Russian oligarchs have sat on the board of the Guggenheim and given money to the Kennedy Center. They’ve funded the New Museum and historic parks in the U.S. At least, they’ve done all that until (& sometimes after) their companies are sanctioned by the U.S. This “soft power” money is approved by the Kremlin and appreciated by strapped arts institutions. “The Russian giving, and the strained relations between the countries, has created something of a minefield for American cultural organizations.” – The New York Times
Author: ArtsJournal2
Natalie Portman, Just Before She Becomes Thor
Portman’s acting life, of course, has been marked not just by Marvel movies but by that other huge franchise, Star Wars. She likes meatier roles as well, but she says, “I love getting to be part of something that is such a major part of entertainment for young people. It sets your mind-set to recognize injustice. I recently saw a sign at the climate march where this kid was like: ‘I grew up on Marvel movies. Of course I’m going to fight against wrong.'” – The New York Times
The Vision Of James Baldwin’s Last Two Works
Though they were shadowed by AIDS, the two works might feel contemporary in 2019. “Baldwin’s primary theme is described by the author thusly: ‘Forays, frontiers, and flags are useless. Nobody can go home anymore.'” – Literary Hub
Lighting Projection Design Is Changing More Than Broadway And Big Regional Theatres
Projection design is that cool part of theatre where – poof! – an entire kingdom can freeze over, as in the Broadway and touring versions of Frozen, or where, in Anastasia, “a stage-spanning LED wall displays landscapes that move in tandem with [a] train.” And it’s more portable than a huge, multi-part set, too. – Los Angeles Times
Supermarkets Are Taking Out Newspaper And Magazine Racks
Print? What is that? “What was once seen as a tool to pull in daily customers is increasingly seen as something taking up valuable floor and counter space.” – Nieman Lab
What Should Performers Do When Audience Members Are Using Their Phones?
Just a few nights after Anne-Sophie Mutter stopped a concert to tell a woman in the front row to stop filming, actor Joshua Henry, star of a new Off Broadway musical called The Wrong Man, tried to get a man in onstage seating to quit filming. The man paid no attention. So Henry “reached into the seats, deftly grabbed the phone out of the man’s hand, wagged it disapprovingly, and tossed it under a riser — all mid-song, without skipping a beat. ‘I knew I had to do something,’ he explained later.” – The New York Times
Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum Has Been Closed For Renovation For Two Years
And the results are almost in; the museum reopens on Monday, with much pomp, a lot of new paint, and a ton of QR codes. – BBC
Nancy Drew Is Still Alive At 90, And Also Still 16 Years Old
How, why, and why is Nancy so hard to adapt to the screen? “Never out of print, she has appeared in more than 250 books and counting, in movies, on television shows, in CD-ROM games. She has been reinvented, in ways that fans have not always embraced, for seemingly every era.” (And she’s being reinvented now, again, for a new series.) – The New York Times
Part Of The Los Angeles Central Library’s Mysteriously Missing Sculpture Returns Home
But where are the other parts of the Wall of Scribes? And how did someone (or someones, or a syndicate, who knows?) steal the bronze sculpture in 1969? – Los Angeles Times
Poet, Novelist, Translator And Biographer Elaine Feinstein Has Died
Feinstein was 88. She’d published more than a dozen poetry collections and 15 novels, translated Russian poets and wrote biographies of Ted Hughes and Bessie Smith. “Feinstein often explored the relationship between being Jewish and being English — the ‘not quite at-homeness of the English Jews in England,’ as Paul Morris put it in The Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. Ever present with her was the knowledge that had her ancestors settled in Germany rather than England, her life might have been very different.” – The New York Times