“Change happens when strong voices are allowed to mature in public, when people take stands without preset or puritanical agendas, aren’t afraid of giving up hierarchies, being wrong, and are honest and earnest. Having a “hot faith in art” has always gotten us through times like these. I haven’t felt this way about this magazine in a long long time. As of today Artforum is no longer a lost cause or a dream anymore. It may be the real thing.”
Blog
How Facebook Plans To Start Competing With YouTube (But Not Netflix)
Facebook VP of product Fidji Simo: “When we look at the content that’s really building these engaged communities, it’s content from creators that are vlogging for 15 minutes. … We see incredibly engaged communities around knitting. That’s something that won’t build a massive community like a big TV show, but if you do that for everyone’s passion projects and you can connect everyone to the creator, it can be extremely powerful.”
How Did Mongolia Start Producing Crops Of Gifted Young Opera Singers?
Westerners don’t think of this huge, remote, sparsely populated country as an operatic hotbed, but singers from there have started taking big prizes at competitions like Moscow’s Tchaikovsky and Cardiff’s Singer of the World. Kate Molleson went there, and traveled 1,000 miles from the capital, Ulaanbaatar, to a lake in the Gobi Desert, to find out why.
The Man Who Literally Built Dubai’s Art Market
A profile of real estate developer Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal, a member of one of Dubai’s leading business families, who turned a desolate warehouse district into the art gallery capital of the Emirates.
Young People Value Theatre As Much As Older Ones, Though They Do So Differently, Researchers Find
Theatre management professor Anthony Rhine looks as the results of three recent studies on engagement.
The *Real* Word Of The Year 2017 (And 2018), Like So Many Words, No Longer Means What It’s Meant To
A rather grouchy Louis Menand, after dissing the various dictionaries’ choices and suggesting that, perhaps, the word of the year ought to be a hashtag (#), argues that his choice of the emblematic word of these times is apt precisely because so many words are being deliberately distorted: “‘Fake’ once meant ‘counterfeit’ or ‘inauthentic,’ like a fake Picasso or a fake birth certificate. It is now used to mean ‘I deny your reality.'”
Record Producer Rick Hall, Father Of ‘Muscle Shoals Sound’, Dead At 85
By the mid-1960s, Fame Studios, the recording company Hall set up in a tiny Alabama town, had become a hotbed for pop musicians of various stripes, including the Rolling Stones, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Clarence Carter, Solomon Burke and Percy Sledge. Because of the reputation for greatness Hall had established, others continued to come calling through the decades, among them Duane Allman, Etta James, Rod Stewart and the Osmonds and more recently pop-R&B singer-songwriter Alicia Keys, alt-country group Drive-By Truckers and avant-bluegrass band the SteelDrivers.”
Gilmore Artist Award, ‘Piano World’s MacArthur Grant,’ Goes To Igor Levitt
“Granted to a pianist every four years, [the $300,000 prize] is not a competition, so contestants do not even know they are in the running. Instead, a small, anonymous jury travels incognito to concerts around the world, searching for an artist with the potential to make a mark on music.” Among previous winners are Leif Ove Andsnes, Piotr Anderszewski, and Ingrid Fliter.
Five Lawsuits That Could Change The Art World In 2018
The cases cover everything from copyright (Graham v. [Richard] Prince et al.) to restitution of looted work (Von Saher v. Norton Simon Museum) to accessions and bequests (the Berkshire Museum suits) to freedom of speech (Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission – yes, the “gay wedding cake” case could affect the art world).
New York City Ballet Board Knew About Peter Martins’s Conduct For Years, Say Insiders
“Until accusations of sexual harassment and brutish behavior led to his retirement Monday, … Peter Martins reigned with impunity for nearly 30 years despite reports of inappropriate behavior and complaints about his leadership, according to several current and former company executives and dancers.”