Josh Niland tells the story of curator Henry Geldzahler and the 1971 deaccessioning of Max Beckmann’s Self-Portrait with Cigarette.
Tag: 02.16.17
Chatting With Brian Eno About Ambient Music
“The path of least resistance for anyone with a lot of sound-making tools is to keep making more sounds. The path of discipline is to say: Let’s see how few we can get away with.”
A Brief History Of Yorick’s Skull
“No other piece of stage business has burned itself so deeply into the collective consciousness. All the greats have been there, from Richard Burbage to Thomas Betterton, Sarah Bernhardt to Laurence Olivier. Even Bart Simpson has got in on the act. Given all this, it’s worth reflecting on the fact that, for Hamlet‘s earliest audiences, seeing real human remains on stage would have been a shock.”
New Music Is Booming In L.A. – And There’s One Problem With That
More groups and composers are competing for donors. Jim Farber looks at how some organizations, large and small, and handling the challenge.
The 19th-Century Chinese Script Only Women Could Write
In one rural county in Hunan province, women developed a phonetic writing system called nüshu, in which they wrote poems, letters, and even autobiographies. Lauren Young gives a brief history of nüshu and its rediscovery in the 1980s – and she debunks a couple myths about it.
How ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic Outlasted Almost Every Star He Parodied
Some of it is that – to the surprise of many – he’s extremely quiet and focused in the studio. Some of it is that he’s extremely resourceful in trying to get singers to give permission for his parodies. And some of it is that he’s extremely nice: “I don’t want to be embroiled in any nastiness. … I take pains not to burn bridges.”
Tracy Letts Furiously Wrote A Play In The Wake Of The Election (And Steppenwolf Is Bringing It To Broadway)
Steppenwolf artistic director Anna D. Shapiro: “The state of the world was really crushing me, and then Tracy got the script into my mailbox. I called him and said that we are lucky you write plays for us.” (And you know that a play by the writer of Killer Joe and August: Osage County is going to be furious.)
Johannesburg Art Gallery, Africa’s Largest, Forced To Close Due To Leaky Roof
The roof has leaked since 1989, but heavy rains last month did so much damage that the museum – whose collection includes works by Picasso, Monet, and Rodin – has been forced to close for several months. And, as Lynsey Chutel reports, that’s by no means JAG’s only problem.
Street Theatre In Beirut: Palestinian Refugees Act For Syrian Refugees (And Lebanese City Folks)
Milia Ayache writes about adapting, staging and performing Derek Walcott and Biljana Srbljanović in Arabic with her Masrah Ensemble.
It’s Time For The Internet To Become A Public Utility
“As it stands, there is not only no incentive for the cable companies to not only expand far beyond the metropolitan areas where there are residences — it doesn’t make fiscal sense to go much further, which is why 43 percent of rural California residents have no broadband access — but there’s no real incentive for them to even innovate their products to provide better service for their existing customers. They’re getting their $50–80 a month for their substandard service anyway, as the only other choice is cutting the cord entirely.”