That’s a new one: Art historian Christopher Wright says a painting attributed to the mid-15th century artist Rogier van der Weyden’s workshop “is a 20th-century fake, of an unknown man sporting a Beatles-style haircut and reading a paper containing nothing more than nonsense.” – The Observer (UK)
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A Violinist Has Questions About The Supposed East-West Divide
Lebanese violinist Layale Chaker isn’t too pleased about some of the choices forced upon her and her classmates as they grew up. “‘From the beginning you chose your path, Western or Arab,’ Ms. Chaker, 28, said recently at her apartment in Brooklyn. ‘I never questioned it.'” Now she has both questions and answers. – The New York Times
One Of The Sundance Winners Had These Bon Mots For Hollywood
Alma Har’el said women directors, who directed 44 percent of the movies at Sundance this year, said, “We’re here; we’re ready; stop sending us to shadow the fucking white men.” (Plus, hey, a list of all the winners.) – Vulture
Upgrading Canadian Stage – Starting From The Bottom Up
Toronto’s Canadian Stage has been a success in the theatre, less so in its financial fortunes. So with new leadership, maybe it’s time for a business upgrade rather than an artistic one. – Toronto Star
Does Ireland Have A Cultural Inferiority Complex?
“We can’t have it both ways. We can’t keep saying we’re a wonderfully endowed cultural nation and boast about our artists and our poets and our writers and everything on the one hand, and then turn around and say we’re not good enough.” – Irish Times
How Story-Sharing Platform Wattpad Became A Hollywood Player
Beyond its handful of higher-profile productions, including a feature film coming this spring, Wattpad estimates that nearly 1,000 of its stories have been turned intotraditional books, TV shows, films and other digital content. It’s partnered with NBCUniversal, SYFY, CW Seed and others around the world to develop film and television projects, and last week it announced that it’s launching its own publishing imprint, Wattpad Books. – Los Angeles Times
First Issue: When A Museum Wants To Be Relevant To Its Community – What Does Relevance Mean?
“Our breakthrough moment was when we took ownership of the fact that we didn’t need to write a “social impact statement” (which might be seen as competing with our mission statement). Rather, we simply needed to articulate the problem our community is facing that we are uniquely suited to address, the best solution we believe exists for that problem, and the concrete and tangible outcomes we’re going to measure that will demonstrate our positive social impact.” – Medium
When A Civil Rights Worker Takes Over A Performing Arts Center… New Things Happen
Doug Shipman — the founding CEO of the Center for Civil and Human Rights before taking over running Atlanta’s Woodruff Center — seems the right person to carry the momentum forward into a new era. In his 18 months at the helm of Atlanta’s mecca of high arts, he has taken steps to broaden the arts center’s reach. In his first months on the job, Shipman made a point of meeting with numerous smaller arts groups with a simple message: how can we help each other? His openness and desire to give Woodruff a deeper imprint on Atlanta’s arts community are palpable. – ArtsATL
National Opera House Boss Fired For Allowing Computer Game Tournament In Building
The Kyrgyz National Opera and Ballet Theatre is funded from the always-strapped budget of Kyrgyzstan, a small and mountainous ex-Soviet republic wedged between China, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. So director Bolot Osmonov took the opportunity to make some extra money by renting the premises out for a national tournament of Dota 2, a notably violent online video game. Alas, pearls were clutched in horror and Osmonov lost his job. (And this wasn’t even the first time that sort of thing happened.) — Global Voices
Doomsday Art – Culture And Our Threat Of Apocalypse
If every age has its version of apocalypse, the soft tragedy of our own is that it can no longer be safely situated in the future. Our end-times, instead, lurk among us, furtive and fierce and all too present-tensed, waiting, watching, lingering, biding—understanding, far better than we allow ourselves to, how little it takes to turn the good place into the bad. – The Atlantic