Gov. Jay Pritzker’s infrastructure spending bill, the state’s first major public works program in more than ten years, just passed the state legislature, and it includes over $60 million in money for capital projects at various arts institutions. And there’s another $50 million for capital projects to be allocated by the Illinois Arts Council. – Chicago Tribune
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YouTube Announces New Crackdown On Hate Speech Videos
“[The company] said content that alleges a group is superior in order to justify discrimination on characteristics like age, race, caste, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status would be prohibited under its new hate speech policy. It’ll also remove some conspiracy theory videos that deny well-documented violent events, like the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting and the Holocaust.” – Slate
Artist Joe Overstreet, 85
“Over the course of a six-decade career that cut across artistic movements and unflinchingly addressed issues of racism and inequality, Overstreet established himself not only as one of the signal painters of postwar American art, but also as a vital organizer. … He helped to create exhibiting opportunities for numerous artists of diverse backgrounds at Kenkeleba House, the arts space he cofounded in Manhattan’s East Village in 1974.” – ARTnews
‘An American Marriage’ By Tayari Jones Win UK’s Women’s Prize For Fiction
“Jones’s portrait of a young African-American’s wrongful incarceration and its devastating impact on his marriage … [won over] last year’s Booker winner, Anna Burns’s Milkman, and former Booker winner Pat Barker’s new novel, The Silence of the Girls.” – The Guardian
San Francisco Ballet’s New Executive Director Comes From Orchestra/Opera World
Kelly Tweeddale, who trained as a dancer when young, has spent the past five seasons as president of the Vancouver Symphony; before that, she was for 12 years executive director of Seattle Opera, and she worked previously at the Cleveland Orchestra and Seattle Symphony. She begins work in San Francisco after Labor Day. – San Francisco Chronicle
How Russia’s ‘Documentary Theatre’ Company Exposes Injustice
Founded in 2002, Teatr.doc assembles scripts from documents and participant testimony from important incidents in contemporary Russia. Writer Verity Healey reports on the company’s latest project, Torture, “about the physical and psychological methods officers from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) used on a group of left-wing young men prior to the 2018 World Cup.” – HowlRound
At Jaap Van Zweden’s Other Orchestra, Director Of Artistic Planning Is Abruptly Fired
In late May, the Hong Kong Philharmonic’s management dismissed Lam Fung, a local composer who took the position in 2017 and had received a good performance review as recently as March. “[The administration] did not offer reasons for Lam’s sudden dismissal, only saying in a statement that the orchestra ‘remains committed to the support and development of local talent.'” – South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
Egypt’s Government Has Even Cracked Down On The Soap Operas Popular During Ramadan
During the month of daytime fasting, families and friends often gather around the TV during and after the evening meal, and Egyptian networks prepare their biggest programming events for the season. This year, the regime of Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came down hard on the soaps, restricting and sometimes dictating content and even banning one of Egypt’s most popular actors from screens. – The Baffler
EO Wilson At 90: Still A Provocateur
Contentious or not, Wilson’s books have mostly addressed one theme: that we must know natural history and evolutionary theory to fully understand humanity’s future on the planet. In his 1986 manifesto Biophilia, for example, he suggested that humans have an innate biological need to be in nature and to “affiliate with other forms of life.” – Wired
The Indictment Of Donald Duck
Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart made the case in the 1990s: “What kind of a role model was he, this eunuch duck, who sought only fame and fortune, who ignored the plight of the working class, who accepted endless suffering as his lot? “Reading Disney,” they wrote, “is like having one’s own exploited condition rammed with honey down one’s throat.” – The New Yorker