“Today, in public attitudes toward everything from science to politics, expertise is under enormous stress. … That pressure makes the MacArthur awards extra important,” writes Christopher Knight, because “the danger is that manipulative demagoguery flourishes in an environment polluted by the anxiety driving the assault on expertise … [so] I’ll take a ringing endorsement of expertise anywhere I can find it.”
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MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ Winners For 2017 Include Annie Baker, Taylor Mac, Yuval Sharon, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Dawoud Bey
Alongside playwright Baker (The Flick, Circle Mirror Transformation), theater artist Mac (A 24-Decade History of Popular Music), opera director Sharon (of the L.A. experimental company The Industry), critic and novelist Nguyen (The Sympathizer), and photographer Bey, winners in the arts include painter Njideka Akunyili Crosby, author Jesmyn Ward (Salvage the Bones), composer Tyshawn Sorey, singer-songwriter Rhiannon Giddens, landscape architect Kate Orff, and geographer-artist Trevor Paglen. (For a complete list of 2017 MacArthur Fellows, click here.)
Reports Of Baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky’s Death Are False
“Early on Wednesday, a number of Russian media outlets” – led by Komsomolskaya Pravda, the modern-day descendant of the Soviet youth paper – “disseminated reports of the singer’s alleged death, without sourcing this information to anyone.” Hvorostovsky was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2015.
Another EU Orchestra Leaves UK Because Of Brexit
“The orchestra was established in London in 1976 but the British vote to leave meant it had to come up with a plan for a future outside the UK. … The orchestra said on Wednesday it had accepted an offer from the Italian culture ministry to be based in Ferrara and Rome.” As EUYO chief executive Marshall Marcus says, “You can’t ask for EU funding and then not be in the EU.”
Art Museum Sold To Investors In Beijing (Wait, What?)
The parent company of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in the Chinese capital was purchased last week by a group of investors. “The museum’s founders, Guy and Myriam Ullens, announced that the UCCA was up for sale in June 2016, fuelling concerns about the future of what has become one of mainland China’s leading private art institutions since it opened in November 2007.”
CEO Of Scotland’s Only Full-Time Acting Company Suddenly Resigns
“Nick Parr has resigned after just two years as chief executive of Dundee Rep, which boasts the country’s only full-time company of actors. He has left with immediate effect less than two months after the Rep’s new artistic director, Andrew Panton, took charge of his first show.” While the company saw revenue rise under Parr, last week a newspaper column argued that morale at the company was sinking due to a perceived change in culture there.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.10.17
Excellence and Engagement: I
Advocates for community engagement in the arts often get pushback from people who assume that concern for the interests of our communities necessitates a “lowering of standards.” What follows is my attempt to address the misgivings (legitimate and otherwise) people have … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2017-10-10
New Yorker’s Bad Role Model for Berkshire Museum: NY Historical Society’s “Responsible” Sales
In his well-intentioned but flawed Oct. 4 New Yorker article, “The Lost Masterpieces of Norman Rockwell Country,” Felix Salmon demonstrates more understanding of museum ethics than the leaders of the embattled Berkshire Museum possess. But that’s not quite enough. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-10-10
Lies & Damnable Uncertainty
Two new London theatre productions, The Lie and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, seem to have little in common, save that they are both topics discussed by philosophers. … read more
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2017-10-10
Artist Graffiti’s Jeff Koons Work – In Augmented Reality
It’s a protest. And graffiti artist Sebastian Errazuriz didn’t physically deface one of Koons’ famous balloon dogs. But the augmented reality graffiti is Errazuriz’s way of staking a claim to public space. He doesn’t think the privilege of geo-tagging should necessarily fall to technology giants. After Snapchat announced a partnership with the sculptor Jeff Koons that uses augmented reality to place his artworks into famous landmarks around the world, Mr. Errazuriz “graffiti-bombed” the project.
A “Phantom Of The Opera Sequel – But It’s On A Tour That Critics Aren’t Supposed To Review?
“This is a new wrinkle in the very old book of showdowns between producers and critics. It’s one thing to have a preview period for performers and stagehands to settle in; previews even used to be significantly discounted, a good-faith concession from producers to fans as shows found their footing. But using an entire tour stop as a critic-free preview zone? That’s not how out-of-town tryouts or tours run. Eventually reviewers report.”
Consciousness – What’s Real And What’s Not (And That’s Difficult To Determine)
“We live in a time when scientists seem to like nothing better than to expose our everyday view of reality as delusional. They say, “You see the color red, but in fact, out there are only atoms; there are no colors. You hear music, but out there, there are no sounds,” etc. This gives them the authority to describe an entirely different reality, in which deciding between chocolate or strawberry ice cream, say, is nothing more than a matter of warring cohorts of neurons transferring their electrical charges and chemical processes this way and that, while outside your brain there is only a flavorless world of atomic particles. It’s a vision that denies not only our existence—as people choosing between ice-cream flavors—but also the existence of the things we experience.”