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Director Michael Greif Reimagines ‘Rent’ For Live TV

Greif staged both the original off-and-then-on-Broadway production (1996-2008) and a 2011-12 Off-Broadway revival, and he’s now directing Rent: Live, airing this Sunday on Fox. Diep Tran talks to director and cast about how they’re reconfiguring the show for a live audience of 1,500 plus a TV audience they hope will be in the millions. — American Theatre

Artist Activist Group Urges Artists To Withhold Work From Upcoming Whitney Biennial

“The group, which advocates for sustainable economic relationships between artists and institutions, is urging the artists who will be invited to participate in the 2019 Whitney Biennial to withhold their works in solidarity with the museum’s staff and to demand compensation for the labor that went into making the pieces that will be included in the exhibition.”    – Artforum

This Really Was An Evil Plot By The Patriarchy: Art Dealers Erased Female Old Masters And Sold Their Paintings As Works By Men

Jordana Pomeroy, director of the Frost Art Museum in Miami and a specialist in the history of women artists, says that some dealers went so far as to paint over a female artist’s signature and replace it with that of a male one “so that you can ask more money for a Frans Hals than you could for a Judith Leyster. And this kind of thing went on for many, many years.” — The Art Newspaper (podcast)

Jonas Mekas’s Final Interview: ‘The Best Commercial Cinema Today Is Action Cinema’

“The plots are invented on the spot. Not like Hitchcock, where every scene that follows is connected with the final scene. In the action movie, it is more like the style of The Arabian Nights.” (Mekas’s favorite recent film? Lady Bird. “It is the only one that deals with real life and succeeds.”) — The Guardian

How The MAGA Teen Video Crystallizes America’s Culture Wars, Despite Meaning (In The End) Almost Nothing In Itself

“This is just the latest instance of a phenomenon you could call ‘event politics’ — that familiar flurry of knee-jerk responses sparked by a single image or clip that a little too perfectly illustrates one side’s worldview.” Lili Loofbourow looks at what event politics signifies (“a response to uncertainty”) and why it spreads so fast (“we’re in a moment when so much is truly bananas — the president can’t spell hamburgers and was investigated by the FBI for being a possible Russian agent, to pick two examples at random — that reassuring framings are welcome.”) — Slate

Andy de Groat, Experimental Choreographer Of 1970s And ’80s, Dead At 71

“Mr. de Groat was a significant presence on the New York downtown dance scene and in Paris in the 1970s and ’80s. Introduced to audiences through his work with [Robert] Wilson, he later formed his own company and built a distinctive choreographic identity through his use of spinning, a technique he began to develop for Mr. Wilson’s work.” — The New York Times

Ten-Year Restoration Of Tutankhamen’s Tomb Is Finally Complete

“In 2009, with help from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, the [Getty Conservation Institute] brought in a team of environmental engineers, architects and designers to improve the tomb’s infrastructure, an Egyptologist to conduct background research, microbi­ologists to study the brown spots, and conservators to treat the walls. Together, they carried out the most intensive study and restoration of the tomb since [Howard Carter discovered it in 1922].” — Hyperallergic