Reporter Peter Dobrin follows Hannibal Lokumbe as he takes four of the orchestra’s musicians to the Philadelphia Detention Center to perform a new piece about Anne Frank.
Category: AUDIENCE
GP McLeer: Ten Things That Should Change In The Arts RIGHT NOW
After being in this field for a hot second, there are just some things that I think are impeding our ability, as an industry, to become more self-sustaining, attract new and younger audiences, and make the arts experience much better for the audience and/or consumer. These are ideas, traditions, thoughts – or “institutional traditions” – that have somehow become the “norm” in our industry and create an environment where we value the tradition over the audience experience – our “user interface”.
Binge-Watchers, Don’t Feel Guilty – Academic Researchers Have Your Back
“For one thing, … our attitudes toward television have yet to catch up to the age of peak TV. In fact, … as shows have become increasingly complex in recent years, watching TV has become a more cognitively stimulating activity.”
Audience Brawl Breaks Out At Michael Flatley’s ‘Lord Of The Dance’
Police were called to break up an eight-person fistfight in the stalls at the Manchester theatre where the production is playing before beginning a tour of regional England.
Which Is More Harmful To The Arts: Elitism Or Populism?
Liesl Schillinger: “Those of a populist mind-set attack so-called elitist art forms as boring; those of an elitist mind-set attack so-called populist art forms as facile and unworthy. But in either case, it’s usually the mind-set, not the work itself, that raises hackles.”
Adam Kirsch: “The truth is, however, that few writers ever make a conscious choice between elitism and populism, difficulty and accessibility. Writers write as their minds and fates compel them to.”
Art Critic Finds Out What It’s Like To See Yayoi Kusama Show With Regular (Huge) Crowds – And It Worries Him
Philip Kennicott: “This exhibition highlights problems far deeper than those raised by the all-too-successful blockbuster shows of the past. This isn’t about managing success and finding the right balance between access for crowds and the integrity of the individual aesthetic experience. Rather, this is about the nature of experience itself, and whether museums want to reinforce an understanding of existence that is fractured, competitive, capitalistic and ultimately alienated from art.”
Since Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Rooms Are So Wildly Popular, Why Not Just Make More Copies Of Them?
“Because one essential feature of the contemporary art world is artificial scarcity,” Philip Kennicott writes. “Theoretically, the Hirshhorn could line its ringed galleries with four or five versions of each room. More people could see them, and more people could experience the effect for longer periods. Except that Kusama has defined her rooms as ‘unique art works,’ and that ultimately diminishes their reach and impact.”
When A New Opera Turns (Terrifyingly) Topical
Yes, it’s about Machiavelli. “Drawing from disparate political histories involving the Medicis, Hitler, Alexander Hamilton, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Osama bin Laden, the Machiavelli of the future, with Henry Kissinger as his sidekick, delivers a warning about abuses of power and lapses of political judgment. There is one ‘new prince’ that everyone in the audience was probably thinking of during the production, but he is conspicuously absent from this political soup.”
The Rate Of Customers Ditching Cable Is Speeding Up
“U.S. pay-TV providers lost around 1.9 million subscribers last year, according to the latest research from Kagan, a unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence. Meanwhile, “virtual” pay-TV services delivered over the internet like Dish’s Sling TV and AT&T’s DirecTV Now didn’t help stop the overall sector from shrinking in 2016.”
Music Sales Hit Five-year High In The UK
“Combined takings from streaming, downloads, physical sales and licensing for use in films, TV and computer games rose 5.1% to £926m. The main contributor to growth was streaming, but vinyl revenues rose by more than two thirds.”