Admission Revision: Metropolitan Museum Raises Eyebrows with Mandatory Fees for Non-New Yorkers
Were it not for my free-admission press pass, I’d be personally affected and affronted by the Metropolitan Museum’s new admissions policy. I’d feel as if a longtime lover had jilted me. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-01-04
Artichokes, Hearts
A while back I read that some folks were plucking artichokes from farm borders off the roads in California, apparently to sell. One doesn’t immediately think that these vegetable aardvarks are sustenance, although, indirectly, … read more
AJBlog: Out There Published 2018-01-04
The artist and his art
In today’s Wall Street Journal“Sightings” column, I offer some further thoughts on the wider implications of the James Levine scandal. Here’s an excerpt. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2018-01-04
Author: Matthew Westphal
Why Is Sleep So Important Across The Entire Animal Kingdom?
“In a way, it’s startling how universal sleep is: In the midst of the hurried scramble for survival, across eons of bloodshed and death and flight, uncountable millions of living things have laid themselves down for a nice, long bout of unconsciousness. … Whatever sleep gives to the sleeper is worth tempting death over and over again, for a lifetime.” Reporter Veronique Greenwood visits a lab in Japan where scientists are trying to find the answer(s) to this question.
The Saxophone Capital Of China (Oh Yes, There Is One)
“For more than a century, the region around Sidangkou has been a hub of musical instrument manufacturing, including traditional Chinese instruments like the sheng, a reed pipe, and the di, a bamboo flute. Factories in the region now produce thousands of oboes, trumpets and tubas each year. Yet nothing seems to have captured the imagination of people here like the saxophone.”
The Black Golden-Age Hollywood Actress Who Could Have Passed For White, But Didn’t
Fredi Washington often did pass for white, especially when traveling in the South, going into whites-only businesses and bringing things out for the likes of Duke Ellington. She often played mixed-race characters, including ones who passed or tried to pass, as in Imitation of Life (1934); she was often turned down for black roles, and when she got one, she had to wear makeup.
In Search Of The Mysterious Author Of A Memoir From Inside The Gulag
“How the diary emerged reads like a detective story, with Zoya Eroshok, a prominent Russian journalist, spending years piecing together the identity of its author and her fate. … [The] diary is believed to be the only one written inside the camps to have survived.”
Pioneering Ceramic Artist Betty Woodman Dead At 87
“Woodman is often associated with the beginning of a trend in the mid-1970s toward raising traditionally low forms of art-making – ones that were not painting, sculpture, drawing, and printing – to the higher status of those other mediums. For Woodman, this was accomplished by radically experimenting with ceramics, in the process alluding to Italian Renaissance, ancient Etruscan, and Chinese styles.” In 2006 she became the first living female artist to get a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum.
Regional Theatre Goes Rogue In Philadelphia
“The Wilma now has a three-year-old resident acting company” – in itself a rarity nowadays – “and welcomes shows whose daring aesthetics depart from the factory-setting naturalism of most American stages, especially regional ones.” And the theater’s model, thoroughly changed from less than a decade ago, was instituted not by a new boss but by longtime artistic director Blanka Zizka.
The Ten Most Important Lost Texts From The Ancient World
From an Indian equivalent of Aesop’s fables to the holy scriptures of Zoroastrianism to an early Chinese encyclopedia to Sappho’s poems.
The Stage 100 For 2018: Britain’s Most Influential Theatre Folk
Vicky Featherstone, artistic director of London’s Royal Court Theatre, “has leapt from last year’s placing of 39th in the annual list, reflecting her ‘brave’ and ‘enlightened’ leadership in the face of allegations around harassment and abuses of power in the theatre industry. … In taking the number one position, Featherstone knocks commercial producer Sonia Friedman off the top of the list to third place.”
San Antonio Symphony Cancels Rest Of Season, ‘Suspends Operations’
“The Symphony Society board met late into Wednesday evening ‘to determine whether there was a path forward for the Symphony Society,’ said Board Chair Alice Viroslav in a statement issued following the meeting … ‘To be clear, this is not the end of the symphony.’ … An attempt on the part of major donors to take over the Symphony’s operations [recently] failed.”