In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Americans generated much of their own art by themselves and at home, through playing parlor piano, reciting Shakespeare around the dinner table, and other exercises in Emersonian self-reliance. All that changed with the introduction of radio, sound recordings, movie theaters, and other forms of industrially produced mass entertainment. The audience’s role increasingly was reduced to coming to a large venue, sitting in a darkened room, then applauding on cue.
Category: issues
There’s A Revolution Happening In The Arts Right Now (And It’s Changing Everything)
“This new radical democratization threatens critics, just as it does well-paid artistic directors, executive directors, curators and all kinds of other gatekeeper types in the cultural universe, which explains why some say we/they react defensively to any grass-roots rebellion.”
Is The Structure Of Today’s Arts Institutions The Problem With Today’s Arts?
“What is the real vision that we’re looking for in the performing arts? Maybe it needs to go beyond simply what goes on the stage. Maybe someone needs to bring vision to the fallacy, almost universally accepted, that the only way to sustain the arts we love is to shore up a system of oversized institutions that no longer seem to work well in today’s culture. Might there be a better way to reconceive orchestras and opera houses, and to allocate the considerable resources that go into the performing arts every year, while fostering creativity — rather than convincing everyone that art needs to be packaged in layers of institutional bubble wrap so it doesn’t get broken?”
Richard Florida’s “New” Urban Crisis
Florida’s new “crisis” is one of growing income inequality everywhere, segregation (by neighborhood, income, and race), and a disappearing middle class. It’s a crisis of suburbs, where poverty, income insecurity, and crime grow. It’s a crisis of the developing world, where urban hypergrowth and rapid industrialization fail to move people up the income scale.
A Fundamental Shift In How Philanthropy Works?
“Over the past decade, as groups have become more sophisticated at assessing the impact of their work, and as digital payment systems have advanced throughout the developing world, a number of carefully designed field experiments have affirmed the effectiveness of unconditional cash transfers to the poor. Such charitable transfers challenge assumptions, dating back centuries, that impoverished recipients will squander money given directly to them. It turns out that the poor often know much better than outside experts how to improve their own condition.”
One London Library Not Suffering From Cuts During The Long Retrenchment Of British Public Life
In a neighborhood where the town council announced there would be no austerity measures at its libraries, “Books are only a small part of the library’s mandate. When the council elected to spare its libraries from cuts, it announced that they would be redeveloped as ‘community hubs.’ Among the groups using the library’s facilities for regular open meetings are stroke survivors, cancer survivors, seniors, dads, knitters, aspiring songwriters, Pilates enthusiasts, and philosophy buffs.”
How We Can, Or Rather Could, Save Free Speech From ‘Free Speech’ Trolls
This certain-type-of-person freakout is costing anyone who’s not an aggrieved white man quite a lot. “Casting the dissent of marginalized groups as a First Amendment violation is the kind of pseudo-intellectual argument that seems reasonable to people who don’t have enough skin in the game to bother paying attention. ‘Discourse’ is good! Sunlight is the best disinfectant! The more airtime we give to irrational bigots on high-profile platforms — the more assiduously we hear both sides, stay ‘fair and balanced’ — the sooner they’ll be rejected by the public at large!”
Literary Icon Ngugi Wa Thiong’o Joins Boycott Of Swedish Book Festival Over Extreme Right-Wing Newspaper
“The event, to be held from 28 September to 1 October, is Scandinavia’s largest book fair and draws around 100,000 visitors each year. On 21 April, more than 200 Swedish authors signed an article in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper saying they would boycott the book fair if Nya Tider is represented.” Now the Kenyan icon, tipped every year for the Nobel, has joined the boycott, withdrawing his attendance.
Colonial Williamsburg Is Beset By Money Woes And Plans To Outsource Its Commercial Operations
So the world’s largest living history museum is not doing well: “The foundation’s operating losses last year totaled $54 million, or $148,000 per day. It also borrowed heavily to improve its hospitality facilities and visitors center and ended 2016 with more than $300 million in debt, Reiss said.”
Why American Performing Artists Have Been Becoming Activists (It Isn’t Just The Election)
Arena Stage artistic director Molly Smith, choreographer Kyle Abraham, Washington National Opera artistic director Francesca Zambello, playwright James Ijames, and others from classical music, dance, and theater talk to Nelson Pressley about how they do and don’t work politics into their art.