Arts news

• Why We Need Theory

  13-02-2024 23:57 via e-flux.com
  
  The vocation of theory to give us perspective on the production of ideas—on their historical conjuncture, their class interests, their philosophical deficiencies, their determined style—flounders in the current anti-idea immediatism. – e-flux
  
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• Calgary Arts Groups Are Struggling (Just Like Everywhere Else)

  13-02-2024 23:29 via calgaryherald.com
  
  Released just last month, the most recent research shows that, while Calgarians are still interested in engaging in the arts, audiences are much more selective about what they attend. Affordability is an issue, but so is the amount of discretionary time available to take in the arts. – Calgary Herald
  
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• Will This Production Of “The Wiz” Change How Broadway Does Business?

  13-02-2024 23:01 via latimes.com
  
  “Broadway and the road have gone through different eras and phases, and it will continue to morph, but we may be beginning a chapter of something new. Because this works artistically, it works economically, and so far, it’s been very exciting to do it this way.” – Los Angeles Times
  
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• Opera Philadelphia Cuts Festival And Budget

  13-02-2024 22:32 via inquirer.com
  
  In August, the company reduced its staff by about 16%, developed a smaller scale for Festival O, and trimmed the budget by about 20% to $11 million, a level director David Devan had called “short-term sustainable.” Now the annual budget has been cut again, to $10 million for the coming season. – Philadelphia Inquirer
  
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• It’s Official: “Peak” TV Is Over

  13-02-2024 22:01 via axios.com
  The 14% year-over-year decline in the number of new scripted series across live television networks and streaming represented the steepest drop-off in at least a decade, per FX Research. – Axios
  
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• We Need To Rethink Cultural Infrastructure — Fund It Like Highways

  13-02-2024 21:31 via nytimes.com
  
  “We need to stop treating museums, theaters and galleries like sacred spaces that exist in some rarefied realm of public life. And we need to start treating them — and funding them — like interstate highways, high-speed internet and other infrastructure projects, using money that’s earmarked to maintain the country’s infrastructure.” – The New York Times
  
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• Hezbollah Goes Into The Immersive Theater Business

  13-02-2024 20:57 via msn.com
  No, this is not a joke, though Robert F. Worth thought it was, when he first saw the announcement that the Lebanese Shiite militant group was staging an “immersive theatrical performance” titled The Crossing, complete with live gunfire and Hamas-style tunnels. – The Atlantic (MSN)
  
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• Actors Equity Authorizes Strike Over Development Pay

  13-02-2024 20:32 via hollywoodreporter.com
  
  “We know there is no revenue from the development sessions themselves, but it’s still work, and that doesn’t change whether there’s revenue today or whether it’s an investment producers are making against future profits. And that work must be appropriately compensated.” – The Hollywood Reporter
  
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• Bharathanatyam: A Newcomer’s Guide

  13-02-2024 20:06 via psyche.co
  
  Writer and dancer Lakshmi Thiagarajan explains some of the origins and history of the South Asian classical dance form, the components of a traditional performance, and how a solo dancer can portray multiple characters with no change of costume or makeup. – Psyche
  
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• I’m not trying to destroy art, says man planning to do just that if Assange dies in jail

  13-02-2024 19:35
  
  Andrei Molodkin believes WikiLeaks founder will be freed, leaving $45m of precious artworks unscathedHe’s attracted global media attention and criticism after vowing to destroy some of the world’s most precious artwork if Julian Assange dies in prison.But Andrei Molodkin, the Russian dissident artist, has said he does not believe the works by Picasso, Rembrandt, Andy Warhol and others, which he will lock away in a safe with a corrosive substance this Friday, will actually be destroye
  
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• Ralph Fiennes: Time To Get Rid Of Trigger Warnings In The Theatre

  13-02-2024 19:32 via theguardian.com
  
  Fiennes, 61, renowned for his roles in Schindler’s List and the Harry Potter films and currently starring in a touring production of Macbeth, said audiences should be “shocked and disturbed”. – The Guardian
  
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• Universal Studios Hollywood Has A Poverty Problem — Among Its Underpaid Staff

  13-02-2024 19:04 via hollywoodreporter.com
  
  “A new UCLA Labor Center study of (the theme park’s) employees reveals that … 44% of the workers reported that they worried about being evicted from their homes, while more than half cut the size of their meals — or skipped them — because they didn’t have enough money for food.” – The Hollywood Reporter
  
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• The Neuroscience Behind Our Connections To Music

  13-02-2024 18:32 via neurosciencenews.com
  
  Music preferences can reflect emotional states and change with life experiences, suggesting a deep psychological connection to the types of music individuals choose. – Neuroscience News
  
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• The Queer Feminist Collective In North Carolina That’s Repatriating Banned Kids’ Books Back To Florida

  13-02-2024 18:02 via msn.com
  Firestrom Books in Asheville got a call from a distributor asking them to take in eight tons of books rejected by Duval County Public Schools (Jacksonville). Now Firestorm is giving those volumes to anyone who asks — including quite a few Floridians. – The Washington Post (MSN)
  
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• University Of New Hampshire Closes Museum In Cost-Cutting Move

  13-02-2024 17:31 via insidehighered.com
  
  Declining enrollment— the main campus had 13,860 students in 2022, down from 15,479 in 2017—and inflated operating costs led to the multimillion-dollar deficit that resulted in eliminating 75 total jobs at the university, which included the art museum’s director and the three other staff members. – InsideHigherEd
  
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• How, When, And Why The Orchestra Plays Winners Off The Stage At Awards Shows

  13-02-2024 17:05 via vulture.com
  
  First of all, it’s something that nobody wants to do. Yet the show’s director, who makes the decision, has to balance the interests of winners, the producers, the network, the audience, and the advertisers. (And it’s the poor stage manager who gets yelled at by the winners cut short.) – Vulture
  
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• Ex-Husband Sought For Arrest In Murder Of Gallerist Brent Sikkema

  13-02-2024 16:33 via artnews.com
  
  “Alejandro Triana Prevez, the man who confessed to the murder of New York art dealer Brent Sikkema, told Brazilian authorities Sikkema’s ex-husband, Daniel Sikkema, offered $200,000 for the killing. … Brazilian authorities … seek to arrest Daniel Sikkema for being the ‘intellectual and main author’ of the crime.” – ARTnews
  
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• Musée d’Orsay’s Virtual-Reality Van Gogh Show Sets New Attendance Record

  13-02-2024 16:01 via news.artnet.com
  
  “Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise,’ which closed last Sunday, brought … in a total 793,556 visitors, or an average of 7,181 each day. The show’s A.I. and immersive V.R. experiences were largely ridiculed in the press, but they proved persuasive to new audiences.” – Artnet
  
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• Is Wisconsin Now Dead Last In State Arts Funding Per Capita?

  13-02-2024 15:36 via wpr.org
  
  So reports Wisconsin Public Radio, which says that the state spends 18 cents per resident, while neighboring Minnesota spends $9.67 (53 times as much) and Illinois spends $5.11 (28 times as much). Still, the Badger State isn’t 50th: Georgia’s arts funding is 15 cents per capita. – Wisconsin Public Radio
  
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• Columbus Symphony To Build $275 Million Concert Hall In Center Of Ohio Capital

  13-02-2024 15:04 via dispatch.com
  
  The new venue, on a city-owned plot directly across the Scioto River from the central business district, would have a main auditorium with a capacity of 1,600 (the orchestra’s current home, the Ohio Theatre, seats almost 2,800) and nine other performance and event spaces. – The Columbus Dispatch
  
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• Nonprofit Arts Organizations: You Missed the Point. Again.

  13-02-2024 15:00 via artsjournal.com
  Yes, you’re a nonprofit. Big deal. Like tennis, if you don’t serve well, it’s your fault.
  All puns intended.
  The book has been released into the wild.
  My new book, Scene Change: Why Today’s Nonprofit Arts Organizations Have to Stop Producing Art and Start Producing Impact is now on the shelves, be they internet shelves or real ones, in the UK and the US. If your bookstore isn’t carrying it (yet), please let them know that you want a copy and that they should stock u
  
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• Threatening to dissolve masterpieces in acid is a pathetically banal stunt for our shallow times

  13-02-2024 14:56
  
  Russian artist Andrei Molodkin will destroy works by Picasso, Rembrandt and Warhol if Julian Assange dies in prison. It’s an unoriginal idea born of art-historical ignoranceThe security at the National Gallery in London gets more oppressive each time I visit. Now, there are new airport style scanning gates and extra searches: I recently saw someone’s art materials apparently being confiscated on entry. It seems heavy handed until you remember that last autumn Velázquez’s
  
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• Bob Edwards, Longtime NPR Anchor, Is Dead At 76

  13-02-2024 14:32 via msn.com
  “(He) stayed at Morning Edition for nearly a quarter-century and became as much a part of the begin-the-day rhythms for NPR listeners as coffee (and) commutes. … Then, in 2004, a decision by NPR to pull Mr. Edwards from the show touched off an avalanche of complaints.” – The Washington Post (MSN)
  
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• Soulscapes review – glimpses of greatness get lost in the lush, tropical overgrowth

  13-02-2024 14:02
  
  Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
  This exhibition exploring race and landscape art has some fabulous moments but its desire to remain tasteful veers towards kitschWhenever I encounter Ingrid Pollard’s conceptual photography, I feel, as a white British male, as if I have had my landscape ripped out from under me. When Pollard looks at the English landscape, she sees the enslaving past in every hill and dale. A day on the beach for her is ruined by the fact that slaving ships once crossed that
  
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• Climate-Protesting Art Vandals Throw Soup At A Monet

  13-02-2024 14:00 via lemonde.fr
  
  On Saturday, two young women from an activist collective called Riposte Alimentaire (“food counterattack”), the group responsible for a similar assault on Mona Lisa at the Louvre last month, hurled golden-yellow potage at Monet’s Le Printemps at Lyon’s Musée des Beaux-Arts. – Le Monde (in English)
  
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• Dutch gallery boss appeals for return of stolen Frans Hals painting

  13-02-2024 13:32
  
  Rijksmuseum director general makes plea for artwork taken from Leerdam in August 2020 before new exhibition in AmsterdamThe director general of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has appealed for the return of a stolen Frans Hals painting as he prepares to open a major exhibition devoted to the Dutch master without the “amazing” €15m artwork.Two Laughing Boys With a Mug of Beer was stolen from the Museum Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden in the Dutch town of Leerdam in August 2020. Unlike
  
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• Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind review – wild shrieks, audacious instructions and bare bottoms

  13-02-2024 10:00
  
  Tate Modern, LondonShake hands with a stranger, write about your mum, colour in, step on, get up close and interact with Ono’s art at this crowd-pleasing retrospectiveIt opens with a phone call. Eventually the artist picks up. “Hello! This is Yoko”, she says, then puts the phone down. It’s an old call, from the days before we had answering machines. The recording is also the last track on Ono’s 1971 album Fly, and it is the first thing you hear as you enter her Tate
  
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• Prism review – three-part film essay turns the camera on race, colour and imperialism

  13-02-2024 08:00
  
  Three film-makers, An van Dienderen, Rosine Mbakam and Eléonore Yaméogo, examine how the lens cannot be neutral in issues of marginalisationA collaborative project between film-makers Rosine Mbakam, An van Dienderen and Eléonore Yaméogo, Prism interrogates the supposed neutrality of the photographic lens, principally in regards to representations of race. Moving through the corridors of a film school before alighting on a sparse set where a lighting test is taking pla
  
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• Black British artists can no longer be ignored, says sculptor Thomas J Price

  13-02-2024 07:00
  
  Price says the number of exhibitions focused on black artists has ‘set a new standard’ for representation in the UKThe British art world can no longer ignore or marginalise black artists, according to the sculptor Thomas J Price, who believes black British culture is finally being absorbed into the mainstream.Price said the large number of exhibitions featuring black British artists – such as Entangled Pasts, Life Between Islands, Get Up, Stand Up Now and In the Black Fantastic
  
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• Dana Gioia: My Battles With Opera

  13-02-2024 00:01 via hudsonreview.com
  I realized the dangers of opera too late to be saved. By ten I had already been corrupted by my parents. Neither of them had ever been to the opera. The notion would have struck them as absurd. But they loved singing, and that included the operatic arias they heard on variety shows. – Hudson Review
  
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