“To say that Richard Strauss’s “Salome” is your favorite opera is a bit like saying that “The Shining” is your favorite film or that Edgar Allan Poe is your favorite author: it marks you as something of a freak.” – The New Yorker
Tag: 08.21.19
Artists Take Over Power Station And Make Art That Generates Power
The contemporary arts centre E-Werk Luckenwalde will not only open exhibition galleries and studio spaces in a former brown coal power station 65km south of Berlin, it will also begin generating carbon-neutral electricity. Led by the artist Pablo Wendel and the curator Helen Turner, E-Werk Luckenwalde will power its own building with locally sourced biomass and sell the excess energy back to the grid to fund the whole enterprise. – The Art Newspaper
Composer Killed By a Bear While Collecting Sounds In The Far North
“Julien really wanted to connect with something else. He really wanted to connect with nature, but not only with nature, but with the scientists and the people that actually are studying the world today.” – CBC
We’re Learning How Emotional Intelligence Drives The Brain
“With the help of neuroscientific and behavioural research, we are beginning to appreciate how the ancestral mammal brain is alive and well inside our higher neocortical systems. Unlike the computational approach to mind, the affective turn is deeply rooted in what we know about the brain as a biological reality. In the first decade of the new millennium, affective (or emotional) studies began to trickle into disciplines such as ethology (the study of animal behaviour).” – Aeon
Have We Stopped Opera From Evolving?
Imagine if Hollywood were to issue shot-for-shot remakes of D.W. Griffith’s gauzy history of the Ku Klux Klan, “The Birth of a Nation ,” every few years. Imagine Tom Hanks re-creating Mickey Rooney’s infamously slant-eyed Mr. Yunioshi in a new “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” or Morgan Freeman cast in a live-action remake of Disney’s “Song of the South.” This is the reality of opera-house programming year after year. – Washington Post
125 Artists, Gallerists Protest Plans To Sell Off Di Rosa Foundation Collection In Napa
On Wednesday Robert Sain, the director of the di Rosa center, responded with a letter that repeated claims that the center did not have sufficient funds to maintain the collection. “It would … have been wonderful if additional donors beyond our board, membership, and strong base of supporters had responded to our fundraising efforts,” he wrote. The letter cites what it calls an “unfortunate” circumstance, “that we finally had to face the reckoning … or close our doors forever.” – San Francisco Chronicle
In A Parallel Universe, The Onion Imagines Football Programs Jealous Of Funding For Theatre
“I understand that this is a live-theater town. Parents move to this school district just to get their kids in front of a director to potentially get cast as Meg. The JV boys haven’t had new uniforms in 10 years and yet the school spends $250,000 on dance training for Newsies. Football has value—it’s an outlet for so many misunderstood kids, and to see it constantly pushed to the side like this is disheartening.” – The Onion
All AM Talk Radio Wanted Was To Entertain Masses Of People. It Ended Up Taking Control Of The Republican Party.
“No one set out to turn the airwaves into a political weapon — much less deputize talk-radio hosts as the ideological enforcers of a major American political party. Instead the story of how the GOP establishment lost its power over the Republican message — and eventually the party itself — begins with frantic AM radio executives and a former Top 40 disc jockey.” (That would be Rush Limbaugh.) – The Atlantic
Can Arts Organizations Become Engines For Economic Justice In Their Communities?
The “anchor institution approach” for nonprofits — using their purchasing decisions, hiring, and other business practices to actively affect their communities’ economic well-being, especially that of historically marginalized groups — is usually thought of as applying to large universities and health-care institutions. But, argues a new report, arts and culture organizations can also serve as such “anchor institutions” — and many do, from Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center and the Cleveland Museum of Art down to smaller groups such as Houston’s Project Row Houses and the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio. – Nonprofit Quarterly
Next Month, Baltimore Symphony Lockout Could Morph Into A Strike
The lockout began in May because there has been no musicians’ contract since January and management, which wants to end the orchestra’s year-round status and shut down during the summers, decided to cancel all this summer’s programming; the musicians wanted to play on and keep negotiating. But management’s stated intention has been to resume the orchestra’s activities with the start of the fall season — and now the musicians are saying they won’t play without a contract. – The Baltimore Sun