So how’s the project, which Alex Poots was first approached about in 2014, going? It’s going OK: “Poots and his board have … doubled the scale of the Shed so that, when it opens this spring with a programme of original commissions including works by Steve McQueen and Björk, it will be in a multistorey glass complex where the largest performance space can accommodate up to 1,200 people. There will be rehearsal and lab spaces for emerging artists, a pop-up bookshop and a 20,000 sq ft outdoor plaza for huge events.” – The Observer (UK)
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Historian Li Xueqin, Who Helped China Embrace Antiquity, Has Died At 85
Li, who wrote more than 40 books and 1000 articles, had to walk the line, including attacking his mentor both personally and professionally during the Cultural Revolution. But inside China, “Li was better known as the country’s leading historian. He participated in some of the most important Chinese archaeological digs of the 20th century, like one at Mawangdui, which yielded texts that helped reshape scholarly understanding of ancient China.” – The New York Times
What Happens When An Author Who Identifies As Non-Binary Is Nominated For A Women’s Fiction Prize?
The author Akwaeke Emezi’s debut novel, Freshwater, is on the 16-book longlist for the Women’s prize for fiction. Emezi identifies as a non-binary trans person and uses they and them as pronouns. The chair of the judging committee: “We’re very careful not to Google the authors while judging, so we did not know. But the book found great favour among us, it is wonderful. They are an incredibly talented author and we’re keen to celebrate them.” – The Guardian (UK)
Saying ‘Ciao’ To The Met’s Too-Much-Is-Never-Enough ‘Aida’
Unbelievably, the run of Sonja Frisell’s grand, gaudy, beloved (and reviled for its length) Aida is coming to an end this week as the Met updates Aida to be sleeker and, yes, shorter. Zachary Woolfe of The New York Times is going to miss the old one: “I love the ridiculous too-much-ness of that moment, with extras circling back into the parade again and again in different costumes, trying to convince us that this really is a cast of thousands. I love the flickering torchlight emanating from the chamber where the priests judge Radamès. I love the starlit Nile Scene, and I love the smoky temple rituals.” – The New York Times
Chiwetel Ejiofor’s New Netflix Film Avoids Sensationalizing A Disaster Through Telling A Specific Tale
Ejiofor, known in the U.S. best for his starring role in 12 Years a Slave, has now directed (and is starring in) a new film for Netflix, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. He wanted to be careful to ground it, and set it, in a very specific place and time. “The way that we relate to those kind of rural African communities is very rarely within the epic storytelling tradition of cinema. … So it was important to me to look at that and to think, Okay, how do I render this truthfully, but in an epic way?” – The Atlantic
Caravaggio Or Not, The Painting Discovered In An Attic Is Going Up For Sale – But Who Would Buy It?
So the Louvre decided not to buy the canvas, found in an attic in Toulouse in 2014, despite the fact that art experts have made a pretty convincing case. – The Guardian (UK)
Britain’s National Theatre Archive Gets A Quarter-Century Celebration
Some contributions to the celebratory exhibit are slightly more elaborate than others: “The security guard at the NT Archive, Slav Kirichok, who also happens to be a talented photographer and film-maker, has created a short video in tribute to Danny Boyle’s 2011 production of Frankenstein.” – The Stage (UK)
Pritzker Prize-Winning Architect Kevin Roche Has Died At 96
Roche was a “Dublin-born American architect whose modernist buildings, at once bold and refined, gave striking new identities to corporations, museums and institutions around the world,” including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. – The New York Times
Azerbaijan And The ‘Worst Cultural Genocide Of The 21st Century’
For 30 years, the country of Azerbaijan has “been engaging in a systematic erasure of the country’s historic Armenian heritage,” including a necropolis dating back to the 6th century. A new report (for Hyperallergic) says the erasure of the necropolis “marked the final stage of a broader campaign to denude Nakhichevan of its indigenous Armenian Christian past.” – The Guardian (UK)
Using Fiction To Reshape Our Understandings Of Los Angeles
Nikki Darling, author of Fade Into You, about her book and LA: “When communities of color are shown, it’s usually associated with violence and turmoil. In my lived experience, all sections of the city contain a swirled variance of different lived realities, histories, and ancestries. People have lived here long before Mulholland Drive and Raymond Chandler. Los Angeles is as old as the fault lines that run beneath it. I wanted to shake the city loose from its static image.” – LitHub