Suburban communities lose their coverage; attitudes about national outlets taint how people feel about their hometown newspapers; reporters cover way too many beats at a time; and other very serious issues occur when places lose their local newspapers or see them massively retrenched. – Nieman Lab
Author: ArtsJournal2
Gahan Wilson, Cartoonist Of The Macabre, Dies At 89
Wilson’s “outlandish, often ghoulish cartoons added a bizarrely humorous touch to Playboy, The New Yorker, National Lampoon and other publications in the era when magazines propelled the cultural conversation.” – The New York Times
André De Shields, Blazing A Path To ‘Hadestown’
The Broadway veteran, perhaps best known as the original Wiz in the musical, won a Tony in June for his portrayal of Mercury in Hadestown, and he gave an “instantly iconic speech in which he gave his three rules for ‘longevity'” in the theatre. – American Theatre
Finding The Art Of The ‘Real’ Moscow In Its Grim Suburbs
As Russia’s population faces a steep decline, Moscow is growing – but there’s no room in the city center. One curator: “We got used to viewing the suburbs as strange, remote areas we don’t want to visit. … But when you get out here, thanks to the artist, you see something you wouldn’t expect.” – Seattle Times (AP)
The Philadelphia Orchestra Is Expanding Its Relationship With China Despite U.S.-China Tensions
There are many, many tensions between the two countries, but “the orchestra’s rock-star status in China offers it unique possibilities for bridge-building. Even youngsters are aware that, in 1973, it was the first Western orchestra to play in the People’s Republic of China. It has made 11 full visits since then, the most recent one in May.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
A Bookstore Whose Nooks And Crannies Are Practically The Key To Narnia
Well, no, no wardrobe or fur coats, but “9,000 square feet of nooks, alcoves, labyrinths, and warrens.” Its customers really love it, including the way thousands of books crammed together smell. And “the store is orderly if not antiseptic. Signs are hand-lettered; there are plenty of chairs for contemplation and ladders for climbing; and, whether by accident or puckish design, the crime section stops short at a fittingly dead end.” – The New York Times
Documenting ‘Old L.A.’ As Developers Destroy More And More Craftsmen Houses For Apartment Buildings
It’s not that preservationists don’t understand the need for housing – that’s obvious in L.A., as in most cities and towns on the West Coast. “It seems to me that we should fight the argument that any talk of preservation is anti-housing. Because it doesn’t have to be. We can be for affordable housing but against the kind of utter freedom to tear down and put up just about anything at all anywhere in the name of it that on the block just east of mine has produced the kind of development that makes neighborhood people cry.” – Los Angeles Times
How Do We Know It’s Creative Placemaking?
Some major organizations have been trying to figure out how to help communities use the arts and culture to create strong, shared values. – Margy Waller
MacArthur ‘Genius’ Lynda Barry Is Using Her Grant To Explore Brain Creativity
She says it’s with the purest of pure artists: Preschoolers. “Barry is pushing the envelope on understanding how the brain creates and responds to words and pictures — a scholarly envelope that, in her mind, should be positively covered with illuminating doodles.” – The Washington Post
American Theatre Is Traumatizing Its Own Practitioners
Lauren E. Turner, founder of the New Orleans theatre company No Dream Deferred, says that she was deeply lucky as a kid. “I was taught creating space was my duty. The idea of what was out there and available for performers of color was accessible, and I knew there was power in being able to tell a different story in different ways. Had I not had that experience, I would have just assumed theatre was strictly for white people.” – HowlRound