Is this for real? Well, as archaeologist Ken Dark puts it, “I can be confident that it’s the house that the Byzantines believed, and was probably believed in the 4th century, to be Jesus’s childhood home.” – Artnet
Blog
England’s Canceled Christmas Pantos Affect More Than The Theatres
Says the chief executive of the theatre in the town of Malvern in Worcestershire, “The panto is crucial for the theatre, as we are unsubsidised, but also for the local economy, to which the theatre is a huge contributor” — up to £21 million a year, researchers estimate. – The Guardian
France Won’t Expand Program To Give Youth €500 To Spend On Culture
“On Monday night, the French senate put a proposed increase in funding for Culture Pass, an app that gives 18-year-olds access to a €500 ($607) credit to spend on cultural experiences, on the chopping block — and the senate moved to put the money elsewhere.” – Artnet
Does Cancel Culture Even Exist? (A History)
“So much has been written about cancel culture in the past year that weariness sets in just reading the words. What it is, what to call it and whether it even exists are all in dispute. The term is shambolically applied to incidents both online and off that range from vigilante justice to hostile debate to stalking, intimidation and harassment.” – The New York Times
How The Shutdown Virtual World Has Leveled Creativity
“What has happened, then, during this time without physical training spaces for artists? In the long months that have passed since isolation began, we have had to overcome the creative blocks related to the lack of spaces—theatres, practice rooms, street stages—and have been engaging in discussions about the new challenges, such as the control of our bodies produced by the confinement and public health policies, the rethinking of the staging of our works, and the reformulation of creative projects with the technological resources that we have.” – HowlRound
Examining The Politics Of Cultural Appropriation
“Permission to use another group’s cultural expressions isn’t something that it’s possible to receive, because ethnicities, gender identities, and other such groups don’t have representatives authorized to grant it. When novelists, for example, write outside their own experience, publishing houses now routinely enlist “sensitivity readers” to make sure they say nothing that will offend—but once the books are published, novelists are on their own. There’s nothing they can do to rebut the accusation that the products of their imagination were “unauthorized,” nothing they can do to ward off the charge that they’ve caused harm by straying outside their lanes.” – Dissent
NY Philharmonic Musicians Agree To Pay Cuts
Under the new contract, the musicians will see 25 percent cuts to their base pay through August 2023. Pay will then gradually increase until the contract ends in September 2024, though at that point the players will still be paid less than they were before the coronavirus pandemic struck. The cuts will amount to more than $20 million in musicians’ wages over the course of the contract. – The New York Times
Met Opera To Lock Out Workers
After talks with the powerful union that represents the Met’s roughly 300 stagehands, Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, failed to yield an agreement this weekend, the Met announced that it planned to lock out the union’s workers. – The New York Times
The Cost Of Singlemindedly Pursuing The New
The pursuit of novelty for its own sake doesn’t just fuel income inequality or threaten the environment (though it does contribute to those): it takes resources and attention from what really matters, which is maintenance and repair. These more modest activities are undervalued in just about every way. – Los Angeles Review of Books
The Pandemic and the Arts: A “Climate of Fear” and “Radical Upheaval”
The pandemic is a diagnostic – and discloses a self-critical, self-confrontational United States that feels newly inchoate. Compared to nations abroad, we are not even secure in asserting that culture matters. – Joseph Horowitz