The arts advocacy group says these are the trends that will inform its work over the next few years. – Americans for the Arts
Blog
Forgers And The True Believers That Want To Believe Them
Perhaps the forger’s best tool is the desire of buyers to want something to be real. No matter how improbable. – The Daily Beast
How Musicians Are Starting To Grapple With The Climate Impact Of Touring
“It seems to me that the only solution commensurate with the scale of the problem is fundamentally changing the way musicians work. We have to stop seeing it as reasonable that we’d play in Barcelona one day, London the next, and New York two days later. And stop seeing it as reasonable that, at a big festival in Barcelona, fifty thousand out of the hundred thousand people there have flown from the U.K. to attend.” – The New Yorker
John Eliot Gardiner On Period-Instrument Beethoven
“What you get in a period orchestra are three things: greater individuality of timbre, more transparency of texture and an increased dynamism once all the instruments are stretched to their absolute maximum capacity of volume and expressivity. If you attempt that with a modern symphony orchestra, there will always be a certain comfort factor, a plushness, which, I feel, doesn’t help the listener to savor all that is most original in the score. It can sound a tad too comfortable.” – The New York Times
The Radical Plan To Remake Paris Into A “15-Minute City”
The idea, floated by the city’s mayor, is to redesign urban life so that all the essentials – for work, play, shopping, culture – are within 15 minutes of every resident of the city. It would change how resources are allocated and would rework how people get around. – CityLab
Following Netflix Series, Case Of Malcolm X’s Murder May Be Reopened
“Following the release of the six-part documentary Who Killed Malcolm X? – which launched on the streaming platform on 7 February – the Manhattan district attorney will look into the case of the civil rights activist, with the possibility that the case may be reopened.” – The Guardian
Rarity: Vienna Kunsthalle Museum Replaces Director With A Three-Person Collective
Founded in 1992, the Kunsthalle Wien is a large exhibition space with no permanent collection. How does a triumvirate lead such a venue in practice? Surely much more time is spent on meetings and co-ordination? To whom do the 35 staff report? WHW say: “We don’t have specific tasks, so no one is in charge of something. Decision-making is at the level of the collective. We have a single email address for staff [to contact us].” – The Art Newspaper
New Director Is Making Britain’s Oldest Dance Company Hot Again
The mission of Benoit Swan Pouffer, formerly artistic director of the now-closed Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet and now at the helm of Rambert, “is to reinvigorate a repertory company founded in 1926, and he is well on track.” – Dance Magazine
Boy Scouts Of America Files For Bankruptcy
The organization has about half the members it did in the 1970s. But it has failed to address claims of sexual abuse for decades, and the claims have mounted up. The bankruptcy is an attempt to deal with some of the settlements. – The New York Times
More Than Numbers: How Astronomers Named The Planets And Stars
As the Shakespeare scholar Todd Borlik has pointed out, the triumph of Romanticism throughout Europe by the mid-1800s meant that Shakespeare (though not so much Pope) was seen as a universal rather than particularly English genius. Because of the Bard’s immense cultural appeal during this period, Herschel’s suggested names transcended cultural or nationalistic boundaries and allowed him the opportunity, whether he intended it or not, to enshrine English literature around the planet first named for an English king. – Aeon