“Public artworks created in 2020 often took up urgent political and social issues, and the very notion of monuments—of which figures were being elevated and how they were rendered—figured in protest movements, opinion pages, and beyond.” – ARTnews
Tag: 12.28.20
The Recipe For A Viral TikTok Dance Hit
“Drawing from a lexicon of hip-hop-inspired moves, … the micro-dances of TikTok are typically front-facing and most animated from the hips up, tailored to the vertical frame of a smartphone screen. Governed by time limits of 15 or 60 seconds, they also tend to stay in one place; you can do them pretty much anywhere. While these TikTok dances might seem purely fun and frivolous, there’s an art to creating and performing them in such a way that gets attention.” – Dance Magazine
Barbara Weisberger, Founder Of Pennsylvania Ballet, Dead At 94
At age 8, she became George Balanchine’s first student at his School of American Ballet. Later, in Philadelphia in 1961, with a couple of graduates of SAB and a Ford Foundation grant, she founded the Pennsylvania Ballet, the first company in what became the regional dance boom of the 1960s and ’70s. – The Philadelphia Inquirer
Romance Novels Are A Massive Business. Why Do So Few Get Adapted For TV?
“Even as networks and streaming services slaver over intellectual property with prearranged fan bases, few mass-market romance novels have found their way to screens. Character-driven and story rich, they would seem to have a lot of what television wants. But showrunners have played hard to get.” Alexis Soloski explores why. – The New York Times
Arts Institutions Lost Their Box Office Income This Year. Now They’re Struggling For Contributions, Too.
“Despite an outpouring of contributions when the virus first struck, individual giving to arts organizations fell by 14 percent in North America during the first nine months of the year, [and the] average size of gifts from the most active, loyal patrons fell by 38 percent. … [The arts] are facing competition from pressing causes including hunger, health care and social justice.” – The New York Times
Tony Rice, Virtuoso Guitarist Who Brought Jazz Stylings To Bluegrass, Dead At 69
“[He] collaborated with Ricky Skaggs, Jerry Garcia and Béla Fleck, and, with mandolinist David Grisman, defined the synthesis of bluegrass, jazz and chamber music known as ‘dawg music.'” As one critic put it, “If you play bluegrass guitar, you have to come to terms with Rice the way portrait photographers have to come to terms with [Richard] Avedon.” – The Washington Post
Gustavo Dudamel And His New Virtual Reality Symphony
Dudamel takes on the role of virtual guide on a tour that takes us from the creation of instruments and how they vibrate and channel sound to the synapses of the brain where sound is processed as the orchestra plays around us. – BBC