Happy 90th birthday, Jasper Johns! Many thanks for sharing your present with who knows how many thousands of people. It’s entirely appropriate that the “gift,” titled Event2 for Jasper Johns, began and ended with James Klosty’s 1969 photograph One Way to Dry a Leotard (Johns’s Flag painting with a leotard hooked over one of its corners). – Deborah Jowitt
Blog
Movie Theatres Are Retreating After Reopening
Many circuits, including AMC Theatres, Regal Cinemas and Cinemark — the country’s three largest chains — are beginning to limit the number of showtimes, as are scores of other chains and independent houses in order to reduce costs, sources say. Some, including Cinemark and Marcus Theatres, are going further and closing a small number of their cinemas on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. – The Hollywood Reporter
Who Owns Public Radio’s Podcasts, The Stations Or The Creators? And Who Should?
“After controversies this year involving the intellectual property of podcasts owned by Spotify and BuzzFeed, some public media podcasters who have co-created podcasts or worked as driving voices behind them are asking whether they should have ownership stakes in their work.” – Current
Disney Plans To Lay Off 28,000 Workers
Parks worldwide shuttered in March. Many are open now but at reduced capacity, including Disney World in Orlando, which resumed most operations in July. Disneyland in Anaheim, California remains closed. – Deadline
What’s The Purpose Of Book Reviews? A Book Critic Speaks
Charles Finch: “For me, books evoke a feeling first, and then you have to try to feel lucidly in words. … That’s the art of criticism to me: trying to explain emotions, which, in a way, all art forms are trying to do through different means. … The best reviews often have an essayistic quality. They’re trying to say, what is this telling us about our moment of life?” – Slate
A New Arts Vibrancy Index Report (Even Though The Arts Are Largely Shut Down)
At a moment of such considerable environmental hostility and uncertainty about the future, we offer this report as a celebration and reminder of the arts’ enduring importance, resiliency, and vibrancy. – SMU Cultural Data
The Art Of Musical Thinking: Using Melody As Metaphor For Moving Through Life
“The art of musical thinking offers a perspective and a context for composing our experiences. It provides a philosophical foundation that embraces dissonance alongside harmony, and casts sound and silence as equal protagonists in a democracy. … In the same way that we don’t have to practise botany to appreciate the lessons of balance and replication in the beauty of nature, we don’t have to be professional musicians or professors of theory to engage in the art of musical thinking.” – Psyche
National Museum of African American History and Culture Names A Poet As Its Next Director
Kevin Young, 49, the poetry editor of the New Yorker and the author of 11 books of poetry, said he is eager to continue Lonnie Bunch’s efforts to record, represent and interpret the stories of African Americans. – Washington Post
Theater Workers On What It’s Like To Be Back In The Theater (In Places Where They Can Do That)
“Cautiously, with six-inch cotton swabs and four-gallon drums of hand sanitizer, theater is creeping back — on the side of a cliff in Cornwall, England; on stoops in Montreal; even, in a few cases, in New York. … We asked artists and audiences — even an usher and a critic — to reflect on what it was like to return to shows across the world.” – The New York Times
Jeremy O. Harris, Katori Hall, And Matthew López On How Broadway Must Change And How Theater Can Change The World
Harris: “I’ve always felt this responsibility that if I was going to be in the theater, I had to do theater the way the Greeks did it. The theater of the Greeks was as much about civic responsibility as it was about anything else. It’s about people witnessing the world, responding to that world, and then maybe doing something to change it. That’s why the only people who could see it were people who could vote.” (video or audio) – Variety