Sure, austerity hurts arts groups in Europe, but what about the U.S.? “For Americans used to seeing the best and most adventuresome European culture on tour in this country, the belt-tightening is beginning to affect both the quantity and quality of arts exchanges.”
Author: ArtsJournal2
How To Make James Madison Exciting? Crowd-source, Of Course
Asking scholars – and others – to annotate an online text of James Madison’s Notes of the Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 means it might become more than something for historians to glance at. “It’s sort of the users manual to the Constitution. You’re not going to make it sing. But can you make it at least speak?”
MGM Buys Back United Artists
“Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has bought back full control of its historic film label United Artists, the independent studio revealed in financial results reported this week.”
Opium: A Real Spark For Artistic Genius (And Madness)
“It was the ‘magical conspiracy between opium, tuberculosis and God’ that inspired Keats’s great odes, Shelley’s laments, Schiller’s ballads, Novalis’s mysterious hymns, Chopin’s nocturnes, Murger’s brilliant vignettes of Bohemian life and countless other treasures of Romantic literature, music and the arts.”
Dance Hall Days And Big Band Nights
Once upon a time, “virtually every neighborhood had a dance hall, and white-tablecloth restaurants had dance floors. Collectively, they constituted a network of big-band music invisibly stitched together by the magic of radio, which was coming into its own.”
Why Can’t Americans Teach Their Architects How To Speak?
In Seattle, architects make the finals for planning a revamped Seattle Center. But what in the hell are they talking about? Knute Berger asks, “Why do architects talk about dialog in incomprehensible language that seems to catalyze brain-freeze and prevent any dialog from actually taking place?”
Bringing The Twenty-Somethings Into Theatre – Online, Of Course
“Before shows open on stage, the audience gets to interact with characters on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr accounts. The theater company works with actors to develop the fictional characters on social media accounts.”
That “Unknown Artist” Is Actually Van Gogh, Dutch Museum Says
“Officials said this week that ‘Still Life With Meadow Flowers and Roses’ is the work of the Dutch master and that he likely created it while living with his brother, Theo, in Paris in the 1880s.”
Playing A New (Well, Rediscovered) Mozart Piece In His Hometown
Want a new Mozart? On Friday, you could have heard one – discovered in a notebook from 1780 in an attic in Tyrol last summer – at Mozart’s home in Salzburg.
More Streaming Movies, More Convenience – And Less Revenue
This year, we’re watching more movies streaming over Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and iTunes than we’re watching on DVD – and the movie companies aren’t real happy about that. “In total, online stores and services will account for 57% of movie consumption in 2012, but only 12% of spending.”