The next-to-last one, in suburban Perth, Australia, closes this month, leaving only the franchise in Bend, Oregon. “But this is no elegy for Blockbuster, no lament for how Netflix killed the video star. … This is about the ability of the Bend store, like sturdy links in other dying chains, to live on and avoid being turned into a pawnshop or a fast-food restaurant.” – The New York Times
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Riccardo Muti Intervenes On Musicians’ Side In Chicago Symphony Contract Talks
The CSO music director said, in a letter to the board of directors, “I hope that the board will remember that theirs is not a job but a mission, and that tranquility and serenity will be given for the artists to do their work.” The musicians have voted to go on strike if agreement on a contract is not reached by March 10 (i.e., by the end of this Sunday’s matinee concert). – Chicago Sun-Times
Undisturbed Mayan Ritual Cave Discovered At Chichén Itzá
“Archaeologists hunting for a sacred well beneath the ancient Maya city of Chichén Itzá on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula have accidentally discovered a trove of more than 150 ritual objects — untouched for more than a thousand years — in a series of cave chambers that may hold clues to the rise and fall of the ancient Maya.” – National Geographic
Artist Carolee Schneemann Dead At 79
“Over the course of Schneemann’s multifarious 60-year career, her art came to form the bedrock of radical traditions like performance art and body art, even while she insisted on identifying herself all the while with a traditional label. ‘I’m a painter,’ she said in 1993. ‘I’m still a painter and I will die a painter. Everything that I have developed has to do with extending visual principles off the canvas.'” – ARTnews
Daniel Hope To Depart Savannah Music Festival
The star violinist, who runs the chamber music program and is the biggest name among the festival’s associate artistic directors, will step down after this year’s festival, which begins in three weeks and runs through April 13. – Savannah Morning News
Fiction Translated Into English Is Selling Better Than Ever In UK
“According to research commissioned by the Man Booker International (MBI) prize from Nielsen Book, overall sales of translated fiction in the UK were up last year by 5.5%, with more than 2.6m books sold, worth £20.7m – the highest level since Nielsen began to track sales in 2001.” – The Guardian
In US, Demand For Foreign Literature In Translation Grows, But Number Of Translated Books Published Declines
As one publisher put it, “Translated literature has found recent mainstream success partly because books coverage, like Congress, is catching up to the changing culture of America.” Yet for two years running, the number of translations published here has fallen. – Publishers Weekly
After A #MeToo Scandal, Africa’s Big New Museum Of Contemporary Art Names A New Director
The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa opened in Cape Town in September of 2017 but had a turbulent first year, the biggest event of which was the ousting of its founding executive director and chief curator, Marc Coetzee, over “professional conduct” issues. His successor is Koyo Kouoh, a Cameroon-born curator who founded a contemporary artist support organization in Dakar called the RAW Material Company. – The Art Newspaper
Is Michael Jackson Inc. Too Big To Cancel?
The recent phenomenon of so-called cancel culture — the notion of withholding moral, financial and other support for prominent figures deemed problematic — has grown to become the default reaction in circumstances of troubling allegations or unacceptable behaviour. But is the King of Pop too big to cancel? – CBC
Broadway Hit: “Network” Makes Back Its Investment In Just 15 Weeks
One of this Broadway season’s clearest successes, the play, directed by Ivo van Hove and also starring Tony Goldwyn and Tatiana Maslany, routinely posts weekly box office of $1 million or more, playing to sell-out or near-sell-out houses. For the week ending March 3, Network grossed $1,024,594, with 99% of seats filled. – Deadline