In 1977, artists fought for a sculpture park in Yorkshire – but it was a very, very uphill climb. “More than 40 years later the stubbornness appears to have paid off. The YSP is at the heart of Yorkshire Sculpture International (YSI), a new festival” that is changing the area. But it started with an idea that politicians, residents, and local businesses didn’t want. – The Guardian (UK)
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What’s The Future For Arthouse Films In China?
Wang Jingchun, who won the Best Actor award at Cannes, says, “The rising box office is a really good thing. At its worst, we hardly had a box office to speak of. There also used to be a problem with content: The subjects and perspectives were too old. Now we need new concepts, and young people coming up now are bringing all sorts of new ones to the table, new kinds of cinematic thinking. Also, foreign and Hollywood films have come in, and everyone’s seen everything. . … Audiences have these needs, and theaters have at least started to provide a platform for them to see this stuff.” – Variety
Will Omaha Become A Center For Children’s Theatre Development?
That’s the hope as Rose Theater gets a large new building and plans to open one of the country’s biggest theatre academies – a “game-changer” for Omaha, but perhaps for the wider theatre world of the Midwest as well. – Omaha World-Herald
Music Publishers Are Pondering New Methods Of Digital Distribution For Orchestras
The Music Publishers Association may long for the past, but they’re also trying to plan for the future. “There still is not a lot of ‘jumping to digital’ at professional orchestras since the operations of these organizations are determined by lots of tradition. They ‘want digital as an option, but not the only thing they do.’ They ‘send digital perusal scores to conductors who don’t want to carry stuff around. But when it comes to concert-time, 99.9% is paper.'” – NewMusicBox
Books And Social Media Actually Do Mix
Surprising no one who has pr-oordered, ordered, put on reserve at the library, or flat-out bought books mentioned by friends and authors on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, the consensus is that social media plus books equals interest … and often, sales. – The Atlantic
The Day The Music Stopped
Jacobin Magazine’s take on the Baltimore Symphony musicians’ lockout emphasizes worker solidarity, even for elite musicians. “A lockout is probably the nastiest of tactics used by orchestra management to force union musicians to sign lackluster contracts. Lockouts take the power of withholding their labor out of the musician’s hands. Management does this for good reason, since orchestras with strong unions, aided — crucially — by community and audience support, have repeatedly used militant tactics to their advantage.” – Jacobin Magazine
Peter Selz, Curator And Art Historian Who Shaped The Berkeley Museum And MoMA, Has Died At 100
Selz’s views strongly shaped MoMA’s take on European and non-Abstract Expressionist art during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and his time at Berkeley made the museum “a locus of activity in the California scene.” – ArtNews
The American Film Industry Has To Learn To Deal With Fire, And Climate Change
When people have a hard time seeing climate change as real, Hollywood could step forward – but it could also cause more problems. “While Hollywood’s version of climate change might bring a modicum of attention to the dangers of our altered world, we still must ask: is this revelation anything more than entertaining catharsis that ultimately reinforces individualism above all else?” – Los Angeles Review of Books
Dancing In The Green
Fertility in the arts at the Jacob’s Pillow Gala. – Deborah Jowitt
The Massive Mistakes Of Art History Include Missing The Reality Of Joan Mitchell
We can’t say it better than this: “The career of Joan Mitchell, who once likened Clement Greenberg to a ‘toilet seat,’ ought to remind us of how tribal the art world continues to be. There are those who want to belong to clubs and acquire the proper affiliations, and there are others who don’t or can’t belong to anything of the sort, even the cliques that would gladly welcome them. Academics are fond of repeating that Mitchell was ‘a second generation’ Abstract Expressionist, as if that were the clubhouse she wanted to enter, and got stuck in.” But there’s a lot more. – Hyperallergic