“The Musée Carnavalet – the museum of Paris’s history, which opened in 1880 and is run by the City of Paris – closed last week for an extensive renovation and restoration. It is due to reopen in late 2019 or early 2020.”
Category: issues
Richard III = Donald Trump? Brush Up Your Shakespeare
“[Richard’s] success in obtaining the crown depended on a fatal conjunction of diverse but equally self-destructive responses from those around him. The play locates these responses in particular characters … but it also manages to suggest that these characters sketch a whole country’s collective failure.” Stephen Greenblatt, general editor of The Norton Shakespeare, lays out the parallels – not so much between the monarch and the mogul as between Richard’s England and Trump’s America.
Number Of Visitors Literally Overwhelms DC’s New African-American Museum
“More people want to get in than can be accommodated, even though timed passes are being used to manage the crowds. In the museum’s first 10 days, some 103,000 people visited the history, culture and community exhibitions, officials said. It’s unclear how many more were unable to get passes.”
Scottish Survey: All Time High In Engagement With Culture
Overall, the report says 95 percent consume culture. “The figures cover both attendance at cultural events, the most popular of which is watching a film in the cinema, and cultural participation, the most popular of which is reading for pleasure. When trips to the cinema are excluded, the proportion of the population who attended a cultural event in 2015 stands at 75%. This figure has risen from 70% in 2012. When reading for pleasure is excluded, 52% participated in a cultural activity in 2015, up from 48% in 2012.”
Another Critic Is Fired Because Those He Covered Complained
Colin Thomas was the longtime theatre reviewer at Vancouver’s alt-weekly The Georgia Straight. Last week he surprised the theatre community with a blog post that began: “I just got fired from The Georgia Straight. Thirty years. No warning. No compensation.”
Everyone Is Angry About The Unmasking Of Elena Ferrante, But For Wildly Different Reasons
“In the United States and Britain, the investigation into Ms. Ferrante’s true identity has been viewed by a vocal contingent through the lens of gender. Critics have accused the journalist who conducted it and the publications where his findings appeared of sexism. But in continental Europe, the criticisms have focused on invasion of privacy issues.”
On-Demand Culture Means You Don’t Own That Book, Movie Or Song You Think You Just Bought
“With the move to cloud computing and streaming content, the concept of “copy ownership” is now disappearing from entertainment as well. Software, motion pictures, and even music are increasingly a service provided to you. Streaming services and cloud content have their own worries. For example, what happens when you’re traveling somewhere with no reliable internet access? What happens when the service provider’s servers go down for days and you are paying for a service you are not getting? But the problems run deeper. The loss of ownership sends copyright law out to sea.”
Austin City Council Says Arts Groups Who Get Public Money Must Work With Union Workers Or Lose Funding
“The changes to the city’s cultural services agreement require organizations that take city money or use city property to recognize any labor organization designated via a card-check method and cooperate with it. If not, they could lose funding in future years.”
Our Diversity Debate Has Been Going On For Decades. So What’s Changed?
“Again and again, the same answer: maybe it’s not fair to say that nothing has changed, but here we are, answering the same fundamental questions about diversity. Very few people seemed wholeheartedly optimistic about change.”
In Praise Of Shorter Performances – And Even Abridging The Text
“Terence Rattigan, England’s master of the well-made play, predicted back in the ’50s that younger playgoers conditioned by movies and TV would eventually start to chafe at the three-hour-two-intermission running time that was then the theatrical norm.” Terry Teachout praises the trend toward shorter, no-intermission plays, and suggests that we should feel free to make cuts in longer works by the likes of Eugene O’Neill and Richard Wagner.