“Scientists, historians and experts in artificial intelligence across the UK and Europe have announced they are teaming up for a €2.8m project labelled ‘Odeuropa’ to identify and even recreate the aromas that would have assailed noses between the 16th and early 20th centuries.” – The Guardian
Blog
Report: Thousands Of American Museums Could Close For Good
The average museum has lost $850,000 to date, though the figure is much higher for large institutions. The Museum of Fine Art, Boston expected a $14 million loss through July alone, and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has projected a $150 million shortfall. – Artnet
700 Pages, 120 Characters, One Actor Reading The Audiobook
“Around 90% of [William Gaddis’s] JR is in unattributed dialogue, with only dashes and ellipses to indicate when a character starts and stops speaking or, more accurately, is interrupted. [The novel] is a teeming operatic racket, an anarchic satire of US capitalism where the flailing voices of more than 120 characters – plus snatches of adverts, news bulletins and TV broadcasts – bellow over one other.” Actor Nick Sullivan’s 37-hour reading of JR has attracted a fanbase in the nine years since it was released, and he calls it “the most rewarding narration job I have ever had.” – The Guardian
Michael Riedel’s Broadway History
Reading Michael Riedel has long been mandatory for theater insiders. They may complain about his journalistic practices, his tendency to sensationalize and distort, his refusal to let a fair review of the facts get in the way of a good scoop, his speculative and often erroneous conclusions. But his copy is sinfully entertaining, full of dish and drama and delivered with the wicked wit Broadway pros can’t help but admire. – Los Angeles Times
The ‘School of Embodiment’: This Is How To Do Good Sex Writing
“[Garth Greenwell] is, a practitioner, with [Lidia] Yuknavitch and a few others, of what we might call the School of Embodiment: a kind of close tracking of sensation and response that we typically assign to poets or sensory neurologists. This doesn’t mean that work by these writers is stylistically similar, only that it seeks meaning in and through the body.” – The Point
Sydney Production Of ‘Hedwig And The Angry Inch’ Called Off After Trans People Protest Casting Of Queer Cis Male
The musical, which was to be one of the centerpieces of the Sydney Festival in January, was postponed and withdrawn from the festival by the producer after a trans non-binary actor launched a social media campaign saying the casting of Hugh Sheridan in the title role “is offensive and damaging to the trans community.” (John Cameron Mitchell, who created and co-wrote the show and originated the part, has said that Hedwig is not a trans character and can be played by anyone.) – The Guardian
James Conlon To Fill In At Baltimore Symphony After Marin Alsop’s Departure
Conlon — music director of Los Angeles Opera since 2006 and previously music director or principal conductor of the Paris Opera, the Cincinnati May Festival, the Ravinia Festival, the RAI National Symphony Orchestra in Turin, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, and the city of Cologne in Germany — will become the Baltimore Symphony’s Artistic Adviser in September of 2021, when Alsop ends her 14-year tenure as music director. Conlon will not be a candidate for the permanent music director post. – Baltimore Business Journal
For The First Time, An NBA Team Engages A Blue-Chip Artist As Creative Director
“In an unprecedented move, multi-hyphenate artist Daniel Arsham will become the creative director of the Cleveland Cavaliers. … His mandate will ultimately include everything from the imagery on the team’s jerseys and home court, to key aspects of its social-media presence, to collaborative initiatives with Cleveland-based artists and other [local] organizations.” – Artnet
Theater At Jacob’s Pillow Burns Down
“‘It looked like what a bomb must look like when it goes off,’ said Pamela Tatge, the executive and artistic director of [the summer dance mecca], who saw the damage [to the Doris Duke Theater] firsthand. ‘It was just a pile of steel and wood. There’s amazingly one wall and one staircase that remained.'” – The New York Times
Three Suspects Arrested In $1.2 Billion Dresden Jewel Theft
A team of roughly 1,600 police officers raided 18 buildings in Berlin and arrested three suspects from a notorious crime family, the Remmo clan, in connection with the robbery of historic jewels from the Green Vault museum in Dresden last November. – Yahoo! (AFP)
