Arts news

• Scientific Publishing Is A HUGE Business (But Does It Harm Science?)

  03-07-2017 23:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The core of Elsevier’s operation is in scientific journals, the weekly or monthly publications in which scientists share their results. Despite the narrow audience, scientific publishing is a remarkably big business. With total global revenues of more than £19bn, it weighs in somewhere between the recording and the film industries in size, but it is far more profitable.
  
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• A Convicted Murderer Making His Debut As Published Author

  03-07-2017 23:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Curtis Dawkins began as writer, earning a Master of Fine Arts degree before he committed his crime. And while his book, “The Graybar Hotel,” has received early praise from writers like Roddy Doyle and Atticus Lish, its release has also raised uncomfortable questions for the publisher as it tries to win over booksellers and critics to rally behind a work by an unknown debut writer — who is also a convicted murderer.
  
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• Qatar blockade tests cultural relations

  03-07-2017 23:00
  
  The diplomatic crisis in the Middle East, which has resulted in the partial blockade of Qatar, has raised fears that cultural institutions and partnerships in the region could be destabilised.
  In June, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt cut off trade and diplomatic links with Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism, which officials in the oil-rich state deny.The Gulf allies behind the blockade have criticised Qatar for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islami
  
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• Late artist Sidney Nolan’s undisturbed UK studio opens to the public

  03-07-2017 23:00
  
  A workbench littered with cans of spray paint in every imaginable colour, boxes overflowing with tubes of acrylic paint, toy trucks, forks, a pipe organ with a crucifix sitting on top of it, a jar containing what appears to be a fish preserved in formaldehyde, pairs of eyeglasses and shoes, a Second World War-era Vickers machine gun case and a London A to Z guide. When the Australian-born artist Sidney Nolan died in the UK in 1992, where he had moved in 1951, his widow closed the doors to his s
  
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• When A Critic Reviews Dance Outside Of Her Own Culture (What Could Go Wrong?)

  03-07-2017 22:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  What deserves interrogation is not the question of whether or not to move beyond “tradition.” It is the rhetorical use of the term “tradition” and the presumption of an uninformed critic to police black choreographers’ prerogatives. When will we be done with these tired tropes of authenticity and “tradition” that continue to plague contemporary black performance?
  
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• Does Engaging In The Arts Even Matter?

  03-07-2017 22:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Americans generated much of their own art by themselves and at home, through playing parlor piano, reciting Shakespeare around the dinner table, and other exercises in Emersonian self-reliance. All that changed with the introduction of radio, sound recordings, movie theaters, and other forms of industrially produced mass entertainment. The audience’s role increasingly was reduced to coming to a large venue, sitting in a darkened room, then applauding o
  
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• There's A Revolution Happening In The Arts Right Now (And It's Changing Everything)

  03-07-2017 21:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "This new radical democratization threatens critics, just as it does well-paid artistic directors, executive directors, curators and all kinds of other gatekeeper types in the cultural universe, which explains why some say we/they react defensively to any grass-roots rebellion."
  
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• How Teaching Machines To Play Chess Cracked The Code To Artificial Intelligence

  03-07-2017 21:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "The history of computer chess is the history of artificial intelligence. After their disappointments in trying to reverse-engineer the brain, computer scientists narrowed their sights. Abandoning their pursuit of human-like intelligence, they began to concentrate on accomplishing sophisticated, but limited, analytical tasks by capitalizing on the inhuman speed of the modern computer’s calculations. This less ambitious but more pragmatic approach has paid off in areas ranging from medical
  
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• Is The Structure Of Today's Arts Institutions The Problem With Today's Arts?

  03-07-2017 20:27 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "What is the real vision that we’re looking for in the performing arts? Maybe it needs to go beyond simply what goes on the stage. Maybe someone needs to bring vision to the fallacy, almost universally accepted, that the only way to sustain the arts we love is to shore up a system of oversized institutions that no longer seem to work well in today’s culture. Might there be a better way to reconceive orchestras and opera houses, and to allocate the considerable resources that go into
  
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• Chill Out And Let The Kids Watch TV

  03-07-2017 20:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Even the American Academy of Pediatrics has started to relax a little about screen time. Also, the entire discussion is a status marker: "The ability of parents to limit screen time, like the ability to limit unwholesome food, has become more than a matter of health. It has become a statement of class, order, purity and parental authority."
  
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• Richard Florida's "New" Urban Crisis

  03-07-2017 19:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Florida’s new “crisis” is one of growing income inequality everywhere, segregation (by neighborhood, income, and race), and a disappearing middle class. It’s a crisis of suburbs, where poverty, income insecurity, and crime grow. It’s a crisis of the developing world, where urban hypergrowth and rapid industrialization fail to move people up the income scale.
  
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• A British Poet Wants To Change The Discussion Around Motherhood

  03-07-2017 19:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Hollie McNish, Ted Hughes Award winner: "It's just to get rid of that shame. Like, be ashamed of things that you should be ashamed of, like being horrible to someone, but don't be ashamed of these natural processes in your body."
  
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• Catching Up With The Beat Poets (They're Still Alive?)

  03-07-2017 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Late last spring, I drove up the coast from Los Angeles in search of surviving members of the Beat Generation. Interview times had been procured with the poets Ferlinghetti (now 98), McClure (84), Snyder (87), and Diane di Prima (82), as well as Beat-adjacent novelist Herbert Gold (93). When I told people about my plan, the most common response was, “They’re still alive?” After all, the loose collective’s three most famous avatars are long gone. William S. Burroughs and
  
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• The 29-Year-Old Woman Who Now Heads The Cartoon Department Of The New Yorker Has A Tradition To Shepherd, And New Voices To Find

  03-07-2017 18:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Emma Allen's "ability to find new voices for Daily Shouts is what first drew the attention of The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick. 'She was bringing in people and things that I hadn’t heard before, and sometimes you need to reinvigorate parts of the magazine,' he said by phone, adding, 'We need to have a deeper exploration of the web, as far as cartooning.'"
  
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• A Fundamental Shift In How Philanthropy Works?

  03-07-2017 17:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "Over the past decade, as groups have become more sophisticated at assessing the impact of their work, and as digital payment systems have advanced throughout the developing world, a number of carefully designed field experiments have affirmed the effectiveness of unconditional cash transfers to the poor. Such charitable transfers challenge assumptions, dating back centuries, that impoverished recipients will squander money given directly to them. It turns out that the poor often know much bette
  
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• A Sea Change In Theatre (Maybe)

  03-07-2017 17:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Vicky Featherstone, artistic director of The Royal Court: "People feel they have much more right to put complex female characters on stage. I think that’s really exciting. Flawed women on stage, women that are asking questions that previously men would ask, about sex, about pornography – there’s really been an opening up about that. But I still feel we have a way to go."
  
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• The Generation(s) That Came Of Age With 'Legend Of Zelda'

  03-07-2017 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Basically, "Zelda" taught people how to grow up: Link and Zelda "navigate spaces that over time have become more difficult to traverse and more populated, just as the real world expands as one ages. And so, it’s dawned on me: With its young characters, its longevity, its accessibility, and the evolution of its gameplay, The Legend of Zelda is hands-down the best franchise about the joys and frustrations of leaving youth and facing the challenges of adulthood."
  
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• Open-Air Dance Party In New York

  03-07-2017 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Two American Ballet Theatre dancers learned and choreographed a rumba routine between ABT duties. "Their routine, peppered with dramatic pauses, tricky partnering moves and quick, flashy turns, opened with a comic flourish. She stumbled on, teetering in her high heels, pretending to be drunk. He acted the part of the overbearing roué, dragging her onto the dance floor."
  
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• The Horror Film Guy Who Produced 'Get Out' And Many More Low-Budget, High-Gross Films Is Turning To Publishing

  03-07-2017 15:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Jason Blum "sees it as another way for the writers and directors he works with to tell a story. 'We’re trying to be a home for our artists, and be an outlet for them no matter what they want to do: write a book, do a live event, do a television series, make a movie ... Having a book division helps me keep books front of mind when we’re talking to people about how to get their stories out into the world.'"
  
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• Why Did This Guy Want To Take On The Job Of Artistic Director At A Theatre That Had To Hold An Emergency Fundraising Campaign?

  03-07-2017 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  David Ivers, who's taking on the role at the Arizona Theatre Company (which runs both in Phoenix and Tucson): "When I became the unanimous candidate — the board’s words, not mine — I felt I had the opportunity ... to say 'I would like to fight on behalf of the staff before I take this job. So if you are serious about me doing this, we have to raise some money before we start. I won’t take the job unless we start to equalize cash flow problems. I’ll help, and I&rsquo
  
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• What Happened To The Big Business Of R-Rated Comedies?

  03-07-2017 15:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  This summer has seen a string of utterly failed attempts to get adults into the theaters for raunchy, semi-dark comedies. Why? It might be that "the definition of what makes a good comedy has changed quickly and dramatically in the past year."
  
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• Morning Links: Independence Day Edition

  03-07-2017 15:00 via artnews.com
  Here's what we're reading this morning. Read More
  
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• How To Save A Museum From Near Death, The Watts Gallery Edition

  03-07-2017 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  How did Perdita Hunt change the Watts Gallery's "Sleeping Beauty look" wherein the gallery "was cold and dark, the roof leaked, the canvases sagged, and the tea room was poisoning its clients"? The first step was a vision that didn't include raw sewage running down the side of the building.
  
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• One London Library Not Suffering From Cuts During The Long Retrenchment Of British Public Life

  03-07-2017 14:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  In a neighborhood where the town council announced there would be no austerity measures at its libraries, "Books are only a small part of the library’s mandate. When the council elected to spare its libraries from cuts, it announced that they would be redeveloped as 'community hubs.' Among the groups using the library’s facilities for regular open meetings are stroke survivors, cancer survivors, seniors, dads, knitters, aspiring songwriters, Pilates enthusiasts, and philosophy buffs.
  
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• Tchaikovsky Hated His '1812 Overture' (Good Thing He Didn't Have To Go To Every Outdoor Summer Symphony Ever)

  03-07-2017 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  In the U.S., it gets played on the Fourth of July a lot. Wait, what? "We think of the 1812 Overture as this very American piece and we play it on the Fourth of July for whatever reason, which is just nutso for so many reasons. Last year, I watched a very grown man cry to this piece of music and I was like, 'Are you sure?” Do you even know what it’s about? Have you just been assuming the '1812 Overture' is about the American War of 1812. Guess what? It’s not!!'"
  
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• Children's Art May Seem Like 'Scribbles,' But It Is Actually Complex And Powerful

  03-07-2017 14:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Artist Brian Belott, who has curated a show with a combo of children's art and his own art: "A child wakes up in the morning with so much energy, and I try, in my own practice, no matter what I do, to tap into that hyper-spazzy energy that slowly gets shut down as you enter the adult world. As an artist, I’m into celebratory stuff. I’d much rather create a dance party than a pity party."
  
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• The Deep Beauty Of Reading About Cooking

  03-07-2017 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  And what a future writer learned about writing: "Words can be used to make an idea more precise, or more vague, to make something clear or to blur its edges. Some writers are good at imagining people who don’t live a life exactly like their own, and others seem incapable."
  
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• A Netflix Movie That Everyone (In The U.S. And U.K.) Needs To Watch

  03-07-2017 13:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Hollywood plus Afghanistan equals ... nothing. "Hollywood movies do not ask the difficult strategic questions. Should the US invade or interfere in countries it knows little about, how do US troops win over local support, is nation building and promotion of democracy feasible by one part of the US government while another part pursues a war strategy? Can the US ever understand tribal societies through the barrel of a gun? Hollywood has left us devoid of any understanding of the escalating global
  
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• Film Critic Barry Norman, Who Was The BBC's Film Reviewer For 26 Years, Has Died At 83

  03-07-2017 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  "It was at the BBC where he became a household name, presenting from a comfortable armchair and often dressed in a familiar jumper. A catchphrase, 'And why not?,' was used on occasion by Norman and became the title of his autobiography, but took on a life of its own in the mouth of the puppet version of him in the satirical show Spitting Image on ITV." Then there was the time Robert DeNiro almost hit him.
  
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• Melbourne's security bollards prettied up and dubbed #bollart

  03-07-2017 10:26
  
  Concrete bollards, introduced to prevent attacks after Bourke Street tragedy, deemed an eyesore until bright covers appearConcrete anti-terror bollards placed around Melbourne pedestrian hotspots have been covered in bright fabric, confetti and paint in a move dubbed on social media as #bollart.The bollards began cropping up around the city in June, though for security reasons the location of the bollards was only revealed as they were installed. So far, they have been placed around Flinders and
  
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• Everyday Italians and their guns – in pictures

  03-07-2017 08:00
  
  From wedding beds to religious rituals, from a vet’s trophy room to SS impersonators, photographer Mattia Micheli scoured Italy to make Friendly Fire, a series about the country’s gun-lovers Continue reading...
  
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