RJ Rushmore: “A year inside of ‘Philadelphia’s community-engagement juggernaut'” – that’s the city’s famous Mural Arts Program – “has taught me a lot. It’s made me fall deeper in love with street art than ever before, and it’s also helped me to better understand the medium’s shortcomings. Here are a few observations.”
Tag: 07.01.15
Quincy Jones: The Music Industry Doesn’t Exist Anymore
“Honey, we have no music industry. There’s 90% piracy everywhere in the world. They take everything. At the recent South by Southwest [an annual music festival in Austin], they had over 1,900 musicians, but fans didn’t know where to go. You can’t get an album out because nobody buys an album anymore.”
How Did Art Auctions Become “Curated Shows?”
“In a market where getting the best material for a sale is essential, the formula has obvious attractions: it is a new story to tell clients, and the inclusion of some masterpieces in a sale can persuade other consignors to give up their treasures.”
Why Summer Isn’t For Reading
It’s for re-reading instead: “I pull this or that beat-up, food-spattered volume off a shelf, whimsically hopeful that this time around it will be a different story: Anna Karenina will skip the train tracks and Sydney Carton will avoid the guillotine. Nothing has changed. But of course everything has changed.”
What Is Lincoln Center’s Place In The Arts World?
“If a new generation of middle-class Americans chooses to move back into the inner cities, large-scale performing-arts centers might start to make fiscal and artistic sense. But even if that should happen, Lincoln Center will never again be culturally influential in the way that it was in the ’70s and ’80s.”
A Contradictory Story About When (And How) Harper Lee’s Novel Was Found
“The discrepancy between the two accounts raises questions about whether the book was lost and accidentally recovered, and about why Ms. Lee would not have sought to publish it earlier.”
In Its Most Challenging Year, Whitworth Museum Wins £100,00 Art Fund Prize As UK Museum Of The Year
“The Whitworth underwent the largest physical transformation in its 125-year history in 2014. The project doubled its size and connected the building with its surrounding park. During its redevelopment the Whitworth continued to offer pop-up projects all over the city, maintaining established audiences and building new ones ahead of its February reopening.”
Did Smooth Jazz Die On The Radio Because Of Bad Ratings Data?
“Smooth jazz was at the edge of a cliff. The Portable People Meter could have helped pull the format back or push it over. It turns out PPM gave it a swift kick right over the edge.”
Misty Copeland’s Promotion At ABT Signals New Era For Company
“Along with Ms. Copeland’s ascendance, the company’s other, less-heralded promotions announced Tuesday suggest a new era at Ballet Theatre—one with a stronger emphasis on promoting dancers who have made a commitment to the company, especially in the early stages of their training.”
Sotheby’s Just Had Its Biggest Ever Sale Of Contemporary Art
“Warhol’s ‘One Dollar Bill (Silver Certificate)’ fetched £20.9m, smashing its pre-sale estimate of £13-18m. This was Warhol’s first such work of a dollar, painted by hand in 1962. A bidding frenzy powered Lucien Freud’s 2002 work ‘Four Eggs on a Plate’, which was originally a gift to the late Duchess of Devonshire, to sell for £989,000, nearly ten times the pre-sale estimate of £100-£150,000.”