“At $30, it costs more to enter the Barnes than any other art museum in the country, according to a list compiled by Art News since the decision by the Metropolitan Museum in New York to end pay-what-you-wish ticket prices for out-of-state visitors. The Met now charges $25. But wait. That $30 Barnes ticket is not the “official” admission price — even though you can’t get in without paying it.”
Blog
We’re Reading Less, Or Are We? (Why Do We Think This?)
“I am not aware of a time after the rise of mass literacy when reading did not compete with other forms of leisure: dance halls, theater, and religious revivals, plus cinema, art galleries, and, more recently, video games. It may feel as though we read less now than we did before the advent of smartphones and social media, but statistics do not bear that out. In January of last year, Gallup found that Americans were consuming books at roughly the same rates as in 2002.”
America’s Dance Companies Are Busting Out Of Their Theaters
Site-specific work isn’t new, particularly among contemporary dance circles. The scale, however, of these recent efforts from companies who customarily present work in big, proscenium settings is notable. Choreographers are looking to every corner of their home venues, getting off the stage and changing the rules about how theatrical spaces are used.
Five Trends That Are Changing The Gallery World
If most longtime gallerists continue clinging to familiar patrons and familiar methods, then the art business, as physicist Max Planck once said of science, will only “advance one funeral at a time.” But either way the next generation appears ready to step up and reach out.
The Russian Politician Using His Country’s Politics As Satire
Plenty of politicos write novels; but not many write eviscerating self-satires. It was as though Karl Rove had taken the knife to his and George W. Bush’s America in, say, 2005. Surkov, however, wasn’t, and isn’t, simply a Rove. The documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis calls him “a hero of our time” (in praise and opprobrium) for turning Russia’s political reality into “a bewildering, constantly changing piece of theater.”
Is There Really Such A Thing As ‘The Self’? Yes, And Science Really Can Study It
The idea that there is no “self” that can be fully apprehended, let alone studied, goes all the way back to David Hume – and up to Daniel Dennett today. In philosophy, it’s called antirealism – and Şerife Tekin is here to demolish it.
Shakeup: Scottish Government Defunds 20 Arts Orgs (Including Edinburgh Fringe) And Funds 19 More
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the city’s King’s and Festival theatres and the body that promotes its Unesco “City of Literature” status have had their funding stripped by Creative Scotland. Creative Scotland has dropped 20 organisations from its three-year funding programme, but added 19 following a shake-up of how its £99 million budget is spent.
Hal Prince Is Turning 90, And He’s Serving Up Broadway Dish For His Birthday
Michael Paulson picks out some choice tidbits from a series of conversations Prince recorded with producer Jeffrey Seller (Hamilton, Rent). For instance, the M.C. in Cabaret was Prince’s idea.
How Live Music Shaped Silent Movies
The soundtrack for any given showing depended, in large part, on the setting. At deluxe movie palaces, films were often accompanied by entire symphony orchestras. “A medium-sized neighborhood theater might carry between five and ten musicians,” writes Scott Eyman in The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution, 1926–1930. “Even the meanest fleapit in the sticks had a piano player.”
A Science Fiction Genre That’s Not Dystopian (Or Even Depressing!)
“Imagine a scene, set in the future, where a child in Burning Man-style punk clothing is standing in front of a yurt powered by solar panels. … Welcome to solarpunk, a new genre within science fiction that is a reaction against the perceived pessimism of present-day sci-fi and hopes to bring optimistic stories about the future with the aim of encouraging people to change the present.”