Competitions, like the rest of the business, are redefining themselves. Rather than trying to produce the superstars of tomorrow, they’re increasingly focusing on the present: an end in themselves. Indeed, the line between the competition and other classical music organizations is increasingly blurred.
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Even As Its Economy Was Melting Down, Greece Still Invested In The Arts. Why?
The principal belief is that supporting the arts and culture is not a luxury but an investment in human progress. It is the necessary scaffolding for building and sustaining civil society. It is the cornerstone for human growth and development.
We’re All About Feelings Now – How Literature Evolved Beyond Narratives
Western literature’s gradual progression from narratives that relate actions and events to stories that portray minds in all their meandering, many-layered, self-contradictory complexities. I’d often wondered, when reading older texts: Weren’t people back then interested in what characters thought and felt?
Report: Broadway Theatre Audience Is Getting Younger
The 21st publication is just out and reports the lowest age attendance since 2000, a significant bit of hope for Broadway’s long-term health. During the 2017–2018 season, the average age of Broadway theater-goers was 40.6, the lowest since 2000. For a second year in a row, there was a record total number of kids and teens under 18 attending a Broadway show. At 2.1 million, it represents the highest total ever (it was 1.65 million the season prior). Additionally, since the 2010-2011 season, Hispanic/Latino attendance has grown by 61%, or 430,000 admissions (from 710,000 to 1.14 million).
Rap Is A Russian Art, Just Like Ballet, Says Russia’s Culture Minister
Vladimir Medinsky told a room full of worthies at an Aspen/Davos-type gathering in Sochi, “Soon we’ll be saying that rap is Russian art. Of course, it was born somewhere in America, but its flourishing occurred with us, of course.” Just like ballet. Then Medinsky pronounced that the very first rapper was, in fact, early Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.
What Happens When The Great Thinking Of The World Is Reduced To Being Expressed In Tweets?
So, what happens when people stop writing letters? Or when books become less central to society—a tangential diversion or eccentricity—less important than movies, which are less important than the premium cable channels, which are less important than Netflix and Amazon Prime, which are less important than video games, all of which together are less important than social media? What happens when our writers and thinkers express themselves through Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter instead of on the page?
The Art Balloon That Scandalized Australia’s Ruling Elite Is Back
“With a head like a turtle, a body like a giant cetacean and ten bulbous, hanging breasts, one thing is certain: It is hard to ignore the Skywhale. When the hot-air balloon debuted in May 2013, looming over Canberra for the Australian capital’s centenary celebrations, critics said the ‘floating sculpture’ created by Patricia Piccinini did not represent the city. Some blushed at the scale of its udders and at its six-figure cost. … Well, get ready, Australia. It’s back.”
New York Museums Rescind Use Of Saudi Money For Programs
The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum said on Thursday that they would not use Saudi money for programs on Middle Eastern art that had originally been supported by groups tied to the Saudi government.
Icelandic Culture Has Survived Since The Age Of The Vikings, But Can It Survive The Age Of Tourism And The Internet?
“Icelandic … has changed so little since then on our small and isolated island, that we can still more or less read [the Sagas] as they were first written. But Iceland is not so isolated anymore.” Novelist Ragnar Jónasson explains the factors that are making English more prevalent there than ever before (“Will Icelandic soon become the second language of Icelanders?”), and then looks at a couple of surprising sources of hope for the mother tongue.
On The Differences Between Being An Actor In The US And Europe
“Certainly American culture is different from European culture. So I had expected the life of a theatre artist in Paris or London to be more refined, somehow easier, and at the same time more gratifying on a creative level than mine here in the States. But it turns out that their struggles, passions, fiscal concerns, their training, their identity issues, and the sexism they face—in other words, much of their life experience, seems very similar to my own.”