Author: Matthew Westphal

Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.24.17

News Flash: Berkshire Museum’s Head on Medical Leave; 21 of 40 Consignments Pulled from Sotheby’s Auctions
There have been two major plot twists in the convoluted saga of the Berkshire Museum’s highly controversial plans to sell 40 works from its collection at Sotheby’s. This just in from the Berkshire Museum: … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-10-24

Get Out And Go For A Walk!
It’s That Time of Year… This is just a reminder: TEFAF is in New York again, at the Park Avenue Armory, opening to the public on Saturday and to collectors on Friday. And before that, as … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2017-10-24

Classical Music and The Echo Society
Sometimes — certainly not always — it makes sense to take a chance and see something you have very little sense of. … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2017-10-24

 

Jackie Chan Has Become, Simply, A Good Actor (As Well As A Businessman And Martial Arts Legend)

“Idle is not one of the speeds in Jackie Chan’s gearbox. ‘Sometimes I look at some other actors, famous actors,’ he says incredulously. ‘They’re so comfortable! After filming, just holiday! With a girlfriend or the family.’ After filming, Jackie tends to an ever-expanding portfolio of business interests, and then he makes more films.”

Art Behind The Scenes: How Paintings Get Framed, Sculptures Get Forged, And Art Gets Moved Around And Installed

“With a sense of craft and care comparable to that of the artists whose work they tend, art-service professionals play a crucial role in making sure artworks get where they need to go, in preserved condition and suited to be seen in the proper light. … ARTnews visited art services in and around New York City to see how [the work gets done].”

The Story Of The Internet’s Number-One Source For Scores

“In 2006, a New England Conservatory student named Edward Guo founded the online portal IMSLP, or International Music Score Library, a kind of Wikipedia for musicians. Now the site contains some 350,000 scores and 40,000 recordings from 14,000 composers. The works of composers who have been dead for less than 70 years are not in the public domain and don’t appear on the site. Still, IMSLP is omnipresent enough that I’ve encountered music students who assumed there were no scores to Strauss songs at all, since they weren’t showing up there.”

The City You Didn’t Know Was An Early Hotbed Of Black Ballet Talent

During the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, Philadelphia had a thriving scene that nourished some of the later 20th century’s most important African-American dancers. Dance Magazine‘s Jennifer Stahl interviews Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet founder Theresa Ruth Howard about what made the city such a relatively good place for black dancers to work, while Judith Jamison, Delores Browne, and Joan Myers Brown offer comments on video about the city’s dance history.

Alt-Right Demonstrators Harass Oakland’s Revolution Books

“On September 24, conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos made a brief visit to Berkeley, an event that drew police from around the region. That evening, a band of between 30 and 40 right-wing activists stormed Revolution Books. The attackers recorded the episode on video, rattling windows and confronting patrons. Since the initial incident, these activists have orchestrated at least five more visits to the store – posting their exploits in online videos.”

Post-Charlottesville, How Is America Changing Its Approach To ‘Gone With The Wind’?

Aisha Harris: “How are cinemas, TV networks, and classrooms rethinking how they present this historical epic and all-time box office king? And could it go the way of Hollywood’s original historical epic and first megablockbuster, 1915’s The Birth of a Nation, leaving it shown very rarely and almost exclusively in academic settings? To find out, I talked to theater managers, academics, television programmers, and fans. The answers I received were mixed, not least because Gone With the Wind is still big business.”