“The decision [by the Hungarian State Opera] to use white singers is contrary to the clear wishes of George and Ira Gershwin, whose estates stipulate that the opera be performed only by black casts,” and all publicity for the production now reflects that. At least they’re not using blackface (as the company did during the Communist period): the production concept sets the opera in a refugee camp, with the characters as migrants.
Blog
Scotland’s Arts Funder Calls ‘Emergency Meeting’ After Cuts Get Serious Pushback
“Under-fire arts quango Creative Scotland has been forced to hold crisis talks to “review” controversial funding cuts. An emergency board meeting is to be held within days to ‘take stock’ of the fall-out from moves to strip 20 companies of long-term funding. The Scottish Government has revealed that the summit has been called to ‘review certain decisions,’ raising the prospect of an embarrassing climbdown for the quango.”
Bénédicte Pesle, Who Brought American Avant-Garde Performance To France, Dead At 90
“[She] did her work behind the scenes, eschewing labels like ‘producer’ and ‘presenter’ while performing a wide array of functions – go-between, convincer, fund-raiser and more – that might in fact have fallen under those job descriptions. When pressed, she would use a humble term to characterize her role: ‘secrétaire d’artistes‘ – secretary of artists.” Among those artists were Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Meredith Monk, Richard Foreman, Philip Glass and Robert Wilson (she engineered the commissioning of Einstein on the Beach).
Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.30.18
Share What You Have
This is part of a series, introduced in Baby Steps, about arts organizations’ initial efforts in community engagement. … The essence is that simple, inexpensive initial steps offer the best way to embark upon community engagement. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2018-01-30
Correspondence, Illustrated: Shoemake On Nash
Vibraphonist Charlie Shoemake has instructed hundreds of aspiring jazz musicians in the techniques and mysteries of improvisation. Among his early students was Ted Nash, who as a young man … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-01-30
Joe Henry, Poetry, and The Blues
Like a lot of listeners, I’ve long considered Joe Henry to be a smart and vaguely literary songwriter – smart, more-or-less sensitive, good with words. But I was pleasantly surprised when Joe … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2018-01-30
Did Telling Stories Help Us To Evolve As Humans?
Anthropologists have long theorized that humans developed “moralistic high-gods” as a way of promoting shared norms and prosocial behaviors. What is religion, after all, but a patchwork quilt of stories reminding humans how to behave—and, more importantly, how not to behave? But religion is thought to have emerged only with the advent of agriculture and large-scale, politically complex human settlements.
Increasingly, Artistic Directors Have To Fund Raise. Is This A Problem?
“Artistic directors are our stars. What has changed is that they also need to be civic leaders. This is a new profile for the next generation. We have moved away from the period where it was enough to do great work which would ensure funding. The artistic director is the personality who personifies the mission and makes it feel vibrant to the community.”
New Research Suggests Medical Students Do Better With Art
“The humanities have been pushed to the side in medical school curricula,” said Mark Kahn of the Tulane University School of Medicine, the paper’s senior author. “Our data suggests that exposure to the arts is linked to important personal qualifies for future physicians.”
Turkish Military Destroys Significant Ancient Syrian Temple
The Turkish air strike hit near the main doorway to the temple, causing severe damage to the central and southeastern parts of the building. The site appears to have no military significance and the fact that the bombs destroyed the temple entrance suggests that the archaeological site was directly targeted. If so, this would be a breach of the Hague Convention on the protection of cultural property during armed conflict.
Trump Supporters Flood Social Media With Bad Reviews Of Guggenheim Museum
An army of amateur art critics soon flooded social media, from Facebook to Yelp, with their grievances. One particularly pissed off Yelper gave the museum a one-star review, the same paltry rating he bestowed upon a Connecticut Cheesecake Factory and the Art Lounge at Newark airport, commenting, “This POS institution thinks its funny to offer our president a toilet. GFY Guggenheim.”
Culture Is Being Priced Out Of Our Cities. What To Do?
As cities lose their creative communities and the spaces they operate from, they become at risk of becoming what Mark Auge referred to as “non-places”—homogenized cities in which aesthetic diversity and local authenticity is diminished. This impacts cities’ vibrancy and distinctiveness, economic dynamism and capacity for innovation. These cities face a dilemma: How can they continue to attract new residents and investment while preserving the cultural and creative milieu that made them desirable in the first place?