Arts news

• AI Is Letting Us Read Ancient Scrolls At Herculaneum For The First Time

  16-02-2024 23:31 via theconversation.com
  
  The news that we could finally read these still rolled-up papyri hit me like a lightning bolt. In the past, opening the scrolls, even those in excellent condition that unrolled easily, caused damage to them – especially the outsides that contain the beginning of each text. – The Conversation
  
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• Does Perfection Have To Be The Measure Of Ballet?

  16-02-2024 23:01 via hedgehogreview.com
  
  Is it possible to imagine the ballet world without a primary teleology of aesthetic perfectionism and a baseline of low self-worth? Is it possible for our culture at large to stop conceiving of art and fame in this way? – Hedgehog Review
  
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• Why Fight Over Equality? Just Define It My Way

  16-02-2024 22:31 via literaryreview.co.uk
  In a famous essay, the economist and philosopher Amartya Sen pointed out that we are all in favour of equality. We just disagree about whether we mean equality of money, or power, or respect, or legal standing, or whatever. – Literary Review
  
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• The Copyright Wars (In Perspective)

  16-02-2024 22:01 via washingtonpost.com
  Though invisible to most people, copyright, the authors point out, is the legal matrix underlying the wealth of nations today, with copyrights in design, software and popular culture accounting for nearly all the valuation of “six of the largest corporations in the world — Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Disney.” – Washington Post
  
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• Urban Planning: Street Grids Are Making a Comeback

  16-02-2024 21:29 via theatlantic.com
  
  We were the victims of an American approach to city planning that had lost its way. But the next generation of kids may not be so unlucky. After a long demise, the grid is showing signs of a comeback. – The Atlantic
  
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• Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson Has Dementia

  16-02-2024 21:08 via theguardian.com
  
  Following the death of his wife last month, the 81-year-old pop legend has had two co-conservators appointed. He’s described in court documents as “unable to properly provide for his or her personal needs for physical health, food, clothing, or shelter … (He) does not have the capacity to give informed consent.” – The Guardian
  
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• LACMA’s Looted Art Problem

  16-02-2024 20:32 via hollywoodreporter.com
  
  For experts in museum ethics, LACMA’s handling of the situation — which partisans see as a proxy battle in a larger war over evolving ideas of power at the nexus of art, justice and globalism — is unsurprising yet unfortunate. To them, the prevailing ethos is catch-me-if-you-can. – The Hollywood Reporter
  
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• How To Get Broadway Out Of Its Winter Doldrums? Let Audience Members Ride The “Sweeney Todd” Death Slide

  16-02-2024 20:04 via msn.com
  In the current staging, Sweeney’s barbershop is above the stage; when he slits a customer’s throat, he pulls a lever that sends the victim down a slide into Mrs. Lovett’s basement. Under the tag “A Bad Idea Worth Considering,” Rebecca Alter points out that slide’s underutilized revenue potential. Wheeeeee! – Vulture (MSN)
  
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• Kansas Senate Cancels Public Broadcasting Funding Cut After Embarrassment

  16-02-2024 19:31 via current.org
  
  Republican senators objected to an LGBTQ documentary. – Current
  
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• Hang on to National Gallery’s 1900 cut-off date | Letters

  16-02-2024 19:19
  
  In response to a piece by Julian Spalding, Michael Newton argues that it makes sense to keep one London gallery for older paintings, while others show more recent workJulian Spalding argues the National Gallery should scrap its 1900 cut-off date (Report, 10 February). There are good reasons why it would be better to keep it. There’s the fact of precedent: the Louvre has a cut-off of 1848; Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie about 1800; the Prado’s collection ends with early 20th-centu
  
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• Remember When That Microsoft Chat-Bot Told A New York Times Writer It Loved Him And He Should Leave His Wife? One Year On, He Considers The Fallout

  16-02-2024 19:03 via nytimes.com
  
  Kevin Roose: “My column about the experience was probably the most consequential thing I’ll ever write — both in terms of the attention it got … and how the trajectory of A.I. development changed. … It’s been a year of growth and excitement in A.I. but a surprisingly tame one.” – The New York Times
  
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• A New Magazine For Art Criticism

  16-02-2024 18:31 via msn.com
  “Our goal is to shift industry standards. Capitalism swallows its own critiques, and we really are dedicated to waiting to scale. We have ambitions for Jupiter, not only to be a magazine, but we want to grow an institution that really is a home for writers, a home for thinkers and a home for artists.” – Chicago Tribune (MSN)
  
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• CNN’s New Boss’s “Revolution”: Smaller Budgets And Slashed Salaries For Stars

  16-02-2024 18:04 via thewrap.com
  
  “CNN boss Mark Thompson is looking to fund his digital-first transformation by cutting anchor salaries — currently more than $50 million — as he seeks to remake the ailing cable network into a U.S. version of the BBC,” where he was Director-General (2004-2012) before becoming New York Times Co. CEO (2012-2020). – TheWrap
  
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• A Rising Movement For Academic Freedom (But How To Define It?)

  16-02-2024 17:35 via nytimes.com
  
  Over the past year, faculty groups dedicated to academic freedom have sprung up at Harvard, Yale and Columbia, where even some liberal scholars argue that a prevailing progressive orthodoxy has created a climate of self-censorship and fear that stifles open inquiry. – The New York Times
  
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• The Choreographer Who Came Up With Emma Stone’s Totally Insane Dance In “Poor Things”

  16-02-2024 17:06 via nytimes.com
  
  Buenos Aires-born, Berlin-based dancemaker Constanza Macras also choreographed the warped courtly dance and the chase/fight in the woods in The Favourite. She says that working in film offers something “that you never get in theater. … The camera is really a choreographic work as well.” – The New York Times
  
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• Insurers Say The Biggest Danger To Museum Artworks Is — Well, Not Climate-Protesting Art Vandals

  16-02-2024 16:32 via hyperallergic.com
  
  It’s “a scourge of selfie-takers backing into paintings and other objects. As many visitors are increasingly more interested in stunting for the ’gram than having an ecstatic art experience, art insurers hope to promote more rigorous protections.” – Hyperallergic
  
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• England’s Arts Funder Gives In To Backlash Against Its Warning About Grantees’ “Political Statements”

  16-02-2024 16:01 via theguardian.com
  
  “A series of recent updates to (Arts Council England) policies … were met with fury from artists, writers and musicians. … Within hours, ACE issued a statement recognising the strength of feeling over the guidance and said it would ‘publish an updated version’ as soon as possible.” – The Guardian
  
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• And Who Has Swooped In To Buy Bankrupt Radio Giant Audacy? George Soros.

  16-02-2024 15:33 via insideradio.com
  
  “(His) buyout of approximately $415 million of Audacy’s debt would make his Soros Fund Management the largest stakeholder of the second-largest radio company in the U.S. when it emerges from chapter 11 reorganization.” – Inside Radio
  
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• BBC Says It Has “Secured The Future” Of The BBC Singers

  16-02-2024 15:05 via classical-music.com
  
  Last year, public outrage caused the broadcaster to abandon its plan to dissolve the 20-member BBC Singers. Now the network has announced a partnership between the Singers and the VOCES8 Foundation that’s evidently meant to provide more revenue, though the Foundation will not give direct financial support. – BBC Music Magazine
  
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• National Book Awards Extends Eligibility To Non-US Citizens

  16-02-2024 14:34 via motherjones.com
  
  “The change will affect prizes for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people’s literature to begin including authors ‘who maintain their primary, long-term home in the United States, US territories, or Tribal lands’ regardless of their citizenship status.” – Mother Jones
  
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• English National Opera’s Orchestra Ends Its Strike Threat

  16-02-2024 14:00 via theguardian.com
  
  All labor action planned for February has been called off as the company and the Musicians’ Union have come to a revised agreement about the instrumentalists’ fate when ENO moves from London to Manchester. – The Guardian
  
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• Sensuous socialites, beautiful disasters and a flaming orange ‘masterpiece’ – the week in art

  16-02-2024 11:56
  
  John Singer Sargent’s ironic fashion portraits go on show, Lord Leighton’s famous Flaming June is back in the UK and Edward Burtynsky’s large-scale photos capture a planet in crisis – all in your weekly dispatchSargent and Fashion
  The sensually ironic social portraiture of John Singer Sargent is a modern artistic miracle, and this sideways approach could be a brilliant key to his enigma.
  • Tate Britain, London, from 22 February to 7 July Continue reading...
  
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• Victorian Radicals review – a riveting rethink for the trippy, cosplaying pre-Raphaelites

  16-02-2024 11:40
  
  Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
  These Victorian painters are often framed as a guilty pleasure. But, as this intriguing exhibition makes clear, there is actually very little to feel guilty about After four years of closure, the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery has partially reopened to welcome the city’s pre-Raphaelites back from a tour of the US. Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts and Crafts Movement features familiar crowd-pleasers. Henry Wallis’s tiny port
  
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• Saul Leiter review – glorious survey of an impressionist with a camera

  16-02-2024 11:00
  
  MK Gallery, Milton Keynes
  Leiter looked at the street life of Manhattan and beyond with precise ideals of beauty and an infectious joyWe call photography “art” with casual unthinkingness now. In Florence there’s a Selfie Museum just round the corner from the museum containing Michelangelo’s David. Can we really describe both as art? But maybe it’s the wrong question. As EH Gombrich put it: “There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.” A
  
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• From New York to north Wales: artist’s field of logs recreated on Llandudno beach

  16-02-2024 11:00
  
  Rosemarie Castoro’s Trap a Zoid, last shown in Manhattan half a century ago, being restaged as part of retrospective A sculpture described by the artist as a “painting you can walk in”, which was only exhibited once almost half a century ago on the tip of Manhattan island, has reappeared on a north Wales beach.Rather than having a backdrop of skyscrapers as it did in 1978, Rosemarie Castoro’s Trap a Zoid has been set up on a beach in Llandudno in front of the Great Orme,
  
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• Rare Jungle Book painting to go on show at Kipling’s home

  16-02-2024 06:00
  
  The Return of the Buffalo Herd, by teenage prodigies Edward and Charles Detmold, can be seen at Bateman’s after conservationA rare watercolour depicting the aftermath of a climactic moment in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book is to go on display at the author’s country home after conservation work.The painting, The Return of the Buffalo Herd, is one of 16 created by twin brothers Edward and Charles Detmold, who were just 18 when they were commissioned to illustrate Kipling&rsqu
  
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• Tucson Symphony VP and General Manager

  16-02-2024 03:36 via artsjournal.com
  ABOUTFormed in 1928-29 as the first professional symphony orchestra in the Southwest, the TSO is the longest continuously performing professional arts organization in Arizona. The mission of the organization is to build and enrich community through the experience of live music of the highest quality. It serves more than 120,000 lives each year, including 35,000 students, through concerts, educational programming and outreach.Under the artistic leadership of Music Director José Luis Gomez
  
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• Hiring: Resident Conductor with Canada’s National Arts Centre

  16-02-2024 02:07 via artsjournal.com
  CANADA’S NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE ORCHESTRAResident Conductor ProgramApply by March 7 2024 Finalists will be invited for in-person auditions and interviews, held in Ottawa, Canada
  on April 27 2024.Applications are open to Canadian Citizens and Permanent Residents of Canada only. Travel and accommodation will be provided for the finalists as needed. Residency begins the 2024-2025 Season. Salary: The position will include a competitive annual salary plus a stipend f
  
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• Can Humans Survive AI?

  16-02-2024 00:01 via jacobin.com
  
  “Biological extinction, that’s not the point. The light of humanity and our understanding, our intelligence — our consciousness, if you will — can go on without meat humans.” – Jacobin
  
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