“Now she has been clean for a year. [the photographer] … decided that she was strong enough for a new battle. That began recently when, in her most personal project yet, she publicly confronted OxyContin’s manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, and that company’s longtime owners, who are also prominent art patrons: the descendants of Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, two of three physician brothers who built Purdue Pharma into a pharmaceutical behemoth.”
Blog
Robert Spano To Depart From Atlanta Symphony After 20 Years As Music Director
Spano, only the fourth music director of the ASO in its 73-year history, will step down at the end of the 2020-21 season.
What Did Garrison Keillor Really Do? Minnesota Public Radio Does Deep-Dive Report On Misconduct Allegations
“An investigation by MPR News” – which included interviews with more than 60 people who had dealt professionally with Keillor – “has learned of a years-long pattern of behavior that left several women who worked for Keillor feeling mistreated, sexualized or belittled.”
Long Wharf Theatre Fires Artistic Director One Day After Report Of Sexual Misconduct Accusations
The New Haven theatre’s board of trustees voted to fire Gordon Edelstein, effective immediately, after The New York Times reported detailed allegations of sexual harassment, and even assault, of staffers by the director.
San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre Has Found Its Next Artistic Director
Pam MacKinnon, who has been nominated for three Tony Awards and won one (for the 2013 revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), will take over from departing artistic director Carey Perloff on July 1.
Thailand Drops Lèse-Majesté Charge Against Historian For Lecture About 16th-Century King
“Prosecutors decided not to pursue their case against [84-year-old] Sulak Sivaraksa, who was charged in October under Thailand’s controversial lèse-majesté law against defaming, insulting or threatening the royal family. The charges were connected to a 2014 university lecture, during which Sulak … questioned whether [16th-century] King Naresuan had in fact slain a Burmese crown prince while riding an elephant.”
One Of The Last Dead Sea Scrolls Now Deciphered
The manuscript, written in a coded form of Hebrew, had deteriorated into sixty pieces that had to be digitally pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle. The document includes the sophisticated calendar followed by the sect that wrote the scroll as well as information about that sect’s disputes with the Temple authorities in Jerusalem.
A Musical About Milosevic? The Serbian Dictator? Oh, Yes …
“A Belgrade-based writer, Jelena Bogavac, has now written a play to be performed by Kosovo Serbs in the Kosovo town of Gracanica that attempts to portray the full complexity of a man still blamed by many across the Balkans for the deaths and suffering of tens of thousands of people.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.23.18
Be What You Are
This is part of a series, introduced in Baby Steps, about arts organizations’ initial efforts in community engagement. The premises are twofold. First, since relationship building is the core of community engagement, attempting to do … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2018-01-23
Hugh Masakela Has Died
Hugh Masakela, a hero of African popular music and an inspirational fighter against discrimination, died today in Johannesburg, South Africa. He was 78. Masakela’s rapid ascent to fame in the 1950s led … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-01-23
Author Ursula Le Guin, 88
Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Several, including “The Left Hand of Darkness” — set on a planet where the customary gender distinctions do not apply — have been in print for almost 50 years. The critic Harold Bloom lauded Ms. Le Guin as “a superbly imaginative creator and major stylist” who “has raised fantasy into high literature for our time.”