, ‘What happened to your mother — is she dead?’ to a man named Richard, who wanted a book signed for his father.
‘She is to him,’ Richard said.
Mr. Sedaris drew a little person and gravestone with ‘R.I.P.’ written on it. ‘Here is your father looking at the ashes of his failed marriage,’ he explained.”
One Catholic Priest’s Response To The Met Costume Institute’s ‘Heavenly Bodies’ Show
“If someone shows you a painting or a sculpture or a dress that he or she has made and says, ‘This is something I’ve been working a long time on, and it comes out of my love for the church or the way that my Catholic upbringing has affected me,’ you’re not going to say, ‘I reject this.’ It’s highly subjective. It’s also highly creative, and so we need to give the artist the benefit of the doubt. Moreover, many of these creations are simply beautiful. I didn’t find them offensive at all.”
Saudi Arabia’s First Female Filmmaker Has A New Movie About (Of All Subjects) Mary Shelley
Haifaa al-Mansour came to worldwide attention in 2012 with Wadjda, both the first-ever feature by a Saudi woman and the first shot entirely inside Saudi Arabia. Even she was surprised by the idea that her next film would be about the 19th-century English author. “But when she read the script, Ms. Mansour was amazed at the parallels between Shelley’s struggles to publish her masterpiece, Frankenstein, and make a name for herself as a writer, and her own experience as an aspiring artist in a conservative Muslim culture in which women have traditionally been denied the same rights as men.”
How A Ten-Year-Old Funding Measure Has Transformed The Arts In Small-Town Minnesota
Legislation known as the Legacy Amendment, passed in 2008, has provided over $440 million for cultural projects in the state, and that money has had a powerful effect in rural communities like New London (pop. 1,355, about halfway between the Twin Cities and the North Dakota state line).
Slowly And Carefully, New York City Ballet Begins Search For New Leader
In what seems to be an attempt to calm the tensions caused by the (let’s say) fraught departure of Peter Martins, City Ballet’s search committee is conducting an extensive “listening tour,” talking with dancers, staff, donors, and board members about what they’d like to see in a new artistic director and in the direction of the company.
How Performing Arts Orgs In Dallas-Fort Worth Are Getting Millennials And Kids Through Their Doors
“Performing arts organizations have long recognized the need to attract younger audiences that will someday support them financially. In addition to retaining their current audiences, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Fort Worth Opera, Dallas Theater Center and WaterTower Theatre target two distinct demographics to expand their audiences: millennials and children.”
One Of World’s Highest-Profile Choral Conducting Posts, At King’s College Cambridge, Has Its Next Maestro
“[Stephen] Cleobury’s announcement that he was retiring from the position – which he had held since 1982 – sparked speculation about who would step into the prominent and demanding role. Aside from singing daily services in the extraordinary chapel, the choir have been prolific recording artists over many year, most recently releasing albums on its own label, launched in 2012. Meanwhile, the annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols reaches audiences of millions both on radio and television.” Cleobury’s successor will be Daniel Hyde, currently director of music at St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue in New York City.
In Reversal, Pennsylvania Ballet Decides To Raze Historic Building For New HQ
“Pennsylvania Ballet, which long planned to renovate a white terracotta-clad building on its property at North Broad and Carlton Streets as part of its expansion a few blocks north of City Hall, now says it will demolish the building instead. … The troupe says it has determined that keeping the historic four-story building fronting Broad Street isn’t feasible.”