Arts news

• Why Is Spotify Getting Into Virtual Concerts Just As In-Person Performances Are Coming Back?

  26-05-2021 23:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  The demand for remote performances is presumably waning, which is why it’s weird that Spotify just entered the virtual concert business and thinks people will pay $15 for prerecorded shows you can only watch once at a dictated time. – Mic
  
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• Still Ticking: The Mousetrap, Running For 67 Years In London, Gets Set To Resume After Its COVID Pause

  26-05-2021 23:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  For 427 days, an old wooden board inside the foyer of St Martin’s Theatre in London was stuck on the number 28,199. It had ticked upwards every night for 67 years, logging the number of performances of the longest -running play in the world. But on March 16, 2020, The Mousetrap paused for breath. This seemingly immovable object met an unstoppable force: the coronavirus pandemic. – The Stage
  
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• Cuban Artists Demand National Museum Take Down Their Work Until Fellow Artist Is Released

  26-05-2021 22:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  In an act of protest, the artists are now calling for any of their works on view in the museum to “be covered in such a way as to prevent their ‘communication’ to the public, and that those works that are not exhibited but belong to the collection be removed from the museum’s web page” until Manuel Luis Alcántara is returned home, his wellness is verified by friends and family and “the police siege that he has been subjected to since November 2020&rdqu
  
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• Can Robots Help Ease Loneliness?

  26-05-2021 22:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  In 2018, New York State’s Office for the Aging launched a pilot project, distributing Joy for All robots to sixty state residents and then tracking them over time. Researchers used a six-point loneliness scale, which asks respondents to agree or disagree with statements like “I experience a general sense of emptiness.” They concluded that seventy per cent of participants felt less lonely after one year. – The New Yorker
  
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• Finalists To Fill Trafalgar’s Fourth Plinth

  26-05-2021 21:29 via feedproxy.google.com
  Mayor Sadiq Khan said it was the “most international line-up” of artists. The landmark has been home to a rolling commission of artworks since 1998. The plinth was built in 1841 but remained empty due to a lack of funds. – BBC
  
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• Forgotten Archive Of Brontë Family Manuscripts Headed To Auction

  26-05-2021 21:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  “The collection was put together by Arthur Bell Nicholls, the widower of Charlotte, who of the six Brontë children lived the longest, dying in 1855 at the age of 38. Nicholls sold the majority of the surviving Brontë manuscripts in 1895 to the notorious bibliophile and literary forger Thomas James Wise. The collectors and brothers Alfred and William Law … then acquired some of the family’s heirlooms from Wise … The Law brothers’ library at Honresfield H
  
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• We Need A New Model For Selling Music. How About This?

  26-05-2021 20:26 via feedproxy.google.com
  “I sometimes feel we’re losing sight of how valuable music is. I get messages on Patreon or Instagram from fans telling me how my music got them through a huge depression or losing a child. It was the same for me.” – The Guardian
  
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• Performance Artist And Director Robbie McCauley Dead At 78

  26-05-2021 20:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  “[Her] résumé included reimagining classic American plays through diverse casting and a stint in the ensemble of Ntozake Shange’s groundbreaking 1976 Broadway show, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf. But she was best known for shows she wrote and performed at venues like the Kitchen in Manhattan and Franklin Furnace in Brooklyn, in which she used her family and personal stories to confront universal issues.” – The New
  
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• In Rushdie’s Defense…

  26-05-2021 19:28 via feedproxy.google.com
  In his new book, “Languages of Truth: Essays 2003-2020,” Rushdie attempts to perform a defensive castling move. He suggests his work has been misunderstood and mistreated because the literary culture has turned from brio-filled imaginative writing toward the humbler delights of “autofiction,” as exemplified by the work of Elena Ferrante and Karl Ove Knausgaard. – The New York Times
  
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• The King Of Nouveau Hula

  26-05-2021 19:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  Patrick Makuakāne understands well the value of the traditional dances passed down through generations. (“I love those little gems. They’re like family heirlooms … they’re very precious and you understand they don’t need to be changed and their inherent value is just the way they are.”) But that doesn’t mean that, in his longtime base of San Francisco, he can’t mix in elements such as electronic music, the Lindy Hop, opera, drag queens, jaz
  
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• NFT Of One Of YouTube’s Most-Viewed Videos Of All Times Is Sold For Beaucoup Bucks

  26-05-2021 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  Sunday’s spending spree means the mysterious anonymous bidder will become the owner of the Charlie Bit My Finger clip. But it also gives them a chance to create some follow-up content. The auction page says the NFT winner will be given the opportunity to “recreate a hilarious modern-day rendition of the classic clip” that will feature “the original stars, Harry and Charlie”. – BBC
  
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• This Island, A COVID Success Story, Had Kept Its Stages Running Right Through The Pandemic — Until Now

  26-05-2021 18:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  “A recent surge in cases — Taiwan’s worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic — has brought a halt to cultural life on the island, forcing performing arts centers, concert halls and museums to shutter just as they are coming back to life in the rest of the world. Performers from Taiwan and abroad have been caught in the middle, grappling with lost income and an avalanche of canceled engagements.” – The New York Times
  
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• Amazon Buys MGM For $8.45 Billion

  26-05-2021 17:26 via feedproxy.google.com
  For Amazon, snapping up MGM — which has more than 4,000 movies and 17,000 TV shows in its catalog — is a way to supercharge its Prime Video service with a slew of well-known entertainment titles. In addition, Amazon is anticipating being able to mine Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer properties like the Pink Panther, Rocky and, yes, the 007 franchises for new originals. – Variety
  
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• Largest Queer Theatre In L.A. Fires Director For Sexual Misconduct

  26-05-2021 17:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  Michael A. Shepperd, artistic director of Celebration Theatre, has been terminated following an internal investigation of allegations that he groped and propositioned an actor backstage during the company’s 2019 production of The Producers. Shepperd, describing Celebration Theatre as “a queer safe space” where flirting and physical affection were common, maintains that any and all contact between him and his accuser was consensual. – Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
  
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• ‘Let The People Pee Without Missing A Note!’ — Maybe Doing Two-Hour Operas With No Intermission Isn’t Such A Good Idea

  26-05-2021 16:35 via feedproxy.google.com
  For its first post-pandemic performances this fall, Lyric Opera of Chicago — based, it seems, on feedback from potential audience members and official guidelines last year — decided to keep all performances under two-and-a-half hours and eliminate intermission. When he reported this, writes Chris Jones, “my mailbox immediately filled up with one burning question from Chicago’s opera fans: When do I pee?” – Yahoo! (Chicago Tribune)
  
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• Federal Court OKs Alan Dershowitz’s Libel Suit Against CNN

  26-05-2021 16:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  Representing Trump during his first impeachment trial, Dershowitz ended his answer to a question from Sen. Ted Cruz by saying, “Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest, … and if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.” During coverage that evening, CNN political analyst Paul Begala said, “The Dershowit
  
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• The Mysterious Foundation That Rescued Performing Arts Orgs From Pandemic Ruin

  26-05-2021 15:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  Here is the story — told, it must be said, rather against the wishes of its founder, who’d have preferred privacy — of the Alphadyne Foundation. – The New York Times
  
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• Anna Halprin, Pioneer Of Postmodern Dance, Dead At 100

  26-05-2021 15:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Before Halprin, American dance was cast in [Martha] Graham’s regal mold, presented formally onstage, and performed by highly trained bodies that acted out the choreographer’s vision in a rarefied movement language. Halprin’s rebellion was to declare that any movement, performed with presence and intention, could be a dance, and anybody could be a dancer.” – San Francisco Chronicle
  
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• Louvre Gets New Director, Its First Female Boss In History

  26-05-2021 14:32 via feedproxy.google.com
  “The French president Emmanuel Macron has nominated Laurence des Cars, currently the president of the Musée d’Orsay, to helm the Louvre in a major shake-up at the world-famous Paris institution. … Des Cars will head across the Seine river to replace its current president Jean-Luc Martinez, who was unsuccessful in his campaign for a third term.” – Artnet
  
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• England’s Amateur Choirs Were Ready To Sing Again After A Year, And Then —

  26-05-2021 14:05 via feedproxy.google.com
  “Choirs had been working under the assumption that restrictions on rehearsals would be relaxed on 17 May, at the same time as shops, bars and hairdressers opened up. Instead, the guidelines” — revised the following day to limit indoor rehearsals to six people and those outdoors to 30 — “were actually more draconian than the ones in place last September and October, when infection rates were higher, and no-one had been vaccinated.” – BBC
  
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• ‘It’s cooler to hang Lennon’s guitar than a Picasso’: pop culture wins out at auctions

  26-05-2021 13:21
  
  Sales of items from celebrities such as Janet Jackson and K-poppers BTS are trending – and reframing what goes under the hammerIs celebrity merchandise the new Monet? Auction houses are in flux, with more and more pop culture items being sold under the hammer for six and seven-figure sums.Last month, Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills hosted a three-day auction of Janet Jackson’s personal belongings, including some of her most iconic stage outfits. Buyers included Kim Kardashia
  
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• Mark Lancaster obituary

  26-05-2021 10:52
  
  British artist and stage designer who in the 1960s served as an emissary to London of New York paintingHad you been in the Gibbs Building at King’s College, Cambridge, one summer’s day in 1969, you might have come across a pair of English artists taking tea. The older was the Bloomsbury painter Duncan Grant, then 84. The younger, halfway through his tenure as the university’s first artist-in-residence, was Mark Lancaster, who has died aged 82.It was, variously, an unexpected pa
  
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• California dreams: the natural wonders of Wynn Bullock – in pictures

  26-05-2021 08:00
  
  A new exhibition collects the stunning black and white photography Bullock took of his family and their surroundings in Monterey, Big Sur and beyond Continue reading...
  
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• Brave front: thought-provoking art on England’s south-east coast

  26-05-2021 08:00
  
  The new Waterfronts exhibition – part of the England’s Creative Coast project – brings contemporary sculpture to seaside towns to attract, and challenge, visitorsI’m escaping a downpour in the Margate shelter where TS Eliot sat in 1921 scribbling The Waste Land. I’m not the only one: holidaying families huddle in waterproofs, wet dogs shake, tinny music emanates from smartphones, and a boy skips rhythmically with a rope. All the while the rain lashes the low-tide sa
  
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• Five thousand years of mystical magnificence: Epic Iran at the V&A – review

  26-05-2021 01:00
  
  V&A, London
  Persepolis and Isfahan are dazzlingly brought to life in a blockbuster show that explores five jaw-dropping millennia of cultural history, from soaring domes to charging horses
  Typical. You go for months without any culture, then 5,000 years of it come along at once. That’s what the V&A’s luxury coach tour of a blockbuster promises, and delivers, including quite brilliant recreations of Iran’s two most renowned sites, Persepolis and Isfahan. Epic Iran shows
  
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• Biden Sets Aside Tradition, Fires Four Members Of The US Commission Of Fine Arts

  26-05-2021 00:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  On Monday, the Biden administration sent letters to architect Steven Spandle, landscape architect Perry Guillot, sculptor Chas Fagan and commission chairman Justin Shubow asking that they resign by 6 p.m. that day or face termination. None of the four resigned. – Washington Post
  
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• Comparing The Careers Of Mike Nichols And Tom Stoppard

  26-05-2021 00:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  The paths they each followed are telling. If you are even marginally involved in the theater, it is impossible not to envy the state support of the arts that benefited Stoppard in Britain or be angry at how, like most American directors, Nichols spent so much time chasing the dollar. Their biographers, too, take differing approaches to these lives. – The New Republic
  
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