“The vast majority of plays are distinctly average. They are fairly well written, fairly well acted and fairly well staged. But they do not reflect how people actually speak because dialogue in most modern plays is generally produced to show how clever the writer is or how gifted the actor delivering it is. The tickets are expensive. The seats are uncomfortable. The audiences are pretentious and pleased with themselves, laughing loudly to show they get obscure jokes and cultural references.”
Author: ArtsJournal2
Those Deeply Ugly Ebook Fonts Are Getting A Makeover
“For typography fans, electronic books have long been the visual equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. The fonts are uninviting. Jarring swaths of white space stretch between words. Absent are all the typesetting nuances of a fine print book.”
Wait, What Actually *Is* The Most Banned Book In The United States?
The American Library Association’s list is not statistically supported, says FiveThirtyEight. Sooooo what’s the deal?
Retired Baby Boomers Become Docents Gone Wild
“Managing a generation of volunteers who grew up as rebels isn’t always easy.”
As The Recent Met Show Proves, Museums Need To Step It Up Around Native Art
“That a show of that size and scope wouldn’t include Native American curatorial partners is indicative of a museum system that has for centuries seen Indigenous people as subjects. In the United States, where most of the large encyclopedic art museums were formed in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, legacies of putting Native cultures on display are deep-rooted and not so easily given up.”
Remember That Photo Of The Nine-Year-Old Smoking?
“When she came along and took those photos, I thought, ‘Well, hey, people will see me and this may get me the attention that I want; it may change things for me,’ ” Ellison says. She thought someone would see the images and come rescue her. “I had thought that that might have been the way out. But it wasn’t.”
What If The Only Shakespeare Play To Survive Had Been ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’?
“The mystery of Midsummer Night gets bound up in the larger mystery of Shakespeare. Yet it is an anomaly, distinct from anything he wrote before or after, a world to itself with its own rules and its own moods.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs For 06.28.15
Ornette Coleman, Traditionalist
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2015-06-26
AJBlog: SandowPublished 2015-06-26
AJBlog: Infinite CurvesPublished 2015-06-26
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Are Children’s Books The Next Frontier For High-Quality Nonfiction Illustration And Writing?
“For a long time it has been thought that publishers serve fiction well, while non-fiction has been dominated by glossy reference books. But we are currently seeing a boom in beautifully illustrated narrative non-fiction – and this Greenaway win marks a high point in the trend.”
The President’s ‘Amazing Grace’ And The Political Power Of Music
“When it comes to political leaders, it’s a fine line between human and unbecoming, and the line gets ever-thinner in a social-media age where moments can be highlighted, repeated and parsed ad infinitum. If the singing isn’t good, it can become a punchline; if it is, it can look glib or narcissistic.”