It’s not only Mantel: Anne Tyler and Colum McCann were also among the semifinalists who failed to advance. Of the six writers on the shortlist, four are women, four are nonwhite, and four, including one dual-national, are from the United States, a fact sure to incense those who still oppose the 2014 decision to open the Booker to any author writing in English and published in the UK. – The Guardian
Blog
The Monuments America Needs?
When we speak of monuments in America, we’re often talking about structures such as statues, obelisks, and memorials that celebrate a relatively narrow band of our history: the Civil War, the First and Second World Wars, the civil-rights era. Our monumental landscape preserves a sense that we are an exceptional, upstart nation. (American civilization may not boast standing stones that date back to the prehistoric era, but we do have Carhenge.) – The New Yorker
JK Rowling Under Attack For Character In Her New Book
Penned under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, Troubled Blood is Rowling’s fifth book to feature private investigator Cormoran Strike. An early review of the book by Telegraph writer Jake Kerridge described it as featuring a “transvestite serial killer,” which inspired readers’ anger and spawned the Twitter hashtag #RIPJKRowling — a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the author’s career. – CBC
US Senate Report On Money Laundering Contains Warning For Art Market
Focusing on purchases of art from major auction houses by Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, two Russian nationals described as ‘oligarchs’ by the report, the Subcommittee makes a series of pronouncements about the supposed prevalence of money laundering in the art market, and the need for regulation to address this perceived problem. – Apollo
Virtual Theatre As An Opportunity Space
“We’re working with authors, artists and companies we’ve always wanted to and reaching audiences around the world in numbers that would be completely unattainable with previous ways of working. This is our working practice now. It’s not an addition – it is the core.” – The Stage
Clarinetist Anthony McGill Wins $100,000 Avery Fisher Prize
Mr. McGill was the Philharmonic’s first Black principal musician when he joined in 2014; he is currently its only Black player. He appears at David Geffen Hall and elsewhere as a concerto soloist, and is in a trio with his brother, Demarre McGill — the principal flute of the Seattle Symphony — and the pianist Michael McHale. In 2009, he performed at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration. – The New York Times
The Wagner Problem
By making music ideological and semantic in new ways, Wagner made it much easier to talk and write about—which is one reason why he has always been so appealing to intellectuals. A book like Alex Ross’s Wagnerism, a survey of Wagner’s influence on art and ideas over the last 150 years, could not be written about any other composer. – The New Republic
Bill T. Jones Dances With Rice
Well, to be truthful, it’s his performers who are engaging the grain directly. Artist Lee Mingwei’s performance installation Our Labyrinth, a meditative ritual in which performers sweep a mound of rice across a floor, has arrived at the Met Museum. Met Live Arts director Limor Tomer got the idea to add movement by Jones, who says he isn’t changing Lee’s piece but rather “infecting” it. – The New York Times
Syracuse Refuse: Everson Museum Discards its Pollock to “Address Inequality” & Pursue the New
I’ve been planning to call out the lamentable decision of the Everson Museum in Syracuse to jettison its only Jackson Pollock painting “in order to refine, diversify, and build the museum’s collection for the future” (in the words of the museum’s self-justification). – Lee Rosenbaum
Alex Ross: Classical Music Grapples With Race
Since nationwide protests over police violence erupted, in May and June, American culture has been engaged in an examination, however nominal, of its relationship with racism. Such an examination is sorely needed in classical music, because of its extreme dependence on a problematic past. – The New Yorker